The Nine Circles of Surveillance Hell: An Institutional View of Information Flows and Information Threats in Libraries

In the past few years, libraries have started to design public programs that educate patrons about different tools and techniques to protect personal privacy. But do end user solutions provide adequate safeguards against surveillance by corporate and government actors? What does a comprehensive plan for privacy entail in order that libraries live up to their privacy values? In this paper, the authors discuss the complexity of surveillance architecture that the library institution might confront when seeking to defend the privacy rights of patrons. This architecture consists of three main parts: physical or material aspects, logical characteristics, and social factors of information and communication flows in the library setting. For each category, the authors will present short case studies that are culled from practitioner experience, research, and public discourse. The case studies probe the challenges faced by the library—not only when making hardware and software choices, but also choices related to staffing and program design. The paper shows that privacy choices intersect not only with free speech and chilling effects, but also with questions that concern intellectual property, organizational development, civic engagement, technological innovation, public infrastructure, and more. The paper ends with discussion of what libraries will require in order to sustain and improve efforts to serve as stewards of privacy in the 21st century.

Institutional Support for Experiential Learning

This brief details institutional support structures and program structures for experiential learning at small colleges. It also examines credit structures associated with experiential learning, experiential learning as a graduation requirement, and program assessments.

Some losses brought out by the WTO agreement for TRIPs

The WTO established two rules concerning the international protection of the TRIPs - trade related intellectual property rights, which includes patents and copyrights. One of these rules is the non-discrimination, which has shown to be efficiency-enhancing in the context of trade tariff reductions. The other is the national-treatment commitment rule. We develop in this paper a simple framework to show that the extended version of this rule - which is nowadays being imposed to members - brings out a loss of economic efficiency and a reduction in the levels of protection of intellectual property rights worldwide. As a consequence, it tends to reduce the investments on Research and Development throughout the world. This exactly contradicts the objectives of the Agreement.

Trade and co-operation in the EU-MERCOSUL free trade agreement

Rio de Janeiro

The EU-Mercosul free trade agreement: Quantifying mutual gains

We identify trade in goods opportunities in a EU-Mercosul free trade area. Gains for Mercosul are rather concentrated, being mostly associated to a few agricultural commodities nowadays facing high protection barriers. EU gains are evenly spread, comprising a variety of market penetration possibilities. Trade deviation by the EU products is never higher than trade creation, confirming their international competitiveness and signalling that a great distortion of Mercosul’s imports won’t take place. Balanced gains exist for both sides; for Mercosul, the agreement can act as a first serious trial for future liberalisations with other developed partners, and as a warning on needed competitiveness improvements.

Analysis of two-party salary negotiations: factos impeding a mutually-beneficial joint agreement

Business professionals were surveyed to explore both factors associated with negotiation propensity, as well as the strategies used by employees and employers in salary negotiations. The objective is to examine the factors that impede both pasties in reaching a mutually-beneficial joint agreement in salary negotiations. In order to achieve this objective, a review of the negotiations literature was conducted including both. Descriptive literature - present research finding and scientific theory which characterizes negotiation and examines the forces that determine it's course and outcome - as well as a review of the prescriptive literature - in order to develop practical advice given a description of hw negotiators behave. Research result show that, although there is general tendency for employers to leave room in the first offer for negotiation, employees rarely ask for more and generally accept the first offer. The sub-optimal outcome was partially a result of the employees' preferred strategies for negotiation salary: a soft approach focusing on compromised and maintaining the relationship. An analysis of the results combined with the literature explore, demonstrates that both parties exhibited a fixed-pie perspective, focusing on salary as the key issue, which impeded the search for integrative settlements and, mutually beneficial trade-offs.

Does Regulation matter? Institutional dimension of the 2008 financial crisis

Why did house prices fall in 2007‐2009? This is the fundamental question to most Americans, and to those who lent them money. Most homeowners did not care why residential real estate prices rose. They assumed prices always rose, and they should simply enjoy their good fortune. It was not until prices began to fall that people were left searching for answers. How much did regulation or lack thereof play in the role of the devastation? To what degree did greed and unrealistic consumer expectation have on the real estate bubble? Using existing literature as well as face to face interviews of experienced leaders within the real estate industry in California who experienced both the up and down of the real estate cycle, the overarching purpose of this study is to investigate the opinions and beliefs of the leaders and drivers within the real estate industry about the cause of the real estate bubble that occurred sharply in 2008 . Specifically, this project will focus on the opinions of real estate industry leaders who worked in the center of the subprime universe located in Irvine, California, during 2004‐2008. Comparing the mainstream beliefs with the interviewees it is fair to say that the main finding in the mainstream beliefs are reflected very well with the finding of the subject’s opinion. The thesis is divided into 6 chapters starting with “introduction”, followed by chapter 2 “Literature Review”. Chapter 3 is “Research Methodology” followed by chapter 4 “Data Presentation”. Finally, the results are discussed in chapter 5 “Analysis and Discussion” and conclusions in Chapter 6.

Desafios da adaptação institucional: um estudo do impacto da Lei de Consórcios Públicos no estado de São Paulo

A Lei nº 11.107/2005, que alterou o artigo 241 da Constituição Federal de 1988, intentou possibilitar aos consórcios a ampliação de seu potencial de atuação, pondo fim à sua fragilidade institucional. Permitindo sua constituição como pessoas jurídicas na figura de um consórcio de direito público ou de direito privado, buscou garantir, entre outras questões, o cumprimento das obrigações assumidas entre os membros e a participação dos três níveis da Federação. Sendo resultado de um processo de articulação em prol de sua regulamentação, a Lei de Consórcios Públicos representou a tentativa de aprimoramento do modelo de federalismo “cooperativo” no Brasil. No entanto, essas possibilidades ou ainda não foram utilizadas como fonte de recursos para algumas experiências ou têm ocorrido a uma velocidade mais lenta do que se esperava. Devido a esta alteração, supôs-se que a lei representaria um motor para o desenvolvimento de novos consórcios, bem como para o aperfeiçoamento das entidades já estabelecidas, que adotariam a nova personalidade de consórcio público. A partir desta problemática, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo realizar um estudo a respeito do processo de adaptação dos consórcios públicos à Lei nº 11.107/2005 à luz do neoinstitucionalismo histórico, com ênfase na investigação de três experiências de consórcios no estado de São Paulo, e que não se converteram para consórcios públicos nos moldes da lei. Em suma, foi possível concluir que, ainda que a lei apresente uma lista de possíveis vantagens, não criou instrumentos de aperfeiçoamento das experiências existentes, mas sim um novo arranjo de pactuação federativa. Essas experiências, que se desenvolveram ao longo de 40 anos sem instrumentos legais específicos para seu funcionamento – tendo, portanto, estruturas mais flexíveis –, apresentaram um comportamento de negação deliberada à adaptação aos instrumentos formais que a lei lhes apresentou. Dessa maneira, compreender de que modo os consórcios pré-existentes à Lei nº 11.107/2005 têm reconhecido as possibilidades dispostas por esse novo marco legal, de que maneira a trajetória desses arranjos pode influenciar em seu comportamento em relação à lei, e a própria trajetória da Lei de Consórcios Públicos, apresentou-se como um estudo ainda inexplorado e constitui-se como o norte principal da discussão neste trabalho.