Uniform Manual Real Property Acquisition and Relocation Assistance Section II - Chapter 111 Uniform Rules and Procedures April, 2006

The purpose of this chapter is to implement Iowa Code chapter 316 and sections 6B.42, 6B.45, 6B.54 and 6B.55, as required by the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-646, as amended by the Uniform Relocation Act Amendments of 1987, Title IV, Pub. L. No. 100-17 , Sec. 104, Pub. L. 105-117, and federal regulations adopted pursuant thereto.

Financial Markets and Real Ecinomy: Four Essays in International Trade

Financial markets play an important role in an economy performing various functions like mobilizing and pooling savings, producing information about investment opportunities, screening and monitoring investments, implementation of corporate governance, diversification and management of risk. These functions influence saving rates, investment decisions, technological innovation and, therefore, have important implications for welfare. In my PhD dissertation I examine the interplay of financial and product markets by looking at different channels through which financial markets may influence an economy.My dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter is a co-authored work with Martin Strieborny, a PhD student from the University of Lausanne. The second chapter is a co-authored work with Melise Jaud, a PhD student from the Paris School of Economics. The third chapter is co-authored with both Melise Jaud and Martin Strieborny. The last chapter of my PhD dissertation is a single author paper.Chapter 1 of my PhD thesis analyzes the effect of financial development on growth of contract intensive industries. These industries intensively use intermediate inputs that neither can be sold on organized exchange, nor are reference-priced (Levchenko, 2007; Nunn, 2007). A typical example of a contract intensive industry would be an industry where an upstream supplier has to make investments in order to customize a product for needs of a downstream buyer. After the investment is made and the product is adjusted, the buyer may refuse to meet a commitment and trigger ex post renegotiation. Since the product is customized to the buyer's needs, the supplier cannot sell the product to a different buyer at the original price. This is referred in the literature as the holdup problem. As a consequence, the individually rational suppliers will underinvest into relationship-specific assets, hurting the downstream firms with negative consequences for aggregate growth. The standard way to mitigate the hold up problem is to write a binding contract and to rely on the legal enforcement by the state. However, even the most effective contract enforcement might fail to protect the supplier in tough times when the buyer lacks a reliable source of external financing. This suggests the potential role of financial intermediaries, banks in particular, in mitigating the incomplete contract problem. First, financial products like letters of credit and letters of guarantee can substantially decrease a risk and transaction costs of parties. Second, a bank loan can serve as a signal about a buyer's true financial situation, an upstream firm will be more willing undertake relationship-specific investment knowing that the business partner is creditworthy and will abstain from myopic behavior (Fama, 1985; von Thadden, 1995). Therefore, a well-developed financial (especially banking) system should disproportionately benefit contract intensive industries.The empirical test confirms this hypothesis. Indeed, contract intensive industries seem to grow faster in countries with a well developed financial system. Furthermore, this effect comes from a more developed banking sector rather than from a deeper stock market. These results are reaffirmed examining the effect of US bank deregulation on the growth of contract intensive industries in different states. Beyond an overall pro-growth effect, the bank deregulation seems to disproportionately benefit the industries requiring relationship-specific investments from their suppliers.Chapter 2 of my PhD focuses on the role of the financial sector in promoting exports of developing countries. In particular, it investigates how credit constraints affect the ability of firms operating in agri-food sectors of developing countries to keep exporting to foreign markets.Trade in high-value agri-food products from developing countries has expanded enormously over the last two decades offering opportunities for development. However, trade in agri-food is governed by a growing array of standards. Sanitary and Phytosanitary standards (SPS) and technical regulations impose additional sunk, fixed and operating costs along the firms' export life. Such costs may be detrimental to firms' survival, "pricing out" producers that cannot comply. The existence of these costs suggests a potential role of credit constraints in shaping the duration of trade relationships on foreign markets. A well-developed financial system provides the funds to exporters necessary to adjust production processes in order to meet quality and quantity requirements in foreign markets and to maintain long-standing trade relationships. The products with higher needs for financing should benefit the most from a well functioning financial system. This differential effect calls for a difference-in-difference approach initially proposed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). As a proxy for demand for financing of agri-food products, the sanitary risk index developed by Jaud et al. (2009) is used. The empirical literature on standards and norms show high costs of compliance, both variable and fixed, for high-value food products (Garcia-Martinez and Poole, 2004; Maskus et al., 2005). The sanitary risk index reflects the propensity of products to fail health and safety controls on the European Union (EU) market. Given the high costs of compliance, the sanitary risk index captures the demand for external financing to comply with such regulations.The prediction is empirically tested examining the export survival of different agri-food products from firms operating in Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Senegal and Tanzania. The results suggest that agri-food products that require more financing to keep up with food safety regulation of the destination market, indeed sustain longer in foreign market, when they are exported from countries with better developed financial markets.Chapter 3 analyzes the link between financial markets and efficiency of resource allocation in an economy. Producing and exporting products inconsistent with a country's factor endowments constitutes a serious misallocation of funds, which undermines competitiveness of the economy and inhibits its long term growth. In this chapter, inefficient exporting patterns are analyzed through the lens of the agency theories from the corporate finance literature. Managers may pursue projects with negative net present values because their perquisites or even their job might depend on them. Exporting activities are particularly prone to this problem. Business related to foreign markets involves both high levels of additional spending and strong incentives for managers to overinvest. Rational managers might have incentives to push for exports that use country's scarce factors which is suboptimal from a social point of view. Export subsidies might further skew the incentives towards inefficient exporting. Management can divert the export subsidies into investments promoting inefficient exporting.Corporate finance literature stresses the disciplining role of outside debt in counteracting the internal pressures to divert such "free cash flow" into unprofitable investments. Managers can lose both their reputation and the control of "their" firm if the unpaid external debt triggers a bankruptcy procedure. The threat of possible failure to satisfy debt service payments pushes the managers toward an efficient use of available resources (Jensen, 1986; Stulz, 1990; Hart and Moore, 1995). The main sources of debt financing in the most countries are banks. The disciplining role of banks might be especially important in the countries suffering from insufficient judicial quality. Banks, in pursuing their rights, rely on comparatively simple legal interventions that can be implemented even by mediocre courts. In addition to their disciplining role, banks can promote efficient exporting patterns in a more direct way by relaxing credit constraints of producers, through screening, identifying and investing in the most profitable investment projects. Therefore, a well-developed domestic financial system, and particular banking system, would help to push a country's exports towards products congruent with its comparative advantage.This prediction is tested looking at the survival of different product categories exported to US market. Products are identified according to the Euclidian distance between their revealed factor intensity and the country's factor endowments. The results suggest that products suffering from a comparative disadvantage (labour-intensive products from capital-abundant countries) survive less on the competitive US market. This pattern is stronger if the exporting country has a well-developed banking system. Thus, a strong banking sector promotes exports consistent with a country comparative advantage.Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis further examines the role of financial markets in fostering efficient resource allocation in an economy. In particular, the allocative efficiency hypothesis is investigated in the context of equity market liberalization.Many empirical studies document a positive and significant effect of financial liberalization on growth (Levchenko et al. 2009; Quinn and Toyoda 2009; Bekaert et al., 2005). However, the decrease in the cost of capital and the associated growth in investment appears rather modest in comparison to the large GDP growth effect (Bekaert and Harvey, 2005; Henry, 2000, 2003). Therefore, financial liberalization may have a positive impact on growth through its effect on the allocation of funds across firms and sectors.Free access to international capital markets allows the largest and most profitable domestic firms to borrow funds in foreign markets (Rajan and Zingales, 2003). As domestic banks loose some of their best clients, they reoptimize their lending practices seeking new clients among small and younger industrial firms. These firms are likely to be more risky than large and established companies. Screening of customers becomes prevalent as the return to screening rises. Banks, ceteris paribus, tend to focus on firms operating in comparative-advantage sectors because they are better risks. Firms in comparative-disadvantage sectors finding it harder to finance their entry into or survival in export markets either exit or refrain from entering export markets. On aggregate, one should therefore expect to see less entry, more exit, and shorter survival on export markets in those sectors after financial liberalization.The paper investigates the effect of financial liberalization on a country's export pattern by comparing the dynamics of entry and exit of different products in a country export portfolio before and after financial liberalization.The results suggest that products that lie far from the country's comparative advantage set tend to disappear relatively faster from the country's export portfolio following the liberalization of financial markets. In other words, financial liberalization tends to rebalance the composition of a country's export portfolio towards the products that intensively use the economy's abundant factors.

TERMINOLOGIA DO DIREITO PROCESSUAL CIVIL EM CABO VERDE

O presente trabalho tem como objectivo prioritário propor, a criação de uma base de dados terminológica e textual trilingue – Português – Inglês – Francês no domínio do direito processual civil em Cabo Verde. No entanto, tencionamos no futuro introduzir o caboverdiano como uma quarta língua na base de dados. Assim, os termos e as colocações terminológicas que iremos armazenar estarão na base da preparação dos recursos linguísticos e terminológicos para o ensino do português jurídico nas universidades e institutos superiores do arquipélago, além de ser uma ferramenta indispensável para os juristas, advogados, magistrados, tradutores, entre outros. Focalizámos a nossa análise nas colocações terminológicas nominais que na sua estrutura contemplem pelo menos um adjectivo: apreciação do Supremo Tribunal de Justiça, ampliação da competência territorial, intervenção do tribunal colectivo, etc.

Reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction reference genes in the spared nerve injury model of neuropathic pain: validation and literature search.

BACKGROUND: The reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) is a widely used, highly sensitive laboratory technique to rapidly and easily detect, identify and quantify gene expression. Reliable RT-qPCR data necessitates accurate normalization with validated control genes (reference genes) whose expression is constant in all studied conditions. This stability has to be demonstrated.We performed a literature search for studies using quantitative or semi-quantitative PCR in the rat spared nerve injury (SNI) model of neuropathic pain to verify whether any reference genes had previously been validated. We then analyzed the stability over time of 7 commonly used reference genes in the nervous system - specifically in the spinal cord dorsal horn and the dorsal root ganglion (DRG). These were: Actin beta (Actb), Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), ribosomal proteins 18S (18S), L13a (RPL13a) and L29 (RPL29), hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase 1 (HPRT1) and hydroxymethylbilane synthase (HMBS). We compared the candidate genes and established a stability ranking using the geNorm algorithm. Finally, we assessed the number of reference genes necessary for accurate normalization in this neuropathic pain model. RESULTS: We found GAPDH, HMBS, Actb, HPRT1 and 18S cited as reference genes in literature on studies using the SNI model. Only HPRT1 and 18S had been once previously demonstrated as stable in RT-qPCR arrays. All the genes tested in this study, using the geNorm algorithm, presented gene stability values (M-value) acceptable enough for them to qualify as potential reference genes in both DRG and spinal cord. Using the coefficient of variation, 18S failed the 50% cut-off with a value of 61% in the DRG. The two most stable genes in the dorsal horn were RPL29 and RPL13a; in the DRG they were HPRT1 and Actb. Using a 0.15 cut-off for pairwise variations we found that any pair of stable reference gene was sufficient for the normalization process. CONCLUSIONS: In the rat SNI model, we validated and ranked Actb, RPL29, RPL13a, HMBS, GAPDH, HPRT1 and 18S as good reference genes in the spinal cord. In the DRG, 18S did not fulfill stability criteria. The combination of any two stable reference genes was sufficient to provide an accurate normalization.

A Fazenda Real, campo de contradições entre a Coroa

A 4 de Maio de 1512, D. Manuel I, rei de Portugal, fez mercê do ofício de almoxarife da vila da Ribeira Grande a Álvaro Dias, escudeiro de Sua Casa e morador da ilha de Santiago. A 20 de Fevereiro de 1534, D. João III confirmou a dita carta. 2 Durante o período que medeia entre estas duas datas decorre a vivência administrativa de uma das personagens mais interessantes e representativas da ilha de Santiago na primeira metade do século XVI. Esta figura, que foi ao mesmo tempo oficial régio, armador e mercador, representou como almoxarife os interesses da Fazenda Real na vila da Ribeira Grande. Como morador de Santiago, que armava navios e comerciava com a costa da Guiné, pertencia à camada social dominante da ilha. Pelo facto de colocar os seus negócios acima dos deveres que tinha perante a Coroa, Álvaro Dias foi por várias vezes destituído do ofício. No entanto, aproveitando-se das fraquezas existentes nas estruturas da administração, conseguiu reter, até à sua morte, a carta de almoxarife.

O poder militar e a desedificação do estado de direito e da democracia na Guiné-Bissau

Após a proclamação da independência do País em 1973, as Forças Armadas Revolucionárias do Povo (FARP), criadas pelo PAIGC durante a luta armada de libertação nacional, passaram a constituir o exército nacional e a integrarem alguns Órgãos de Soberania. Partidarizadas e politizadas até 1991, com a transição do sistema político monopartidário para multipartidário, as FARP foram legalmente despartidarizadas. Contudo os militares guineenes, continuam a intervir na vida política, contrariando o dever Constitucional de submissão ao poder político. Pretende-se com este tema analisar: O papel das Forças Armadas Revolucionárias do Povo, à luz da Constituição da República e o poder militar na desedificação do Estado de Direito e da Democracia. As consequências relativas à afirmação do” jus imperii” do Estado e os desafios

A CONTABILIDADE E O REAL VALOR DAS EMPRESAS: FOCO NO CAPITAL INTELECTUAL

Este trabalho mostra que a contabilidade pode não estar a evidenciar o real valor do património das empresas (um dos seus objectivos), constatamos nos últimos tempos, que os relatórios fornecidos pela contabilidade financeira não retratam certas realidades das empresas, visto que o valor contabilístico se distancia cada vez mais do valor de mercado, principalmente nas empresas de alta tecnologia e serviços, assim sendo as demonstrações financeiras podem estar experimentando uma perda de relevância para a tomada de decisões de investimentos, de crédito e de gestão. Dentro deste contexto, ressaltamos a necessidade de a contabilidade evidenciar naquelas demonstrações tais informações para que possa divulgar aos vários utentes da informação o real valor da empresa. Visto que o Capital Intelectual é importante para as empresas, torna-se necessário relatar não só informações financeiras como também não financeiras. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo descritivo/quantitativo da empresa CVTelecom, com o objectivo de avaliar o grau de divulgação do Capital Intelectual na empresa. A principal constatação foi o seguinte: uma participação activa da empresa em divulgar o Capital Intelectual, uma forma não normalizada através da divulgação voluntária do Capital Intelectual cujo veículo de divulgação, é o Relatório de Gestão e o Balanço Social. This work shows that the Accounting cannot be evidencing the Real value of the patrimony of the enterprises (one of their objectives), we verified in the last times, that the reports supplied by the Financial Accounting don't portray certain realities of the enterprises, because the value Accounting of the enterprises go away more and more of his market value, mainly in the companies of high technology and services, soon the financial demonstrations are trying a loss of relevance for socket of decisions of investments, of credit and of administration. Inside of this context, we emphasized the need of the Accounting to evidence in the demonstrations such financial information so that it can publish to the several users of the information the Real value of the company. Because the Intellectual Capital is important for the enterprises, it becomes necessary to tell not only financial information as well as any financial. This work presents a descriptive-quantitative study of the enterprise CVtelecom, with the objective of evaluating the degree of popularization of the Intellectual Capital in the enterprise and the impact in the performance of this enterprise. The main verification was the following: A participation active of the company in publishing the Intellectual Capital in spite of being in a way no normalized but a voluntary popularization of the Intellectual Capital, whose popularization vehicle is the Report of Administration and the Social Swinging.

Desenvolvimento Profissional dos Professores do Ensino Básico em Cabo Verde

A educação tem sido um factor privilegiado no processo do desenvolvimento dos recursos humanos. Falar do desenvolvimento da educação implica necessariamente falar da capacitação, qualificação e valorização dos docentes. Quanto maior for a importância atribuída à educação, entendida como um todo, seja com vista à transmissão valores como a coesão, justiça social ou os valores inerentes ao desenvolvimento dos recursos humanos, tão caros nas economias modernas baseadas na tecnologia e no conhecimento. O engajamento que se espera dos professores nesse processo passa pelo seu desenvolvimento profissional, o que se pressupõe um maior grau de motivação na classe. A aquisição de qualificações adequadas para se ser um bom professor sempre foi uma condição indispensável para o sucesso do processo ensino/aprendizagem. É fundamental compreendermos que este sucesso será conseguido quando o professor se sentir plenamente motivado. Convém realçar que em Cabo Verde os professores têm aderido, prontamente, às acções de formação, seminários, works-shops e entre outras acções propostas pelo Ministério da Educação, não só para estarem á altura de acompanhar as demandas do sistema educativo e da nova revisão curricular em curso, mas também para se desenvolverem profissionalmente e poderem sentir-se mais capacitados para o exercício da missão que escolheram. II. Justificação da escolha do tema A escolha do tema, “ Desenvolvimento Profissional dos Docentes do Ensino Básico em Cabo Verde” no período compreendido entre 2000 a 2006, justifica-se pelo contributo que pretendemos dar ao subsistema de formação de professores, evidenciando alguns indicadores que permitam delinear com mais rigor o processo de desenvolvimento pessoal e profissional. Pretendemos também analisar a problemática do desenvolvimento profissional dos professores do ensino básico, realçando os progressos, estagnação e seus efeitos ao nível da satisfação e motivação laboral, bem como a repercussão do processo normativo no desenvolvimento da carreira. Atendendo que o desenvolvimento profissional dos docentes do ensino básico em Cabo verde tem constituído uma preocupação para a classe, constituindo tema de habituais debates em vários fóruns, merecendo, por outro lado, tratamento e questionamento diferenciado, também por parte do organismo governamental que tutela a Educação. O presente trabalho surge da consciência que se tem da necessidade de conhecer a real situação do desenvolvimento profissional dos docentes, decorrendo desse conhecimento que se pretende obter a apresentação de sugestões e propostas de melhorias capazes de contribuírem para a omissão de constrangimentos, visando o melhoramento profissional dos docentes do modo em geral. O período em estudo decorre de 2000 a 2006, é marcado pela institucionalização do sistema multipartidário em Cabo Verde, consubstanciada com a aprovação de uma Constituição da República que garante a todos os cidadãos, neste caso particular os professores, a liberdade de questionarem o seu desenvolvimento profissional, ao mesmo tempo lhes consagra o direito, o dever e os instrumentos para se reivindicarem.

Insider Trading and Real Investment

In this paper I analyze the effects of insider trading on real investmentand the insurance role of financial markets. There is a single entrepreneurwho, at a first stage, chooses the level of investment in a risky business.At the second stage, an asset with random payoff is issued and then the entrepreneurreceives some privileged information on the likely realization of productionreturn. At the third stage, trading occurs on the asset market, where theentrepreneur faces the aggregate demand coming from a continuum of rationaluniformed traders and some noise traders. I compare the equilibrium withinsider trading (when the entrepreneur trades on her inside information in theasset market) with the equilibrium in the same market without insider trading. Ifind that permitting insider trading tends to decrease the level of realinvestment. Moreover, the asset market is thinner and the entrepreneur's netsupply of the asset and the hedge ratio are lower, although the asset priceis more informative and volatile.

Real wage rigidities and the new Keynesian model

Most central banks perceive a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output. However, the standard new Keynesian framework implies no such trade-off. In that framework, stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. In this paper, we argue that this property of the new Keynesian framework, which we call the divine coincidence, is due to a special feature of the model: the absence of non trivial real imperfections.We focus on one such real imperfection, namely, real wage rigidities. When the baseline new Keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities, the divine coincidence disappears, and central banks indeed face a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. We show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications, but it also has appealing positive properties. In particular, it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation-unemployment relation found in the data.

The macroeconomic effects of German unification: Real adjustments and the welfare state

We study the effects of German unification in a model with capital accumulation, skill differences and a welfare state. We argue that this event is similar to a mass migration of low-skilled agents holding no capital into a foreign country. Absent a welfare state, we observe an investment boom, depressed output and employment conditions. Capital owners and high-skilled agents are willing to give up to 4% of per-capita consumption to favor unification. When a welfare state exists the investment boom disappears and the recession is prolonged. Now, with unification, capital owners and high-skilled agents lose 4% of per-capita consumption.

Direitos Humanos e Guerra na Filosofia do Direito Internacional de Habermas

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar uma visão crítica da Filosofia do Direito Internacional de Habermas. Também partindo, tal como ele, de uma base kantiana, analisar-se-á alguns aspectos basilares da teoria habermasiana: o seu debate com o jurista alemão Carl Schmitt (1); a sua formulação do Direito Cosmopolita (2) e a fraca fundamentação que ele dá aos Direitos Humanos (3). Então mostrar- se-á que a sua Filosofia do Direito Internacional, apesar de estruturar fortemente as instituições globais do futuro, é algo inapropriada para resolver problemas internacionais contemporâneos como o das intervenções humanitárias (4).