Diagnosis socioambiental y presupuesto para el Parque Nacional Los Quetzales (Costa Rica)

Se realiza una diagnosis socioambiental y un presupuesto para el Plan de Manejo del Parque Nacional Los Quetzales (PNLQ). El PNLQ ocupa una superficie de 4117 ha. Presenta un régimen hí­drico elevado favorecido por la topografí­a quebrada que permite la presencia de fajas de condensación. Estas condiciones favorecen la presencia del bosque nublado que como se ha observado es el hábitat de innumerables especies, algunas de las cuales presentan gran valor ecológico. El presupuesto para el Plan de Manejo refleja cómo los gastos superan en una proporción importante a los ingresos, por lo que se recomienda centrar los esfuerzos en la búsqueda de formas de financiación (pago por servicios ambientales, convenios, co-manejo y donaciones). También se hace precisa una aportación anual del Gobierno Central para la ejecución del Plan.

Memory in contracts: the experience of the EBRD (1991-2003)

The objective of this paper is to identify the role of memory in repeated contracts with moral hazard in financial intermediation. We use the database we have built containing the contracts signed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development EBRD between 1991 and 2003. Our framework is a standard setting of repeated moral hazard. After having controlled for the adverse selection component, we are able to prove that client reputation is the discrimination device according to which the bank fixes the amount of credit for the established clients. Our results unambiguously isolate the effect of memory in the bank's lending decisions.

Barcelona'92: los Juegos de la comunicación

Este artículo es una síntesis de algunas partes del libro del autor de &i&Juegos Olímpicos y Comunicación&/i&, publicado por FUNDESCO. La investigación correspondiente se pudo realizar en el Centre d'Estudis Olímpics de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona con el apoyo de la C.I.C.Y.T. (Centro de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica), en el Plan Nacional de Investigación (Área del Deporte). Esta versión fue preparada para la revista &i&Telos&/i& de Fundesco, en enero de 1992.

The Private and fiscal returns to schooling and the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education: a general framework and some results for the EU

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these countries, we construct estimates of the private return to an additional year of schooling for an individual of average attainment, taking into account the effects of education on wages and employment probabilities after allowing for academic failure rates, the direct and opportunity costs of schooling, and the impact of personal taxes, social security contributions and unemployment and pension benefits on net incomes. We also construct a set of effective tax and subsidy rates that measure the effects of different public policies on the private returns to education, and measures of the fiscal returns to schooling that capture the long-term effects of a marginal increase in attainment on public finances under conditions that approximate general equilibrium.

Anàlisi de la viabilitat dels cultius energètics a Catalunya

Els biocombustibles constitueixen la font energètica renovable més important que volen implantar les administracions per tal de disminuir les emissions d’efecte hivernacle. Tot i això es demostra que la producció local, en el millor dels casos, és insuficient per arribar als objectius proposats i que caldrà importar els productes d’altres països. D’aquesta manera, no es redueix la dependència energètica de l’exterior i la reducció d’emissions no és tan significativa com s’esperava. En contra, una producció i consums a escala local poden tenir un impacte econòmic, ambiental i social positiu.

Rethinking economies: regulation and responsibility in contemporary ethnographic cases of production and exchange

Informe de investigación realizado a partir de una estancia en la University of London entre el 3 de marzo al 10 de abril 2007. Redacción de un artículo sobre aspectos metodológicos centrales para las ciencias sociales en su vertiente tanto teórica como aplicada: la articulación entre la investigación etnográfica y los modelos abstractos. Tanto la etnografía en sus múltiples formas de describir la realidad observable, como los modelos en su intento por reducir la complejidad con el fin de subrayar las conexiones causales son instrumentos de las ciencias sociales. Los modelos cambian el mundo: gracias a su cualidad abstracta pueden presentar no sólo una imagen de cómo funcionan las cosas, sino también subrayar el aspecto procesual de las conexiones permitiendo de este modo establecer proposiciones prospectivas y guiar las políticas públicas de desarrollo. En la base de la acción encontramos siempre alguna forma de modelización, incluso en el ámbito de las disposiciones subjetivas que mueven a la gente a la toma de decisiones cotidianas. A menudo la realidad escapa a la matriz de los modelos, sin embargo, y el cambio y la adaptación toman caminos insospechados y no planificados. Este proyecto busca construir la posibilidad de un diálogo constructivo, creativo y no-jerárquico entre los modelos de desarrollo económico y la etnografía(...)

Análisis del gasto de los turistas que acceden a España por avión

El sector turístico se ha convertido en una de las principales actividades económicas tanto a nivel regional, nacional como mundial. Por otro lado, el transporte aéreo ha contribuido en gran manera a este desarrollo, incluyendo potencias mundiales como España, donde tres de cada cuatro turistas acceden por este medio. Una de las razones que ha favorecido esta situación son las aerolíneas de bajo coste. En este trabajo se analizará y comparará el gasto y su distribución de los turistas que acceden a España con estas aerolíneas y con las tradicionales. Dicho conocimiento será de gran utilidad para el desarrollo de estrategias de promoción y marketing en el destino turístico, así como en la mejora de la caracterización del mismo.

Measuring intergenerational earnings mobility in Spain: a selection-bias-free approach

This paper analyses intergenerational earnings mobility in Spain correcting for different selection biases. We address the co-residence selection problem by combining information from two samples and using the two-sample two-stage least square estimator. We find a small decrease in elasticity when we move to younger cohorts. Furthermore, we find a higher correlation in the case of daughters than in the case of sons; however, when we consider the employment selection in the case of daughters, by adopting a Heckman-type correction method, the diference between sons and daughters disappears. By decomposing the sources of earnings elasticity across generations, we find that the correlation between child's and father's occupation is the most important component. Finally, quantile regressions estimates show that the influence of the father's earnings is greater when we move to the lower tail of the offspring's earnings distribution, especially in the case of daughters' earnings.

Applications of the MuSIASEM approach to study changes in the metabolic pattern of Catalonia

This document presents an integrated analysis of the performance of Catalonia based on an analysis of how the energy consumption (measured at the societal level for the Catalan Society) is used within both the productive sectors of the economy and the household, to generate added value, jobs, and to guarantee a given level of material standard of living to the population. The trends found in Catalonia are compared to the trends of other European Countries to contextualize the performance of Catalonia with respect to other societies that have followed different paths of economic development. The first part of the document consists of the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach that has been used to provide this integrated analysis of Catalan Society across different scales (starting from an analysis of the specific sectors of the Catalan economy as an Autonomous Community and scaling up to an intra-regional (European Union 14) comparison) and across different dimensions of analyses of energy consumption coupled with added value generation. Within the scope of this study, we observe the various trajectories of changes in the metabolic pattern for Catalonia and the EU14 countries in the Paid Work Sectors composed of namely, the Agricultural Sector, the Productive Sector and the Services and Government Sector also in comparison with the changes in the household sector. The flow intensities of the exosomatic energy and the added value generated for each specific sector are defined per hour of human activity, thus characterized as exosomatic energy (MJ/hour) (or Exosomatic Metabolic Rate) and added value (€/hour) (Economic Labour Productivity) across multiple levels. Within the second part of the document, the possible usage of the MuSIASEM approach to land use analyses (using a multi-level matrix of categories of land use) has been conducted.

The Electoral Determinants of Collective Remittances: The Mexican 3x1 Program for Migrants

The 3x1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure, and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To do so, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This opens the door to the political manipulation of the program. We explore the impact of a particular facet of Mexican political life on the operation of the 3x1: its recent democratization and the increasing political competition at the municipal level. Relying on the literature on redistributive politics, we posit that an increasing number of effective parties in elections may have two different effects. On the one hand, the need to cater to more heterogeneous constituencies may increase the provision of public projects. On the other hand, since smaller coalitions are needed to win elections under tighter competition, fewer public and more private (clientelistic) projects could be awarded. Using a unique dataset on the 3x1 Program for Migrants for over 2,400 municipalities in the period 2002 through 2007, we find a lower provision of public goods in electorally competitive jurisdictions. Thus, we remain sceptical about the program success in promoting public goods in politically competitive locations with high migration levels.

Water scarcity, social power and the production of an elite suburb: the political ecology of water in Matadepera, Catalonia

This article investigates the history of land and water transformations in Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona. Analysis is informed by theories of political ecology and methods of environmental history; although very relevant, these have received relatively little attention within ecological economics. Empirical material includes communications from the City Archives of Matadepera (1919-1979), 17 interviews with locals born between 1913 and 1958, and an exhaustive review of grey historical literature. Existing water histories of Barcelona and its outskirts portray a battle against natural water scarcity, hard won by heroic engineers and politicians acting for the good of the community. Our research in Matadepera tells a very different story. We reveal the production of a highly uneven landscape and waterscape through fierce political and power struggles. The evolution of Matadepera from a small rural village to an elite suburb was anything but spontaneous or peaceful. It was a socio-environmental project well intended by landowning elites and heavily fought by others. The struggle for the control of water went hand in hand with the land and political struggles that culminated – and were violently resolved - in the Spanish Civil War. The displacement of the economic and environmental costs of water use from few to many continues to this day and is constitutive of Matadepera’s uneven and unsustainable landscape. By unravelling the relations of power that are inscribed in the urbanization of nature (Swyngedouw, 2004), we question the perceived wisdoms of contemporary water policy debates, particularly the notion of a natural scarcity that merits a technical or economic response. We argue that the water question is fundamentally a political question of environmental justice; it is about negotiating alternative visions of the future and deciding whose visions will be produced.

Emissions distribution in post-Kyoto international negotiations: a policy

An abundant scientific literature about climate change economics points out that the future participation of developing countries in international environmental policies will depend on their amount of pay offs inside and outside specific agreements. These studies are aimed at analyzing coalitions stability typically through a game theoretical approach. Though these contributions represent a corner stone in the research field investigating future plausible international coalitions and the reasons behind the difficulties incurred over time to implement emissions stabilizing actions, they cannot disentangle satisfactorily the role that equality play in inducing poor regions to tackle global warming. If we focus on the Stern Review findings stressing that climate change will generate heavy damages and policy actions will be costly in a finite time horizon, we understand why there is a great incentive to free ride in order to exploit benefits from emissions reduction efforts of others. The reluctance of poor countries in joining international agreements is mainly supported by historical responsibility of rich regions in generating atmospheric carbon concentration, whereas rich countries claim that emissions stabilizing policies will be effective only when developing countries will join them.Scholars recently outline that a perceived fairness in the distribution of emissions would facilitate a wide spread participation in international agreements. In this paper we overview the literature about distributional aspects of emissions by focusing on those contributions investigating past trends of emissions distribution through empirical data and future trajectories through simulations obtained by integrated assessment models. We will explain methodologies used to elaborate data and the link between real data and those coming from simulations. Results from this strand of research will be interpreted in order to discuss future negotiations for post Kyoto agreements that will be the focus of the next. Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. A particular attention will be devoted to the role that technological change will play in affecting the distribution of emissions over time and to how spillovers and experience diffusion could influence equality issues and future outcomes of policy negotiations.

Firm dynamics support the importance of the embodied question

This paper contributes to the literature on both embodied technical progress and firm dynamics, by formulating an endogenous growth model where selection and imitation play a fundamental role in helping capital good producers to learn about the productivity of technologies embodied in new plants. By calibrating the model to some key aggregates particularly relevant for the embodied capital literature, among them the growth rate of the relative investment price, the model quantitatively replicates the main facts associated to firm dynamics, such as the entry rate and the tail index of the establishment size distribution. In line with the previous literature, it also predicts a contribution to productivity growth of embodied technical progress and selection of around 60%

Information Dispersion and Equilibrium Multiplicity

This paper studies the implications of correlation of private signals about the liquidation value of a risky asset in a variation of a standard noisy rational expectations model in which traders receive endowment shocks which are private information and have a common component. We …nd that a necessary condition to generate multiple linear partially revealing rational expectations equilibria is the existence of several sources of information dispersion. In this context equilibrium multiplicity tends to occur when information is more dispersed. A necessary condition to have strategic complementarity in information acquisition is to have mul- tiple equilibria. When the equilibrium is unique there is strategic substi- tutability in information acquisition, corroborating the result obtained in Grossman and Stiglitz (1980). JEL Classi…cation: D82, D83, G14 Keywords: Multiplicity of equilibria, strategic complementarity, asym- metric information.

The political ecology of Jatropha plantations for biodiesel in Tamil Nadu, India

Jatropha curcas is promoted internationally for its presumed agronomic viability in marginal lands, economic returns for small farmers, and lack of competition with food crops. However, empirical results from a study in southern India revealed that Jatropha cultivation, even on agricultural lands, is neither profitable, nor pro-poor. We use a political ecology framework to analyze both the discourse promoting Jatropha cultivation and its empirical consequences. We deconstruct the shaky premises of the dominant discourse of Jatropha as a “pro-poor” and “pro-wasteland” development crop, a discourse that paints a win-win picture between poverty alleviation, natural resource regeneration, and energy security goals. We then draw from field-work on Jatropha plantations in the state of Tamil Nadu to show how Jatropha cultivation favors resource-rich farmers, while possibly reinforcing existing processes of marginalization of small and marginal farmers.