Image Normalization of Wiener-Hopf operators and boundary-transmission value problems for a junction of two half-planes

The present paper deals with an application of the image normalization technique for certain classes of Wiener-Hopf operators (WHOs) associated to ill-posed boundary-transmission value problems. We briefly describe the method of normalization and then apply it to boundary-transmission value problems issued from diffraction problems for a junction of two half-planes, which are relevant in mathematical physics applications. We consider different boundary-transmission conditions on the junction of the two semi-infinite half-planes and analyze the not normally solvability of the corresponding operators.Comment: 15 page

The Immigration and Trade Link in the European Union Integration Process

The aim of this paper is to analyse the link between immigration and trade among EU countries, particularly, in the context of the 2004 enlargement. The study tests whether the increase in immigrant stock from New Member States has any impact on the exports from the EU-15 to those markets or not. To that end the study applies an extended gravity model of international trade to panel data for three countries – Germany, Denmark and Portugal. The results show that increasing immigration from both New Member States and EU15 countries has a positive impact on the exports of both Portugal and Denmark. The results also suggest that less restrictive immigration policies have a positive impact on exports, and contribute to the normalization of exports of these countries to New Member States. Finally, these results do not hold in the case of Germany.International trade, immigration, European Union, economic integration, gravity model

Crime and Punishment Re-Awakened – Insights on a Risky Business from the Worker's Perspective

This research inspects the general implications of considering duration of confinement as a deduction to the convicted consumer-worker time endowment. Even if analytically simple, the model is able to shed some light on the expected wage profile of criminals, and the pattern of their preferences. The methodology used relies on the analysis of the crime-deterrent composite scheme, establishing the relation between required fines, duration of imprisonment, the monetary size of the offence, arrest probabilities and individual preferences and endowments. The main conclusions stem from the fact, proven below, that dissuasive seclusion or fines may decrease with the individuals' wage rate under a much wider range of consumer preferences than with non-labor earnings – for crimes for which seclusion length is high relative to fines. The intuition behind such conclusion lies on the fact that the money value of the opportunity costs of imprisonment is proportionally indexed to the individual's wage rate. Sensitivity of the deterrent sanction to uncertainty in the endowments distribution, as well as of dispersion in the sanction itself, was also inspected. It was found dependent on the pattern of individual preferences, particularly on how the response to a risk behaves in the presence of others. Corresponding risk measures were applied.Risk and Uncertainty and Labor Supply, Criminal Behavior, Illegal Behavior, Crime Deterrence, Risk Aversion, Multivariate Risks.

Elections and the public expenditure mix

The paper presents an intertemporal utility model that determines the effects of elections on the public expenditure composition. Conventional political budget cycle models describe incumbents as concerned only with the conditions that guarantee re-appointment. Aiming at achieving re-election, incumbents behave opportunistically in order to seduce voters about their political performance. The paper introduces another motivation for the manipulation of the public expenditure mix near elections: the incumbent’s concern with her future utility in the case of defeat. We provide data to suggest that both central and local governments in the European Union do manipulate the budget composition around election moments. In order to rationalise this observation, the paper proposes a model where voters and incumbent are rational, have complete information and no bias towards any category of public expenditure, namely consumption expenditure or investment expenditure. The paper shows that even under these extreme conditions, an electorally induced cycle on public expenditure mix is still expected, one where consumption expenditure raises relative to investment expenditure in pre-election periods. This opportunistic budget manipulation follows from two facts. First, any decision an incumbent makes on consumption expenditure pays back political dividends during the same period the expenditure is incurred, while any investment expenditure only becomes visible to voters with a one-period delay. Second, re-election is an uncertain event, which makes the second state of nature valuable. Outside politics, the incumbents’ pay back is a direct function of the voters’ assessment of the incumbents’ job while in office. The model is then extended to accommodate the scenario where voters and society at large do not share preferences. When voters or society evidence a preference prone to one of the public expenditure categories, a bias towards such category emerges in post-election periods. In pre-election periods two cases are found. Consumption expenditures exceed investment expenditures if either voters or society prefer the former category at the margin. The cycle’s nature is ambiguous if the marginal preferences of voters or society are biased towards investment expenditures. JEL classification: H50, E62. Keywords: Political Budget Cycles, Public Expenditure, Elections.

Visualyzart Project – The role in education

The VisualYzARt project intends to develop research on mobile platforms, web and social scenarios in order to bring augmented reality and natural interaction for the general public, aiming to study and validate the adequacy of YVision platform in various fields of activity such as digital arts, design, education, culture and leisure. The VisualYzARt project members analysed the components available in YVision platform and are defining new ones that allow the creation of applications to a chosen activity, effectively adding a new language to the domain YVision. In this paper we will present the role of the InstitutoPolitécnico de Santarém which falls into the field of education.VisualYzART is funded by QREN – Sistema de Incentivos à Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico (SI I&DT), Project n. º 23201 - VisualYzARt (from January 2013 to December 2014). Partners: YDreams Portugal; Instituto Politécnico de Santarém - Gabinete de e-Learning; Universidade de Coimbra - Centro de Informática e Sistemas; Instituto Politécnico de Leiria - Centro de Investigação em Informática e Comunicações; Universidade Católica do Porto - Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Managing social-ecological systems under uncertainty : implications for conservation

Natural resource managers and conservationists are often confronted with the challenges of uncertainty. Limits to knowledge and predictability challenge conservation success and socio-economic, institutional and political context affect implementation of conservation interventions. Using a management strategy evaluation (MSE) conceptual framework, I use a multidisciplinary approach to gain a better understanding of the role and implications of different sources and types of uncertainty for the management of social-ecological systems, giving special attention to the issues of observation and implementation uncertainty. The conservation of harvested ungulate species in the Serengeti, Tanzania, is used as a case study. I investigated which factors should be prioritized in order to increase survey accuracy and precision, and explored the potential effects of budgetary scenarios on the robustness of the population estimates obtained for different savannah ungulate species. The relative importance of each process affecting precision and accuracy varied according to the survey technique and biological characteristics of the species. I applied specialized questioning techniques developed for studying non-compliant and sensitive behaviour, using the unmatched-count technique (UCT) to assess prevalence of illegal hunting in the Serengeti. I found that poaching remains widespread in the Serengeti and current alternative sources of income may not be sufficiently attractive to compete with the opportunities provided by hunting. I explored trade-offs between different types of error when monitoring changes in population abundance and how these are affected by budgetary, observational and ecological conditions. Higher observation error and conducting surveys less frequently increased the likelihood of not detecting trends and misclassifying the shape of the trend but the differences between multiple levels of observation error decreased for higher monitoring length and frequency. Using key informant interviews with the main actors in the monitoring and management system, I provided recommendations for the development and implementation of interventions within long-term integrated and adaptive frameworks. The research presented in this thesis highlights the need to consider the role of people as influential components within social-ecological systems in order to promote effective conservation interventions. Monitoring and implementation must be understood as dynamic features of the system, instead of merely acting upon it, and the multiple sources of uncertainty must be fully considered in conservation planning, requiring the development and application of tools to aid management decision-making under uncertainty.Open Acces

Tax dividend evaluation of major urban renewal projects

This paper proposes a parsimonious methodology to evaluate the impact of large urban renewal projects on public revenues. The impact is largely endogenous, external to projects and may encompass a broad range of instruments, ranging from local to regional to central governments. We look at licence fees, user charges, piggyback levies, excise taxes, social security contributions, and taxation of property, corporate income, personal income, and sales or value added. All these revenues are labelled tax dividends for short. The evaluation of a project?s tax dividends may help governments on their licensing and, above all, on their co-financing decisions. However, the need for rigorous financial evaluations faces too many difficulties in practice, from modelling complexity to information shortages to time constraints to bureaucratic obstruction. The methodology in this paper aims precisely at delivering feasible, fast and reasonably sound assessments that can be computed before or after the projects? accomplishment. Revenue changes spring from the economic effects of renewal projects, which differ across space and time. Spatial effects are not restricted to the renewal site. Very often, they spill over to neighbouring city areas, and may also include region and nationwide outcomes. Most on-site effects are internalised by the developer but generate tax dividends too. The renewal project can also bring important benefits to adjacent city areas, because it either reduces a negative externality?pollution or crime, for example?or creates a positive externality?such as widely appraised amenities?for agents located therein. In the case of really large renewal projects, there may also be non-local effects to account for. In fact, the project?s own expenditure is likely to leak into regional and national suppliers, triggering macroeconomic consequences. Economic effects differ also on time, being temporary or permanent. The former come out of resource acquisition by the developer, and may include expenditure on planning, compulsory purchases, decontamination, demolition, and construction. Permanent effects on output occur because these projects increase the real value of capital in the economy. Real estate rents, on site and on neighbouring areas, capitalise the social net benefits of the renewal project. Hence, temporary effects are spatially diffuse and expand the economy in the short run. The methodology includes a tailored Mundell-Fleming design to quantify these effects. Permanent outcomes expand potential output, are normally restricted to an urban subspace and are quantifiable out of differential rents. The methodology is easily customisable to particular projects. As an example, we include an application to the large ongoing renewal project in Eastern Lisbon, Portugal, triggered by the 1998 world exhibition?Expo?98. Frequently, major renewal projects are prompted by a highly visible event, such as this exhibition or the Olympics. The event itself is likely to cause temporary effects, for example through its impact on the tourism sector? which is likely to boost within the city and its region. Our application shows also how to plug these effects into the analysis.

Means of payment and degree of monetization : a suggestion and an application ot the case of Portugal

Given that the characteristics of the sets of means of payment available to economic agents at a given moment supply decisive information about the degree of monetization of the economy, this paper first proposes a technique to analyse these characteristics, considering their amplitude, purchasing power and density, and then applies that technique to the evolution of the monetary system of Portugal in the course of its existence as an independent country. The Portuguese case is an interesting standard for international comparisons, because it evolved over a very long time span, and sharply different degrees of monetization may be identified within it: (i) an epoch of low or negligible monetization (12th-15th century); (ii) monetization of a significant and gradually increasing part of the economy (15th19th century); and (iii) almost full monetization (19th century on).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio