CRIME AND PUNISHMENT WITH HABIT FORMATION

Moral concepts affect crime supply. This idea is modelled assuming that illegal activities is habit forming. We introduce habits in a intertemporal general equilibrium framework to illegal activities and compare its outcomes with a model without habit formation. The findings are that habit (i) reduces the crime level; (ii) reduces the marginal effect of illegal activities return on crime; (iii) reduces the efficacy of punishment.

PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN BASIC EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

The main objective of this paper was to visualize the relation between government spending on basic education and the human capital accumulation process, observing the impacts of this spending on individual investments in higher education, and on economic growth. From the results obtained, we may reach the central conclusion that basic education affects agents' decisions over their lifetime, and that the significance of the relation between public spending on education and economic growth is altered by changes in the composition of government spending with regard to basic and higher education, and this relation may be insignificant when higher education is not promoted.

Monetary policy and country risk

This article develops an econometric model in order to study country risk behavior forsix emerging economies (Argentina, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Korea and Indonesia),by expanding the Country Beta Risk Model of Harvey and Zhou (1993), Erb et. al.(1996a, 1996b) and Gangemi et. al. (2000). Toward this end, we have analyzed theimpact of macroeconomic variables, especially monetary policy, upon country risk,by way of a time varying parameter approach. The results indicate an inefficient andunstable effect of monetary policy upon country risk in periods of crisis. However, thiseffect is stable in other periods, and the Favero-Giavazzi effect is not verified for alleconomies, with an opposite effect being observed in many cases.

Public investment in basic education and economic growth

The main objective of this paper was to visualize the relation between governmentspending on basic education and the human capital accumulation process, observingthe impacts of this spending on individual investments in higher education, and oneconomic growth. It is used an overlapping-generations model where the governmenttax the adult generation and spent it in basic education of the next generations. Itwas demonstrated that the magnitude of the marginal effect of government spendingin basic education on growth crucially depends on public budget constrains. The paperexplains why some countries with a lot of public investment in basic education growthat low rates. In that sense if a country has only a lot of public investment in basiceducation without investment in higher education it may growth at low rates becausethe taxation can cause distortions in the agents incentives to invest in higher education.

Crime and punishment with habit formation

Moral concepts affect crime supply. This idea is modelled assuming that illegal activities is habit forming. We introduce habits in a intertemporal general equilibrium framework to illegal activities and compare its outcomes with a model without habit formation. The findings are that habit and crime presents a non linear relationship that hinges upon the level of capital and habit formation. It is possible to show that while the effect of habit on crime is negative for low levels o habit formation it becomes positive as habits goes up. Secondly habit reduces the marginal effect of illegal activities return on crime. Finally, the effect of habit on crime depends positively on the amount of capital. This could explain the relationship between size of cities and illegal activity.

On the purchasing power parity for latin-american countries

The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis of long-run purchasingpower parity (PPP) for all Latin American countries. These countries sharesimilar economic history and contagious effects from currency crises, whichmight lead to comovements in their real exchange rates. New time series unitroot tests found evidence of PPP for the vast majority of countries. In thepanel data framework, tests for the null of unit root, null of stationarity, andunit root under multiple structural breaks indicated stationary real exchangerates. Thus, there is convincing evidence that PPP holds for Latin-Americancountries in the post-1980 period.

Development and analysis of an open-source platform to simulate electric vehicle charging needs

There is the need to improve the charging process of EVs. In order to do that, the field of smart-charging and smart-charging algorithms emerged. Nevertheless, the studies involved in this field are complex, expensive, and risky, leading to a need for prior simulations to analyze/predict the integration of EVs in the electrical networks. There have been some solutions to solve this problem. However, they consist of either academic, proprietary, or limited/rigid solutions. On that account, in this thesis, we have presented a solution that provides a handy and intuitive tool for the researchers to simulate these scenarios with a decoupled and flexible simulation system. Its decoupled architecture is accomplished by adopting open design approaches and the concept of containerized micro-services, easing up the process of maintaining/extending it and providing high scalability. This solution was evaluated in three assessments: migrating it to a remote production system, giving an external developer the task of enhancing a given data model, and integrating this system with an external one. This solution delivered good results in these three tasks. All in all, this solution was motivated by the good aspects of some solutions found in the related work (and improving some of them), it fulfilled its objectives, and it solved the stated problem. At the moment, this solution is already up and running on a production system while also being consumed externally

MODELO INTERTEMPORAL DA CONTA CORRENTE: EVIDÊNCIAS PARA O BRASIL

The paper uses the procedure developed first by Campbell (1987) to test, for the Brazilian economy, the proposition that the balance of the current account is negatively related to the present value of the future changes of the GDP net of the investment and consumption of the government. Within the framework of intertemporal choice transitory shocks should affect the current account since the agents use credit or give loans in the international capital market to smooth the consumption pattern. On the contrary, when the shocks are permanent the agents adjust to a new consumption level and the effect on the current account is small. This means that the model should adjusts fairly well in countries with short run fluctuations. The empirical results of this work suggest that the present value of the future GDP path is able to explain the behavior of the quarter and annual Brazilian current account giving support to the model of intertemporal choice optimization.