Labor redundancy, retraining, and outplacement during privatization : the experience of Brazil's Federal Railway

One of the most complex challenges of infrastructure privatization is its impact on employment. Often (but not always) private operators'main approach to cost-cutting is labor reduction. Private operators cannot afford the low levels of labor productivity typical in public companies if they are to be competitive and to deliver on their contractual obligations to provide cheaper, more reliable infrastructure services. But labor issues are so sensitive that government's early, direct involvement is seen as a way to address what potential investors see as a risk of privatization as well as to address the social concerns of the population, including the workers. When Brazil's Federal Railway was privatized, the team in charge of privatization made a significant effort to complement the incentive for voluntary reduction with an elaborate menu of training options. The authors describe this experience in dealing with labor redundancy problems. They discuss the design of the program, highlight the connections between its components, and assess the program's achievements. All things considered, they conclude, this staff reduction program was reasonably successful. The aimed-for improvements in productivity were achieved without major problems through a government-stimulated and -sponsored combination of early retirement and voluntary retrenchment. The concessionaire was willing to make quick decisions about the number of involuntary retrenchments it wanted to make, which helped sustain the momentum created by the government's prompt implementation of its own decisions and the fair treatment of workers. The main problems came from the underestimate of time needed to agree on the strategy for implementing the training and outplacement programs. Informal evidence suggests that most workers found new jobs before many of the training programs were available. And the strategy adopted gave workers a good incentive (one month's pay) to sign up for the courses but provided little incentive for workers to show up, since they were paid up front.Labor Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Labor Management and Relations,Labor Standards,Public Health Promotion,Labor Management and Relations,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Labor Standards,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management

Taking games seriously Sportmanship and the paradox of zero-sum games

Competitive games are zero-sum games; would be sports zero-sum practices? Aurel Kolnai said that game players exhibit an odd volitional posture that turns games into paradoxes. Bernard Suits disagreed. In zero-sum games, says Suits, conflict is intentional. It cannot be paradoxical, because each player aims one identical goal, but rather two different personal goals. Nevertheless, Kolnai has a point, since players fall into a predicament if they seriously adopt the attitude of playing games with their internal aims of winning them. In the extent that games continue to be non-seriously played, they do not represent predicaments for agents. But if an agent decides to take some game seriously, her attitude becomes behaviorally paradoxical. The reason is that competitive games are zero-sum activities. But with sports it is different. Being institutionalized social practices, sports offer persistent possibilities of winning. Differently from what happens in the case of mere ludic enterprises, organized competitions allow a better distribution of wins; and in a long-standing involvement in the practice, sportsmen can accumulate good results in the long run. Sports seem to be an evolved solution for a basic human predicament: the impossibility of attaining happiness and personal fulfillment by means of mere ludic enterprises

Determinants of tourism destination competitiveness in the countries most visited by international tourists: Proposal of a synthetic index

Tourism destination competitiveness is a multidimensional concept that is widely studied in the academic literature, but multiple factors make its measurement a difficult task. In this article, we design a synthetic index to rank the 80 countries that attract the majority of international tourists by level of tourism competitiveness. In order to do this, we use all of the simple variables included in the 2017 Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, proposing a new methodology for the construction of this synthetic index, which it solves the problems of aggregation of variables expressed in different measures, arbitrary weighting and duplicity of information; issues that remain unresolved by the TTCI. Likewise, we analyse the most influential dimensions in tourism competitiveness. Air transport infrastructures, cultural resources and ICT readiness are the key dimensions that explain the main disparities.Funding Agency Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness State Research Agency (SRA) European Union (EU) ECO2017-86822-Rinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Finite Sample Performance of Frequency and Time Domain Tests for Seasonal Fractional Integration

Testing the order of integration of economic and financial time series has become a conventional procedure prior to any modelling exercise. In this paper, we investigate and compare the finite sample properties of the frequency domain tests proposed by Robinson (1994) and the time domain procedure proposed by Hassler, Rodrigues and Rubia (2008) when applied to seasonal data.

Contagion by shared financial intermediary in the pre-1914 London sovereign debt market

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-32).This thesis consists of one empirical essay on contagion (co-authored with Joao Manoel Pinho de Mello¹ and Marcelo de Paiva Abreu²). We document a novel type of international financial contagion whose driving force is shared financial intermediation. In the London peripheral sovereign debt market during pre-1914 period financial intermediation played a major informational role to investors, given the absence of international monitoring agencies and substantial agency costs. Using a hand-collected dataset of weekly bond prices and borrower-underwriters relationships in the pre-1914 London market for sovereign debt, we explore two events of financial distress - the Brazilian Funding Loan of 1898 and the Greek Funding Loan of 1893 - as quasi-natural experiments to contagion by shared underwriter. Following the two crises, bond prices of countries that shared the same merchant bank dropped by some 3.5% relative to the rest of the market. This result is true for the mean, median and the whole distribution of bond prices, and robust to an extensive sensitivity analysis. Two theoretical explanations can rationalize this phenomenon: information spillovers and portfolio realignment.by Antonio Carlos de Azevedo Sodre.S.M

Intemperismo subtropical de minerais em saprolitos ácidos do Sul do Brasil

O intemperismo de minerais primários disponibiliza elementos químicos no ciclo biogeoquímico, que por sua vez influencia a qualidade da água subterrânea, formação de minerais secundários e o fluxo de nutrientes na cadeia trófica. Com base na análise microscópica e elemental, o intemperismo de riodacito da formação Serra Geral foi caracterizado e mecanismos de intemperismo propostos. Três processos principais de intemperismo de fenocristais de plagioclásios foram identificados: plagioclásio para gibbsita (Pg1); plagioclásio para gel e gibbsita (Pg2), e plagioclásio para gel, gibbsita e caulinita (Pg3). Piroxênios intemperizaram-se para esmectita e goetita (Py1), ou para goethita e gibbsita (Py2), e magnetita intemperizou-se para óxidos de ferro. A matriz da rocha compõe 90% do volume total, e intemperiza-se para caulinita e gibbsita, o que explica a abundância destes minerais nos produtos de intemperismo destes saprolitos.Because weathering of minerals releases chemical elements into the biogeochemical cycle, characterization of their weathering products helps to better model groundwater quality, formation of secondary minerals and nutrient flux through the trophic chain. Based on microscopic and elemental analyses, weathering of riodacite from Serra Geral formation was characterized and weathering paths proposed. Three weathering paths of plagioclase phenocrystals were identified: plagioclase to gibbsite (Pg1); plagioclase to gels and gibbsite (Pg2); and plagioclase to gels, gibbsite and kaolinite (Pg3). Pyroxenes weathered to smectite and goethite (Py1), or to goethite and gibbsite (Py2), and magnetite weathered directly into iron oxides. Rock matrix comprises 90% of rock volume, and weathered to kaolinite and gibbsite, which explains why these minerals were the most abundant in the weathering products of these saprolites

Distribuição de agregados, estabilidade e liberação de argila dispersa em água para dois Latossolos subtropicais

The behavior of a soil regarding the dispersion and aggregation of its particles is very important for the development of environmental and agricultural soil functions. This study was conducted to determine how aggregate distribution and stability are impacted by land uses and how the release of Water Dispersible Clay (WDC) relates to disaggregation in Oxisols from subtropical Brazil. Samples from two Oxisols, collected at three depths from sites under no-tillage (NT), conventional tillage (CT) and native vegetation (NV) land uses were shaken in 250 mL plastic bottles for intervals up to 27 hours. The mass of aggregates was measured in five size classes ranging from 53 to 2000 µm. Most aggregates larger than 500 mm disappeared during the first 7.5 hours of shaking, concurrent with an increase in WDC release and without change in soil suspension pH and electrical conductivity, without increase in smaller aggregates. Therefore, there is no aggregate hierarchy in these soils and the release of WDC was caused by breaking aggregates within the 500 to 2000 mm range. Land uses affect mass of aggregates in each size class, but the aggregate stability depends on its size, not land use.O comportamento do solo em relação ao seu estado de agregação e dispersão é de alta relevância agrícola e ambiental. Este estudo foi conduzido para determinar como a distribuição e estabilidade de agregados são afetados por diferentes usos e como a liberação de argila dispersa em água (WDC) se comporta em relação à desagregação em Latossolos subtropicais brasileiros. Amostras de dois Latossolos coletadas em três profundidades em locais sob plantio direto (NT), plantio convencional (CT) e vegetação nativa (NV) foram agitados em garrafas plásticas de 250 mL por até 27 horas. A massa de agregados foi medida em cinco classes de tamanho desde 53 até 2000 µm. A maioria dos agregados maiores que 500 mm desapareceu durante as primeiras 7,5 horas de agitação, paralelamente à um aumento na liberação de WDC sem variação nos valores de pH e condutividade elétrica da suspensão, e sem aumento na massa de agregados menores. Portanto, não há hierarquia de agregados nestes solos e a liberação de WDC foi causada pela quebra de agregados com tamanho no intervalo entre 500 e 2000 mm. O tipo de uso afetou a massa de agregados em cada classe de tamanho mas a estabilidade de agregados é dependente do seu tamanho, não do tipo de uso

O Fair Play como Deliberação Moral: Práticas e Virtudes em Jogo

El artículo estudia la deliberación moral como una práctica de juego limpio, a partir de la acción de un jugador en un partido de fútbol, buscando reflejar filosóficamente acerca del concepto de fair play como práctica voluntaria y virtuosa. Definimos el "fair play" como una ejemplificación particular de un tipo general de acción promovida por un atleta con el fin de evitar la continuación de un resultado del juego de ventaja injusta o injusta para usted o su equipo. Por lo tanto, nuestro objetivo será entender el fair play como resultado del proceso de deliberación moral en el curso de un juego. Se considerará el posible conflicto entre el deseo o meta de ganar el juego (una meta que Bernard Suits ha llamado de meta lusória) y la práctica del fair play. Buscaremos, en última instancia, establecer si el fair play, como norma moral implícita de todo deporte, puede ser caracterizado como una regla constitutiva o regulativa, en el sentido dado por John Searle