THE INTERACTION BETWEEN UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND HUMAN CAPITAL POLICIES

In the presence of an optimally designed unemployment bene.t system we show that it is optimal for the government to encourage human capital acquisition. The driving force of this result is the complementarity between human capital and labor-market- oriented behavior. If policy includes inter-temporal transfers, the optimal level of investment in human capital is given at the point where, at the margin, expected return to human capital is identical to the risk free rate even though there is no full insurance at the optimum.

Stability of a two-sublattice spin-glass model

We study the stability of the replica-symmetric solution of a two-sublattice infinite-range spin-glass model, which can describe the transition from antiferromagnetic to spin glass state. The eigenvalues associated with replica-symmetric perturbations are in general complex. The natural generalization of the usual stability condition is to require the real part of these eigenvalues to be positive. The necessary and sufficient conditions for all the roots of the secular equation to have positive real parts is given by the Hurwitz criterion. The generalized stability condition allows a consistent analysis of the phase diagram within the replica-symmetric approximation.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Disposition effect and gender

Investors seem to hold on to their losing stocks to a greater extent than they hold on to their winning stocks. This well-document behavioral regularity is termed disposition effect (Shefrin and Statman 1985). We set an experiment to replicate results from a previous study of the disposition effect (Weber and Camerer 1998), and further show that a subject’s gender may interfere with the effect’s detection.

Sacrifice and Efficiency of the Income Tax Schedule

We investigate the efficiency of equal sacrifice tax schedules in an economywhich primitives are exactly those in Mirrlees (1971): a continuum of individualswith identical preferences defined over consumption and leisure who differ withrespect to their labor market productivity. Using a separable specification forpreferences we derive the minimum equal sacrifice allocation and recover thetax schedule that implements it. The separable specification allows us to usethe methodology developed by Werning (2007b) to check whether the scheduleis efficient, that is, whether there is no alternative tax schedule that raises morerevenue while delivering less utility to no one. We find that inefficiency does notarise for most parametrizations we use to approximate the US economy. For thefew cases for which inefficiency does arise, it does so only for very high levels ofincome and marginal tax rates.

The Private Memory of Aggregate Shocks

We study constrained efficient aggregate risk sharing and its consequence for thebehavior of macro-aggregates in a dynamic Mirrlees’s (1971) setting. Privately observedidiosyncratic productivity shocks are assumed to be independent of i.i.d. publiclyobserved aggregate shocks. Yet, private allocations display memory with respectto past aggregate shocks, when idosyncratic shocks are also i.i.d.. Under a mild restrictionon the nature of optimal allocations the result extends to more persistentidiosyncratic shocks, for all but the limit at which idiosyncratic risk disappears, andthe model collapses to a pure heterogeneity repeated Mirrlees economy identical toWerning [2007]. When preferences are iso-elastic we show that an allocation is memorylessonly if it displays a strong form of separability with respect to aggregate shocks.Separability characterizes the pure heterogeneity limit as well as the general case withlog preferences. With less than full persistence and risk aversion different from unityboth memory and non-separability characterize optimal allocations. Exploiting thefact that non-separability is associated with state-varying labor wedges, we apply abusiness cycle accounting procedure (e.g. Chari et al. [2007]) to the aggregate datagenerated by the model. We show that, whenever risk aversion is great than one ourmodel produces efficient counter-cyclical labor wedges.

Afluências e confluências de um design incógnito

A ‘mínima moralia’ do designer, num mundo de confluências adstrito, submergindo nas ideias e nas confrontações. O Design como agente de engenho e de olhar atento sob as gramáticas do quotidiano despontando sobre esse ‘hapening’ ‘glocal’ em que as lógicas de imprevisibilidade, improbabilidade e ‘desenrascanço’, podem ser agentes dinâmicos de práticas de auto-produção, identidade e sustentabilidade

Can a Habit Formation Model really explain the forward premium anomaly?

Verdelhan (2009) shows that if one is to explain the foreign exchange forwardpremium behavior using Campbell and Cochrane (1999)'s habit formation modelone must specify it in such a way to generate pro-cyclical short term risk free rates.At the calibration procedure, we show that this is only possible in Campbell andCochrane's framework under implausible parameters speci cations given that theprice-consumption ratio diverges in almost all parameters sets. We, then, adoptVerdelhan's shortcut of xing the sensivity function (st) at its steady state level toattain a nite value for the price-consumption ratio and release it in the simulationstage to ensure pro-cyclical risk free rates. Beyond the potential inconsistenciesthat such procedure may generate, as suggested by Wachter (2006), with pro-cyclical risk free rates the model generates a downward sloped real yield curve,which is at odds with the data.

A criatividade e a educação: percursos

O presente estudo centra-se na temática da criatividade, e, mais especificamente, na verificação do exercício de técnicas da criatividade como ferramentas de desenvolvimento do processo criativo. Ao longo do tempo foram apresentadas diferentes perspectivas sobre explicação da criatividade e do potencial criativo. No entanto, a capacidade de produção pela originalidade inventiva encontrando soluções diferentes e originais face a novas situações, é, nas várias teorias, uma definição comum. Actualmente as pesquisas apontam que a criatividade é inata, sendo que todos somos criativos, seja em maior ou menor grau, provindo de vários factores. A educação é um dos agentes apontado como inibidor ou impulsionador da nossa capacidade criativa. Os docentes deparam-se com a dificuldade de desenvolver competências nos discentes para responder criativamente aos problemas colocados, tendo um papel proeminente neste desígnio. As instituições de ensino devem dotar os seus alunos de ferramentas que lhes promovam a agilidade mental para a resolução de situações futuras, de uma forma original, importante para o seu desenvolvimento pessoal e profissional. A utilização das técnicas da criatividade é uma das ferramentas para a promoção do pensamento criativo. Estas, e em função de estudos neste âmbito, têm sido apontadas como factor de melhoramento das capacidades criativas. 2 Neste artigo, apresenta-se primeiramente uma breve contextualização teórica sobre a temática focada, bem como o estabelecimento de uma relação entre a criatividade e o sistema educacional, finalizando-se com o retrato de alguns exemplos da vida profissional dos autores como docentes, traduzindo algumas das suas práticas educacionais, estratégias e objectivos, no sentido de promover as aptidões do pensamento criativo nos seus alunos

Confluence and affluence in design ambiguity scales

Full Paper Acceptance and Publishing Certificate Awarded to Carlos Casimiro da Costa Jacinta Helena Alves Lourenço Casimiro da Costa For the acceptance and publication of the paper “Confluence and affluence in Design ambiguity scales”, in the context of the Cumulus Conference “Projecting Design 2012: Global Design Bridge”, organized by Cumulus Association, Aalto University and DuocUC.Ambiguity in Design education needs to focus in a ‘glocal’ perspective, tracing the paths and confluence circumstances that creativity exposes in particular different domains at the present time. If one world is literally being transformed into subsistence mean’s, as a predisposal sense of surviving confined in ecology of ‘freedom’, giving a reuse (re)interpretation of realities with limited resources predisposal