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.

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.

Enhancing scarce-resource language translation through pivot combinations

Chinese and Spanish are the most spoken languages in the world. However, there is not much research done in machine translation for this language pair. We experiment with the parallel Chinese-Spanish corpus (United Nations) to explore alternatives of SMT strategies which consist on using a pivot language. Particularly, two well-known alternatives are shown for pivoting: the cascade system and the pseudo-corpus. As Pivot language we use English, Arabic and French. Results show that English is the best pivot language between Chinese and Spanish. As a new strategy, we propose to perform a combination of the pivot strategies which is capable to highly outperform the direct translation strategy.Postprint (published version

The forward- and the equity-premium puzzles: two symptoms of the same illness?

Using information on US domestic financial data only, we build a stochastic discountfactor—SDF— and check whether it accounts for foreign markets stylized factsthat escape consumption based models. By interpreting our SDF as the projection ofa pricing kernel from a fully specified model in the space of returns, our results indicatethat a model that accounts for the behavior of domestic assets goes a long waytoward accounting for the behavior of foreign assets prices. We address predictabilityissues associated with the forward premium puzzle by: i) using instruments that areknown to forecast excess returns in the moments restrictions associated with Eulerequations, and; ii) by pricing Lustig and Verdelhan (2007)’s foreign currency portfolios.Our results indicate that the relevant state variables that explain foreign-currencymarket asset prices are also the driving forces behind U.S. domestic assets behavior.

Toward a model of inter-organisational cooperation

The technological development along with the fall of most political barriers has made the world a smaller place. Firms, even those that focus their operations in the domestic market, face an increasing competition. These phenomena have introduced an important shift in the way the competitiveness issue must be regarded. In fact, in a growing number of cases it is a matter of being competitive in webs of relationships where the particular position assumed by one firm is likely to affect not only its own performance but also the evolution of other players. The objective of this paper is to shed a new light on competitiveness supported by collaborative arrangements. The authors develop a model of inter-organizational cooperation based on four attributes: interests, resources, activities and trust

Understanding export grouping schemes as issue-based nets

Many Portuguese SMEs firms used export networks as an internationalization strategy. In the process of internationalization of those firms export grouping schemes have assumed an increasing role. Export grouping schemes creation and development has been widely studied. The study of collective action within export grouping schemes has been neglected. This paper aims at developing a methodological approach which takes into account that most export schemes involve a variety of actors who share common interests and are concerned with the promotion or defense of their collective interests

The collective nature of export grouping schemes

Export grouping schemes have assumed an increasing role in the process of internationalization, especially for small- and medium-sized companies. Its network character has received the attention of a number of researchers who have focused both on their creation and development. Although cooperation has been recognized as a central feature, its collective action nature has been neglected. This paper aims at developing a methodological approach which takes into account that most export schemes involve a variety of actors who share common interests and are concerned with the promotion or defense of their collective interests

A methodological approach for the study of export grouping schemes

Export grouping schemes have assumed an increasing role in the process of internationalization, especially for small- and medium-sized companies. Its network character has received the attention of a number of researchers who have focused both on their creation and development. Although cooperation has been recognized as a central feature, its collective action nature has been neglected. This paper aims at developing a methodological approach which takes into account that most export schemes involve a variety of actors who share common interests and are concerned with the promotion or defense of their collective interests

UPC-BMIC-VDU system description for the IWSLT 2010: testing several collocation segmentations in a phrase-based SMT system

This paper describes the UPC-BMIC-VMU participation in the IWSLT 2010 evaluation campaign. The SMT system is a standard phrase-based enriched with novel segmentations. These novel segmentations are computed using statistical measures such as Log-likelihood, T-score, Chi-squared, Dice, Mutual Information or Gravity-Counts. The analysis of translation results allows to divide measures into three groups. First, Log-likelihood, Chi-squared and T-score tend to combine high frequency words and collocation segments are very short. They improve the SMT system by adding new translation units. Second, Mutual Information and Dice tend to combine low frequency words and collocation segments are short. They improve the SMT system by smoothing the translation units. And third, Gravity- Counts tends to combine high and low frequency words and collocation segments are long. However, in this case, the SMT system is not improved. Thus, the road-map for translation system improvement is to introduce new phrases with either low frequency or high frequency words. It is hard to introduce new phrases with low and high frequency words in order to improve translation quality. Experimental results are reported in the Frenchto- English IWSLT 2010 evaluation where our system was ranked 3rd out of nine systems.Postprint (published version

Screening of thermotolerant yeast strains for more sustainable, eco-efficient and competitive industrial fermentations

Financial support is aknowledged to Project ERA-IB “YeastTempTation” (ERA-IB -2-6/0001/2014), and FCT for the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684), RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP -01-0124-FEDER-027462) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004). Lallemand Ibéria, SA and Unicer Bebidas, SA are acknowledged for the supply of yeast strainsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio