The Effects of the Minimum Wage in Brazil on the Distribution of Family Incomes: 1996-2001

The Brazilian economy has long relied on the minimum wage, having first implemented a minimum in 1940. Shortly after taking office in 2003, Brazil’s President raised the minimum wage by 20 percent and promised to double the value of the minimum wage before his term ends in 2006. The usual rationale for minimum wage increases is to bring about beneficial changes in the income distribution, by raising incomes of poor and low-income families. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the efficacy of the minimum wage in Brazil in bringing about these changes in the income distribution. We examine data drawn from Brazil’s major metropolitan areas, studying the years after Brazil’s hyper-inflation ended. The estimates provide no evidence that minimum wages in Brazil lift family incomes at the lower points of the income distribution; if anything some of the evidence points to adverse effects on lower-income families.

Timber Island: A Screenplay

A screenplay about the legacy of land use in the Pacific Northwest: A family from old timber money looking to sell their expansive Pacific Northwest island estate. Two Parks Service surveyors, a Native American scientist, and a developer competing for the bid. A forest with its own agenda. Against a backdrop of cedar trees and saltwater, tensions boil, ideologies clash, and buried secrets bubble to the surface. Who will walk away with the deed to Timber Island? And what will it cost

The Man in the Fiber Optic Cable: A Short Film

A man runs through a fiber optic cable

Preliminary investigation of flexibility in learning color-reward associations in gibbons (<i>Hylobatidae</i>)

Previous studies in learning set formation have shown that most animal species can learn to learn with subsequent novel presentations being solved in fewer presentations than when they first encounter a task. Gibbons (Hylobatidae) have generally struggled with these tasks and do not show the learning to learn pattern found in other species. This is surprising given their phylogenetic position and level of cortical development. However, there have been conflicting results with some studies demonstrating higher level learning abilities in these small apes. This study attempts to clarify whether gibbons can in fact use knowledge gained during one learning task to facilitate performance on a similar, but novel problem that would be a precursor to development of a learning set. We tested 16 captive gibbons' ability to associate color cues with provisioned food items in two experiments where they experienced a period of learning followed by experimental trials during which they could potentially use knowledge gained in their first learning experience to facilitate solution I subsequent novel tasks. Our results are similar to most previous studies in that there was no evidence of gibbons being able to use previously acquired knowledge to solve a novel task. However, once the learning association was made, the gibbons performed well above chance. We found no differences across color associations, indicating learning was not affected by the particular color / reward association. However, there were variations in learning performance with regard to genera. The hoolock (Hoolock leuconedys) and siamang (Symphalangus syndactylus) learned the fastest and the lar group (Hylobates sp.) learned the slowest. We caution these results could be due to the small sample size and because of the captive environment in which these gibbons were raised. However, it is likely that environmental variability in the native habitats of the subjects tested could facilitate the evolution of flexible learning in some genera. Further comparative study is necessary in order to incorporate realistic cognitive variables into foraging models

Lossy Image Compression with Compressive Autoencoders

We propose a new approach to the problem of optimizing autoencoders for lossy image compression. New media formats, changing hardware technology, as well as diverse requirements and content types create a need for compression algo- rithms which are more flexible than existing codecs. Autoencoders have the po- tential to address this need, but are difficult to optimize directly due to the inherent non-differentiabilty of the compression loss. We here show that minimal changes to the loss are sufficient to train deep autoencoders competitive with JPEG 2000 and outperforming recently proposed approaches based on RNNs. Our network is furthermore computationally efficient thanks to a sub-pixel architecture, which makes it suitable for high-resolution images. This is in contrast to previous work on autoencoders for compression using coarser approximations, shallower archi- tectures, computationally expensive methods, or focusing on small image

La radio, el módem y el mar

Obra que parte de una búsqueda estética basada en el zapping y que intenta integrar a un instrumental mixto formado por la combinación de instrumentos acústicos, eléctricos y un reproductor de samples, bajo una narrativa de aparente caos y de diálogo gestual entre los elementos sonoros que la componen.Facultad de Arte

ACTH Challenge: Stress Response Across Tadpole Development

Research Questions Do tadpoles excrete more cortisol or corticosterone? Do tadpoles excrete more corticosterone after ACTH injections? Does the ACTH stress response change across development

Pending issues in protection, productivity growth, and poverty reduction

This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought. The impetus to voluntary informality, which appears to be a substantial fraction of the sector, implies that the design of social safety nets and labor legislation needs to take a more integrated view of the labor market, taking into account the cost-benefit analysis workers and firms make about whether to interact with formal institutions. Second, the impact of labor market institutions on productivity growth has probably been underemphasized. Draconian firing restrictions increase litigation and uncertainty surrounding worker separations, reduce turnover and job creation, and poorly protect workers. But theory and anecdotal evidence also suggest that they, and other related state or union induced rigidities, may have an even greater disincentive effect on technological adoption, which accounts for half of economic growth. Finally, institutions can affect poverty and equity, although the effects seem generally small and channels are not always clear. Overall, the present constellation of labor regulations serves workers and firms poorly and both could benefit from substantial reform.Labor Markets,Labor Standards,Economic Theory&Research,Work&Working Conditions,Labor Management and Relations