Brazilian Land Tenure and Conflicts: The Landless Peasants' Movement

This paper analyzes conflicts and violence in Brazil involving landless peasants occupying privately-owned land, for the period 2000-2008. It is the first study to be undertaken at a national level, with a contemporary data span, using a count data model that allows for heterogeneity, endogeneity and dynamics. Results from the estimated model show that the violent land occupation grows with left-wing political support for land occupation, rural population density, and agricultural credit, and decreases with poverty, agricultural productivity. The study discusses the interconnection of land reform, poverty and conflict.Land occupation, land reform, Brazil, poverty, conflict.

Quantum erasure in the presence of a thermal bath: the effects of system-environment microscopic correlations

We investigate the role of the environment in a quantum erasure setup in the cavity quantum electrodynamics domain. Two slightly different schemes are analyzed. We show that the effects of the environment vary when a scheme is exchanged for another. This can be used to estimate the macroscopic parameters related to the system-environment microscopic correlations.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Opportunism vs. Excellence in Academia: Quality Accreditation of Collegiate Business Schools

This study extends the literature on the (in)effectiveness of quality accreditation by examining how standards adopted by an accrediting or research agency, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB), can be manipulated by academic units, such as collegiate schools of business. We present a hierarchical differential game between a collegiate business school and its accrediting agency to advance the hypothesis that strategic or opportunistic behavior occurs where heterogeneity in academic achievement exists, as represented by an uneven distribution of academic achievement resulting either from the presence of both unproductive and highly productive faculty or periods of high academic productivity followed by other periods of low academic productivity. Statistical explorations utilizing data from senior management faculty affiliated with both the highest-ranking and lowest-ranking colleges and universities in the U.S. are suggestive of the presence of incentives facing some U.S. business schools to behave strategically or opportunistically in terms of quality accreditation

Human Capital and Collegiality in Academic Beehives: Theory and Analysis of European Economics Faculties

This study investigates the importance of the quality of human capital investment and collegiality (i.e., good colleagues) in achieving the type of acclaim in economics captured by receipt of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, arguably the second-most prestigious award that a European economist can receive as recognition of the importance of his or her research endeavors. We provide an economic model as a foundation for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Our results indicate that four institutions, namely the Toulouse School of Economics, University College London, University of Oxford and the London School of Economics generally rank highest in supporting a position of acclaim among academic economics faculties in Europe