Expulsión de los jesuitas y marginalidad en la España de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII

La Pragmática Sanción de 1767 que ordenaba la expulsión de los miembros de la Compañía de Jesús tuvo un fuerte impacto sobre la sociedad española. Pronto corrieron rumores y noticias de los intentos de algunos jesuitas expulsos por volver a España clandestinamente, provocando un estado de alarma en las autoridades. Pero, al mismo tiempo, la expulsión dio lugar a numerosos casos de picaresca. Este trabajo analiza varias causas procesales contra vagabundos y pobres que fingieron pertenecer a la Compañía para obtener ventajas en su vida marginal: una manifestación más de lo que Bronislaw Geremek ha denominado "arte del pordioseo". Pero estos procesos judiciales también muestran el eco que tuvo entre determinados grupos sociales esa imagen simbólica de una religiosidad medievalizante, exaltadora de la pobreza, encarnada en estos falsos jesuitas

Real Returns on Government Debt: A General Equilibrium Quantitative Exploration

We extend and apply computable general equilibrium methods to the study of economies with both aggregate uncertainty and uninsured household-specific uncertainty. In our economies the government issues two types of assets: a small denomination, non-interest bearing asset, which we call currency, and a large denomination, interest bearing asset, which we call T-bills. We find that a real interest rate behavior similar to that observed in the U.S. can be sustained as equilibrium behavior in our class of economies. We also find that policy induced real interest rate changes that are perceived as being permanent have significant real effects and that these effects take a few years to be fully realized.Publicad

Participation and Solidarity in Redistribution Mechanisms

Following Bossert (1995), we consider a model where personal income depends on two different characteristics: skills and effort. Luttens (2010) introduces claims that individuals have over aggregate income and that only depend on the effort they exert. Moreover, he proposes redistribution mechanisms in which solidarity is based on changes in a lower bound on what every individual deserves according to these claims: the so-called minimal rights (O’Neill 1982). A debatable consequence in one of Luttens’ mechanisms is that “the poorest individuals might up with a negative income” (Luttens 2010); that is, this mechanism does not satisfy participation, which turns out to be incompatible with claims feasibility, under Luttens’ assumptions. We present a new solidarity axiom that is compatible both with participation and claims feasibility, and we provide a mechanism satisfying these properties and our new additive solidarity axiom. Moreover, our mechanism satisfies additional properties, as priority, or respect of minimal rights.This has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness funds under Project ECO2013-43119 and by Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Banco Santander and Generalitat de Catalunya under the project 2011LINE-06

A proportional approach to claims problems with a guaranteed minimum

In distribution problems, and specifically in bankruptcy issues, the Proportional (P) and the Egalitarian (EA) divisions are two of the most popular ways to resolve the conflict. Nonetheless, when using the egalitarian division, agents may receive more than her claim. We propose a compromise between the proportional and the egalitarian approaches by considering the restriction that no one receives more than her claim. We show that the most egalitarian compromise fulfilling this restriction ensures a minimum amount to each agent. We also show that this compromise can be interpreted as a process that works in two steps as follows: first, all agents receive an equal share up to the smallest claim if possible (egalitarian distribution), and then, the remaining estate (if any) is allocated proportionally to the remaining claims (proportional distribution). Finally, we obtain that the recursive application of this process finishes at the Constrained Equal Awards solution (CEA).Financial support from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Banco Santander and Generalitat de Catalunya under Project 2011LINE-06 and the Barcelona GSE

Non-perturbative renormalization of lattice operators in coordinate space

We present the first numerical implementation of a non-perturbative renormalization method for lattice operators, based on the study of correlation functions in coordinate space at short Euclidean distance. The method is applied to compute the renormalization constants of bilinear quark operators for the non-perturbative O(a)-improved Wilson action in the quenched approximation. The matching with perturbative schemes, such as MS-bar, is computed at the next-to-leading order in continuum perturbation theory. A feasibility study of this technique with Neuberger fermions is also presented.Comment: 11 pages and 9 figures, LaTeX2

Mediation in claims problems

Mediation is a dispute resolution process whereby agents reach a mutually acceptable agreement among different proposals that satisfy a set of principles. This paper provides a natural way of coming to such agreements in claims problems. In our approach, mediation combines (i) a set of fair properties (legitimate principles); and (ii) a criterion for delimiting the admissible manners of distributing the endowment, that is determined by the mediator expressing the two (dual) points of view to face such problems: awards and losses. These dual views define a lower and an upper bounds on awards, which are used to implement the so-called Double Recursive Process. We find that this process concludes at the midpoint between the two dual points of view. Finally, we argue that the criterion of the mediator could be established throughout Lorenz domination. In so doing, we retrieve the average of old and well-known rules.Financial support from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Banco Santander and Generalitat de Catalunya under project 2011LINE-06

Phase-transitions in spin-crossover thin films probed by graphene transport measurements

Future multi-functional hybrid devices might combine switchable molecules and 2D material-based devices. Spin-crossover compounds are of particular interest in this context since they exhibit bistability and memory effects at room temperature while responding to numerous external stimuli. Atomically-thin 2D materials such as graphene attract a lot of attention for their fascinating electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, but also for their reliability for room-temperature operations. Here, we demonstrate that thermally-induced spin-state switching of spin-crossover nanoparticle thin films can be monitored through the electrical transport properties of graphene lying underneath the films. Model calculations indicate that the charge carrier scattering mechanism in graphene is sensitive to the spin-state dependence of the relative dielectric constants of the spin-crossover nanoparticles. This graphene sensor approach can be applied to a wide class of (molecular) systems with tunable electronic polarizabilities.Comment: main text: 13 pages, 5 figures ; SI: 14 pages, 12 figure