Financial Frictions and Business Cycles in Developing Countries

Standard theory of small open economies predicts a smooth path for consumption and investment over time, and procyclical current account balances and employment. This contrasts with the data for emerging countries, where consumption, investment and employment are highly procyclical and volatile, and the current account balance is counter cyclical. Previous studies have reconciled theory and data using different households preferences for emerging countries vs. developed ones, either a lower intertemporal elasticity of substitution or the use of GHH type of preferences. This paper takes a different approach. It explores whether adding two financial frictions to an otherwise standard small open economy model, an external borrowing constraint and labor financing wedges, can reconcile theory and data without appealing to changes in preferences, but rather to market imperfections widely studied in the literature for the emerging world. I find that adding the external borrowing constraint makes consumption and investment more procyclical and volatile, and reproduces the counter cyclical path of the current account. However, it generates counter cyclical employment. Adding the labor financing wedges reproduces the cyclical path of this variable as wellFrictionless, external borrowing constraint, internal financial friction, labor financing wedges.

Southern occupational therapies: Emerging identities, epistemologies and practices

Indexación: Web of Science; Scielo.For over a decade, debates in occupational therapy have extended into the profession's theoretical foundations as well as epistemological underpinnings thereof A series of proposals have emerged from around the world that aim to link the definition of occupational therapy, its knowledge and practices to contemporary social, political, cultural and economic conditions. Contributing to this is the increasing precariousness of the global social life, the economic crises of many social systems, and the deterioration of the ecological environment. The current paper critically reflects on the historical conditions that shape the institution of occupational therapy, particularly in the regions of South America and Africa. This involves a political, ethical, and epistemological rethinking of the foundations that underpin identities, knowledge and practices of occupational therapy and their effects on society. These foundations may favour processes of exclusion and ahistorical and individualist views of human occupation, as opposed to social perspectives expressed in collective occupations and human rights promoting practices. The authors propose to problematise the construction of a professional identity, knowledge and practices of occupational therapy, emphasising the need for a liberating discipline, committed to and acting alongside people and communities who are in situations of social exclusion. This implies the necessary positioning of occupational therapy within social transformation.http://ref.scielo.org/z57kz

A Cardy-like formula for rotating black holes with planar horizon

We show that the semiclassical entropy of $D$-dimensional rotating (an)isotropic black holes with planar horizon can be successfully computed according to a Cardy-like formula. This formula does not refer to any central charges but instead involves the vacuum energy which is identified with a gravitational bulk soliton. The soliton is obtained from the non-rotating black hole solution by means of a double analytic continuation. The robustness of the Cardy-like formula is tested with numerous and varied examples, including AdS, Lifshitz and hyperscaling violation planar black holes.Comment: Published in JHEP04(2017)09

Referee assignment in the Chilean football league using integer programming and patterns

This article uses integer linear programming to address the referee assignment problem in the First Division of the Chilean professional football league. The proposed approach considers balance in the number of matches each referee must officiate, the frequency of each referee being assigned to a given team, the distance each referee must travel over the course of a season, and the appropriate pairings of referee experience or skill category with the importance of the matches. Two methodologies are studied, one traditional and the other a pattern-based formulation inspired by the home-away patterns for scheduling season match calendars. Both methodologies are tested in real-world and experimental instances, reporting results that improve significantly on the manual assignments. The pattern-based formulation attains major reductions in execution times, solving real instances to optimality in just a few seconds, while the traditional one takes anywhere from several minutes to more than an hour.Fil: Alarcón, Fernando. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Duran, Guillermo Alfredo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Guajardo, Mario. Norwegian School of Economics; Norueg