THE PUBLIC SECTOR, MIGRATION, AND HETEROGENEITY

Questions on the optimal size of government always provoke intense political debate. At the center of this is the public goods problem, where certain goods and services are “under-provided” by the market due to problems with rivalry and excludability. These goods are usually provided by the public sector and financed through taxes. Questions emerge over the optimal level of provision, as different individuals value these goods differently. This dissertation consists of two studies which address preferences for the size of government from different perspectives. The first study provides a method that can be used to estimate demand for changes in levels of public provision. Using individual level Census data on migration from 1990 and 2000, I demonstrate how preferences are revealed through migration responses. Though policy convergence precludes the estimation of optimal levels for different demographic groups, I find that balanced-budget increases in education expenditures tend to attract most demographic groups while other expenditures tend to repel most individuals. Young, college educated, relatively high-income individuals tend to be more responsive to, and therefore appear to have higher preference intensity for, fiscal changes. This is true even when controlling for their increased propensity to migrate. Evidence inconsistent with welfare migration is found, suggesting that policies intended to address the race-to-the-bottom in welfare benefits may be counterproductive. In addition, the ability of the Tiebout migration process to homogenize a jurisdiction is limited by relatively small fiscal changes among jurisdictions and similar migration responses among demographic groups. The second study empirically explores the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on government size for countries throughout the world. In the developed world, heterogeneity is found to reduce the size of budgetary government, consistent with previous studies and predictions in the literature. In the undeveloped world, however, heterogeneity is found to increase the size of non-budgetary government and may increase the overall size of government

A New Kind of Production Multiplier for Assessing the Scale and Structure Effects of Demand Shocks in Input-Output Frameworks

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a new kind of input-output multiplier that would be particularly well suited to quantifying the impacts of final demand changes on the sectoral output growth potential of an economy. Instead of using the traditional output multipliers, solving an appropriate optimization problem provides what can be called input-output Euclidean distance multipliers. This method does not impose unitary final demand shocks with a fixed (predetermined) structure, allowing the “IO economy” to change across the spectrum of all possible structures. It can be very helpful in measuring interindustry linkages and key sectors in a national or regional economy. An empirical illustration is made, using national (Spain and Portugal) and regional (Balearic Islands and the Azores) input-output data.input-output analysis; ultra-peripheral regions; structural change

Assessing Economic Complexity with Input-Output Based Measures

Economic complexity can be defined as the level of interdependence between the component parts of an economy. In input-output systems, intersectoral connectedness is a crucial feature of analysis, and there are many different methods for measuring it. Most of the measures, however, have drawbacks that prevent them from being used as a good indicator of economic complexity, because they were not explicitly made with this purpose in mind. In this paper, we present, discuss and compare empirically different indexes of economic complexity as intersectoral connectedness, using the interindustry tables of several OECD countries.input-output analysis; intersectoral connectedness; economic complexity

Web Services: Metodologias de Desenvolvimento

Os Web Services são uma tecnologia emergente, sobre a qual muito se tem especulado. No decorrer deste artigo efectua-se uma primeira contextualização, aproveitanto ao mesmo tempo para apresentar a arquitectura de funcionamento de um qualquer Web Service. De seguida, e aproveitando a implementação de um caso de estudo em quatro plataformas de desenvolvimento distintas, propomos metodologias de desenvolvimento para Web Services e respectivas aplicações cliente

Applications and perspectives of multi-parameter flow cytometry to microbial biofuels production processes

Conventional microbiology methods used to monitor microbial biofuels production are based on off-line analyses. The analyses are, unfortunately, insufficient for bioprocess optimization. Real time process control strategies, such as flow cytometry (FC), can be used to monitor bioprocess development (at-line) by providing single cell information that improves process model formulation and validation. This paper reviews the current uses and potential applications of FC in biodiesel, bioethanol, biomethane, biohydrogen and fuel cell processes. By highlighting the inherent accuracy and robustness of the technique for a range of biofuel processing parameters, more robust monitoring and control may be implemented to enhance process efficiency

Site-condition map for Portugal based on Vs30 values and evaluation of the applicability of Vs30 proxies

Maps providing information on site conditions are essential tools to accurately represent the spatial distribution of ground motions, both in seismic hazard maps and in instrumental intensity maps (ShakeMaps). Project SCENE, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, aims at characterizing the site conditions for Portugal and to outline a first-order site effects map to be used in seismic hazard assessment at a national level. In the context of project SCENE we developed a database of available shear-wave velocity profiles to- gether with surface-geology data and geotechnical data. Currently the database includes around 60 profiles dispersed in a variety of lithological and geological units. The vast majority of data consist of seismic refraction sections that were acquired both within the scope of ongoing research projects SCENE and NEFITAG, and previously performed CAPSA and ERSTA campaigns. Few sites analyzed with multichannel analysis of surface waves by Lopes et al. (2005) were also included. The Vs30 values calculated from the profiles range from 100 m/s to1000 m/s, but the higher values are poorly represented. We performed a careful evaluation of the geological conditions at database sites, using the smallest scale available maps (usually 1:50000), and grouped it into six generalized geological units. The variability of the distribution of Vs30 values varies significantly with the generalized geological unit. Holocene deposits and Pliocene units display the lowest variance. On the other hand the Pleistocene and Miocene units, which are characterized in Portugal by a large lithological variety, display a large dispersion. Geological outcrop studies and the analysis of geotechnical data in close association the seismic refraction data acquisition are currently under way to better understand this velocity-lithology relation. The use of proxies based either on exogenous geological-geographical defined units (Wills et al., 2006) or topographic slope shows relatively unbiased residual distributions of the logarithm of Vs30. Although the variance is large for both methods the geological/geographical-defined units method shows a better performance with respect to the topographic slope method. Lemoine et al. (2012) evaluated the applicability of the topographic slope method for stable and active re- gions of Europe using the Vs30 dataset compiled in the context of project SHARE. The variability of the entire residuals distribution is larger for the Portuguese dataset than for the European dataset, suggesting that the European database is far from being representative of the near-surface conditions in Europe

Motor competence assessment (MCA) scoring method

The Motor Competence Assessment (MCA) is a quantitative test battery that assesses motor competence across the whole lifespan. It is composed of three sub-scales: locomotor, stability, and manipulative, each of them assessed by two different objectively measured tests. The MCA construct validity for children and adolescents, having normative values from 3 to 23 years of age, and the configural invariance between age groups, were recently established. The aim of this study is to expand the MCA’s development and validation by defining the best and leanest method to score and classify MCA sub-scales and total score. One thousand participants from 3 to 22 years of age, randomly selected from the Portuguese database on MC, participated in the study. Three different procedures to calculate the sub-scales and total MCA values were tested according to alternative models. Results were compared to the reference method, and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, Cronbach’s Alpha, and Bland–Altman statistics were used to describe agreement between the three methods. The analysis showed no substantial differences between the three methods. Reliability values were perfect (0.999 to 1.000) for all models, implying that all the methods were able to classify everyone in the same way. We recommend implementing the most economic and efficient algorithm, i.e., the configural model algorithm, averaging the percentile scores of the two tests to assess each MCA sub-scale and total scoresThis work was supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) under Grant number UIDB/00447/2020 (unit 447); the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020 under Project TECH—Technology, Environment, Creativity and Health, Grant number Norte-01-0145-FEDER-00004; and the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) under Grant number UID04045/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio