Tax Reforms in an Endogenous Growth Model with Pollution

This paper discusses the effects of a green tax reform in an AK growth model without abatement activities and with a negative environmental externality in utility function. There is also a non-optimal level of public spending. The results depend on the financing source of public spending. When there is not public debt, a revenue-neutral green tax reform has not any effect on pollution, growth and welfare. On the contrary, when short-run deficits are financed by debt issuing, a variety of green tax reforms increase welfare. Nevertheless, in this framework, non-green tax reforms are also welfare improving.Environmental externalities, Economic growth, Pollution taxes, Laffer Curve.

Environmental fiscal policies might be ineffective to control pollution

In a one sector growth model with pollution in the utility function, the competitive equilibrium can be indeterminate for plausible values of the intertemporal substitution elasticity of consumption and under constant returns to scale. The tax rate on pollution does not enter the condition characterizing indeterminacy. This means that the government is not able to control emissions in the economy by using environmental policies. Non-separability between private consumption and pollution in the utility function is crucial for this result.Indeterminacy, Environmental taxes, Pollution

Double Dividend in an Endogenous Growth Model with Pollution and Abatement

This paper discusses wether by implementing an environmental tax reform, a government may achieve a double dividend. We consider the simplest endogenous growth model (AK model) and include a negative environmental externality in the utility function. Pollution flow can be reduced by means of private abatenment activities. There is a predetermined non-optimal level of public spending financed by environmental taxes and pre-existing taxes on income and consumption. The major contribution of the paper is to show that, under this simple framework, a double dividend may arise if tax reform consists of substituing environmental tax for income tax, in such a way that the government budget constraint holds in a present value sense.Environmental tax reform, Double dividend, Abatement activities.

Sobre la difusión del teléfono de Bell en sus comienzos (1876-1877)

El trabajo sigue los pasos dados por Bell para perfeccionar y dar a conocer su teléfono, y muestra un conjunto de informaciones que sobre ello fueron apareciendo en la prensa y publicaciones especializadas de Norteamérica, Inglaterra, Francia y España, desde las primeras presentaciones posteriores al registro de su patente en febrero de 1876, hasta la llegada material de su invento a Europa en los últimos meses de 1877.This paper follows Bell’s steps to improve and publicize his telephone and presents a recollection of informations that appeared along this process in the daily press and specialized journals of North America, England, France and Spain, from the early lectures that followed the filing of his patent in February 1876 to the material arrival of his invention in Europe late in 1877

Global and local indeterminacy and optimal environmental public policies in an economy with public abatement activities

We study the dynamic properties of an endogenous growth model with pollution in which the government can control the pollution through distorting taxes on the pollutant firms and through public abatement activities. First, we characterize the conditions for indeterminacy of equilibria when the government is benevolent and chooses its tax policy by taking into account the decentralized competitive equilibrium. Under this second best setup we show that two balanced growth paths can be found (one with a low level of pollution and the other with a high level) both of which can be locally indeterminate. Therefore, under indeterminacy, the optimal public policies do not guarantee that the economy will converge towards the steady state characterized by a low level of pollution and neither guarantee that the economy will display, along the transition, low levels of pollution. Second, we show that the central planner solution might also display indeterminacy; in particular, two Pigouvian taxes can be found.Global and local indeterminacy, Environmental taxes, Pollution, Abatement, Pigouvian taxes

Expansions in series of varying Laguerre polynomials and some applications to molecular potentials

11 pages, no figures.-- MSC2000 codes: 81V55, 33C45, 81Q10.-- Issue title: "Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and their Applications" (OPSFA-VI, Rome, Italy, 18-22 June 2001).MR#: MR1985711 (2004f:33026)Zbl#: Zbl 1017.81048The expansion of a large class of functions in series of linearly varying Laguerre polynomials, i.e., Laguerre polynomials whose parameters are linear functions of the degree, is found by means of the hypergeometric functions approach. This expansion formula is then used to obtain the Brown–Carlitz generating function (which gives a characterization of the exponential function) and the connection formula for these polynomials. Finally, these results are employed to connect the bound states of the quantum–mechanical potentials of Morse and Pöschl–Teller, which are frequently used to describe molecular systems.This work has been partially supported by the Junta de Andalucía, under the research Grants FQM0207 (J.S.D. and J.S.R.) and FQM0229 (P.L.A.); the Spanish MCyT projects BFM2001-3878-C02 (J.S.R., J.S.D. and P.L.A.) and BFM2000-0206-C04-01 (J.S.R.); and the European Union project INTAS 2000-272 (J.S.D. and J.S.R.).Publicad

Pérdida de soberanía alimentaria: una faceta actual de los países subdesarrollados.

In the current phase of the world economy - globalization - underdeveloped countries are moving even further away from achieving robust, sustainable, supportable, and balanced economic growth among the economic sectors and regions of their territories, which would allow them to reduce poverty and create societies with fewer inequalities. Underdevelopment has increased in these regions due to various economic and political causes, which, moreover, tend to perpetuate themselves. The objective of this article is to explain that one of these causes is the loss of the capacity to feed their populations with internal resources. The methods of study were comparative and deductive, to find common characteristics and to identify trends; historical-logical to address the background; and, based on the analysis of various sources of information, a framework of four variables of the causes of the non-existence of food sovereignty in underdeveloped countries was prepared ex profeso. The research found that two thirds of underdeveloped countries lack food self-sufficiency, a situation that forces them to depend on the purchase of food from the external market, where interests of large transnational agribusiness corporations prevail, which has the effect of gradually distancing them from food sovereignty, as they lack the power to decide on the food of their peoples. The main conclusion is that food insufficiency is no longer a temporary or transitory condition, but a structural or permanent one (exacerbated by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic), which is yet another obstacle to the development of these countries. Modifying this situation requires a complete change in the policies of the governments of underdeveloped countries, which have given priority to agribusiness and food security based on imports, abandoning self-sufficiency and deepening food dependence; in addition, leaving small farmers without support, who, even with their limited resources and very few incentives, are the mainstay of world food supply, generating more than 80 percent of the planet’s food.  Los países subdesarrollados en la fase actual de la economía mundial -la globalización- se apartan aún más de conseguir un robusto crecimiento económico, sostenible, sustentable y equilibrado, entre los sectores económicos y las regiones de sus territorios, que les permita reducir la pobreza y conformar sociedades con menores desigualdades. El subdesarrollo se ha acrecentado en ellos por diversas causas económicas y políticas que, además, tienden a perpetuarse. El objetivo del artículo es explicar que, una de esas causas, es la pérdida de la capacidad de alimentar a su población con recursos internos. Los métodos del estudio fueron el comparativo y deductivo, para encontrar características comunes e identificar tendencias; el histórico-lógico para abordar los antecedentes; y, con base en el análisis de diversas fuentes de información, se diseñó un marco de cuatro variables de las causas de la inexistencia de soberanía alimentaria en los países subdesarrollados. Con la investigación se encontró que dos terceras partes de los países subdesarrollados carecen de autosuficiencia alimentaria, situación que los obliga a depender de la compra de alimentos en el mercado externo, donde prevalecen los intereses de grandes corporaciones agroalimentarias transnacionales, lo que tiene como efecto un paulatino alejamiento de la soberanía alimentaria, al carecer del poder de decisión sobre la alimentación de sus pueblos. La principal conclusión es que la insuficiencia alimentaria es una condición que ha dejado de ser coyuntural o transitoria para volverse estructural o permanente (exacerbada por las consecuencias de la pandemia por COVID-19), lo que constituye una traba más para el desarrollo de esos países. Modificar esta situación requiere un viraje completo de las políticas de los gobiernos de los países subdesarrollados que han dado prioridad a las agroempresas y a la seguridad alimentaria, basada en importaciones, abandonando la autosuficiencia y profundizando la dependencia alimentaria; además, dejando sin apoyo a los pequeños agricultores, los que aún con sus limitados recursos y muy pocos estímulos, son la base primordial de la alimentación mundial, al generar más de 80 por ciento de los alimentos del planeta.

Papel de las GTPasas Ral en la función linfoide y la citotoxicidad celular

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de lectura: 11/2/201

Fast Feature Selection by Means of Projections

The attribute selection techniques for supervised learning, used in the preprocessing phase to emphasize the most relevant attributes, allow making models of classification simpler and easy to understand. The algorithm (SOAP: Selection of Attributes by Projection) has some interesting characteristics: lower computational cost (O(m n log n) m attributes and n examples in the data set) with respect to other typical algorithms due to the absence of distance and statistical calculations; its applicability to any labelled data set, that is to say, it can contain continuous and discrete variables, with no need for transformation. The performance of SOAP is analyzed in two ways: percentage of reduction and classification. SOAP has been compared to CFS [4] and ReliefF [6]. The results are generated by C4.5 before and after the application of the algorithms

Fast Feature Ranking Algorithm

The attribute selection techniques for supervised learning, used in the preprocessing phase to emphasize the most relevant attributes, allow making models of classification simpler and easy to understand. The algorithm has some interesting characteristics: lower computational cost (O(m n log n) m attributes and n examples in the data set) with respect to other typical algorithms due to the absence of distance and statistical calculations; its applicability to any labelled data set, that is to say, it can contain continuous and discrete variables, with no need for transformation. In order to test the relevance of the new feature selection algorithm, we compare the results induced by several classifiers before and after applying the feature selection algorithms