Patronage-Preserving Federalism? Legislative Malapportionment and Subnational Fiscal Policies in Argentina

This paper builds on institutional analysis to generate new conclusions about the economic viability of federalism. It does so by suggesting that Weingast´s seminal model of marketpreserving federalism falls short of accounting for the poor fiscal performance of multitiered systems in the developing world. This theoretical deficiency stems to a large extent from the insufficient attention paid by this model to the institutional complexity of federal systems, particularly the public policy effects of legislative malapportionment. Subsequent to an analytical discussion of the potential public spending and distributive politics distortions resulting from overrepresentation, we offer preliminary empirical evidence from Argentina, a federation exhibiting one of the most decentralized fiscal systems in the world and severe imbalances in the territorial distribution of legislative and economic resources. The findings show not only that said imbalances lead to sub-optimal fiscal results but also that they have a mutually-reinforcing relationship with regionalized patronage.Federalism, legislative malapportionment, subnational fiscal policies, patronage, Argentina

On the Inverse Problem for a Size-Structured Population Model

We consider a size-structured model for cell division and address the question of determining the division (birth) rate from the measured stable size distribution of the population. We formulate such question as an inverse problem for an integro-differential equation posed on the half line. We develop firstly a regular dependency theory for the solution in terms of the coefficients and, secondly, a novel regularization technique for tackling this inverse problem which takes into account the specific nature of the equation. Our results rely also on generalized relative entropy estimates and related Poincar\'e inequalities

Tangent Graeffe Iteration

Graeffe iteration was the choice algorithm for solving univariate polynomials in the XIX-th and early XX-th century. In this paper, a new variation of Graeffe iteration is given, suitable to IEEE floating-point arithmetics of modern digital computers. We prove that under a certain generic assumption the proposed algorithm converges. We also estimate the error after N iterations and the running cost. The main ideas from which this algorithm is built are: classical Graeffe iteration and Newton Diagrams, changes of scale (renormalization), and replacement of a difference technique by a differentiation one. The algorithm was implemented successfully and a number of numerical experiments are displayed

The Challenges of Strategic Human Resources Management in Southeast Asian Universities

Nowadays the Higher Education Institutions face major challenges in its development. Demanding from different actors and the orientation of the research, more oriented to innovation and value creation, request news capacities to answer to that. Southeast Asia shows a strong economic growth with a large increase in GDP and a growing improvement in the position of The Human Development Index promoted by United Nations. This reality creates a different pressure on the higher education institutions in southeast Asia that requires a change in the universities, in the way they implement the mission and in the requested capacities, specially the human resources capacities. In this way, a new paradigm and model of human resources management for southeast higher education institutions need be developed to create the conditions to answer to this new reality, where the main analysis variables will be talent, performance, motivation and retention, coaching, cross cultural, integrity and permanent adaptability and flexibility. The main objective of this communication is to reflect and contextualize in terms of theoretical models where we find the assumptions for the implementation of strategic human resources management for southeast Asian universities. What kind of profile is request for the staff in this new reality? What we need to change in human resources management? How can this change be implemented? What HRM tools are most relevant to this reality? These are the main issues on which we will reflect with a critical thinking approach in order to present a set of clues to southeast Asian universities according to our analysis and interpretation, as Portuguese and European