Essays on two contemporary topics through an intergenerational lens: smart technologies and economic sanctions

This thesis centers its scope on the macroeconomic implications of two contemporary issues affecting welfare: the arrival of smart technologies and global control policies as sanctions. The key element that integrates these topics into the thesis is the intergenerational perspective. The thesis employs overlapping generations (OLG) models to study how smart technologies could modify long-term economic conditions and how fiscal policies are to be thought as a global matter rather than isolated decisions. The first chapter addresses the circumstances under which smart technologies may drive people out of well-compensated work. The Chapter uses a two-period OLG model comprising two type of workers, high and low-tech, and two goods –a capital intensive one and a labor intensive one. Automation, characterized as legacy code, combines with capital to give birth to a smart machine: a robot. In turn, as automation capacity grows these robots leave future workers– both high and low-tech– worse off. The lower code relative to capital increases the high-tech worker’s compensation, savings, and capital formation. However, as code accumulates, demand for high-tech labor falls, limiting younger generations’ savings and investments. Similarly, the second chapter seeks to answer whether robots raise or lower economic well-being. The setup is once again a two-period OLG. However, in this economy two goods are produced and consumed, but only one is fully automatable. Robots may be harmful except when robotic productivity is high enough that induces a virtuous circle of rising wages, savings, and output, producing the open-ended constant growth of an AK model. Additionally, a government transfer can turn an increase in robotic productivity into a long-term welfare improvement for future generations. Finally, the third chapter develops a large-scale multi-country OLG model to address the fiscal implications of global sanctions to a country –namely Russia. The model is uniquely suited to understanding the long-term effect of different trade and fiscal regimes. The sanctioned country responds either by seizing foreign assets, or imposing capital controls, policies that might hurt the sanctioning countries. In all scenarios, except for the most benign, all generations alive at the time are made worse off in the sanctioned country

Culturally Sensitive Teaching in Finland's Basic Education: A Comparative Study of the 'Diversity Pedagogy' Model

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the practice of teachers in the Finnish classroom with a model of culturally sensitive teaching. By this comparison, the research examines the influence of culture in the teaching-learning process: how the cultural background of every student and every instructor cannot be detached from this everyday process. Several researchers have studied the power of culture in education, and today the rising of a multicultural classroom is inevitable. According to a culturally sensitive teaching, the role of the educator is to be aware and try to identify cultural situations, and to create an equal environment of learning for every student. The need for a special teaching approach regarding culturally diverse students is the argument for this research. The performance of these students is conditioned by the equal accessibility they have to instruction. The focus of this research was Basic Education, and teachers working with immigrant students were approached. The method of analysis was based on the ‘Diversity Pedagogy’ model, proposed by educator Rosa Hernández Sheets. This model helped to approach different dimensions of instruction in the classroom, since it covered important areas in the development of the students. The study aims to state the concepts of multicultural teaching and the adversities that minority students experience. The findings and conclusions were supportive of the need of specialized attention for those students who differ from the mainstream culture. Finnish education considers the presence of culturally diverse students in their classrooms and offers special education. However, this type of special instruction was perceived specifically in the classrooms teaching only immigrant children and it faded in the regular classes when those immigrant children were integrated with the Finnish pupils.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Collection and Distribution of Wheat, Dynamic of Theprocess of Shipping to International Markets: Case Study

This article presents the case study developed over five months in an agrofood company from Southern Sonora. The problem detected was the lack of quantitative information for decision making in the processes of wheat collection, transport, and sales in domestic and international markets. The aim was to build a dynamic interface that would allow observing the quantitative scenarios in the distribution link. The method included the prior analysis of the processes of wheat collection and delivery at the Port of Guaymas to attend to the demands of Algeria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. This article only presents information from deliveries to Algeria as an international destination, where the demand varies from 49 thousand to 86 thousand tons of wheat annually; the organization was looking into how to concentrate all the quantitative information and make decisions based on possible modifications of their collection and delivery policies. The system dynamics methodology employing Stella Architect software generated the development of a dynamic and visual user interface that allowed them to observe each of the quantitative scenarios associated with the amount of wheat that was being moved from the wheat collection centers to the domestic and international destinations. The main conclusions are that decision making supported by a user-friendly and visual dynamic interface allows the interested parties to modify the higher priority indicators and in thus observe the scenarios according to current and future policies in wheat distribution logistics; this establishes that the system dynamics methodology is a practical and reliable development and analysis tool for solutions in the agrofood sector

El cos, el sexe i la dona en el Recull d'eximplis

The collection of exempta edited by Marià Aguiló in 1881, samples materials related to all kinds of subjects, not excluding some –like those explored in this article– of an humorous or rather misogynous nature, related to sexual behaviour, where women are presented as a mischivious source of moral danger

Al Voltant dels Exempla per sermons (Ms. 61 de la Biblioteca Universitària de Barcelona). Primer acostament [1/2]

El present treball ofereix l'estudi i edició d'una selecció dels exempla que conté el ms. 61de la BUB. L'estudi té en compte tant l'evolució postmedieval de l'exemplarística com el de l'àmbit sociocultural de la literatura catalana del s. XVIII. Cada narració, a la fi del treball, rep atenció individualitzada, la qual cosa permet col·locar-la en el recorregut de la tradició literària que li correspon.On the Exempla per sermons (ms. 61 of the Biblioteca Universitària de Barcelona). A First Approach [1/2] This paper is a study and edited presentation of a selection of the exempla in ms. 61 of BUB. The study covers both the evolution of postmedieval exempla-literature and the socio-cultural context of Catalan literature in the eighteenth century. Each story at the end of the paper receives individual attention, which enables us to situate it along the line of development of its corresponding literary tradition