Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes

We develop a competitive equilibrium theory of a market for votes. Before voting on a binary issue, individuals may buy and sell their votes with each other. We definne ex ante vote-trading equilibrium, identify weak sufficient conditions for existence, and construct one such equilibrium. We show that this equilibrium must always result in dictatorship and the market generates welfare losses, relative to simple majority voting, if the committee is large enough. We test the theoretical implications by implementing a competitive vote market in the laboratory using a continuous open-book multi-unit double auction

Sectorial structure, qualitative characteristics and guidelines of labour mobility in the European Union.

In the context of the process of construction of a single labour market in the Economic Union, one of the greatest problems is the existence of certain levels of structural unemployment. From this point of view, the imbalance between the qualification characteristics of work supply and demand as well as the determining factors of geographical mobility among jobs become a relevant explication factor. The aim of the paper will be to carry out a comparative analysis of some of the most important characteristics of employment in European countries. For this, how different employed population groups are distributed by sectors of activity and labour occupations will be analysed, how these structures have been modified over time, and the patterns of labour mobility that interconnect activities and occupations in the framework of labour mobility, in order to see whether these evolutions are leading to an assimilation of labour characteristics in the countries, or not. Keywords: labour mobility, employment, service sector, European Union. JEL-Code: J62, L80, F02

Patterns of Fluctuation of Employment in the European Union: National Cycles and Effects of Tertiarization

The paper has two aims. First, to study the possible relationships existing between cyclical fluctuations of employment by countries in the EU and the EU as a whole. And, second, to analyse the effects produced by the intense and increasing growth of employment in service industries in such fluctuations. In short, a first aim is to analyse the fact that cyclical movements of employment by countries (EU context)show some diffenreces and, on the second objective is to explore if the increasing presence of services in the employment structure has or not important consequences on employment fluctuations at national level. The first part of the paper analyses the cyclical fluctuations of employment in each of the EU countries, as a basis to set up the differences btw. countries and to establish the European cycle of employment. The second part is focused on the study of the apparent relationship existing between national fluctuations of employment and the structural changes as an explaining factor. Finally, the paper also analyses if there is or not a process of convergence (progressive adjustment) between the European countries and if they tend to adjust themselves to the more general trends observed. The lack of a European data-base on employment fluctuations at regional level (quarterly) impedes actually to extend the analysis to this level. Nevertheless, a case-study on a country and its regions will be included to test the differences/coincidences compared to the paper's general conclusions.

Does tertiarization explain differences in labour market behaviour?: A cross national approach refering to European Union

There are ever more works which identify the service sector as the principal protagonist in the creation of employment in western economies, with respect to the recent past and in the near future. At the same time, agreement exists regarding the profound transformations that work characteristics are undergoing, a processs which can be finally expressed as an increment in what we could call "work flexibility". With reference to the previous questions, in the European Union very varied disparities can be found. Whilst employment in Ireland and in Spain increased noticeably between 1994 and 2000, (37 and 23% respectively), in Austria the increase was only 0.9% and in Germany 3%. On the other hand, we can also find great differences in labour behviour in terms of flexibility and rigidity. The thesis which we endeavour to prove in the work is double: In what measure do the services ( and their internal composition) explain both the processes of employment creation and the increment of job flexibility observed in the EU? In what measure do the differences in tertiarization (and their internal composition) in the EU countries explain the heterogeneity observed in both employment creation and increased job dynamics? For this, and by means of the data of the "European Household Panel", the paper will have the following scheme: a) In first place, the behaviour of job markets in the European Union countries will be revised (employment creation, the presence of services and the processes of tertiarization). b) Then the internal composition of the tertiary sector will be analyzed in each of these countries, checking the extent in which they are similar or different. c) Finally, using shift-share techniques the relation between tertiarization, processes of employment creation and work flexibility (through indicators of labour mobility) will be analyzed, in relation to the EU and to each of the member countries.

Dynamic bayesian networks for rainfall forecasting

In this paper we deal with the problem of forecasting local rainfall at multiple meteorological stations over the Iberian peninsula. To this aim a dynamic Bayesian network is introduced for relating rainfall to broad-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. In this way statistical historic information gathered at the available stations is combined with numerical atmospheric predictions developed at different weather services, resulting a single consensus prediction. This technique can be considered an hybrid statistical-numerical method for precipitation downscaling (predicting local values based on broad-scale grided predictions), and can be easily adapted to other meteorological variables of interest.Eje: Informática teóricaRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Sampling bias in systems with structural heterogeneity and limited internal diffusion

Complex systems research is becomingly increasingly data-driven, particularly in the social and biological domains. Many of the systems from which sample data are collected feature structural heterogeneity at the mesoscopic scale (i.e. communities) and limited inter-community diffusion. Here we show that the interplay between these two features can yield a significant bias in the global characteristics inferred from the data. We present a general framework to quantify this bias, and derive an explicit corrective factor for a wide class of systems. Applying our analysis to a recent high-profile survey of conflict mortality in Iraq suggests a significant overestimate of deaths

Does Immigration Contribute to Convergence Among Regional Labour Markets?

Foreign immigration is still a recent phenomenon in Spain, but its magnitude and growth has been extraordinarily important during the last years. According to the available data (Foreigners Official Register), foreign residents have increased by 382 percent between 1996 and 2005, that is from around 538.000 to more than 2.5 million people. It is generally accepted that immigrants may have, according to their magnitude, important effects on labour markets of the destination countries. First, because immigrants are a rather different population group due to their personal and labour characteristics compared to domestic population. So, immigrants may constitute a potential factor of changing the dynamics or the domestic labour markets. On the other hand, in the Spanish case immigrants population is characterized by displaying an unequal territorial distribution, with remarkable regional differences in terms of immigration rates and aggregate figures. On the basis of these ideas, the aim of the paper is to analyse to what extent the massive immigration flows to Spain along the last years has modified the parameters of regional labour markets, contributing or not to change regional differences of the main characteristics of the domestic markets

Remote Photonic THz Generation using an Optical Frequency Comb and Multicore Fiber

This paper proposes and demonstrates a photonic THz generation technique based on an optical frequency comb and multicore fiber (MCF) transmission, with the advantage of remote generation with great reconfigurability and reduced digital signal processing (DSP). The feasibility of the proposed technique is evaluated experimentally comparing the performance when transmitting a data wavelength and a local oscillator for optical heterodyning over a single core or over different cores in a 1-km MCF link. The proposed remote photonic THz generation technique is demonstrated employing a 16QAM 12.5 GBd signal. A short wireless transmission at 183 GHz center frequency with 0.25 m antenna-separation is achieved after 1 km MCF, meeting the soft-decision decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) bit error rate (BER) recommendation of 210-2. The analysis includes the received photocurrent range for which the BER meets the standard hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) recommendation of 3.810-3 BER. The BER performance is analyzed considering different DSP configurations, with and without frequency offset estimation (FOE) and decision-driven least mean squares (DD LMS) equalization. The performance of the remote photonic THz generation technique is evaluated comparatively against traditional free-running laser transmission over MCF, confirming the advantage of using comb generation to reduce the frequency offset fluctuation and simplify the DSP