Government spending volatility and the size of nations

This paper provides empirical evidence showing that smaller countries tend to have more volatile government spending for a sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2000. We argue that the larger size of a country decreases the volatility of government spending because it acts as an insurance against idiosyncratic shocks, and it leads to increasing returns to scale due to the higher ability of the government to spread its cost of financing over a larger pool of taxpayers. The results are robust to different time and country samples, different econometric techniques and to several sets of control variables. The analysis also evinces that country size is negatively related to the discretionary part of government spending and to the volatilities of most of the government spending items. JEL Classification: E62, H10Country Size, Fiscal Policy, fiscal volatility, government size, H10, JEL: E62

História do ensino de cálculo diferencial e integral: a existência de uma cultura

DISSERTAÇÃO_MARCOS RIBEIRO RAADO presente trabalho tem como objetivo o estudo histórico sobre o ensino da disciplina Cálculo Diferencial e Integral na Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF) durante as décadas de 1970 e 1980 com a intenção de identificar traços, vestígios da cultura desse ensino. Dessa forma, a questão norteadora foi : como se caracteriza a cultura do ensino de Cálculo Diferencial e Integral nas décadas de 1970 e 1980 ? O estudo aqui prop osto, ao investigar historicamente os processos de ensino e aprendizagem da Matemática, naturalmente se insere no campo de pesquisa da história da educação matemática com um suporte teórico - metodológico proveniente da História da Educação entendida como es pecificidade da História. As fontes analisadas foram as notas de aula de um professor de Cálculo do Departamento de Matemática da UFJF do século passado, o caderno de Cálculo de um aluno do referido professor, as atas departamentais, livros texto de Cálcul o do período em questão; além de entrevista com o docente autor das notas. As conclusões do estudo delineado apontam para a identificação de elementos da cultura de ensino de Cálculo como: o rigor, os pré - requisitos, a reprovação, as aplicações da matemáti ca, a ênfase no treinamento e a seqüência de ensino função - limite - derivada - integral

The strong global dimension of piecewise hereditary algebras

Let T be a tilting object in a triangulated category equivalent to the bounded derived category of a hereditary abelian category with finite dimensional homomorphism spaces and split idempotents. This text investigates the strong global dimension, in the sense of Ringel, of the endomorphism algebra of T. This invariant is expressed using the infimum of the lengths of the sequences of tilting objects successively related by tilting mutations and where the last term is T and the endomorphism algebra of the first term is quasi-tilted. It is also expressed in terms of the hereditary abelian generating subcategories of the triangulated category.Comment: Final published version. After refereeing, historical considerations were added and the length of the article was reduced: Introduction and Section 1 were reformulated; Subsection 2.1 was moved to Section 1 (with an abridged proof); Subsection 3.2 was reformulated (with an abridged proof); The proof in A.5 was rewritten (now shorter); And minor rewording was processed throughout the articl

Essays on Geography and Firm Dynamics

In this dissertation, I study the effects of geography on firm dynamics. I do so from three different perspectives. The first two chapters explore how geography affects sales of branded retail products in the United States. Chapter 1 focuses on the spread of sales over time and space. It describes each component of sales and discusses the potential role of word-of-mouth in the growth of brands. Chapter 2 studies the cross-section relation of brand sales and distance. The chapter analyses how physical trade frictions and information frictions interact and generate the observed reduction in customer base as distance increases. Chapter 3 uses a reduced-form approach to analyze the border-effect using Brazilian exporters\u27 data. I show that serving a neighboring country increases the probability of entry, the expected growth of sales and reduces the probability of exit. Chapter 1 studies the spread of sales of branded products in the United States. Distance affects the cost of moving goods and people across space. Recent evidence suggests that geography also affects the flow of information. To investigate this hypothesis, I study the causes of brand sales growth over time and space. I analyze data from a large set of branded retail products sold in different regions in the United States and document a series of stylized facts about their life-cycle. I find that brands typically sell to a small number of locations that tend to be geographically close. Growth usually happens around previously successful markets. Furthermore, I decompose sales into three components: customer base, prices, and quantities per customer. Almost all of the variation in brand sales, both across locations and over time, comes from the first term. The evidence suggests that geography plays a vital role in customer acquisition, but not due to differences in prices. Motivated by these findings, I propose a model in which information about brands\u27 existence spreads geographically, similarly to how contagious diseases spread. Consumers aware of a brand might `infect\u27 others with that knowledge, and the probability of contagion depends on their location. Additionally, brands have different costs to deliver their goods to different markets. I use the predictions for the correlation of brand sales and customer base across regions to estimate the model using Simulated Methods of Moments and find that information frictions are more severe between distant locations. Furthermore, eliminating the role of distance in contagion increases consumer welfare by 32.5%. These results highlight the importance of geography for the spread of information about brands. This relationship allows for the description of brand dynamics across space and has significant welfare implications. Chapter 2 studies the cross-section relations of sales and distance. How does distance affect the sales of brands in the United States? To answer that question, I use brand data across 44 different regions in the US. At the brand level, most of the effect of distance on sales is associated with a reduced number of customers in distant locations rather than sales per customer. At the aggregate level, most sales reduction comes from having fewer brands serving other areas. To understand what drives these patterns, I introduce a trade model between regions with shipping costs and search frictions between brands and final consumers. The estimates suggest that the shipping costs are a log-linear function of distance. However, information frictions are lower at the origin than at other destinations but are not affected by distance otherwise. Chapter 3 describes the post-entry dynamics of Brazilian exporters. This article documents post-entry sales dynamics of Brazilian exporters and how they can depend on the set of countries that they exported to in previous years. Controlling for marginal costs and selection on idiosyncratic demand, the results on firm\u27s sales dynamics are similar to the ones in Fitzgerald for Irish firms, and are robust to the inclusion of destination-year controls. The main contribution of this article is to investigate how these dynamics are affected by the set of destinations served by the firm in the previous periods. The evidence collected here suggests that sales to destinations that are close to the ones that were previously served by the firm tend to be higher, to grow more, and that the firm is less likely to exit from those locations. These geographic spillovers seem to contribute to more successful endeavors, and to be economically relevant when describing the dynamics of exporters. Finally, the evidence suggests that these spillovers are correlated with higher idiosyncratic demand in those destinations, but are not associated with lower fixed and sunk costs individually faced by firms

Diagnóstico da mortalidade, na faixa etária de 20 a 49 anos, no período de 1980 a 1986, em Criciúma, SC.

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Departamento de Clínica Médica, Curso de Medicina, Florianópolis, 198