Institutional Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil

This paper analyzes the determinants of local institutions and distribution of political power within a constant 'macro-institutional' setting. We show that characteristics of Brazilian municipalities related to institutional quality and distribution of political power are partly inherited from the colonial histories experienced by different areas of the country. Municipalities with origins tracing back to the sugar-cane colonial cycle – characterized by a polarized and oligarchic socioeconomic structure – display today more inequality in the distribution of endowments (land). Municipalities with origins tracing back to the gold colonial cycle – characterized by a heavily inefficient presence of the Portuguese state – display today worse governance practices and less access to justice. The colonial rent-seeking episodes are also correlated with lower provision of public goods and lower income per capita.institutions, colonial heritage, rent-seeking, geography, Brazil

Rent Seeking and the Unveiling of 'De Facto' Institutions: Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil

This paper analyzes the roots of variation in de facto institutions, within a constant de jure institutional setting. We explore the role of rent-seeking episodes in colonial Brazil as determinants of the quality of current local institutions, and argue that this variation reveals a de facto dimension of institutional quality. We show that municipalities with origins tracing back to the sugar-cane colonial cycle -- characterized by a polarized and oligarchic socioeconomic structure -- display today more inequality in the distribution of land. Municipalities with origins tracing back to the gold colonial cycle -- characterized by an over-bureaucratic and heavily intervening presence of the Portuguese state -- display today worse governance practices and less access to justice. The colonial rent-seeking episodes are also correlated with lower provision of public goods and lower income per capita today, and the latter correlation seems to work partly through worse institutional quality at the local level.

Job Displacement Insurance and (the Lack of) Consumption-Smoothing

We study the spending profile of workers who experience both a positive transitory income shock (lump-sum severance pay) and a negative permanent income shock (layoff). Using de-identified expenditure and employment data from Brazil, we show that workers increase spending at layoff by 35 percent despite experiencing a 14 percent long-term loss. We find high sensitivity of spending to cash-on-hand across consumption categories and for several sources of variation, including predictable income drops. A model with present-biased workers can rationalize our findings, and highlights the importance of the timing of benefit disbursement for the consumption-smoothing gains of job displacement insurance policies

A Study on Order Generation in High Frequency Trading with Generative Adversarial Network

東京都立大学Tokyo Metropolitan University博士（経営学）doctoral thesi

Development of a Region-Specific Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Brain Model to Assess Hippocampus and Frontal Cortex Pharmacokinetics

Central nervous system drug discovery and development is hindered by the impermeable nature of the blood-brain barrier. Pharmacokinetic modeling can provide a novel approach to estimate CNS drug exposure; however, existing models do not predict temporal drug concentrations in distinct brain regions. A rat CNS physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model was developed, incorporating brain compartments for the frontal cortex (FC), hippocampus (HC), "rest-of-brain" (ROB), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Model predictions of FC and HCCmax,tmaxand AUC were within 2-fold of that reported for carbamazepine and phenytoin. The inclusion of a 30% coefficient of variation on regional brain tissue volumes, to assess the uncertainty of regional brain compartments volumes on predicted concentrations, resulted in a minimal level of sensitivity of model predictions. This model was subsequently extended to predict human brain morphine concentrations, and predicted a ROBCmaxof 21.7 ± 6.41 ng/mL when compared to "better" (10.1 ng/mL) or "worse" (29.8 ng/mL) brain tissue regions with a FCCmaxof 62.12 ± 17.32 ng/mL and a HCCmaxof 182.2 ± 51.2 ng/mL. These results indicate that this simplified regional brain PBPK model is useful for forward prediction approaches in humans for estimating regional brain drug concentrations

Função e Multiplicação de Bancos Comunitários

Este trabalho apresenta o papel de um banco comunitário em uma comunidade de baixa renda, bem como expõe o papel da Rede Brasileira de Bancos Comunitários - RBBC na divulgação da metodologia própria dessas instituições. Destacamos desde já que tratar da RBBC significa versar sobre o Banco Palmas que a criou, a representa e implementa seus métodos nos bancos comunitários do Brasil. Para dar conta dos objetivos propostos, foi realizado um estudo de múltiplos casos com o Banco Palmas (CE), o Banco Paju (CE) e o Banco Comunitário da Cidade de Deus - BCC (RJ). A comparação entre os casos mostrou que não basta sistematizar uma metodologia. Um banco comunitário não pode ser implementado “de fora para dentro”. É preciso que a própria comunidade sinta e expresse a vontade de criá-lo e que pessoas do local liderem a iniciativa. Só o trabalho da Rede não é suficiente. A experiência do BCC mostra essa dificuldade. A ausência de uma liderança comprometida com a própria comunidade e a falta de conhecimento sobre o papel do banco comunitário impedem seu desenvolvimento. A vivência coletiva da comunidade em outras lutas também demonstrou a distinção existente entre os casos cearenses e os da experiência fluminense

Equine hepatocytes: isolation, cryopreservation, and applications to in vitro drug metabolism studies

Despite reports of the successful isolation of primary equine hepatocytes, thereare no published data regarding the successful cryopreservation of these isolatedcells. In this study, a detailed description of the procedures for isolation, cryop-reservation, and recovery of equine hepatocytes are presented. Furthermore, theintrinsic clearance (Clint) and production of metabolites for three drugs werecompared between freshly isolated and recovered cryopreserved hepatocytes. Pri-mary equine hepatocytes were isolated using a two-step collagenase perfusionmethod, with an average cell yield of 2.47 2.62 9 106cells/g of perfused livertissue and viability of 84.1 2.62%. These cells were cryopreserved with Wil-liam’s medium E containing 10% fetal bovine serum with 10% DMSO. The via-bility of recovered cells, after a 30% Percoll gradient, was 77 11% andestimated recovery rate was approximately 27%. These purified cells were usedto determine the in vitro Clintof three drugs used in equine medicine; omepra-zole, flunixin, and phenylbutazone, via the substrate depletion method. Cryopre-served suspensions gave a comparable estimation of Clintcompared to fresh cellsfor these three drugs as well as producing the same metabolites. This work pavesthe way for establishing a bank of cryopreserved equine hepatocytes that can beused for estimating pharmacokinetic parameters such as the hepatic metabolicin vivo clearance of a drug as well as producing horse-specific drug metabolites

Optimization and characterization of bacterial nanocellulose produced by Komagataeibacter rhaeticus K3

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.carpta.2020.100022.In this work, a novel Bacterial NanoCellulose (BNC) producing strain, from Kombucha tea, was isolated and characterized. Based on 16S rRNA analysis the strain was identified as Komagataeibacter rhaeticus. Under static culture, K. rhaeticus K3 produces membranes with a relaxed structure, as observed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The addition of 2% (v/v) ethanol to the culture media enhanced by more than 3-fold of the BNC yield. Response surface methodology (RSM) was performed with K. rhaeticus K3, using a new low cost Eucalyptus Biomass Hydrolysate (EBH). The maximum experimental BNC yield was of 5.46 g/L, obtained with the following composition: 31.4 g/L of EBH; 2.89% (v/v) of ethanol and 10.8 g/L of Yeast extract/peptone. Texture Profile Analysis (TPA) of BNC membranes obtained using Hestrin-Schramm culture (HS) medium and optimized medium from EBH showed that membranes from EBH had higher resistance to compression, higher cohesiveness and resilience.This study was supported with the funds of Institute of Technical Biochemistry, Lodz University of Technology, Lodz, Poland and from The Navigator Company through the I&D no. 21874, “Inpactus-– Produtos e Tecnologias Inovadores a partir do Eucalipto”, funded through the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) and the Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) is greatly acknowledged. This study was also supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte.” The authors also acknowledge the financial support of the FCT (ESF) through the grant given to Francisco A.G. Soares da Silva (SFRH/BD/146375/2019).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Impact evaluation methods in public economics : a brief introduction to randomized evaluations and comparison with other methods

Recent years have seen a large expansion in the use of rigorous impact evaluation techniques. Increasingly, public administrations are collaborating with academic economists and other quantitative social scientists to apply such rigorous methods to the study of public finance. These developments allow for more reliable measurements of the effects of different policy options on the behavioral responses of citizens, firm owners, or public officials. They can help decision makers in tax administrations, public procurement offices, and other public agencies design programs informed by well-founded evidence. This article provides an introductory overview of the most frequently used impact evaluation methods. It is aimed at facilitating communication and collaboration between practitioners and academics by introducing key vocabulary and concepts used in rigorous impact evaluation methods, starting with randomized controlled trials and comparing them with other methods ranging from simple pre–post analysis to difference-in-differences, matching estimations, and regression discontinuity designs