Equality of Opportunity and Optimal Cash and In-Kind Policies

This paper examines the argument for public provision of certain private goods, like education and health, based on equality of opportunity by studying the utility possibility frontier of a society in which there is a concern for the distribution of these goods. A given quality of education or health services can be consumed for free in the public sector, but people can opt-out and purchase their desired quality levels in the private sector. Some of the conclusions are: (i) a pure cash transfer is optimal when the utility redistribution is either “sufficiently” small or large; (ii) if and only if both the equality-of-opportunity concern and the utility redistribution are large enough, can an in-kind program which attracts the whole population be justified; (iii) even when everybody chooses the in-kind program, it may be optimal to perform some additional utility redistribution by increasing the size of such program.equality of opportunity, redistribution, education, in-kind

Understanding over-indebtedness in Portugal: descriptive and predictive models.

Over-indebtedness is a recurring problem in Portugal. After facing different economic cycles, between financial crises and prosperity periods, Portuguese consumers have been striving to keep their household finances stable and avoid being over-indebted. This project aims to gain insights on over-indebtedness, from different perspectives that range from the social to the economic point of view. It examines over-indebtedness from a psychological and from a data science perspective. In particular, we suggest that the systemic impact of financial crisis in Portugal not only promotes over-indebtedness, but it crafts a specific profile of over-indebted consumers which may be distinguished from other profiles, ranging from the emphasis on lack of self-regulation and careless management of one’s budget to other causal factors such as consumerism, crisis, and unemployment. Given this scenario, this project proposes the use of Machine Learning (ML) for developing descriptive and predictive models, to understand the influencing factors of over-indebtedness on Portuguese consumers and will be used for establishing consumer clusters and guidelines for over-indebtedness regulation and consumer financial empowerment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Equality of opportunity and optimal cash and in-kind policies

Este trabajo examina el argumento para la provisión pública de ciertos bienes privados (e.g. educación y salud) basado en igualdad de oportunidades, mediante el estudio de la frontera de posibilidades de utilidad en una sociedad donde hay preferencias por la distribución de estos bienes. Cierto nivel de calidad de servicios de educación o salud se puede consumir gratis en el sector público, pero los individuos pueden optar por obtener dichos servicios del sector privado. Algunas de las conclusiones son: (i) una transferencia pura de efectivo es óptima cuando la redistribución de utilidad es suficientemente grande o pequeña; (ii) sí y sólo si tanto la preferencia de igualdad de oportunidades y la redistribución de utilidad son lo suficientemente grandes se puede justificar un programa en especie para toda la población; y (iii) aun cuando todos eligen este programa, puede ser óptimo hacer más redistribución aumentando el tamaño del programa.This paper examines the argument for public provision of certain private goods, like education and health, based on equality of opportunity by studying the utility possibility frontier of a society in which there is a concern for the distribution of these goods. A given quality of education or health services can be consumed for free in the public sector, but people can opt-out and purchase their desired quality levels in the private sector. Some of the conclusions are: (i) a pure cash transfer is optimal when the utility redistribution is either "sufficiently" small or large; (ii) if and only if both the equality-of-opportunity concern and the utility redistribution are large enough, can an in-kind program which attracts the whole population be justified; (iii) even when everybody chooses the in-kind program, it may be optimal to perform some additional utility redistribution by increasing the size of such program.Trabajo publicado en el Journal of Public Economics 90 (1-2): 143-169, January, 2006.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

Equality of opportunity and optimal cash and in-kind policies

Este trabajo examina el argumento para la provisión pública de ciertos bienes privados (e.g. educación y salud) basado en igualdad de oportunidades, mediante el estudio de la frontera de posibilidades de utilidad en una sociedad donde hay preferencias por la distribución de estos bienes. Cierto nivel de calidad de servicios de educación o salud se puede consumir gratis en el sector público, pero los individuos pueden optar por obtener dichos servicios del sector privado. Algunas de las conclusiones son: (i) una transferencia pura de efectivo es óptima cuando la redistribución de utilidad es suficientemente grande o pequeña; (ii) sí y sólo si tanto la preferencia de igualdad de oportunidades y la redistribución de utilidad son lo suficientemente grandes se puede justificar un programa en especie para toda la población; y (iii) aun cuando todos eligen este programa, puede ser óptimo hacer más redistribución aumentando el tamaño del programa.This paper examines the argument for public provision of certain private goods, like education and health, based on equality of opportunity by studying the utility possibility frontier of a society in which there is a concern for the distribution of these goods. A given quality of education or health services can be consumed for free in the public sector, but people can opt-out and purchase their desired quality levels in the private sector. Some of the conclusions are: (i) a pure cash transfer is optimal when the utility redistribution is either "sufficiently" small or large; (ii) if and only if both the equality-of-opportunity concern and the utility redistribution are large enough, can an in-kind program which attracts the whole population be justified; (iii) even when everybody chooses the in-kind program, it may be optimal to perform some additional utility redistribution by increasing the size of such program.Trabajo publicado en el Journal of Public Economics 90 (1-2): 143-169, January, 2006.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

The Consequences of Preferential Trade Agreements: Lessons for U.S.-Latin America Trade Relations

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms

Memorial da Imigração e Cultura Japonesa da UFRGS e o poema haicai: em prol da difusão do patrimônio imaterial à sociedade local

Anais do 35º Seminário de Extensão Universitária da Região Sul - Área temática: CulturaO Memorial da Imigração e Cultura Japonesa da UFRGS desenvolve através das oficinas de haicai, em parceria com diversas escolas e instituições públicas e escolas estaduais, atividades que estimula a interação social dos indivíduos abrangendo as mais diversas faixas etárias como esta, a de criação literária. O haicai é uma forma poética de três versos de 17 sílabas ao todo, expressa uma percepção da natureza através do kigo, i.e. uma palavra ou expressão que lembre alguma estação do ano. Ao mesmo tempo, serve como instrumento de interiorização do meio em que se vive e de socialização e convivência com o outro. A ação tem como objetivo, introduzir as técnicas da elaboração de haicai à comunidade local, acadêmicos, professores de ensino fundamental e médio assim como para o público em geral, para serem multiplicadores da técnica de composição literária, para que o haicai seja difundido como instrumento de identificação da própria sociedade e para sensibilizar as pessoas no reconhecimento do meio ambiente onde os mesmos estão inseridos além de ser excelente instrumento de interação, não somente local mas como instrumento de interação e integração entre pessoas de diversas regiões. Como Metodologia, faz-se primeiramente a introdução teórica sobre o estilo do poema haicai, sua história e as peculiaridades em relação ao trato dos versos com o meio ambiente e eventos sociais locais. Em seguida, após demonstração de alguns exemplos, os participantes são convidados a elaborarem seus próprios poemas, compartilhando-os em seguida com os demais participantes. Como resultado, os participantes produzem suas obras literárias, utilizando as palavras que reportam a natureza e de respeito em relação à sociedade, numa interpretação zen do ambiente, tomados individualmente ou em conjunto. Ao final da atividade que requer integração, as pessoas se mostram mais comunicativos entre si e, ao mesmo tempo, mais sensibilizados com os acontecimento

DEMO Models Based Automatic Smart Contract Generation: A Case in Logistics Using Hyperledger

This article presents a practical research project aimed at developing a method for automatically generating smart contracts from business models. The project has as a context the logistics in- dustry and uses Hyperledger Fabric as the blockchain (BC) platform. The main contributions are a mapping from DEMO (Design and Engineering Methodology for Organizations) language to Hyperledger Chaincode using GO language, as well as an evolution of DEMO’s Action Model Grammar, that enable specification of elements necessary for automatic SC generation. The proposed approach extends the DEMO methodology so that it includes an SC concern, enabling the generation of reusable action rule specifications and other elements necessary for SC genera- tion. Our research contributes to combining the strengths of the DEMO methodology and smart contracts. The design and implementation considerations of this approach are discussed in de- tail, and the results can be applied in future business cases requiring enterprise interoperability supported by distributed ledger technology