Minimum Income in Portugal: Changing the Rules in Times of Crisis

The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact on the distribution of household income and poverty of the 2010 reform of the law that establish the non-contributory social benefits entitlement conditions in Portugal, with particular incidence in the Social Integration Income (RSI). Carried out in a period of serious deepening economic and social crisis, the changes in the resources condition appear fundamentally as a way of limiting and reducing the resources earmarked for social policies usage, precisely at the time when increased social insecurity should lead to a significant increase in the importance of such social policies. Using micro-data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we simulate the impact of the reform and estimate its effects on the income distribution and on different dimensions of monetary poverty. The change in the size of government expenditure required to finance these programs will also be estimated.Social Policy, Income Distribution, Inequality, Poverty Alleviation, Portugal

Towards Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning for Traffic Signal Control: Demand Surges, Incidents and Sensor Failures

Reinforcement learning (RL) constitutes a promising solution for alleviating the problem of traffic congestion. In particular, deep RL algorithms have been shown to produce adaptive traffic signal controllers that outperform conventional systems. However, in order to be reliable in highly dynamic urban areas, such controllers need to be robust with the respect to a series of exogenous sources of uncertainty. In this paper, we develop an open-source callback-based framework for promoting the flexible evaluation of different deep RL configurations under a traffic simulation environment. With this framework, we investigate how deep RL-based adaptive traffic controllers perform under different scenarios, namely under demand surges caused by special events, capacity reductions from incidents and sensor failures. We extract several key insights for the development of robust deep RL algorithms for traffic control and propose concrete designs to mitigate the impact of the considered exogenous uncertainties.Comment: 8 page

Monetary Poverty, Material Deprivation and Consistent Poverty in Portugal

In this paper we use the Portuguese component of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) to develop a measure of consistent poverty in Portugal. It is widely agreed that being poor does not simply mean not having enough monetary resources. It also reflects a lack of access to the resources required to enjoy a minimum standard of living and participation in the society one belongs to. The coexistence of material deprivation and monetary poverty leads to the concept of consistent poverty. The assessment of material deprivation and the identification of the households and individuals living in consistent poverty could become essential parts of the national anti-poverty strategy and crucial instruments in the definition of the target groups in social policy.Multidimensional poverty measurement, material deprivation, consistent poverty, Portugal.

Eu-China Relations: Exploring the Possibility of Cognitive Dissonance

This paper takes stock of the idea of cognitive dissonance as a possible attribute of the current EU-China relations state of affairs. It goes far beyond the simplistic approach to the term that became quite frequent in politicians and analysts’ discourses, because delving into the theory pioneered by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the late 50s, which, in brief terms, assumes that in a psychologically unpleasant situation characterised by conflicting beliefs, opinions, feelings, behaviors, or attitudes, there is a tendency to attempt to reduce dissonance and avoid information likely to increase conflict. Under this theoretical framework, the article explores the tensions, contradictions and dilemmas that are shaping EU-China relations in a complex, fast-changing, geopolitical and geostrategic context. Accordingly, it takes advantage of insights provided by the theory of cognitive dissonance to frame a discussion on dependencies and interests, as well as efforts to keep up appearances and manageable balances within conflict, which, arguably, can configure a dissonance-reducing intent. The paper, though, concludes that this intent is bearing on a hedging strategy, rather than on changes in behavior, values and beliefs, or environmental conditions, as advocated by Festinger’s theor