Should UI Benefits Really Fall over Time?

The issue of whether unemployment benefits should increase or decrease over the unemployment spell is analyzed in an analytically tractable model allowing moral hazard, adverse selection and hidden savings. Analytical results show that when the search productivity of unemployed is constant over the unemployment spell, benefits should typically increase or be constant. The only exception is when there is moral hazard and no hidden savings. In general, adverse selection problems calls for increasing benefits, moral hazard problems for constant benefits and decreasing search productivity for decreasing benefits.unemployment benefits, search, moral hazard, adverse selection

Methanol dehydration over ZrO2 supported-activated carbons

Resumen comunicación congreso internacionalDME is playing an important role due to its potential use as an alternative fuel in diesel engines. The use of this fuel produces lower NOx emissions, and less engine noise compared to traditional diesel fuels. Moreover, this compound is used as building block for many value-added chemicals such as lower olefins. DME is usually produced via catalytic dehydration of methanol over a solid acid. The use of activated carbons in catalytic processes, acting directly as catalyst and as catalyst support, is focussing much attention. They can be obtained from different types of lignocellulosic waste, producing not only an environmental but an economical profit. In this sense, the preparation of activated carbons with phosphoric acid produces catalytic supports with certain surface acidity, which have shown high activity for alcohol dehydration. In this study, ZrO2 supported activated carbons were prepared from an industrial byproduct as lignin for the methanol dehydration to DME. The activated carbon was prepared by chemical activation with H3PO4, using Alcell® lignin as precursor. The impregnation ratio value (H3PO4/lignin) used was 3. The impregnated sample was activated under N2 flow at 500 ºC for 2h, washed and dried. The activated carbon was loaded with different amounts of ZrO(NO3)2, dried at 120ºC for 24h, and calcined in air at 250ºC for 2h, obtaining ZrO2 loadings of 5 and 10%, respectively. For the sake of comparison, pure ZrO2 was also used. Catalytic tests were performed at atmospheric pressure in a fixed bed reactor, at different space times and partial pressures. The activated carbon (ACP) prepared shows a well-developed porous structure, with an apparent surface area higher than 2000 m2/g, and a high contribution of mesoporosity. After metal loading, a maximum decrease of 20% in all structural parameters of the ACP was observed.The results show that ZrO2 loading produces an enhancing in the catalytic activity of the carbon materials compared to the parent activated carbon (0.1 g·s/μmol, PCH3OH= 0.02 atm in helium and 350 ºC). In this sense, a methanol conversion of 25% was observed with the addition of 10% w/w ZrO2 (ACP-10Zr), at steady state conditions (Figure 1). ACP shows negligible conversion, at the same conditions and for pure ZrO2 the methanol conversion was of 10%. Very high selectivity to DME (~100%) was found at temperatures lower than 350 ºC. The methanol conversion increases with temperature, reaching a value of 67% at 475ºC, but a slight decrease in DME selectivity is observed, resulting in a higher production of light hydrocarbons, mainly CH4. The results suggest that the addition of only a 10% of ZrO2 over an activated carbon prepared by chemical activation with H3PO4 enhances significantly the performance of the catalyst, compared to pure ZrO2.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Alcohol decomposition on basic/acid lignin-derived submicron diameter carbon fibers

The use of lignin, the second most abundant polymer in nature, along with a simple and versatile technique, electrospinning, represents an advantageous and promising approach for the preparation of carbon fibers. In previous studies, we have demonstrated that the incorporation of H3PO4 to the initial lignin solution allows for shortening the carbon fibers preparation process and that the resulting carbon fibers present P-surface groups that are of great interest for heterogeneous catalysis. Different carbon fibers catalysts have been prepared by electropinning of Alcell lignin in the absence or presence of H3PO4 as chemical activating agent. Carbonization at different temperatures between 500 and 1600 ºC allows for preparing carbon fibers with a high variety of porosity and chemical surface properties. Diverse oxygen surface groups are presented on the carbon catalysts surface. The isopropanol decomposition has been used as a catalytic test to study the acid or basic character of the prepared carbon fibers. Carbon fibers without phosphorus surface groups generate acetone as the main product of the isopropanol decomposition reaction, from 400 to 600 ºC, suggesting the basic character of these catalysts. On the contrary, phosphorus-containing carbon fibers show high acid character, producing selectivity to propylene of 100 % at temperatures between 250 and 350 ºC. The most acid carbon fiber catalyst produced a high selectivity to ethylene and dimethyl ether for the decomposition of ethanol and methanol, respectively. The conversion enhancement that the presence of oxygen in the gas phase produced for all these reactions was also studied.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. MINECO (CTQ2015-68654-R). MINECO (PTA2015-11464-I)

Theory for Decoupling in High-T_c Superconductors from an Analysis of the Layered XY Model with Frustration

The nature of decoupling in the mixed phase of extremely type-II layered superconductors is studied theoretically through a duality transformation of the layered XY model with frustration. In the limit of weak coupling, we generally find that the Josephson effect is absent if and only if the phase correlations within isolated layers are short range. In the case specific to uniform frustration, we notably identify a decoupled pancake vortex liquid phase that is bounded by first-order and second-order decoupling lines in the magnetic field vs. temperature plane. These transitions potentially account for the flux-lattice melting and for the flux-lattice depinning that is observed in clean high-temperature superconductors.Comment: 11 pgs. of Plain TeX, 1 postscript fig., based on a talk given at the VORTEX Euroconference held in Heraklion, Crete, Sept. 199

A Positive Theory of Geographic Mobility and Social Insurance

This paper presents a tractable dynamic general equilibrium model that can explain cross-country empirical regularities in geographical mobility, unemployment and labor market institutions. Rational agents vote over unemployment insurance (UI), taking the dynamic distortionary e.ects of insurance on the performance of the labor market into consideration. Agents with higher cost of moving, i.e., more attached to their current location, prefer more generous UI. The key assumption is that an agent’s attachment to a location increases the longer she has resided there. UI reduces the incentive for labor mobility and increases, therefore, the fraction of attached agents and the political support for UI. The main result is that this self-reinforcing mechanism can give rise to multiple steady-states — one “European” steady-state featuring high unemployment, low geographical mobility and high unemployment insurance, and one “American” steadystate featuring low unemployment, high mobility and low unemployment insurance.employment, migration, geographical mobility, political equilibrium, unemployment insurance, voting.

Making more flexible ATISMART+ model for traffic simulations using a CAS

Traffic simulations usually require the search of a path to join two different points. Dijkstra’s algorithm [1] is one of the most commonly used for this task due to its easiness and quickness. In [2, 3] we developed an accelerated time simulation of car traffic in a smart city using Dijkstra’s algorithm to compute the paths. Dijkstra’s algorithm provides a shortest path between two different points but this is not a realistic situation for simulations. For example, in a car traffic situa- tion, the driver may not know the shortest path to follow. This ignorance can be produced, among others, because one of the following two facts: the driver may not know the exact length of the lanes, or, even knowing the exact length, the driver may not know how to find the shortest path. Even more, in many cases, a mixture of both facts occurs. A more realistic simulation should therefore consider these kind of facts. The algorithm used to compute the path from one point to another in a traffic simulation might consider the possibility of not using the shortest path. In this talk, we use a new probabilistic extension of Dijkstra’s algorithm which covers the above two situations. For this matter, two different modifications in Di- jkstra’s algorithm have been introduced: using non-exact length in lanes, and the choice of a non-shortest path between two different points. Both modifications are used in a non-deterministic way by means of using probability distributions (classi- cal distributions such as Normal or Poisson distributions or even "ad hoc" ones). A precise, fast, natural and elegant way of working with such probability distributions is the use of a CAS in order to deal with exact and explicit computations. As an example of use of this extension of Dijkstra’s algorithm, we will show the ATISMART+ model. This model provides more realistic accelerated time sim- ulations of car traffics in a smart city and was first introduced in [4] and extended in [5]. This model was developed combining J AVA for the GUI and M AXIMA for the mathematical core of the algorithm. The studies developed in the above mentioned works, dealt with Poisson, Ex- ponential, Uniform and Normal distributions. In this talk we will introduce, as a novelty, the possibility of using other continuous probability distributions such as: Lognormal, Weibul, Gamma, Beta, Chi-Square, Student’s t, Z, Pareto, Lo- gistic, Cauchy or Irwin-Hall, and other discrete distributions such as: Bernouille, Rademacher, Binomial, Geometric, Negative Binomial or Hypergeometric. Even 1 more, this new version allows to deal with any “ad-hoc” continuous, discrete or mixed user’s distributions. This fact improves the flexibility of ATISMART+ model.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Recuerdos (y Proyectos) de docencia Romanística

Recoge las experiencias de innovación docente del autor, así como los recuerdos de los comienzos de la carrera docente con José María Coma Fort

SICAR, “encuentro a orillas del pozo”

Projectes Finals dels màsters i postgraus, Institut de Formació Continuada (IL3), Universitat de Barcelona, any: 2015, Tutor: Jordi Cuss