The Political Economy of School Size: Evidence from Chilean Rural Counties

Public schools in Chile receive a per-student subsidy depending on enrollment, and are managed by local governments that operate under soft budget constraints. In this paper, we study the effects of this system on per-student expenditures. Per-student expenditures on rural areas are 30% higher than in urban areas. We find that about 75% of this difference is due to the fact that rural public schools are significantly smaller and thus do not benefit from economies of scale. Besides, we also show that in our preferred estimates about 50% of the students in rural areas could be moved to schools that could exploit economies of scale – i.e., these students could attend bigger schools traveling at most an hour day a day in total. We show that even if we use conservative average speed rates or control for transportation, utility and infrastructure costs, there is a sizeable share of students that could be consolidated. We argue that local governments that have soft budget constraints do not consolidate these schools giving the existing potential because of political factors: closing schools is harmful for mayors in electoral terms. Consistent with this claim, we find that a decrease in the degree of political competition in areas with better access to non-voucher transfers from the central government (i.e. with softer budget constraints) decreases the extent of the inefficiency.

Analisis Pengaruh Pengembangan Ukuran Kemasan dan Harga Terhadap Penjualan Produk pada PT. Rena Djaja Semarang

Setiap perusahaan ingin menjadi pemenang dalam memasarkan produknya. Dalam mencapai tujuannya, perusahaan perlu melakukan kebijakan-kebijakan bisnisnya untuk meraih pangsa pasar yang diinginkan. Diantaranya adalah kebijakan pengembangan ukuran kemasan produk dan harga. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui seberapa besar pengaruh pengembangan ukuran kemasan produk dan harga terhadap penjualan produk baik secara parsial maupun simultan. Pengembangan ukuran kemasan produk yang dikeluarkan oleh perusahaan diharapkan dapat menunjang keberhasilan langkah perusahaan dalam mencapai penjualan produk yang telah direncanakan. Setiap ukuran kemasan produk yang dikeluarkan diharapkan mampu meningkatkan penjualan produk, sehingga akan berimbas pada besarnya keuntungan yang diperoleh. Demikian pula dengan kebijakan penetapan harga, dengan penentuan harga yang tepat diharapakan perusahaan mampu memperoleh laba yang diinginkan. Penelitian ini menggunakan tipe eksplanatory dan data yang digunakan menggunakan data time series. Metode pengumpulan data yaitu teknik wawancara dan dokumentasi. Data yang digunakan merupakan data yang berasal dari laporan penjualan, data harga dan data pengembangan ukuran kemasan produk perusahaan yang kemudian dianalisis dengan menggunakan uji regresi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pengembangan ukuran kemasan dan harga berpengaruh positif terhadap penjualan produk. Pengaruh terbesar diberikan oleh pengembangan ukuran kemasan produk yaitu bersifat positif dimana bila ukuran kemasan produk mengalami penambahan maka penjualan produk juga akan mengalami kenaikan, begitu juga sebaliknya. Sedangkan pengaruh harga bersifat positif dimana bila harga produk naik maka penjualan produk akan bergerak naik pula. Adapun saran yang dapat diberikan sebagai masukan bagi perusahaan adalah hendaknya perusahaan tidak ragu untuk mengembangkan ukuran kemasan produknya agar penjualan produk terus meningkat. Seiring dengan berkembanganya produk yang dihasilkan, perusahaan juga harus menetapkan kebijakan harga yang tepat sehingga dapat mendukung meningkatnya penjualan produk yang diperoleh perusahaan

Performar el archivo

A partir de la performance de Coco Fusco intitulada "Words May Not Be Found" (Berlin, 2017) y desde el concepto de "campo expandido" (expanded field) de Rosalind Krauss (1979) y de la crítica de Rebecca Schneider a la noción de inmediatez de la performance, este texto pretende mostrar algunos de los componentes que permiten pensar "la documentación" de la performance en video como ese medio donde se expande el campo de la performance a partir del del teatro y del video.Departing from Coco Fusco's performance entitled “Words May Not Be Found” (Berlin, 2017), as well as taking into consideration Krauss's concept of expanded field and Rebbeca Schneider's critique of the notion of immediacy of performance, this text discusses "the documentation" of performance through video. This is approached as the medium that expands the field of performance into the future and into an "alive" dimension of the archive through theater and video

The Body Perfect: On Disability, Experience and the Aesthetics of Expertise.

This is a provocation. It does not aim for a seamless narrative. The erudition and argument that create narrative smoothness are identified, here, as indexes of the aesthetic values that define Brazilian and British academic training, values that I would like to unpack. Specifically, the suppression of those experiences perceived as less than perfect is what concerns me. Through my experiences as a Deaf anthropologist, I reflect on the relation between aesthetic values, a powerful need to maintain “the body perfect” and, consequently, labour separate from personal experience in Brazilian and British universities. By reflecting on how “the body perfect” emerges through a protection of whiteness, I also hope to begin to explore the relation between racism and ableism that infuses academic aesthetics of expertise. In doing so, my provocation contributes to opening up spaces where reimagining diversity can actually take place in the academy

Air-Pollution Impact of Transmission Line Capacity Expansions in Power Systems

In this paper, we study the environmental effects on global and local pollutant emissions derived from the incorporation of new transmission circuits in existing corridors, and the interrelationships with the system economic costs and the system reliability variations. For that purpose, we develop a methodology that allows quantifying the indirect impact on pollutant emissions due to variations in power plants’ dispatch when adding a line circuit to a hydrothermal power system. Our methodology also allows the analysis of the effect of N – 1 security criterion over the pollutant emission displacement, as well as the effect of changes in demand, the hydrology scenarios, and the failure cost. We illustrate our methodology using a simplified version of the main Chilean network

Retinoic acid as a modulator of T cell immunity

Indexación: Scopus. DOAJ.Vitamin A, a generic designation for an array of organic molecules that includes retinal, retinol and retinoic acid, is an essential nutrient needed in a wide array of aspects including the proper functioning of the visual system, maintenance of cell function and differentiation, epithelial surface integrity, erythrocyte production, reproduction, and normal immune function. Vitamin A deficiency is one of the most common micronutrient deficiencies worldwide and is associated with defects in adaptive immunity. Reports from epidemiological studies, clinical trials and experimental studies have clearly demonstrated that vitamin A plays a central role in immunity and that its deficiency is the cause of broad immune alterations including decreased humoral and cellular responses, inadequate immune regulation, weak response to vaccines and poor lymphoid organ development. In this review, we will examine the role of vitamin A in immunity and focus on several aspects of T cell biology such as T helper cell differentiation, function and homing, as well as lymphoid organ development. Further, we will provide an overview of the effects of vitamin A deficiency in the adaptive immune responses and how retinoic acid, through its effect on T cells can fine-tune the balance between tolerance and immunity.http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/6/34

The End Begins

A dialogue between Renan Porto and Julia Sauma, on the dialogue between Antonio Tarsis and Anderson Borba in ‘The End Begins at the Leaf’