Relations Between Regulation, Competition Policy and Consumer Protection in Telecommunications, Electricity and Water Supply

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relations between regulation, competition policy and consumer protection these relations in three key sectors of Brazil’s infrastructure: telecommunications, electricity and water supply. A study of the literature points to two general principles. First, the need for consumer protection depends on the 'degree of sovereignty' enjoyed by consumers, defined in terms of the cost of consumer organization, consumers’ ability to evaluate services, and the level of competition in each sector. Second, the less sovereignty consumers enjoy the more consumer protection institutions are involved with regulation agencies. The evidence for the Brazilian case apparently corroborates these points. In addition, it is important to stress that consumer complaints in regulated sectors seem to have increased more intensely than in others. The article is divided into three sections. Section 1 presents theoretical elements and aspects of the relations between regulation, competition policy and consumer protection evidenced by international experience. Section 2 analyzes the Brazilian experience and in particular the available statistics on consumer complaints about telecommunications, electricity and water supply, submitted to Fundação Procon-SP during the nineties. The last section points to possible configurations of the institutional relations between competition policy, regulation and consumer protection, showing how the existing configuration of these areas in the three infrastructure sectors discussed confirms that the theoretical framework proposed has reasonable predictive power

Statistical characterization of eight maximum daily precipitation series of the State of São Paulo, Brazil

O objetivo do trabalho foi caracterizar as séries de valores máximos diários de precipitação pluvial, observados dentro de cada ano (Preabs) da Secretaria de Agricultura e Abastecimento do Estado de São Paulo, verificando o ajuste dessas distribuições empíricas a diferentes funções de densidade de probabilidade. O teste de aderência Kolmogorov-Smirnov/Lilliefors, os gráficos percentil-percentil e quantil-quantil indicaram bom ajuste dessa variável meteorológica à distribuição geral dos valores extremos nas localidades de Campinas, Cordeirópolis, Mococa, Monte Alegre do Sul, Ribeirão Preto e Ubatuba. Apenas na série de Pindorama foi detectada tendência de elevação nos valores de Preabs. As análises de Fourier e de ondaletas não indicaram marcantes periodicidades em nenhuma das séries analisadas.The aim of the work was to characterize the series of maximum daily rainfall value, observed during each year (Preabs) on the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The characterization was carried out by using different probabilities density functions. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the percentiles-percentiles graphics and, the quantil-quantil graphics, indicate that the observed data converges to the general extreme value distribution (GEV) in the locations of Campinas-SP, Cordeirópolis-SP, Mococa-SP, Monte Alegre do Sul-SP, Ribeirão Preto-SP and Ubatuba-SP. Increasing trends were detected only for the Pindorama-SP series. The Fourier and the wavelets analysis indicate no significant periodicities in all analyzed series

Between the Craft and the Mud: An Analysis of the Work and Health Relationship of Firefighters in the Breach of the Córrego do Feijão Dam—Brumadinho/MG

Faced with the rupture of the VALE S.A. tailings dam that hit the city of Brumadinho (MG), the article sought to better understand the organisation of work of military firefighters who participated in the search and rescue operation and the relationship between work and health present in this scenario. This is a qualitative research with a focus on the subjective production of the speeches of seven firefighters who were interviewed individually with a semi-structured script, using as a basis of analysis the ergological perspective and the productions of the psychodynamics of work. The firefighters experienced a scenario with risks of injury, contamination, and even death. In the interviews, they showed that more than twelve hours of work was responsible for sleep problems during and after the performance, as well as the food provided and the lack of time for physical exercise proved to be aggravating factors for their health. Working in the tailing’s mud combined the development of musculoskeletal problems and anxiety, due to the possibility of contamination by metals present in the mud. The work relationships show a high degree of trust and recognition between the firefighters and the affected population, which helped in the motivation and continuation of the operation until the present moment. The work in this operation that gained national prominence was responsible for the feeling of pride and for feeling more capable and prepared to act in other disasters. This research is expected to broaden the discussion about the work-health relationship of military firefighters exposed to disasters, as well as serve as a subsidy to encourage the creation of public policies focused on the health of these workers

Intersection local times of independent Brownian motions as generalized white noise functionals

The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/14jtbl19nh37ggtx/fulltext.pdfA "chaos expansion" of the intersection local time functional of two independent Brownian motions in Rd is given. The expansion is in terms of normal products of white noise (corresponding to multiple Wiener integrals). As a consequence of the local structure of the normal products, the kernel functions in the expansion are explicitly given and exhibit clearly the dimension dependent singularities of the local time functional. Their Lp-properties are discussed. An important tool for deriving the chaos expansion is a computation of the "S-transform" of the corresponding regularized intersection local times and a control about their singular limit.peerreviewe