Performance Evaluation of Sheltered Workshops. Does Legal Status Matter?

Social enterprise pursues both social and economic goals and is recognized as a formula for achieving sustainable development. Sheltered workshops (SWs) are a manifestation of this phenomenon, their main objective being the labor market integration of disabled people. In this paper, the efficiency of SWs has been studied taking into account the operational and the core social aspects, as well as their distinct nature, namely for-profit or non-profit status. Additionally, we have analyzed the relationship between the social efficiency and the economic returns of these entities. To do this, a semiparametric methodology, combining different data envelopment analysis (DEA) models with truncated regression estimation has been used. It is the non-profit and top-performing SWs that achieve the best social and economic efficiency. For-profit and low-performing SWs show further reductions in social efficiency as a result of the economic crisis and uncertainty in subsidy-related public policies. Their extensive social proactiveness and high economic strength in the crisis period positively influenced their social and economic efficiency. We have also proven that it is the most profitable SWs that have the greatest social efficiency. We consider that our results constitute a useful complement to other evaluation models for social enterpriseWe gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade (Xunta de Galicia) with reference ED431C 2020/18, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER) within the period 2020–2023S

Application of the DEA Double Bootstrap to Analyze Efficiency in Galician Sheltered Workshops

Sheltered workshops (SW), as social enterprises, need to be efficient and maintain a balance between social aspects and economic prosperity. An important part of research on the subject has been focused on measuring the economic value created by these entities. In this study, we analyzed performance of SWs in Galicia (Spain), from the point of view of efficiency, combining social and economic aspects and investigating its key determinants. Using panel data from 609 entities from 2008 to 2017, we followed Simar and Wilson’s two-stage approach (2007). Specifically, we used data envelopment analysis (DEA) at the first stage to estimate efficiency scores and then used truncated regression estimation with double-bootstrap to test the significance of explanatory variables. Our results show that SWs have high levels of performance, higher in economic than in social terms, and we found that several factors, such as size and age, positively influence total, economic and social efficiency individually. We also found a positive, significant relationship between social efficiency and economic profitabilityS

IAA : Información y actualidad astronómica (1)

Sumario : Ventana Abierta.-- Investigación: Búsqueda de discos protoplanetarios: presente y futuro.-- Apuntes sobre la astronomía arábigo-española.-- Charlas con... César Nombela, Presidente del CSIC.-- Actualidad Científica: Nuevos logros en Óptica Adaptativa.-- Menos asteroides cercanos a la Tierra.-- Actividades IAA .-- Agenda .N

Understanding Accretion Outbursts in Massive Protostars through Maser Imaging

The bright maser emission produced by several molecular species at centimeter to long millimeter wavelengths provides an essential tool for understanding the process of massive star formation. Unimpeded by the high dust optical depths that affect shorter wavelength observations, the high brightness temperature of these emission lines offers a way to resolve accretion and outflow motions down to scales below $\sim$1 au in deeply embedded Galactic star-forming regions at kiloparsec distances. The recent identification of extraordinary accretion outbursts in two high-mass protostars, both of which were heralded by maser flares, has rapidly impacted the traditional view of massive protostellar evolution, leading to new hydrodynamic simulations that can produce such episodic outbursts. In order to understand how these massive protostars evolve in response to such events, larger, more sensitive ground-based centimeter wavelength interferometers are needed that can simultaneously image multiple maser species in the molecular gas along with faint continuum from the central ionized gas. Fiducial observations of a large sample of massive protostars will be essential in order to pinpoint the progenitors of future accretion outbursts, and to quantify the outburst-induced changes in their protostellar photospheres and outflow and accretion structures. Knowledge gained from these studies will have broader impact on the general topic of accretion onto massive objects.Comment: Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1806.0698

Economic and social analysis of sheltered workshops: a study in Galicia

La encomiable labor de los Centros Especiales de Empleo (CEE) en la integración laboral de las personas con discapacidad unido a las importantes ayudas que reciben de la Administración, demanda un mayor conocimiento de su realidad económica y social. Teniendo en cuenta que los estudios en Galicia sobre los CEE son prácticamente inexistentes, y que durante la crisis económica han visto reducidas de forma importante las ayudas económicas, el objetivo de nuestro trabajo es, en primer lugar, analizar la evolución de su situación económico-financiera durante el periodo 2010- 2015, atendiendo a su diferenciación entre centros con y sin ánimo de lucro. En segundo lugar y dado que en los CEE coexisten objetivos económicos y sociales, completamos el análisis anterior, incorporando el valor social generado. La técnica utilizada para evaluar su eficiencia es el Análisis Envolvente de Datos (DEA). En cuanto a los resultados, los CEE se financian principalmente con fondos propios, con mayor intensidad en los centros sin ánimo de lucro, y mejoran su solvencia, a pesar del incremento del endeudamiento a corto plazo, en especial en los centros con ánimo de lucro. Durante los últimos años los CEE han visto incrementada de forma importante su autonomía respecto a las subvenciones y han mantenido sus plantillas estables a pesar de la importante disminución de estas. Sus rentabilidades son moderadas, sobre todo en los centros sin ánimo de lucro, que destinan una mayor cantidad de sus recursos a sus trabajadores, priorizando en mayor medida los aspectos sociales sobre los económicos. En cuanto al nivel de eficiencia global, en general, es elevado y no existen diferencias sustanciales entre las entidades con y sin ánimo de lucro.The praiseworthy work of the Sheltered Workshops (SW) in the labor integration of people with disabilities together with the important public aids they receive, demands a greater knowledge of their economic and social reality. Bearing in mind that the studies in Galicia on SWs are practically non-existent, and that the economic aids have been significantly reduced during the economic crisis, the objective of our work is, first, to analyze the evolution of their economic situation during the 2010-2015 period, taking into account their differentiation between for-profit and non-profit entities. Second, and given that economic and social objectives coexist in SWs, we complete the previous analysis, incorporating the generated social value. The technique used to evaluate their efficiency is the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). As for the results, the SWs are financed mainly with their own funds, with greater intensity in the non-profit entities, and improve their solvency, despite the increase in short-term indebtedness, especially in the for-profit ones. During the last few years, the SWs have seen their autonomy significantly increased with respect to public aids and have maintained their staff stable despite the significant decrease in subsidies. Their returns are moderate, especially in non-profit ones, which allocate a greater amount of their resources to their workers, giving greater priority to social over economic aspects. In general, the level of overall efficiency is high and there are no substantial differences between for-profit and non-profit entitiesS

Rapidly Evolving Episodic Outflow in the Fastest Water Fountain

Talk delivered in Coloquio del Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica in México, 08 January 202

The Dust Properties and Origin of Substructures in HL Tau

Poster delivered in Five years after HL Tau: a new era in planet formation, an European Southern Observatory virtual conference, Chile, December 7-11, 2020.-- https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2020/hltau2020.htmlWith funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation SEV-2017-070

Medición del impacto y rendición de cuentas en las empresas sociales: integración información financiera y no financeira

Las empresas sociales, en tanto que empresas híbridas, necesitan modelos alternativos para la gestión y medición de su desempeño social y económico, como apoyo a la toma de decisiones y para garantizar la rendición de cuentas ante sus grupos de interés. En los últimos años, han surgido diferentes metodologías para evaluar su desempeño e impacto social. En este contexto, el presente documento pretende hacer una revisión de la literatura académica existente, relacionando estos modelos de medición de su impacto social, con otros instrumentos de rendición de cuentas como las memorias de sostenibilidad y la información financiera tradicional

Performance Evaluation of Sheltered Workshops. Does Legal Status Matter?

Social enterprise pursues both social and economic goals and is recognized as a formula for achieving sustainable development. Sheltered workshops (SWs) are a manifestation of this phenomenon, their main objective being the labor market integration of disabled people. In this paper, the efficiency of SWs has been studied taking into account the operational and the core social aspects, as well as their distinct nature, namely for-profit or non-profit status. Additionally, we have analyzed the relationship between the social efficiency and the economic returns of these entities. To do this, a semiparametric methodology, combining different data envelopment analysis (DEA) models with truncated regression estimation has been used. It is the non-profit and top-performing SWs that achieve the best social and economic efficiency. For-profit and low-performing SWs show further reductions in social efficiency as a result of the economic crisis and uncertainty in subsidy-related public policies. Their extensive social proactiveness and high economic strength in the crisis period positively influenced their social and economic efficiency. We have also proven that it is the most profitable SWs that have the greatest social efficiency. We consider that our results constitute a useful complement to other evaluation models for social enterprise

Evolution of the circumnuclear radio supernova SN 2000ft in NGC 7469

9 pags., 5 figs., 1 tab. -- An erratum for this article has been published in 2007 ApJ 654 1176SN 2000ft is the first radio supernova detected in the circumnuclear starburst of a luminous infrared Seyfert 1 galaxy. It is located at a distance of 600 pc from the QSO-like nucleus of NGC 7469. We report the temporal evolution of SN 2000ft during the 3 years after its discovery. Although SN 2000ft has exploded in the dusty and very dense environment that exists in the nuclear regions of luminous infrared galaxies, it shows the radio evolution properties characteristic of radio supemovae identified as Type II supernovae, aside from some foreground free-free absorption. The peak luminosity and circumstellar matter opacity of SN 2000ft are similar to other compact radio sources detected in luminous infrared galaxies such as NGC 6240, Arp 299, and Arp 220 and identified as Type II supernovae. © 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..A.A.was supported by grant AYA2001-2147-CO2. L. C. was supported by grants PB98-0340-C02-02 and AYA2002-01055. J. M. T. acknowledges partial support by grant AYA2005-08523-CO3-0Z, and A. S. W. was partially supported by NASA through LTSA grant NAG5-13065.Peer Reviewe