La demanda de las AFP chilenas: 1993-2002

This paper estimates the demand curves faced individually by each pension fund management firm that serves compulsory saving for old age in Chile, in 1993-2002. These firms –Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones, AFP- sell their services by retail methods, contacting each client separately. The service is also a subscription service, so demand refers both to the inflow of new subscribers and the outflow of separations. The paper presents two specifications with different degrees of aggregation: a panel where for each firm the rival firms are aggregated together, and a more detailed panel for a specific AFP where rival firms are disaggregated. The specific firm is chosen to be a large AFP whose participants have the highest taxable earnings and may be more informed. In the first panel, the finding for 1993-97 is that the effective elasticity of demand faced by each firm is less tan 1.0 (in absolute value). In the panel for relatively more informed participants, the effective elasticity in 1993-97 was slightly larger tan one, implying an optimal margin of 70% above marginal cost. For the period that starts in December 1997, after important regulatory changes, the effective elasticity for the panel for relatively more informed participants fell to 0.10 and in the other panel remained below 1.0. Together, these results show that in Chile competition between pension funds has occurred without competition in prices throughout 1993-2002, and that competition in prices weakened further after 1998.Competition, social security, denand estimation, dynamic panels

Contabilidad Regulatoria: Las AFP Chilenas, 1993-2003

In firms subject to tariff regulations, the authorities have developed “regulatory” accounting methods, to identify accepted costs and possible supernormal lrates of return. These methods are also useful in industries free from price regulation, because information about the economic rate of return on assets may be useful for many other decisions, both private and public. This paper starts the development of a specific set of regulatory accounting methods for the Chilean industry of pension plan administrators (the managing firms, not the pension funds). The aim is to determine its effective rate of return, without a separate analysis for each firm. Heavy use is made of specific studies about certain aspects of this industry, performed by other authors. In the methodological area, it is found that the main adjustments to the accounting data are the addition of intangible assets related to commercial investments and the exclusion of assets that hide the performance of the main business. A new method is proposed to value one of the intangible assets. The main empirical finding is that the Chilean industry of pension plan administrators obtained, between 1993 and 1997(five years), an annual rate of return on assets before taxes between 9% and 27%, with an average of 18%. Starting in 1999 these rates rose, staying above 35% per annum, with an average until 2003 of 53% per annum ( five years). When comparing with the risk-adjusted rate of return (before taxes), and taking into account the size of this industry, it is found that from 1998 until 2003 the supernormal return averaged 0.10% of GDP per annum. The causes of this outcome and possible solutions are not the subject of this paperRegulatory accounting, financial services, social security

Internet en elecciones locales ¿medio, hipermedio o transmedio? análisis de caso en las elecciones del Estado de México 2009 - 2012

El objetivo de este ensayo es identificar si el Internet puede ser considerado como un medio de comunicación más, y evaluar cuál ha sido el rol que ha jugado en el modelo de comunicación y las campañas de los procesos electorales 2011 y 2012 en el Estado de México, de modo que se pueda hacer una valoración de las implicaciones que ha tenido en la comunicación política, no de un nivel nacional, donde la tendencia macro impide ver los fenómenos focalizados, sino en el contexto regional y local de los procesos políticos y electorales

Jerarquizaciones de los objetivos generales y específicos del Plan Nacional de Desarrollo Económico y Social hasta el 2030 mediante técnicas prospectivas: Rankings of the general and specific objectives of the National Plan for Economic and Social Development until 2030 using prospective techniques

El problema que se pretende resolver es lograr un proceso revitalizador, creativo y eficiente que permita establecer los vínculos jerárquicos entre los objetivos generales y los específicos contemplados en el documento rector de manera de alcanzar la sustentabilidad necesaria en cada entorno a la vez que se establezcan los vínculos entre ellos de forma fluida en términos de una red que propicie el flujo de información y conocimiento de manera sistemática teniendo en cuenta lo que hemos dado en llamar vigilancia prospectiva

Evaluation of a new vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus mastitis in dairy herds of southern Chile. I. Challenge trial

S. aureus is the most frequently isolated mastitis pathogen in southern Chile. Hygiene during milking time and DCT have not been successful to control this pathogen. Vaccination has been suggested as a useful tool to combat mastitis and several vaccines have been developed and evaluated worldwide. This study presents the results of a pilot trial to evaluate the effects of a new vaccine produced in Chile against S. aureus mastitis on udder health, humoral immune response, and milk production after an experimental intramammary challenge with a heterologous S. aureus strain. Four 2 mL doses of the vaccine were administeredintramuscularly to five pregnant heifers free of IMI infections, using another five heifers as controls. Ten days after last immunisation two mammary quarters of all heifers were challenged with a pathogenic strain of S. aureus. Heifers were monitored for clinical signs, bacterial count, SCC, differential leukocyte count in blood, S. aureus antibody, and milk yield during 14 days after challenge. No systemic effects were observed in any of the challenged heifers, and severe clinical cases were only observed in the control group. The SCCs were always higher in heifers of the control group. The challenged quarters of the control group yielded the highest counts of S. aureus, but no significant difference was observed between vaccinated and non-vaccinated groups. Serum antibody titres were twice as high in the vaccinated group compared to the control group, and average milk yield reduction was lower in the vaccinated group. In conclusion, this vaccine was able to stimulate the humoral immune response of vaccinated heifers which could have a beneficial effect against new IMI by S. aureus and help to combat this mastitis pathogen

Suspension culture of Pk15 cells for veterinary antigen production

The aim of this work is to characterize a culture of adherent pig kidney cells used for the production of an antigen for Porcine circoviral disease (PCVD), and determine a suitable strategy for scale up. The pig kidney cell line PK15 grown in adherence at low glucose concentration, was characterized in terms of culture and metabolic parameters, and subsequently adapted to suspension culture using a progressive adaptation method and media modification to a condition with low serum, high glucose and surfactant presence. The adapted cell was grown in suspension in 1 L flasks, and characterized also in terms of culture and metabolic parameters for comparison with the original adherent culture. Cells grown in suspension maintain a high viability and reach a similar maximum cell concentration as cells grown in adherence, while exhibiting a more efficient metabolic state. Cell concentration was increased by culture feeding, which is initiated at 5 mM residual glucose. Cells were infected with 103 viral genomic equivalents/cell, cultured and monitored for 120 hours. Cell growth and metabolic parameters were also determined. A stoichiometric model that considers the main metabolic pathways was used to assess and compare the metabolic state and needs of cells grown in adherence, grown in suspension and after infection using metabolic flux analysis. Results from this analysis were used to determine a suitable specific media composition for the cell growth stage and the viral infection stage in suspension culture. Results obtained in this study are to be transferred to the production setting. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Accounting for homeowners? decisions to insulate: A discrete choice model approach in Spain

This paper assesses Spanish households' willingness to thermally insulate their homes and the drivers that influence such a decision-making process. Stated preference data were collected through a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The final sample of 191 respondents and 1,145 observations was analysed by the use of a mixed logit model, weighing the factors that encourage homeowners to carry out facade energy renovations or not. The model enables the quantitative estimation of renovation adoption rates depending on the households' characteristics and public support instruments in place. The results show that homeowners are extremely interested in increasing the thermal insulation of their homes. The actual investment cost required in the existing building stock is lower than the obtained willingness-to-pay. Furthermore, it was found a relevant effect of a variety of household features on renovation choice (income, age, heating system, etc.), which should be contemplated in the energy efficiency policy design. Additionally, a case analysis is performed which comprises 3 household categories. The results reveal that the required subsidy level is different in each case, sometimes even unnecessary, although all of them lower than the grants set by existing aid programs. Thus, to reduce the free-riding effect, a closer perspective would enable targeted support mechanisms towards each household category. Moreover, the policy performance can be improved by combining subsidies with other measures such as low-interest loans or increased tax rebates, which could contribute to improving the cost effectiveness of the public expense associated with direct grants. Overall, an increased tax rebate is preferred to soft financing, although the influence of the latter increases in low-income households

Modelo de planificación agregada para proyectos de fabricación/instalación de muros cortina

Este trabajo presenta un modelo de planificación agregada para la optimización de la producción e instalación de una empresa fabricadora de Muros Cortina, también llamados Sistemas de Fachada Ligera. Este producto está compuesto por una estructura de aluminio que se ubica por delante de la estructura de los edificios, sobre la cual se acoplan cristales. El objetivo de este estudio es diseñar un modelo de planificación agregada, que le permita a la empresa alcanzar mejores rendimientos en su actividad y la elaboración de presupuestos de buena calidad. De tal manera que los presupuestos diseñados se ajusten a los costos y operaciones reales, entregando como resultado las decisiones operacionales que se deben tomar para alcanzar las metas de la empresa. Para determinar algunos parámetros del modelo se recurrió al estudio de tiempos con cronómetro. Gracias a la implementación del modelo propuesto, se mejoró la planificación de la producción y la calidad de los presupuestos para participar en licitaciones.This paper presents a model of aggregate planning for the optimization of production and installation of Curtain Walls in a manufacturing company. This product is made out by a aluminum structure with crystal that it is installed in front of the buildings. The objective of this study is to design a model of aggregate  planning, that it allow finding better performances in the company activity, and allow elaborating good-quality budgets. In order that the designed budgets fit to the costs and real operations, giving up the operational decisions that should be done, in order to achieve the company goals. In order to determine some parameters of the model, times’ study with chronometer was used. Thanks to the implementation of the proposed model, the planning of production and the quality of the budgets got better

Pipeline design to identify key features and classify the chemotherapy response on lung cancer patients using large-scale genetic data

Background: During the last decade, the interest to apply machine learning algorithms to genomic data has increased in many bioinformatics applications. Analyzing this type of data entails difficulties for managing high-dimensional data, class imbalance for knowledge extraction, identifying important features and classifying individuals. In this study, we propose a general framework to tackle these challenges with different machine learning algorithms and techniques. We apply the configuration of this framework on lung cancer patients, identifying genetic signatures for classifying response to drug treatment response. We intersect these relevant SNPs with the GWAS Catalog of the National Human Genome Research Institute and explore the Regulomedb, GTEx databases for functional analysis purposes. Results: The machine learning based solution proposed in this study is a scalable and flexible alternative to the classical uni-variate regression approach to analyze large-scale data. From 36 experiments executed using the machine learning framework design, we obtain good classification performance from the top 5 models with the highest cross-validation score and the smallest standard deviation. One thousand two hundred twenty four SNPs corresponding to the key features from the top 20 models (cross validation F1 mean >= 0.65) were compared with the GWAS Catalog finding no intersection with genome-wide significant reported hits. From these, new genetic signatures in MAE, CEP104, PRKCZ and ADRB2 show relevant biological regulatory functionality related to lung physiology. Conclusions: We have defined a machine learning framework using data with an unbalanced large data-set of SNP-arrays and imputed genotyping data from a pharmacogenomics study in lung cancer patients subjected to first-line platinum-based treatment. This approach found genome signals with no genome-wide significance in the uni-variate regression approach (GWAS Catalog) that are valuable for classifying patients, only few of them with related biological function. The effect results of these variants can be explained by the recently proposed omnigenic model hypothesis, which states that complex traits can be influenced mostly by genes outside not only by the “core genes”, mainly found by the genome-wide significant SNPs, but also by the rest of genes outside of the “core pathways” with apparent unrelated biological functionality.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Plan de acción para actores locales desde la Gestión Ambiental en comunidades rurales

The following research was developed at San Andre's popular council with the objective of designing an action's plan for local actors from the environmental management point of view, to contribute to the sustainable development of this community. To diagnostic the environmental problems and the current state of environmental management process, discussion's groups with the local actors were realized, as well as interviews and observations of this process in the studied community. Taking into account the problems the theme of the environmental management related to the studied community which is oriented to get better in a responsible attitude for local actors from an environmental point of view to the sustainable development emphasis in their actions field that have to do with the lifestyle of people of this way. The proposal of the plain of action of environmental step will contribute to the knowledge and the best acting of the local actors in the area object of study.La presente investigación se desarrolló en el Consejo Popular San Andrés, con el objetivo de diseñar un plan de acción para actores locales desde la Gestión Ambiental que contribuya al desarrollo sostenible, debido a que en la zona objeto de estudio, son evidentes los problemas que presentan los actores locales para la Gestión Ambiental de su comunidad, por el insuficiente conocimiento de la educación ambiental y de las actividades desarrolladas en ese sentido, lo que ocasiona modos de actuación inadecuados y daños irreversibles al medio ambiente. Para el diagnóstico de las problemáticas ambientales y del estado actual de la gestión ambiental se aplicaron una serie de técnicas: grupos de discusión con los actores locales, entrevistas a especialistas del territorio y la observación participante. La propuesta del plan de acción de Gestión Ambiental contribuirá al conocimiento y mejor desempeño de los actores locales en la zona objeto de estudio, garantizando una actitud responsable desde el punto de vista medio ambiental con énfasis al desarrollo sostenible en sus radios de acción, y de esta manera incidir en sus estilos de vida