Monetary Policy and the Political Support for a Labor Market Reform

Lagged benefits relative to costs can politically block an efficiency-enhancing labor market reform, lending support to the two-handed approach. An accommodating monetary policy, conducted alongside the reform, could help bringing the positive effects of the reform to the fore. In order to identify the mechanisms through which monetary policy may affect the political sustainability of a reform, we add stylized features of the labor market to a standard New-Keynesian model for monetary policy analysis. A labor market reform is modeled as a structural change inducing a permanent shift in the flexible-price unemployment and output levels. In addition to the permanent gains, the impact of the timing and magnitude of the reform-induced adjustments on the welfare of workers - employed and unemployed - is crucial to the political feasibility of the reform. Since the adjustments depend, on one hand, on the macroeconomic structure and, on the other hand, can be influenced by monetary policy, we simulate various degrees of output persistence across different policy rules. We find that, if inertias are present, monetary policy, even when conducted by an independent central bank, affects the political support for the reform. In general, the more expansionary (or the less contractionary) the policy is, the faster is the recovery to the new steady-state equilibrium and, thus, the stronger is the political support.Monetary policy rules; Labor market reforms; Unemployment benefit; Political economy; New-Keynesian models

A taxonomy of podcasts and its application to higher education

In this paper we address the uses of podcasts in higher education and we propose a taxonomy for podcasts. We describe results obtained within a study that is being conducted at the University of Minho, in Portugal, focusing on the use of podcasts and their implications towards learning in higher education. The project involves 6 lecturers from different scientific domains – Education, Humanities, Social Sciences, Engineering and Biology. These lecturers created 84 podcasts in order to support their undergraduate and master courses during the 1st and 2nd semesters of 2007/ 2008 and the 1st semester of 2008/ 2009. A total of 479 students - 372 undergraduate and 107 master students - were enrolled in 20 courses. Some students were not only podcasts listeners but they also had the challenge and the opportunity to create their own podcasts (34 episodes). Podcasts were classified in different types (Informative, Feedback, Guidelines and Authentic materials), styles (formal or informal), length (short, moderate or long), purpose and medium (audio or video), according to a taxonomy proposed by the authors. The majority of podcasts was Informative (76), followed by podcasts with Feedback (30), Guidelines (9) and Authentic materials (3). Most podcasts were short (102), mainly in informal style and only 21 were vodcasts. Students´ reactions about podcasts implementation in higher education revealed their acceptance of this new tool and their receptiveness to podcasting in other courses. The majority of students found podcasts a positive resource in learning, although they did not explore one of the main advantages of this technology – portability. Lecturers also found podcasting a useful resource for learning and recognized its great potential as a pedagogical tool but stressed that it is too time consuming

Experimentation with MANETs of Smartphones

Mobile AdHoc NETworks (MANETs) have been identified as a key emerging technology for scenarios in which IEEE 802.11 or cellular communications are either infeasible, inefficient, or cost-ineffective. Smartphones are the most adequate network nodes in many of these scenarios, but it is not straightforward to build a network with them. We extensively survey existing possibilities to build applications on top of ad-hoc smartphone networks for experimentation purposes, and introduce a taxonomy to classify them. We present AdHocDroid, an Android package that creates an IP-level MANET of (rooted) Android smartphones, and make it publicly available to the community. AdHocDroid supports standard TCP/IP applications, providing real smartphone IEEE 802.11 MANET and the capability to easily change the routing protocol. We tested our framework on several smartphones and a laptop. We validate the MANET running off-the-shelf applications, and reporting on experimental performance evaluation, including network metrics and battery discharge rate.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Seismic Constraints on Slow Slip Events within the Cascadia Subduction Zone

Reanalysis of geodetic GPS time series from the Cascadia subduction zone have revealed at least 30 resolvable slow slip events along the megathrust, ranging from northern California to southern British Columbia, since 1997. Many of the smaller and more recent events are barely resolvable with GPS, but stand out clearly as tremor sequences. Since tremor bursts lasting less than 10-seconds are often visible across multiple stations, they offer the highest resolution for studying moment release through time. To test the hypothesis that tremor and transient deformation are two manifestations of the same faulting process, and to quantify the relative contribution of moment release during times of strain-transients versus other times, tremor bursts are systematically analyzed during the time period of June 2005 to February 2007. First, daily seismic files are consolidated from the Puget Basin of Washington State and SW British Columbia, where GPS density is highest. Seismic traces are included from the PNSN, the PBO borehole seismic network, and the EarthScope-funded CAFE experiment. Instrument gain is removed, and then the data is decimated to 10 sps, rectified, its envelope is computed using a Hilbert transform, and lastly the envelopes are averaged from regionally adjacent stations to provide a single metric indicative of tremor activity. Then tremor duration is compared to equivalent moment slip inversions of corresponding GPS- derived deformation to obtain a model that relates hours of tremor to moment magnitude, showing that moment is directly proportional to the hours of tremor. Finally, to locate tremor during the January 2007 event, cross-correlated envelopes of band-pass filtered instruments are used. The location is determined by minimizing the L2-norm of the vector containing the differences between the measured and predicted stations offsets for a 3D grid of possible locations. Although the scatter is high, particularly in the depth, it is found here that tremor during the 2007 event propagates in a northwesterly direction beneath the eastern Olympics Range over a 3-week period

RECONHECIMENTO, REDISTRIBUIÇÃO E POLÍTICAS DA DIFERENÇA CULTURAL: AS RELAÇÕES ÉTNICO-RACIAIS NO ENSINO SUPERIOR

O presente estudo pretende subsidiar a reflexão em torno das mudanças propostas recentemente para a adoção de novas diretrizes curriculares na formação de professores e na educação continuada. Políticas da diferença cultural, contempladas na educação das relações étnico-raciais, precisam estar embasadas nos princípios da justiça com equidade e nos argumentos das políticas por reconhecimento social e redistribuição, ou da discriminação reversa. As decisões governamentais de concertação para a adoção no ensino superior da inclusão de conteúdos que privilegiam as políticas da diferença cultural inauguram um novo cenário, trazendo à tona possibilidades de práticas pedagógicas e estudos que repercutem por uma temática epistemológica ainda a ser construída, pois os sujeitos serão os “outros”. Nova configuração no currículo, a apreensão na qualificação e formação dos docentes por uma temática que privilegie a adoção de uma política cultural da diferença, incluindo sujeitos historicamente excluídos do cenário do ensino, da pesquisa e da extensão nas Universidades é o caminho

ADMINISTRAÇÃO PÚBLICA NO CONTEXTO INTERNACIONAL: A PARTICIPAÇÃO NO 5º CADAPi (CURSO DE ALTA DIREÇÃO EM ADMINISTRAÇÃO EM ADMINISTRAÇÃO PÚBLICA – INTERNACIONAL) , OEIRAS - PORTUGAL

A participação no 5º CADAPi proporcionou-me o desenvolvimento de novas competências, desde agradecer todos os dias pela interculturalidade presenciada e vivida, além de reforçar os conceitos tão caros para a busca da eficiencia em administração pública, que me levaram a incorporar novas ferramentas em minha rotina profissional, sobretudo com maior fundamentação e uma visão pluralista no desenvolvimento de uma gestão estratégica. Partir do conhecimento da realidade da administração pública de Portugal e dos demais países da União Européia, como da Alemanha, do descobrimento da administração pública da África e Asia (Timor Leste) lusófona, da América Central e América do Sul facilitarão sobremaneira o “olhar” revitalizado para as nossas diferenças interculturais brasileiras e contribuirão para os novos desafíos que me são colocados no dia-a-dia da gestão universitária