Productivity, Geography, and the Export Decision of Chilean Farms

This article analyzes the export participation of Chilean farms and the relative importance of farm-specific and geographic characteristics in this decision. An export behavior model is estimated using data on 8,284 Chilean farms and a two-stage conditional maximum likelihood procedure. Farm efficiency has a relatively stronger effect than the combined effect of geographic characteristics in increasing the probability of export participation. Farms with skilled (managerial) labor and in regions with higher human capital also have a relatively higher probability of producing for the export market. However, for geographic characteristics to positively affect export participation, farms must achieve a minimum level of efficiency.Agricultural Trade, Chile, Export Participation, Geography, Productivity., Farm Management, International Relations/Trade, F11, O13, O18,

The Track Record on Takings Legislation: Lessons from Democracy\u27s Laboratories

This report by the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute, entitled The Track Record on Takings Legislation: Lessons from Democracy\u27s Laboratories, examines the experiences of Florida, Oregon, and several other states with legislation implementing the property rights agenda. The report is the first comprehensive effort to systematically identify and evaluate the on-the-ground consequences of so-called takings compensation laws. The major findings of the report are that the takings agenda has undermined community protections by forcing a roll back of existing legal rules and/or by exerting a chilling effect on new legislative activity, special interests such as developers and timber companies have been the primary beneficiaries of takings legislation, the takings laws have fomented and exacerbated neighbor-neighbor conflicts over land use issues, the takings agenda has conferred large windfalls on certain owners either in the form of taxpayer-funded awards or special exemptions from the rules that apply to the rest of the community, and the property rights agenda has undermined the democratic process. Contrary to a common argument made by proponents of this type of legislation, requiring the government to pay to regulate does not lead government officials to make a more nuanced appraisal of the costs and benefits of regulations, apparently because the salience of fiscal costs to government officials far outweighs the relatively more diffuse political benefits of community and homeowner protection

Phase growth in bistable systems with impurities

A system of coupled chaotic bistable maps on a lattice with randomly distributed impurities is investigated as a model for studying the phenomenon of phase growth in nonuniform media. The statistical properties of the system are characterized by means of the average size of spatial domains of equivalent spin variables that define the phases. It is found that the rate at which phase domains grow becomes smaller when impurities are present and that the average size of the resulting domains in the inhomogeneous state of the system decreases when the density of impurities is increased. The phase diagram showing regions where homogeneous, heterogeneous, and chessboard patterns occur on the space of parameters of the system is obtained. A critical boundary that separates the regime of slow growth of domains from the regime of fast growth in the heterogeneous region of the phase diagram is calculated. The transition between these two growth regimes is explained in terms of the stability properties of the local phase configurations. Our results show that the inclusion of spatial inhomogeneities can be used as a control mechanism for the size and growth velocity of phase domains forming in spatiotemporal systems.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figure

Letras femeninas en el periodismo mexicano de Miriam López

Reseña del libro Miriam López Hernández, Letras femeninas en el periodimo mexicano, Colección Raíz del Hombre, Toluca, Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, 2010, 140 pp

The influence of online posting dates on the bibliometric indicators of scientific articles

This article analyses the difference in timing between the online availability of articles and their corresponding print publication and how it affects two bibliometric indicators: Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and Immediacy Index. This research examined 18,526 articles, the complete collection of articles and reviews published by a set of 61 journals on Urology and Nephrology in 2013 and 2014. The findings suggest that Advance Online Publication (AOP) accelerates the citation of articles and affects the JIF and Immediacy Index values. Regarding the JIF values, the comparison between journals with or without AOP showed statistically significant differences (P=0.001, Mann-Whitney U test). The Spearman's correlation between the JIF and the median online-to-print publication delay was not statistically significant. As to the Immediacy Index, a significant Spearman's correlation (rs=0.280, P=0.029) was found regarding the median online-to-print publication delays for journals published in 2014, although no statistically significant correlation was found for those published in 2013. Most journals examined (n=52 out of 61) published their articles in AOP. The analysis also showed different publisher practices: eight journals did not include the online posting dates in the full-text and nine journals published articles showing two different online posting dates--the date provided on the journal website and another provided by Elsevier's Science Direct. These practices suggest the need for transparency and standardization of the AOP dates of scientific articles for calculating bibliometric indicators for journals