Symbolic representation of scenarios in Bologna airport on virtual reality concept

This paper is a part of a big Project named Retina Project, which is focused in reduce the workload of an ATCO. It uses the last technological advances as Virtual Reality concept. The work has consisted in studying the different awareness situations that happens daily in Bologna Airport. It has been analysed one scenario with good visibility where the sun predominates and two other scenarios with poor visibility where the rain and the fog dominate. Due to the study of visibility in the three scenarios computed, the conclusion obtained is that the overlay must be shown with a constant dimension regardless the position of the aircraft to be readable by the ATC and also, the frame and the flight strip should be coloured in a showy colour (like red) for a better control by the ATCO

Suddenly last summer: how the tourist tsunami hit Lisbon

En el presente artículo fijamos nuestra atención en la capital de Portugal, Lisboa, y su reciente proceso de turistificación, que ha forzado a una revisión colectiva de la identidad de la ciudad y sus narrativas patrimoniales, para encajar los crecientes contrastes entre marginalidad y centralidad, circulación y calma, abandono y atención pública, indigencia y afluencia, spleen y euforia. Después de introducir nuestro foco teórico en el problema de los “comunales urbanos” y de presentar nuestra metodología cualitativa, pasamos a describir el proceso histórico que ha conducido a la transformación de Lisboa: desde el mega-evento de la Expo’98 cuando Lisboa era todavía un destino turístico periférico, hasta la presente economía urbana, especializada en el turismo y los servicios. Vamos a centrarnos especialmente en los proyectos y políticas implantadas “desde arriba” durante aquellos años y en la crisis financiera de 2008, usada para liberalizar varios aspectos de la economía.In this paper, we focus our attention in Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, and in the recent process of its touristification, which is forcing a collective revision of the city’s identity and its patrimonial narratives, to make sense of the growing contrasts between marginality and centrality, circulation and calm, abandonment and limelight, indigence and affluence, spleen and euphoria. After introducing our theoretical focus on the problem of “urban commons” and the qualitative methodology used in the article, we describe the historical process that led to the transformation of Lisbon: from the Expo’98 megaevent when Lisbon was a peripheral tourism destiny, to the present urban economy that is specialized in tourism and services. We will focus especially in the top-down projects and policies developed during those years and the use of 2008 financial crisis to liberalize many aspects of economy

A Note on Mexico and U.S. Manufacturing Industries’ Long-term Relationship.

The results in Chiquiar and Ramos-Francia (2005) suggested that the long-run relationship between the US’s and Mexico’s manufacturing sectors was weakened after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). When that paper was made, however, this shock was too recent and, therefore, the analysis was based only on end-of-sample structural break tests. In this note we use updated information to revisit this issue. The results suggest that, by shifting resources towards those sectors where it remained competitive, Mexico’s response allowed the effect of China’s entry to the WTO on its long-term relationship with the U.S. manufacturing sector to be only temporary.Business Cycle Synchronization, Trade Integration, NAFTA

Competitiveness and Growth of the Mexican Economy.

We address the role that deep, structural factors may have as determinants of Mexico’s economic growth. We argue that Mexico’s poor growth performance appears to be associated not only with shorter-run events such as the "lost decade" of the eighties, but also with supply-side features of the economy that have been present for at least four decades. Mexico’s low competitiveness and poor growth potential seem to reflect an institutional framework that tends to support rigid, non-competitive market structures, and incentives that promote the allocation of resources towards unproductive rent-seeking activities relatively more than into investment, production, productivity, and adoption of superior technologies. We present examples of input markets where we believe these issues are central. We conclude that solving this situation requires microeconomic policies that lead to fundamental changes in the incentive structure of the economy.Competitiveness and growth, productivity, efficiency, comparative advantage.

Wage differentials in Mexico's urban labor market

We estimate wage differentials across different segments of the Mexican urban labor market. We use a panel sample of individuals which allows us to control for workers' observable and non-observable characteristics, by focusing on wage changes reported by individuals who move from one sector to another. The results suggest that the wage differential between the formal and informal sectors is positive and significant, and larger than the differential between industry and services. While we cannot distinguish formally between different hypotheses that could explain the existence of these differentials, our results seem to suggest that the main distortions in the Mexican labor market appear to be related more to labor regulations that affect the allocation of labor between the formal and informal sectors, than to differences in intrinsic characteristics of the production processes in industry and services.Informal Sector, Labor Market Distortions

Time Series Approach to Test a Change in Inflation Persistence: The Mexican Experience.

When monetary policy has an explicit inflation target, observed inflation should be a stationary process. In countries where, for a variety of reasons, the determinants of inflation could lead it to follow a non-stationary process, the adoption of an inflation targeting framework should therefore induce a fundamental change in the stochastic process governing inflation. This paper studies the time series properties of Mexican inflation during 1995-2006, using recently developed techniques to detect a change in the persistence of economic time series. Consistent with the adoption of an inflation-targeting framework, the results suggest that inflation in Mexico seems to have switched from a nonstationary to a stationary process around the end of year 2000 or the beginning of 2001.Inflation, Persistence change, Stationarity, Unit root tests, Unknown direction of change