Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930

In this paper, we contribute to the discussion of what determines country risk by arguing that an important explanatory factor is the impact that commodities have on the capacity to pay. We use a newly created data base with state-level fiscal and risk premium data for Brazil states between 1891 and 1930 to show that Brazilian states with natural endowments that allowed them to export commodities that were in high demand ended up having higher revenues per capita and, thus, lower cost of capital. We also explain that the variation in revenues per capita across states was both a product of the variation in natural endowments and a commodity boom that had asymmetric effects among states. We end by running instrumental variable estimates using indices of export prices for each state to instrument for revenues per capita. Our IV estimates confirm our results that states with commodities that had higher price increases had lower risk premia.State public debt, fiscal decentralization, endowments, public revenue.

An Evaluation of the 1997 Fiscal Decentralization Reform in Mexico: The Case of the Health Sector

This paper studies the impact of the health decentralization of funds and responsibilities that took place in Mexico in 1997 on state level health outcomes. It renders two main results. First, the magnitude of transfers from the federal government to states failed to take into account state-specific needs; instead, transfers were mainly determined by the pre-reform health expenditures of the federal government in each state. Second, decentralization did not boost the advances in health outcomes already achieved under the centralized health sector regime. We conclude by discussing plausible reasons for the disappointing impact of decentralization on health outcomes.Fiscal decentralization, federalism, health.

The Great Leap Forward: The Political Economy of Education in Brazil, 1889-1930

Recent research links the inequality across countries and regions to colonial institutions. This paper argues that trade shocks could alter the development path of a country or subnational units, in spite of its colonial institutions. This hypothesis is analyzed using state-level data for Brazil, a country with high regional heterogeneity in endowments. We find that positive trade shocks, or improvements in export tax revenues, increased expenditures on education per capita and education outcomes in the period 1889 to 1930. In fact, trade shocks ended up altering the inequality in education levels across states in a permanent way. The paper ends by explaining why politicians spent windfall tax revenues to invest on education.Institutions, Fiscal Federalism, Education, Long Run Development

Bargaining for Fiscal Control: Tax Federalism in Brazil and Mexico, 1870-1940

This paper studies the historical origins of the federalist institutions in Mexico and Brazil. Using a bargaining game model, I argue that the type of commodities each country produced by the end of the nineteenth Century determined the negotiation power of local governments. This led to the buildup of opposite federalist institutions in both countries, which have persisted until nowadays. The model shows that countries with regions with more autonomy to produce and trade their commodities increase the local power to collect more taxes. While in Brazil coffee was the most important commodity, Mexico relied on mining products. Coffee was produced by local landowners who became economically powerful and they were able that export taxes were collected locally with the proclamation of the 1891 Constitution. Empirical estimates show that, after 1891, exporter states increased significantly their own fiscal revenue. On the other hand, mining was capital and technology intensive, inputs that were domestically scarce in Mexico. To finance those activities foreign investment was promoted centrally, weakening the relative power of local elites.Institutions, Fiscal Federalism, Public Finance and Endowments.

Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930

In the last few years there has been an explosion in the number of papers that aim to explain what determines country risk (defined as the difference between the yield of a sovereign’s bonds and the risk free rate). In this paper, we contribute to the discussion using by showing that Brazilian states with natural endowments that allowed them to export commodities that were in high demand (e.g., rubber and coffee) between 1891 and 1930 ended up having higher revenues per capita and, thus, lower cost of capital. The link between exports and state government revenues works in the Brazilian case because of the extreme form of fiscal federalism that the Brazilian government adopted in the Constitution of 1891, giving state governments the sole right to tax exports. We create a panel of state debt risk premia and a series of state level fiscal variables and we show, using OLS, that having specific commodities gave states access capital in better terms (i.e., lower risk premium) in international markets. We also confirm our results that states with better commodities had lower risk premia when we use export price indices for each of the states as instruments for state revenue per capita.

Micro and nanoplastics in the aquatic environment with special reference to synthetic fibers

Currently, there is great concern for the release of plastic nano- and micro fibers and microparticles (microplastics) to the natural environment for which nobody knows, so far, the ultimate consequences for health and ecological homeostasis. In this chapter book we discuss all known aspects of synthetic nano- and microfibers. This included morphology, physicochemical properties, production and origin of nano/micro fibers entering the atmosphere, water and food chain; exposure and ingress via life cycle for aquatic biota; analytical and measurement methods;Postprin

Numerical computation of dark solitons of a nonlocal nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation

The existence and decay properties of dark solitons for a large class of nonlinear nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equations with nonzero boundary conditions in dimension one has been established recently in [de Laire and S. L\'opez-Mart\'inez, Comm. Partial Differential Equations, 2022]. Mathematically, these solitons correspond to minimizers of the energy at fixed momentum and are orbitally stable. This paper provides a numerical method to compute approximations of such solitons for these types of equations, and provides actual numerical experiments for several types of physically relevant nonlocal potentials. These simulations allow us to obtain a variety of dark solitons, and to comment on their shapes in terms of the parameters of the nonlocal potential. In particular, they suggest that, given the dispersion relation, the speed of sound and the Landau speed are important values to understand the properties of these dark solitons. They also allow us to test the necessity of some sufficient conditions in the theoretical result proving existence of the dark solitons.Comment: 33 figure

Herramienta de diseño para sistemas de control de las plantas del Laboratorio de Control Automático del Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica

Trabajo de Graduación (Licenciatura en Ingeniería Electrónica) Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Escuela de Ingeniería Electrónica, 2018.The School of Electronic Engineering of Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica, has as its project the realization of a rapid prototyping unit for control systems in different plants with which the Automatic Control Laboratory is equipped. The project seeks to reduce the implementation times that students take in applying control systems to the laboratory plants. The rapid prototyping unit was divided into two parts: the hardware unit, which interacts with the plant, and the design tool that interacts with the user. The present work corresponds to the design tool, where a tool with graphical user interface was developed, with simulation capability and with a communication protocol to the hardware unit. This tool provides the user with the necessary tools for the design of different control systems, decreases possible errors committed by the user, and translates into machine language the designs generated for the communication and transmission of data to the hardware unit

Integrated care programmes for adults with chronic conditions: a meta-review

Objective To review systematic reviews and meta-analyses of integrated care programmes in chronically ill patients, with a focus on methodological quality, elements of integration assessed and effects reported. Design Meta-review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses identified in Medline (1946-March 2012), Embase (1980-March 2012), CINHAL (1981-March 2012) and the Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews (issue 1, 2012). Main Outcome Measures Methodological quality assessed by the 11-item Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist; elements of integration assessed using a published list of 10 key principles of integration; effects on patient-centred outcomes, process quality, use of healthcare and costs. Results Twenty-seven systematic reviews were identified; conditions included chronic heart failure (CHF; 12 reviews), diabetes mellitus (DM; seven reviews), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; seven reviews) and asthma (five reviews). The median number of AMSTAR checklist items met was five: few reviewers searched for unpublished literature or described the primary studies and interventions in detail. Most reviews covered comprehensive services across the care continuum or standardization of care through inter-professional teams, but organizational culture, governance structure or financial management were rarely assessed. A majority of reviews found beneficial effects of integration, including reduced hospital admissions and re-admissions (in CHF and DM), improved adherence to treatment guidelines (DM, COPD and asthma) or quality of life (DM). Few reviews showed reductions in costs. Conclusions Systematic reviews of integrated care programmes were of mixed quality, assessed only some components of integration of care, and showed consistent benefits for some outcomes but not other

Algunas Nostalgias

ABSTRACT: A maioria dos críticos que abordam a obra literáriade Roque Dalton, poeta salvadorenho, limitam-se à sua poesia revolucionária, ou seja, ao poeta político. Nosso interesse, neste artigo, centra-se em resgatar e difundir o mérito do poeta e sua obra, no que se conjugam ética, poética e estética. O trabalho faz uma leitura do poema Algunas Nostalgias, tomado do poemário Taberna y otros lugares, (prêmio Casa de las Américas, La Habana, Cuba, 1969), em que se destacam dor, solidão e angústia como figuras metafóricas recorrentes