Corporate Policy in Mexico During the Porfirian Age. The Telephone Companies, 1881-1905

In Mexico City, in the heyday of the Porfirio Díaz’s regime (1877-1911), a telephone system was developed by a private carrier, whose parent company was American Bell Telephone Company, which grew into a privately owned monopoly that served a clientele made up mostly of businessmen and government institutions. This essay tries to explain the company’s corporate policies to grow and profit in this incipient market, as well of the municipal council to regulate its operations till 1903, when its administrative powers were taken away by the federal government.telephone; policy; companies; Mexico; city council

Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy and the Structure of International Financial Markets.

This paper characterizes the behavior of debt and tax rates in a small open economy under both complete and incomplete markets. First, I show hat when the government follows an optimal fiscal policy and agents have access to complete markets, the value of the government’s debt portfolio is negatively correlated with government spending, and positively correlated with productivity and output, while output, labor, consumption and the tax rate are uncorrelated with government spending shocks. The stochastic processes followed by these variables inherit the serial-correlation properties of the stochastic process of the productivity shock. Second, I show that if agents can only buy and sell one-period risk-free bonds, public debt shows more persistence than other variables, and it is negatively correlated with productivity and output, and positively correlated with government spending. Moreover, the tax rate is positively correlated with government spending, while consumption is negatively correlated.Complete markets, Incomplete markets, Optimal fiscal policy

Spatial modelling of adaptation strategies for urban built infrastructures exposed to flood hazards

The recent 2010/2011 floods in the central and southern Queensland (Australia) prompted this research to investigate the application of geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing in modelling the current flood risk, adaptation/coping capacity, and adaptation strategies. Identified Brisbane City as the study area, the study aimed to develop a new approach of formulating adaptation/coping strategies that will aid in addressing flood risk management issues of an urban area with intensive residential and commercial uses. Fuzzy logic was the spatial analytical tool used in the integration of flood risk components (hazard, vulnerability, and exposure) and in the generation of flood risk and adaptation capacity indices. The research shows that 875 ha, 566 ha, and 828 ha were described as areas with relatively low, relatively moderate, and relatively high risk to flooding, respectively. Identified adaptation strategies for areas classified as having relatively low (RL), relatively moderate (RM), relatively high (RH), and likely very high (LVH) adaptation/coping capacity were mitigation to recovery phases, mitigation to response phases, mitigation to preparedness phases, and mitigation phase, respectively. Integrating the results from the flood risk assessment, quantitative description of adaptation capacity, and identification of adaptation strategies, a new analytical technique identified as flood risk-adaptation capacity index-adaptation strategies (FRACIAS) linkage model was developed for this study

Perspectives on the use of plant growth promoting bacteria as biocontrol agents for the pine wilt disease

Pine Wilt Disease (PWD) has been considered one of the major threats affecting conifer forests and forestry economics throughout the whole world. This complex disease is caused by the pinewood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, through an intricate interaction with other partners like nematode associated bacteria and an insect vector that is responsible for nematode tree-to-tree transportation and dissemination. The first report of PWD dates to 1905 in Japan. Later, the PWD spread out to China (1982) and Korea (1988). In Europe, PWD was firstly reported in Portugal in 1999. Since then the disease has spread throughout the country and recently new PWD focus were found in Madeira Island (2008) and Spain (2010), thus indicating an elevated risk to other European countries (including the Scandinavia region) and forestlands. Although efforts for controlling and understanding PWD have been made, till now there are no significant solutions rather than the destruction of infected trees and forestlands, leading to huge losses, i.e 26 million m3 of timber in Japan, which is both economic and ecologically unacceptable. Therefore, new solutions are needed in order to control PWD. Some of the disease control methods developed rely on the use of chemicals with nematicidal effects. Plant breeding programs are also being conducted in order to obtain resistant pine trees. Yet, these approaches can endure as also they can be non-environmental friendly. In other plant diseases caused by plant parasitic nematodes the use of plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) as biocontrol agents is considered to be an interesting and effective green-approach. In this sense, the results obtained in our lab indicate that the inoculation of Pinus pinaster (maritime pine) seedlings with PGPB leads to a reduction of PWD development, as also to an increased plant growth. These results suggest that the inoculation of pine seedlings with PGPB in a “nursery” system can be a useful alternative in obtaining PWN resilient pine trees

Mitigations to Reduce the Law of Unintended Consequences for Autonomy and Other Technological Advances

The United Nations states that Earths population is expected to reach just under 10 billion people (9.7) by the year 2050. To meet the demands of 10 billion people, governments, multinational corporations and global leaders are relying on autonomy and technological advances to augment and/or accommodate human efforts to meet the required needs of daily living. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) gene-edited plants and cloning will be utilized to expand human food supply. Biomimetic implants are expected to improve life expectancy with 3D printed body parts. Human functioning will be extended with wearables and cybernetic implants continuing humanitys path toward transhumanism. Families will be strengthened with 3 parent households. Disease will surely be eradicated using the CRISPR-CAS9 genetic engineering revolution to design out undesirable human traits and to design in new capabilities. With autonomous cars, trucks and buses on our roads and on-demand autonomous aircraft delivering pizzas, medical prescriptions and groceries in the air and multi-planet vehicles traversing space, utopia will finally arrive! Or will it? All of these powerful, man-made, technological systems will experience unintended consequences with certainty. Instead of over-reacting with hysteria and fear, we should be seeking answers to the following questions - What skills are required to architect socially-healthy technological systems for 2050? What mindsets should we embody to ameliorate hubris syndrome and to build our future technological systems with deliberation, soberness and social responsibility

An Affine Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates in Mexico.

We develop and estimate an affine model that characterizes the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates in Mexico. Moreover, we provide empirical evidence on the relationship between the term structure factors and macroeconomic variables. First, we show that the model fits the data remarkably well. Second, we show that the first factor captures movements in the level of the yield curve, while the second factor captures movements in the slope of the curve. Third, the variance decomposition results show that the level factor accounts for a substantial part of the variance at the long end of the yield curve at all horizons. At short horizons, the slope factor accounts for much of the variance at the short end of the yield curve. Finally, we show that movements in the level of the yield curve are associated with movements in long-term inflation expectations, while movements in the slope of the curve are associated with movements in the short-term nominal interest rate.No-Arbitrage, Latent Factors, Term-Structure

L´escriptura d´un Déu avorrit

L´escriptura d´un Déu avorri

The writing of a bored God

The writing of a bored Go

A Macroeconomic Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates in Mexico.

This paper investigates how different macroeconomic shocks affect the term-structure of interest rates in Mexico. In particular, we develop a model that combines a no-arbitrage specification of the term structure with a macroeconomic model of a small open economy. We find that shocks that are perceived to have a persistent effect on inflation affect the level of the yield curve. The effect on medium and long-term yields results from the increase in expected future short rates and in risk premia. With respect to demand shocks, our results show that a positive shock leads to an upward flattening shift in the yield curve. The flattening of the curve is explained by both the monetary policy response and the time-varying term premia.Term-Structure, No-Arbitrage, Macroeconomic Shocks.

New methods for the estimation of Takagi-Sugeno model based extended Kalman filter and its applications to optimal control for nonlinear systems

This paper describes new approaches to improve the local and global approximation (matching) and modeling capability of Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model. The main aim is obtaining high function approximation accuracy and fast convergence. The main problem encountered is that T-S identification method cannot be applied when the membership functions are overlapped by pairs. This restricts the application of the T-S method because this type of membership function has been widely used during the last 2 decades in the stability, controller design of fuzzy systems and is popular in industrial control applications. The approach developed here can be considered as a generalized version of T-S identification method with optimized performance in approximating nonlinear functions. We propose a noniterative method through weighting of parameters approach and an iterative algorithm by applying the extended Kalman filter, based on the same idea of parameters’ weighting. We show that the Kalman filter is an effective tool in the identification of T-S fuzzy model. A fuzzy controller based linear quadratic regulator is proposed in order to show the effectiveness of the estimation method developed here in control applications. An illustrative example of an inverted pendulum is chosen to evaluate the robustness and remarkable performance of the proposed method locally and globally in comparison with the original T-S model. Simulation results indicate the potential, simplicity, and generality of the algorithm. An illustrative example is chosen to evaluate the robustness. In this paper, we prove that these algorithms converge very fast, thereby making them very practical to use