Economic growth and investment in the Arab world

This paper analyses the economic growth performance in the Arab world over the last forty years. The Arab world has managed to reduce poverty performance despite its relatively disappointing growth performance. We relate this poor performance of both oil and non-oil producers to investment. Contrary to widespread belief, we do not find evidence that low quantity of investment is the main of low growth. The decline in the investment rate followed rather than preceded the reduction in the aggregate growth rate. We conclude that the low quality of investment projects is the key determinant of growth. The excessive reliance on public investment, the low quality of financial institutions, the bad business environment (due to political and social instability and to excessive public intervention and overregulation) and the low quality of human capital are important determinants of systematically unproductive investment decisions and, thus, low economic growth.Economic growth, investment, the Arab World

Social security, retirement, and the single-mindedness of the electorate

We propose a positive theory that is consistent with two important features of social security programs around the world: (1) they redistribute income from young to old and (2) they induce retirement. We construct a voting model that includes a “political campaign” or “debate” prior to the election. The model incorporates “single-mindedness” of the groups that do not work: while the workers divide their political capital between their “age concerns” and “occupational concerns”, the retired concentrate all their political capital to support their age group. In our model, the elderly end up getting transfers from the government (paid by the young) and distortionary labor income taxes induce the retirement of the elderly. In addition, our model predicts that occupational groups that work more will tend to have more political power. The opposite is true for non-occupational groups (such as the elderly). We provide some evidence that supports these additional predictions.Social Security, retirement, retirement incentives, single-mindedness, political theories of Social Security

The economic tragedy of the XXth Century: Growth in Africa

The dismal growth performance of Africa is the worst economic tragedy of the XXth century. We document the evolution of per capita GDP for the continent as a whole and for subset of countries south of the Sahara desert. We document the worsening of various income inequality indexes and we estimate poverty rates and headcounts. We then analyze some of the central robust determinants of economic growth reported by Sala-i-Martin, Doppelhofer and Miller (2003) and project the annual growth rates Africa would have enjoyed if these key determinants had taken OECD rather than African values. Expensive investment goods, low levels of education, poor health, adverse geography, closed economies, too much public expenditure and too many military conflicts are seen as key explanations of the economic tragedy.Africa, determinants of growth, economic developement

"Els reguladors no serveixen per a prevenir les crisis"

“Aquesta crisi ha estat «una més», i aprendre dels errors que la van fer néixer no evitarà que en sorgeixin de noves

"Regulators are no good to prevent crises"

“This crisis as been just «another one», and learning from the errors that brought it about will not avoid further ones” Interview to Xavier Sala i Martí

Probability-based Dynamic Time Warping and Bag-of-Visual-and-Depth-Words for Human Gesture Recognition in RGB-D

We present a methodology to address the problem of human gesture segmentation and recognition in video and depth image sequences. A Bag-of-Visual-and-Depth-Words (BoVDW) model is introduced as an extension of the Bag-of-Visual-Words (BoVW) model. State-of-the-art RGB and depth features, including a newly proposed depth descriptor, are analysed and combined in a late fusion form. The method is integrated in a Human Gesture Recognition pipeline, together with a novel probability-based Dynamic Time Warping (PDTW) algorithm which is used to perform prior segmentation of idle gestures. The proposed DTW variant uses samples of the same gesture category to build a Gaussian Mixture Model driven probabilistic model of that gesture class. Results of the whole Human Gesture Recognition pipeline in a public data set show better performance in comparison to both standard BoVW model and DTW approach

Análisis de la evaluación única y continuada en Biofarmacia y Farmacocinética-I

Podeu consultar la Setena trobada de professorat de Ciències de la Salut completa a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/43352La construcción del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) tiene como objetivo disponer de un espacio abierto en el que no existan obstáculos a la movilidad de estudiantes, titulados, profesores y personal de administración. El sistema se articula en torno al reconocimiento de titulaciones y otras calificaciones de educación superior, la transparencia (un sistema de titulaciones comprensibles y comparables organizado en tres ciclos) y la cooperación europea en la garantía de la calidad Ante este gran reto, la enseñanza universitaria ha tenido que reorganizarse y los planes de estudio de cada facultad han tenido que adaptarse a las nuevas exigencias del EEES. Además las metodologías docentes centran su interés en un seguimiento más tutorizado del alumno, para garantizar su aprendizaje, no sólo en la adquisición de conocimientos sino también de competencias

Evaluación del aprendizaje en Biofarmacia y Farmacocinética en evaluación única y continuada

Podeu consultar la Vuitena trobada de professorat de Ciències de la Salut completa a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/66524Transcurridos unos años de la implantación del Plan Bolonia en las universidades españolas, y concretamente en la facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad de Barcelona, cabe preguntarse si estos cambios de planes de estudio, cambios metodológicos docentes y la tutorización del alumnado han revertido en la adquisición de un mayor conocimiento en las materias que se imparten. Con este objetivo, en la unidad de Biofarmacia y Farmacocinética, en la cual se imparten dos asignaturas obligatorias de 3 y 6 créditos ECTS (Biofarmacia y Farmacocinética I y II, respectivamente), y con un nº de alumnos muy elevado (316-360) se ha realizado un estudio de evaluación del aprendizaje en conocimientos de los alumnos que han seguido evaluación única y/o continuada..

Association of lifestyle factors and inflammation with sarcopenic obesity: data from the PREDIMED‐Plus trial

Background: Sarcopenia is a progressive age-related skeletal muscle disorder associated with increased likelihood of adverse outcomes. Muscle wasting is often accompanied by an increase in body fat, leading to ‘sarcopenic obesity’. The aim of the present study was to analyse the association of lifestyle variables such as diet, dietary components, physical activity (PA), body composition, and inflammatory markers, with the risk of sarcopenic obesity. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis based on baseline data from the PREDIMED-Plus study was performed. A total of 1535 participants (48% women) with overweight/obesity (body mass index: 32.5 ± 3.3 kg/m2; age: 65.2 ± 4.9 years old) and metabolic syndrome were categorized according to sex-specific tertiles (T) of the sarcopenic index (SI) as assessed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scanning. Anthropometrical measurements, biochemical markers, dietary intake, and PA information were collected. Linear regression analyses were carried out to evaluate the association between variables. Results: Subjects in the first SI tertile were older, less physically active, showed higher frequency of abdominal obesity and diabetes, and consumed higher saturated fat and less vitamin C than subjects from the other two tertiles (all P < 0.05). Multiple adjusted linear regression models evidenced significant positive associations across tertiles of SI with adherence to the Mediterranean dietary score (P-trend < 0.05), PA (P-trend < 0.0001), and the 30 s chair stand test (P-trend < 0.0001), whereas significant negative associations were found with an inadequate vitamin C consumption (P-trend < 0.05), visceral fat and leucocyte count (all P-trend < 0.0001), and some white cell subtypes (neutrophils and monocytes), neutrophil-tolymphocyte ratio, and platelet count (all P-trend < 0.05). When models were additionally adjusted by potential mediators (inflammatory markers, diabetes, and waist circumference), no relevant changes were observed, only dietary variables lost significance

Morbid liver manifestations are intrinsically bound to metabolic syndrome and nutrient intake based on a machine-learning cluster analysis

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is one of the most important medical problems around the world. Identification of patient ' s singular characteristic could help to reduce the clinical impact and facilitate individualized management. This study aimed to categorize MetS patients using phenotypical and clinical variables habitually collected during health check-ups of individuals considered to have high cardiovascular risk. The selected markers to categorize MetS participants included anthropometric variables as well as clinical data, biochemical parameters and prescribed pharmacological treatment. An exploratory factor analysis was carried out with a subsequent hierarchical cluster analysis using the z-scores from factor analysis. The first step identified three different factors. The first was determined by hypercholesterolemia and associated treatments, the second factor exhibited glycemic disorders and accompanying treatments and the third factor was characterized by hepatic enzymes. Subsequently four clusters of patients were identified, where cluster 1 was characterized by glucose disorders and treatments, cluster 2 presented mild MetS, cluster 3 presented exacerbated levels of hepatic enzymes and cluster 4 highlighted cholesterol and its associated treatments Interestingly, the liver status related cluster was characterized by higher protein consumption and cluster 4 with low polyunsaturated fatty acid intake. This research emphasized the potential clinical relevance of hepatic impairments in addition to MetS traditional characterization for precision and personalized management of MetS patients