Motives for parental money transfers in Europe.

We find a high prevalence of Europeans giving equal financial transfers to their adult children, regardless of siblings’ income differences. This behaviour is sharply different from previously documented for American counterparts and it is not predicted by any conventional model on family transfers. We build a model to explain the motives for European parental transfers which includes concern with fairness and leaves altruism as an additional motive. We show that, in contrast to the prediction of the pure altruism model, parents do not offset income inequality among their children but decide to give equal transfers in order to be “fair”. However, the parents might start to give larger transfers to poorer children if the siblings’ income inequality becomes unbearable from the parent’s view. We find evidence for this behaviour using simulations for parameter’s distributions and also microeconomic data of 9 European countries from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

The division of parental transfers in Europe.

In the extensively studied equal division puzzle, one finds very large shares of equal bequests and unequal inter-vivos transfers given to adult children. However, such puzzle is less evident in Europe as we find a higher prevalence of parents giving equal inter-vivos transfers. We argue that altruistic parents are also concerned with norms of equal division. Thus, parents do not fully offset child income inequality. The parents start to give larger transfers to poorer children if the child income inequality becomes unbearable from the parent’s view. We find econometric evidence for this behaviour using microeconomic data of 12 European countries from the two waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

Welfare, inequality and financial consequences of a multi-pillar pension system. A reform in Peru.

The distributional impact of the structural pension reform in Latin American countries has been largely absent in the economic debate. However, this reform may widen inequality in old‐age and reduce welfare. In this paper we study the consequences of implementing a multi‐pillar system in one of these countries. We take advantage of available administrative records for Peruvian workers to estimate inequality in pensions, pension debt and welfare. Overall, our results show that the pension debt and inequality can be substantially reduced without welfare losses. Thus, the proposed multi‐pillar system allows recovering the principle of solidarity and saves fiscal resources.Pension reform; Pension inequality; Social security; Latin America; Peru;

Molino pendular de 8000 Kg/h

El objetivo de este proyecto es el de diseñar un molino para la trituración de arcillas y similares, que permita abarcar un importante sector de mercado en una industria de muy alta importancia en este país, como es la de la fabricación de productos cerámicos para la construcción. Se analizan diferentes tipos de molinos y entre ellos se opta por el pendular, por su mejor economía de molienda. El proyecto abarca el diseño completo de la máquina, en el cual se enfatizan aspectos de crucial importancia como son la reducción del nivel de desgaste de sus elementos a un valor mínimo, en vistas a reducir la necesidad de operaciones de mantenimiento, y la disminución del nivel de ruido y vibraciones transmitidos hasta un nivel mínimo comparado con las máquinas de características similares que se pueden encontrar en el mercado. También se consideran muy especialmente en la ejecución del diseño del molino las indicaciones de las normativas existentes a nivel de prevención de riesgos laborales y uso de la máquina por parte de los trabajadores. Se presentan planos, elaborados mediante Autocad® 2002, del conjunto montado de la máquina, así como despieces detallados que permitan la fabricación de sus principales componentes individuales. Asimismo, se elabora un plan de mantenimiento preventivo de la máquina para asegurar el correcto funcionamiento de la misma durante la vida prevista, que se estima de 10 años previa reposición tecnológica. También se incluye en el proyecto un estudio de viabilidad económica del mismo, que incluye el conjunto de la actividad explotadora que permite fabricar la serie prevista por los estudios de mercado durante los 10 años citados, y que muestra que el proyecto es plenamente rentable

Implementación del derecho de consulta de los pueblos indígenas y sus aspectos ambientales en Chile a la luz del Convenio nº 169 de la OIT

El Decreto Supremo N° 124 de 25 de septiembre de 2009 crea el Reglamento sobre consulta y participación de pueblos indígenas, implementando el Convenio OIT N° 169 en Chile. En esta nota se analizan los aspectos ambientales del Decreto, la concordancia con los estándares internacionales del derecho de los pueblos indígenas y el nivel de implementación en el nuevo marco institucional ambiental chileno

ÁLVAREZ MOLINERO, Natalia, OLIVA MARTÍNEZ, J. Daniel, ZÚÑIGA GARCÍA-FALCES, Nieves (eds.) Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas. Hacia un mundo intercultural y sostenible, Serie Ensayos UNESCO Etxea, Editorial Catarata, Madrid, 2009

ÁLVAREZ MOLINERO, Natalia, OLIVA MARTÍNEZ, J. Daniel, ZÚÑIGA GARCÍA-FALCES, Nieves (eds.) Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas. Hacia un mundo intercultural y sostenible, Serie Ensayos UNESCO Etxea, Editorial Catarata, Madrid, 200

A case study on cross-platform development frameworks for mobile applications and UX

Cross-platform development frameworks for mobile applications promise important advantages in cost cuttings and easy maintenance, posing as a very good option for organizations interested in the design of mobile applications for several platforms. Given that platform conventions are especially important for the User eXperience (UX) of mobile applications, the usage of a framework where the same code defines the behavior of the app in different platforms could have a negative impact in the UX. This paper describes a study where two independent teams have designed two different versions of a mobile application, one using a framework that generates Android and iOS versions automatically, and another team using native tools. The alternative versions for each platform have been evaluated with 37 users with a combination of a laboratory usability test and a longitudinal study. The results show that differences are minimal in the Android platform, but in iOS, even if a reasonably good UX can be obtained with the usage of this framework by an UX-conscious design team, a higher level of UX can be obtained directly developing with a native tool

Linguistic characteristics of the social science texts related with the teacher training

Este artículo plantea la necesidad de conocer las peculiaridades lingüísticas y textuales de los textos de ciencias sociales relacionados con la formación del profesorado. Pretende hacer consciente a estudiantes y a profesores de la importancia que tiene conocer la “gramática de la exposición” de textos de Ciencias Sociales, de manera que comprendan mejor y se expresen con precisión cuando escriban estos textos.Cet article insiste sur le besoin, pour les étudiants et les professeurs, de connaître les singularités linguistiques et textuelles des textes de Sciences Sociales en rapport avec la formation des professeurs. Nous voulons que les étudiants et les professeurs deviennent conscients du fait que maîtriser la « grammaire de l’exposition » des textes des Sciences Sociales est un atout pour mieux comprendre et mieux s’exprimer à l’heure d’écrire ce type de textes.This article raises the need of knowing textual and linguistic characteristics of the social science texts related with the teacher training. The aim has been to assess the importance of knowing “the grammar of the exposition” of social science texts to teachers and students in order to get a better understanding and expression when they write these types of texts

Forecasting heterogeneous regional data: The case of Spanish employment

Forecasting regional variables provides very important information for political, institutional and economic agents. However, in the present context characterized by important decline of economies, heterogeneous data and regional interdependencies, it is even more difficult to carry out accurate forecasts for any economic variable. In this paper, we assess the predictive performance of alternative models such as certain spatial panel models, the space-time autoregressive (ST-AR) model or the spatial Global VAR model. In all the cases, models also take into account the significant structural breaks in time. The capacity of forecasting is measured through traditional measures such as Theil?s U statistics, mean absolute error or root mean square error. Furthermore, comparison with some non-spatial models is also carried out. The empirical application refers to the explanation of employment in European Regions at NUTS II administrative level in terms of Eurostat. Results show that spatial models outperform non-spatial ones by a great extent

Case Report: Resolution of submacular haemorrhage secondary to exudative age-related macular degeneration after a single intravitreal dobesilate injection

[Introduction] Submacular haemorrhage is not an unusual cause of acute central vision loss, particularly in older people. It may be caused by a number of conditions, most common of which is exudative age-related madular degeneration. In patients affected by this type of macular degeneration, choroidal neovascularization extends into the subretinal space, producing substantial bleeding in approximately 17% of cases, resulting in large haemorrhages in the subretinal space that detach the neurosensory retina from the supporting retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) layer. This leads to substantial vision loss because of a relatively fast process of extensive photoreceptor atrophy in the overlying neuroretina and formation of macular scars[Case presentation] We describe a patient with submacular haemorrhage secondary to exudative age-related macular degeneration, treated with intravitreal injection of dobesilate. Two months later, visual acuity in the treated eye reached 0.50 with a significant improvement of the distortion and an anatomical resolution of the haemorrhage, as confirmed by optical coherence tomography.[Conclusions] Submacular haemorrhage secondary to exudative age-related macular degeneration can be successfully treated with intravitreal dobesilate. To our knowledge, this is the first case reporting a resolution of submacular haemorrhage after a single dobesilate injection.We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)Peer reviewe