Search

The message of this note is that in a general equilibrium setting the compensating variation is numéraire dependent. In contrast, the equivalent variation is neutral regarding the choice of value units. We illustrate with a simple example and propose an even simpler solution to overcome this bias in the compensating variation; all that is required to have a correct welfare estimate is to compensate the compensating variation by normalization with a price index. This type of correction is necessary to overcome the often blind implementation of welfare measures in numerical general equilibrium.

El principal motiu del desenvolupament del projecte ha estat el fet que en els infants d'edats de 7 i 11 anys, troben alguns conceptes o maneres d'impartir-los en les aules avorrits i pesats. En concret, el projecte es bassa amb escriure bé en català. Per això, aquest projecte intenta crear una interfície que sigui amigable i que engresqui a l'usuari a aprofundir en coneixement dels mecanismes que s'apliquen en l'ortografia i la gramàtica catalana. Per no fer que l'aplicació sigui un simple formulari on s'han d'introduir dades i respostes compulsivament, s'hi ha emprat una temàtica popular entre els infants com és el món de la història de la humanitat. D'aquesta manera també hi ha un segon punt de coneixement en l'aplicació, com es seguir els esdeveniments històrics de diferents èpoques. L'aplicació de les tecnologies TIC així com metodologies com es la gamificació, ajuda a imprimir un dinamisme en el projecte. Tenint en compte que els videojocs i les aplicacions mòbils tenen un fort impacte en totes les edats dels nens. Un dels aspectes més importants ha estat buscar un sistema que sigui intuïtiu per l'usuari, que a mesura que es vagin passant de nivells, la dificultat va augmentant, però d'altra banda el fet de poder superar nivells té les seves recompenses, així com poder demostrar-ho en la pantalla de perfil. Per concloure, el projecte ha estat un repte interessant de poder unificar un tema tan important com és el món de l'aprenentatge amb el món dels dispositius mòbils aplicat per a nens. El principal motivo del desarrollo del proyecto ha sido el hecho que en los niños de edades de 7 y 11 años, encuentran algunos conceptos o maneras de impartirlos en las aulas aburridos y pelmazos. En concreto, el proyecto se balsa con escribir bien en catalán. Por eso, este proyecto intenta crear una interfaz que sea amigable y que anime al usuario a profundizar en conocimiento de los mecanismos que se aplican en la ortografía y la gramática catalana. Para no hacer que la aplicación sea un simple formulario donde se tienen que introducir datos y respuestas compulsivamente, se ha empleado una temática popular entre los niños como es el mundo de la historia de la humanidad. De este modo también hay un segundo punto de conocimiento en la aplicación, como se seguir los acontecimientos históricos de diferentes épocas. La aplicación de las tecnologías TIC así como metodologías como se la gamificación, ayuda a imprimir un dinamismo en el proyecto. Teniendo en cuenta que los videojuegos y las aplicaciones móviles tienen un fuerte impacto en todas las edades de los niños. Uno de los aspectos más importantes ha sido buscar un sistema que sea intuitivo por el usuario, que a medida que se vayan pasando de niveles, la dificultad va aumentando, pero por otro lado el hecho de poder superar niveles tiene las suyas recompensas, así como poder demostrarlo en la pantalla de perfil. Para concluir, el proyecto ha sido un reto interesante de poder unificar un tema tan importando cómo es el mundo del aprendizaje con el mundo de los dispositivos móviles aplicado para niños. The main reason for this project has been the fact that the children of ages between 7 and 11 years old, are some concepts to teach them in boring classrooms.Specifically, the project is about to write well in Catalan.This project aims to create an interface that is friendly for the user to learn the mechanisms used by the Catalan spelling and grammar. To do more atractive the aplication we use the temporal historic ages line, to develop our project and the user learn two lessons at the same time. An attempt has been made to integrate the methodologies of gamification with the existing TICs, in order for the project to be much more attractive to the user. To conclude, the most interesting part of the project has been to unify the new technologies for learning with the world of children and that both are compatible.

In this paper we explore the capacity of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to track down policy induced economic changes and their ability to generate contrastable data for an economy. We start from an empirically built regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) which is then used to construct a first stage CGE model. The model is perturbed with a set of policy shocks related to European Union Structural Funds 2000-2005 invested into the region of Andalusia in the south of Spain. The counterfactual equilibrium is translated into a virtual SAM, conformal with the initial one, which is in turn reused to calibrate the next stage in the CGE modeling. And so on until we reach the last stage and all European funds yearly invested have been absorbed by the economy. Since at the end of the process another empirical SAM is available, we can compare it with the terminally produced virtual SAM. The comparison shows the sequence of SAMs to provide a very good fit to the actual data in the empirical SAM. Regional GDP and unemployment rates are two examples of the close approximation. With this novel approach we evaluate, from the methodological viewpoint, the projection capabilities of CGE modeling and at the same time we provide an empirical assessment of the said European policies., JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy

We present a novel sequential approach that explores the capacity of CGE models to track down policy induced economic changes and their ability to generate contrastable data. We use an empirical SAM of the region of Andalusia, in the south of Spain, to construct an initial CGE model. This model is then perturbed with a set of policy shocks related to EU Structural Funds invested into Andalusia. These shocks are accompanied by some parameter adjustments that pick up the main external changes not explained by the model. We generate a sequence of model produced virtual SAMs. We then compare the last virtual SAM in the sequence with a new available empirical SAM. This allows us to check relatedness, for the same year, between the model produced and the empirical SAMs. The results show a good fit to the empirical data which provides further support to the CGE modelling tool.

The goal of this study is the selective oxyfunctionalization of steroids under mild and environmentally friendly conditions using fungal enzymes. With this purpose, peroxygenases from three basidiomycete species were tested for the hydroxylation of a variety of steroidal compounds, using H2O2 as the only cosubstrate. Two of them are wild-type enzymes from Agrocybe aegerita and Marasmius rotula, and the third one is a recombinant enzyme from Coprinopsis cinerea. The enzymatic reactions on free and esterified sterols, steroid hydrocarbons, and ketones were monitored by gas chromatography, and the products were identified by mass spectrometry. Hydroxylation at the side chain over the steroidal rings was preferred, with the 25-hydroxyderivatives predominating. Interestingly, antiviral and other biological activities of 25-hydroxycholesterol have been reported recently (M. Blanc et al., Immunity 38:106–118, 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2012.11.004). However, hydroxylation in the ring moiety and terminal hydroxylation at the side chain also was observed in some steroids, the former favored by the absence of oxygenated groups at C-3 and by the presence of conjugated double bonds in the rings. To understand the yield and selectivity differences between the different steroids, a computational study was performed using Protein Energy Landscape Exploration (PELE) software for dynamic ligand diffusion. These simulations showed that the active-site geometry and hydrophobicity favors the entrance of the steroid side chain, while the entrance of the ring is energetically penalized. Also, a direct correlation between the conversion rate and the side chain entrance ratio could be established that explains the various reaction yields observed. This study was supported by the INDOX (KBBE-2013-7-613549), PEROXICATS (KBBE-2010-4-265397), and PELE (ERC-2009-Adg 25027) EU projects.

Recently there has been a renewed research interest in the properties of non-survey updates of input-output tables and social accounting matrices (SAM). Along with the well-known scaling RAS method, new procedures related to entropy minimization and other metrics have been suggested, tested, and used in the literature. Whether these procedures will eventually substitute or merely complement the RAS approach is still an open question. In general, the performance of the updating procedures has been tested using proximity measures to a reference input-output table or SAM. In this paper, in contrast, we propose to look at the operational performance of three updating mechanisms by comparing the simulation results that ensue from adopting alternative databases for the calibration of a reference computable general equilibrium (CGE) model.

Expenditure multipliers are routinely used to evaluate the effectiveness of government spending. When interested in disaggregated effects, interindustry models provide the necessary tools to be able to look at very detailed sectorial results. These models are theoretically simple and empirically operational, which makes them easily implementable and therefore popular with policy makers. They miss, however, quite a bit of the interaction that takes place at the micro level. On the one hand, they ignore the role exerted by supply constraints in primary factors; on the other hand, they look at the world as though it is fully linear. We overcome these limitations by using an opposite Walrasian general equilibrium model to compute marginal multipliers. By using differential calculus, we also offer some insights regarding the “under-the-hood” circuits of influence.

The problem of lack of competitiveness has become one of the main concerns of European governments. This is reflected trough out the Europe 2020 Strategy that includes as key priority the promotion and efficient and productive use of inputs. Differently to other ?well-behaved? European ?neighbours?, in Spain productivity growth closely connected to competiveness improvements has been remarkably slow during the last decade. Some analysts consider that the bad evolution of Spanish competiveness levels is basically due to the increase in labour costs during these years. Consequently, this paper pursues to shed some light on the possible main reasons that explains the lack of competiveness in the Spanish economy. In doing so, we use a multi-sectoral approach employing yearly Input-Output data for this economy that covers the 2000-2007 time-frame. This is the empirical contribution of our paper. In terms of methodology, to the best of our knowledge, the contribution of this paper relating to the Hypothetical Extraction Method (HEM) is two-fold. Differently to what is common practise, the first contribution has to do with evaluating endogenous price impacts using the HEM. Expanding the application of the original approach first proposed by Leontief (1949), the second contribution consists in introducing an inter-temporal analysis within the HEM. This helps in the analysis of the evolution and the main determinants of the rise in price levels that has generated a decline in Spanish competitiveness levels.

In general terms key sectors analysis aims at identifying the impact that a productive sector has in the economy. Quite a few measures and methodologies of varied complexity have been proposed in the literature, from multiplier sums to extraction methods, but not without debate about their properties and information content. All of them, to our knowledge, focus exclusively on the interdependence effects that result from the inputoutput structure of the economy. By so doing the approach misses critical links beyond the interindustry ones. A productive sector’s role is that of producing but also that of generating and distributing income among primary factors and households as a result of production. Thus when measuring a sector’s role, the income generating process should not be omitted if we want to elucidate the sector’ economic role. A simple way to make the missing income link explicit is to use the SAM (Social Accounting Matrix) facility. Using a standard extraction methodology we compare lost output with and without the missing link and observe the substantial differences in sectoral lost gross output associated as well as the implied shifting in the rank ordering within a sector.

Como es sabido, un ejercicio de estática comparativa consiste en el uso de un modelo que permita comparar estados alternativos de equilibrio de un sistema económico. Para ello se habrán de alterar exógenamente determinados parámetros, partiendo de un estado de equilibrio de referencia. En este trabajo pretendemos un desglose cuantitativo de los efectos.

Recently there has been a renewed research interest in the properties of non survey updates of input-output tables and social accounting matrices (SAM). Along with the venerable and well known scaling RAS method, several alternative new procedures related to entropy minimization and other metrics have been suggested, tested and used in the literature. Whether these procedures will eventually substitute or merely complement the RAS approach is still an open question without a definite answer. The performance of many of the updating procedures has been tested using some kind of proximity or closeness measure to a reference input-output table or SAM. The first goal of this paper, in contrast, is the proposal of checking the operational performance of updating mechanisms by way of comparing the simulation results that ensue from adopting alternative databases for calibration of a reference applied general equilibrium model. The second goal is to introduce a new updating procedure based on information retrieval principles. This new procedure is then compared as far as performance is concerned to two well-known updating approaches: RAS and cross-entropy. The rationale for the suggested cross validation is that the driving force for having more up to date databases is to be able to conduct more current, and hopefully more credible, policy analyses.

Unlike traditional impact analysis, that measures the influence of a sector, or a set of like sectors, on the overall economy, we present in this note a simple reverse procedure that attempts to quantify the impact of activity changes in the overall regional economy over a specific subset of firms. We apply the procedure to a specific enclave of the chemical and basic industry sectors, which has been and still is of special significance for the development of the region. Because we feel that interdependency effects should be adequately captured, we rely on a 1995 regional social accounting matrix (SAM) of Andalusia, Spain, to establish the empirical structural support for the analysis. We proceed by setting up a linear SAM model to obtain extended multipliers, then we decompose them in three categories of effects (direct, indirect, and induced) under different hypotheses about the classification of endogenous and exogenous sectors. The decomposed multipliers are then apportioned to measure and distinguish the effects on the economic enclave. The results are seen to be quite robust to the exogeneity assumptions.

El objetivo de este trabajo es doble. En primer lugar presentamos una matriz de contabilidad social de le economía andaluza para el año 1995, siguiendo la tendencia que se ha seguido en los últimos años de regionalizar este tipo de base de datos. Utilizando los datos disponibles de Contabilidad Regional, otras fuentes estadísticas a nivel nacional y la Tabla Input-Output de Andalucía para el año 1995, se reordenan y presentan en formato tabular los flujos entre los distintos agentes de la economía. En segundo lugar, y usando la base de datos compilada, realizamos una descomposición de los multiplicadores contables en sus tres efectos ("directos, indirectos e inducidos"), lo que nos permite analizar las relaciones más importantes entre los diferentes sectores productivos de la economía andaluza y comprobar las versatilidad de la metodología de análisis lineal en el tratamiento de este tipo de base de datos.

The goal of this paper is to use a regional social accounting matrix (SAM) to empirically study the price burden of indirect taxes in the regional economy of Andalusia, Spain, a developing region located in the south of the Iberian peninsula. The methodology we use is that of the well-known input-output subset of a SAM model. Adopting this approach we are able to capture the existent structural interdependence among productive sectors and we are able to evaluate the implicit weights and price elasticities of the different indirect taxes, as well as indicators of consumer’s welfare variations. The database used in the analysis is the SAMAND95 (Social Accounting Matrix of Andalusia, Spain, for 1995) developed by the authors. The main result of the paper is that taxes on labour use by firms carry the largest price burden of all indirect taxes, hence exerting a constraining role on the regions’ competitiveness.

L'empresa d'obres i reformes Ortbot SL ha sol·licitat una aplicació via web per poder portar el control de la gestió de la seva empresa. Aquesta aplicació ha d'ésser fàcil d'utilitzar, ha de tenir un disseny atractiu i que compleixi els requisits bàsics per al bon funcionament de l'empresa, així com poder cobrir les seves noves necessitats. La empresa de obras y reformas Ortbot SL ha solicitado una aplicación vía web para poder llevar el control de la gestión de su empresa. Esta aplicación debe ser fácil de utilizar, debe tener un diseño atractivo y que cumpla los requisitos básicos para el buen funcionamiento de la empresa, así como poder cubrir sus nuevas necesidades.

The message of this note is that in a general equilibrium setting the compensating variation is numéraire dependent. In contrast, the equivalent variation is neutral regarding the choice of value units. We illustrate with a simple example and propose an even simpler solution to overcome this bias in the compensating variation; all that is required to have a correct welfare estimate is to compensate the compensating variation by normalization with a price index. This type of correction is necessary to overcome the often blind implementation of welfare measures in numerical general equilibrium