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Through their loans, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are key resource mobilizers. MDB lending to a sector in a country significantly increases inflows from other sources up to two years later. The resources mobilized are more than four times the size of MDB financing. They come from both the public and the private sector, and the mobilization that takes place is cross-border as well as national.

Fiscal policy and net capital inflows in developing countries are procyclical. A large amount of literature has examined this phenomenon and explored its consequences for aggregate fluctuations. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are an important source of external finance for governments and play a key role in financing the execution of fiscal policy. Hence, understanding the behavior of MDB flows is key to gauge their contribution to macroeconomic volatility. This paper investigates the co-movement of sovereign lending from MDBs and private creditors with government expenditure, and finds that multilateral sovereign lending follows government expenditure, and that this correlation does not change if the government is running a surplus or a deficit. This finding raises doubts on the feasibility of MDBs to be counter-cyclical, unless the governments themselves implement counter-cyclical fiscal policies.

Using a large panel of official bilateral loan data for 111 borrowing countries and 78 lending countries between 1980 and 2020, this paper shows that international government borrowing from bilateral sources is acyclical with respect to the economic cycle of the borrower, but procyclical with respect to the cycle of the lending country. This holds in the case of loans both from advanced economies and from China, currently the largest supplier of official bilateral lending to the average developing country. We find this form of procyclicality most often among middle-income recipient countries across most regions of the world. We also find that bilateral loans follow economic links captured through bilateral trade, and political ties measured by the alignment of votes in the United Nations. The results are consistent across a battery of robustness tests.

This study shows that the trend of declining gender gaps in labor market indicators in Latin America in previous decades did not change significantly in most countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a closer look at the dynamics during the 2019-2021 period shows that (i) women were harder hit in terms of employment losses during the 2020 economic shock; (ii) despite the labor market recovery, women in 2021 often remained less likely to work than they did in 2019; nevertheless, (iii) in a subset of countries the gender gap in employment rates widened. However, relative to the value of their 2019 wages, the accumulated income losses were considerably greater for women than for men in most cases. This can create scarring effects for the future through greater vulnerability, lower incomes, and reduced probabilities of job insertion. The groups of women hit hardest by the shock were those with less than a tertiary education, those in the 14-24 year-old age group, those living in urban areas, and those working in the tertiary sector.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are key players in the International Financial Architecture and an important source of external finance for governments. Beyond their impact to foster development in recipient countries, understanding the behavior of MDB flows is important to assess their contribution to macroeconomic stability. This paper studies the co-movement of sovereign lending from MDBs with private sovereign lending and their dynamics during fiscal crises. The paper finds that unlike private lending, multilateral sovereign lending does not retrench in most fiscal crises. It also finds synchronization between multilateral development banks and the International Monetary Fund during fiscal crises, particularly in some regions. Event analyses show that this synchronization persists after several periods. Taken together, our results strongly support the notion that MDBs play an important role in crisis mitigation and suggest that this role neither erodes the discipline between International Financial Institutions within the International Financial Architecture, nor it creates incentives towards fiscal mismanagement in recipient countries.

Policy-based lending is an important element within the toolbox of multilateral development banks to assist countries that need budget support and/or that are embarked on institutional changes or reforms. This Technical Note reviews different aspects of policy-based loans (PBLs) to gain a fresh perspective on their structural and financial features. It examines policy-based loans through the lens of their dual goals of providing beneficiary countries with flexible, liquid, and timely funding to meet their financing needs and of supporting policy reforms or institutional changes in a sector or subsector. The discussion identifies general trends in policy-based lending in Latin America and the Caribbean, explores the sectoral allocation of the policy-based loans of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and examines how policy-based loans are combined with other instruments as they provide liquidity and support reforms. It also explores how the IDB compares to other multilateral development banks in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of policy-based lending.

This study assesses whether the deployment of Technical Cooperation operations (TCs) of the Inter-American Development Bank is related to business development and which alert indicators predict problems in TC execution. The study finds that TC approvals are associated with increases in the IDB lending portfolio in country/sectors. The associations last up to 3 years from the time of the approval. In addition, to improve monitoring of TCs in execution, attention must be given to alert indicators, such as the indicator activated when more than six months have passed since disbursement eligibility and no disbursements have taken place. The alert indicators considered also have predictive power on the unsatisfactory delivery of planned outputs.

We explore how Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) can help to fill a large infrastructure financing gap in developing countries by indirectly mobilizing resources from other entities. The analysis focuses on more than 6,500 transactions in 2005-2020 to developing and emerging markets from the Infrastructure Journal database. Using granular data, we analyze the dynamics of flows from different actors to infrastructure at the country-subsector level, and control for a wide range of fixed effects. MDB lending significantly increases the inflows from other sources. Cross-border and domestic resources are mobilized from both the public and the private sectors. Effects exhibit country heterogeneity. Mobilization occurs in countries of all income levels, though it is stronger in low and lower-middle income countries. In countries that use capital controls frequently mobilization effects are undermined. When the global financial crisis of 2008 hit, no difference in mobilization effects was found, unlike the COVID-19 pandemic when mobilization effects were weakened. The findings survive a long battery of robustness checks, and no evidence of anticipation effects is found.

The objectives of this analysis are twofold: (i) First, it aims to enhance our understanding of the role design and execution characteristics of IDB financed projects play in project success and effectiveness in delivering results. (ii) Second, it empirically explores which project characteristics are more likely to explain partial financial cancellations, which plays a key role on the delivery of results. Based on the knowledge gained, we identify specific measures that can be taken to enhance the likelihood of project success.

This study explores the evolution of inequality in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic using primary data available from household and employment surveys collected in 2020. Inequality increased on average by 2 percent between 2019 and 2020, twice the average annual growth in the inequality indicator that marked the decade of growing inequality in the 1990s. We obtained heterogeneous results when disaggregating by gender, urban/rural location, and sector of economic activity. Surprisingly, we found that the differences in income by education level declined in most cases. Remittances had a modest effect, while government transfers played a central role in preventing greater disparities in half the countries studied. Our estimations show that the decline in employment levels due to the economic contraction caused by COVID-19 is associated with increases in income inequality that we project will gradually diminish with the recovery. However, the lost schooling and losses in education attainment due to the pandemic may generate future pressures on inequality once school-age youth enter the labor market.

Empowering women and enhancing children’s early development are two important goals that are often pursued via independent policy initiatives in developing countries. In this paper we study a unique approach that pursues both goals at the same time: empowering mothers through tools that also advance their children’s development. A program operated by AVSI, an Italian NGO, in a poor neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador, targets parents of children from birth to age 5. It provides family advisor-guided parent training sessions once every two weeks for groups of six to eight mothers and their children. We find that the program empowered women in various dimensions, including higher labor force participation and employment, higher likelihood of a full-time job in the formal-sector and higher wages. Treated mothers are also more likely to continue their education, make independent decisions regarding their own finances, have greater role in intra-household decisions, especially on issues involving children’s education and discipline and increase parental inputs into their children’s development. We find that treated children improve their cognitive and non-cognitive skills, for example, they are less likely to repeat a grade or temporarily drop-out from schooling, are less absent from and have improved behaviors in school, have better attitudes towards learning, and achieve higher scores on cognitive tests. Applying a recently suggested factor model of children's relative non-cognitive skills reaffirms our finding of significant gains in children non-cognitive skills. All results hold when we estimate aggregate treatment impacts, use summary indices instead of individual outcomes in order to account for multiple inference, when we use entropy balancing to adjust for differences in pre-treatment covariates, and when we use other robustness checks.

This study uses loan-level data on syndicated lending to a large sample of developing countries between 1993 and 2017 to estimate the mobilization effects of multilateral development banks (MDBs), that is, their ability to crowd-in capital from private creditors. Controlling for a large set of fixed effects, the paper shows evidence of positive and significant mobilization effects of multilateral lending on the size of bank inflows. The number of lenders and the average maturity of syndicated loans also increase. These effects are present not only on impact but last for up to three years and are not offset by a decline in bond financing. There is no evidence of anticipation effects, and the results are robust to numerous tests controlling for the role of confounding factors and unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, the results are economically sizable, indicating that MDBs can mobilize about seven dollars in bank credit over a three-year period for each dollar invested.

Using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) between 2000 and 2014, this paper investigates the effect of labor contract modalities on firm productivity within the industrial sector through a structural model. We find that the elasticity of revenue with respect to temporary workers is often lower than that with respect to permanent workers, but not in small firms, where some forms of flexibility might lead to productivity gains.

The timely disbursement of funds is a necessary condition for the success of international development projects. Disbursements track the progress of projects in completing the products that ultimately will deliver the projects desired outcomes. Moreover, in a world with pressing needs for external financing, project disbursements are an important source of external liquidity for recipient countries. However, some projects start disbursing faster than others and at relatively larger amounts. Hence learning why some projects disburse faster than others is important to understand not only which projects are more likely to achieve development outcomes sooner, but also to assess their value as providers of external liquidity in times of distress. As it has become evident over the past year with the COVID-19 pandemic, multilateral lending has played a crucial role in helping emerging countries face the larger financing needs originated by the crisis. In 2020, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) disbursements increased 49% over 2019, reaching $13.4 billion, more than doubling the baseline disbursement projection. This paper assesses which observable characteristics of investment loans offered by the IDB are associated with faster disbursements. The results indicate substantial heterogeneity across countries, sectors, and loan modalities. All else constant, results-based loans and loans in the social sector are more likely to disburse within 2 years after being approved. Projects in countries where it takes longer to meet at least some of the clauses to start disbursing are less likely to start disbursing 2 years after approval. Projects that are expected to have longer execution times disburse at slower speeds within 24 months after approval. Overall, country factors seem to play a more relevant role than sectorial factors in explaining the probability that a project will disburse funds quickly. These and other findings in the paper can inform future programming exercises and help optimize the disbursement processes.

By analyzing a novel dataset on publications by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), we shed light on the extent to which the knowledge production of a multilateral development bank can reach its beneficiaries. We find that IDB publications are downloaded mostly in the American continent, with Colombia, Peru, Mexico and the United States leading the ranking. Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic downloads of IDB publications increased, both in the world and in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some characteristics of publications are significantly associated with higher numbers of downloads, such as the language of publications: documents in at least two languages or in Spanish only are downloaded more often than documents in English only, suggesting that it is important to disseminate research in the language of the targeted audience. As for the online discussion on the IDB, we find that mentions of the IDB touch different sectors important for development (especially modernization of the state, health, labor markets and financial markets), they increase when a document is published, and also when a loan is approved.

Este documento analiza la dinámica del mercado laboral en América Latina durante la pandemia del COVID-19. Después de una década en un círculo virtuoso de crecimiento con creación de empleos formales, la pandemia tuvo un impacto sin precedentes en el mercado laboral de la región, generando un crecimiento inusitado en la proporción de población en situación de inactividad, con reducciones considerables en la informalidad, y en cambio, fluctuaciones menores en los empleos formales. En este contexto el sector formal, dada su menor flexibilidad, se convirtió en una “red de protección social” que preservó la estabilidad del empleo y de los salarios. Las estimaciones indican que a partir de 2021 la informalidad crecerá a niveles superiores a los de la era pre-COVID (con 7.56 millones de empleos informales adicionales), como resultado del regreso de la población al mercado laboral para compensar la caída en los ingresos. De acuerdo con las simulaciones presentadas, posponer o condonar pagos de impuesto sobre la renta y contribuciones a la seguridad social condicionados a la generación de empleos formales podría reducir el crecimiento de la informalidad entre 50% y 75%; y lograr mejoras educativas tiene potencial para aminorarlo del 50%.

Modern production systems have become highly complex, given technological progress and competitive market needs. However, the role of human operators keeps being fundamental since they are in charge of supervising machines and take proper action in the presence of alarms and faults. As a consequence, the design of effective and easy to use human-machine interfaces (HMIs) is a key component of overall production efficiency. In this paper we provide an extensive overview of different methods to assess the usability of HMIs for industrial operators. In particular, the methods covered by the survey range from subjective assessment to objective quantitative analysis that takes into account user’s mental fatigue, user’s interaction strategies and production efficiency.

Theory suggests both resilience and fragility in banking networks. This paper finds both, exploiting a new database of cross-border syndicated lending to developing countries from 1993 to 2017. Shocks propagate via co-lenders driven by central players, but shocks impacting fringe banks have little impact. The global financial crisis and the appearance of South-South lenders prompted a decline in network centrality, suggesting greater resilience to normal shocks. Multilateral Development Banks may play a catalytic role, but their small size limits their ability to mitigate shock propagation. The ongoing Covid-19 crisis is not a normal shock, is hitting central players and will likely provoke significant contagion.

Campylobacteriosis has been the most frequently reported zoonotic disease in humans in Europe. The scientific literature has reported that the role of dogs may be relevant. The objectives of this work are to improve the knowledge about Campylobacter spp. carriage, infection and antimicrobial resistance in household and shelter dogs in Italy, and to assess risk factors at the dog/human interface. During the 2015‑2016 period, rectal swabs were collected from 431 household vet‑visiting dogs and 173 dogs housed in shelters. A total of 3 veterinary clinics, located in three Italian regions (Abruzzo, Molise and Tuscany) and 10 shelters, five in Abruzzo and five in Molise, were included in the study. Relevant risk factors for the transmission of Campylobacter spp. from dogs to humans were assessed by means of a questionnaire administered to owners of household dogs. For Campylobacter spp. isolation, selective cultivation methods were used, followed by confirmation and species identification with the PCR method. Phenotypic antibiotic resistance profiles assayed using antimicrobial susceptibility testing were combined. Campylobacter spp. were isolated from 9 household dogs (2.1% CI 1.1% ‑ 3.9%) and from 13 shelter dogs (7.5 % CI 4.5% ‑ 12.4%). In household dogs C. jejuni was the most represented species (0.9%). In shelter dogs, the most common species was C. jejuni (5.2%). Campylobacter spp. isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin (22.73%), nalidixic acid (22.73%), tetracyclines (27.27%), streptomycin (9.09%) and erythromycin (4.55%). The main C. jejuni Clonal Complex identified in dogs were CC21, CC45, CC206, CC403, CC42 and CC658. The risk of contracting Campylobacteriosis from dogs remains a concrete reality. This risk is increased in the presence of common habits, as shown by the data from the questionnaire. Prevalence control of Campylobacter spp. in household and shelter dogs would be important in order to reduce the transmission to humans.

Hydrothermal depolymerization of lignin-rich streams (LRS) from lignocellulosic ethanol was successfully carried out in a lab-scale batch reactors unit. A partial depolymerization into oligomers and monomers was achieved using subcritical water as reaction medium. The influence of temperature (300−350−370 °C) and time (5−10 minutes) was investigated to identify the optimal condition on the monomers yields in the lighter biocrude (BC1) and aqueous phase (AP) fractions, focusing on specific phenolic classes as well as carboxylic acids and alcohols. The effect of base catalyzed reactions (2−4 wt. % of KOH) was compared to the control tests as well as to acid-catalyzed reactions obtained with a biphasic medium of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) and subcritical water. KOH addition resulted in enhanced overall depolymerization without showing a strong influence on the phenolic generation, whereas sCO2 demonstrated higher phenolic selectivity even though no effect was observed on the overall products mass yields. In conclusion, a comparison between two different biocrude collection procedures was carried out in order to understand how the selected chemical extraction mode influences the distribution of compounds between BC1 and AP.

This study uses loan-level data on syndicated lending to a large sample of developing countries between 1993 and 2017 to estimate the mobilization effects of multilateral development banks (MDBs), that is, their ability to crowd-in capital from private creditors. Controlling for a large set of fixed effects, the paper shows evidence of positive and significant mobilization effects of multilateral lending on the size of bank inflows. The number of lenders and the average maturity of syndicated loans also increase. These effects are present not only on impact but last for up to three years and are not offset by a decline in bond financing. There is no evidence of anticipation effects, and the results are robust to numerous tests controlling for the role of confounding factors and unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, the results are economically sizable, indicating that MDBs can mobilize about seven dollars in bank credit over a three-year period for each dollar invested.

This paper investigates the co-movement of sovereign lending from multilateral development banks (MDBs) and private creditors with government expenditure. The paper finds that multilateral sovereign lending follows government expenditure and that this correlation does not change if governments are running a surplus or a deficit. This finding raises doubts on the feasibility of MDBs to be counter-cyclical, unless the governments themselves implement counter-cyclical fiscal policies.

This document offers estimates of the possible changes in the social structure of the countries of Latin America derived from the consequent economic contraction from the Covid-19 pandemic and explores the possible costs and benefits of different types of interventions to cushion its impact. The analysis forecasts that the number of people living in poverty (extreme and moderate) would increase by up to 44 thousand million people in the region. It also finds that the policy with the highest benefit-cost ratio is the postponement of payroll taxes and social security contributions. Other alternatives such as granting support to unemployed persons, temporarily doubling the benefits of existing social programs, and the transfer of income to self-employed workers also generate a favorable benefit-cost ratio, with differences among countries.

The aim of the present work is to investigate the possibility of producing activated carbons from the residual lignin stream of lignocellulosic ethanol biorefineries, as this represents an optimal opportunity to exploit a residual and renewable material in the perspective of sustainable bioeconomy, increasing biorefinery incomes by producing value-added bioproducts in conjunction with biofuels. Activated carbons (ACs) were produced via chemical (KOH) and physical (CO2) activation. Char samples were obtained by slow pyrolysis (SP) and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC). Several HTC experiments were carried out by varying residence time (0.5–3 h) and reaction temperature (200–270 °C), in order to evaluate their influence on the product yield and on the morphological characteristics of the hydrochar (specific surface area, total pore volume and pore size distribution). ACs from hydrochars were compared with those obtained from pyrochar (via physical activation) and from the raw lignin-rich stream (via chemical activation). In both cases, by increasing the HTC temperature, the specific surface of the resulting activated carbons decreased from 630 to 77 m2 g−1 for physical activation and from 675 to 81 m2 g−1 for chemical activation, indicating that an increase in the severity of the hydrothermal pretreatment is deleterious for the activated carbons quality. In addition, the HTC aqueous samples were analyzed, with GC-MS and GC-FID. The results suggest that at low temperatures the reaction mechanisms are dominated by hydrolysis, instead when the temperature is increased to 270 °C, a more complex network of reactions takes place among which decarboxylation.

Enterococci are opportunistic bacteria that cause severe infections in animals and humans, capable to acquire, express, and transfer antimicrobial resistance. Susceptibility to 21 antimicrobial agents was tested by the disk diffusion method in 222 Enterococcus spp. strains isolated from the fecal samples of 287 healthy domestic dogs. Vancomycin and ampicillin minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) and high-level aminoglycoside resistance (HLAR) tests were also performed. Isolates showed resistance mainly to streptomycin (88.7%), neomycin (80.6%), and tetracycline (69.4%). Forty-two (18.9%) isolates showed an HLAR to streptomycin and 15 (6.7%) to gentamicin. Vancomycin and ampicillin MIC values showed 1 and 18 resistant strains, respectively. One hundred and thirty-six (61.2%) strains were classified as multidrug resistant and six (2.7%) strains as possibly extensively drug-resistant bacteria. Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis were the most prevalent antimicrobial resistant species. Companion animals, which often live in close contact with their owners and share the same environment, represent a serious source of enterococci resistant to several antibiotics; for this reason, they may be a hazard for public health by providing a conduit for the entrance of resistance genes into the community.

This paper sheds light on how labor market regulations affect the relationship between different types of innovation and employment in Latin America. We estimate the effect of process and product innovation on employment growth using Enterprise Surveys for 14 Latin American countries. We calculate the model for the whole sample and then classify countries according to the rigidness of their labor market regulations. We find that: (i) product innovations have a positive impact on employment growth; (ii) process innovations do not affect employment growth; and (iii) more rigid labor market regulations (minimum wages and severance payments) reduce the effects of innovation.

The development of numerical control technology, the increasing efficiency of production processes and the high automation level have allowed a great improvement of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines. Although CNC machines allow short working times and the precise repeatability of the processing, they suffer from some major disadvantages: they need to be controlled and managed by an expert operator who has to interact with the user interface to complete her/his tasks and set-up the machine. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there are no thorough studies on how human operators manage and perceive the interaction with these machines. As a result, the interfaces of most current CNC machines present several limitations. Considering the advantages in adding ergonomics and usability analysis to increase quality, productivity and market competitiveness, the industrial world is moving to develop new interfaces for CNC machines, to improve users’ experience. Starting from our experience with woodworking CNC machines, this paper reports, first, an analysis of the CNC process from the point of view of human-machine interaction; specifically, main issues and criticalities are outlined. Then, major new trends in modern interfaces for CNC machines are presented, highlighting the tendency to integrate user experience in the design of interfaces.

Hydrothermal liquefaction of lignin-rich stream from lignocellulosic ethanol production at an industrial scale was carried out in a custom-made batch test bench. Light and heavy fractions of the HTL biocrude were collected following an ad-hoc developed two-steps solvent extraction method. A full factorial design of experiment was performed, investigating the influence of temperature, time and biomass-to-water mass ratio (B/W) on product yields, biocrude elemental composition, molecular weight and carbon balance. Total biocrude yields ranged from 39.8% to 65.7% w/w. The Temperature was the main influencing parameter as regards the distribution between the light and heavy fractions of the produced biocrude: the highest amount of heavy biocrude was recovered at 300 °C, while at 350 and 370 °C the yield of the light fraction increased, reaching 41.7% w/w at 370 °C. Instead, the B/W ratio did not have a significant effect on light and heavy biocrude yields. Feedstock carbon content was mainly recovered in the biocrude (up to 77.6% w/w). The distribution between the light and heavy fractions followed the same trend as the yields. The typical aromatic structure of the lignin-rich stream was also observed in the biocrudes, indicating that mainly hydrolysis depolymerization occurred. The weight-average molecular weight of the total biocrude was strictly related to the process temperature, decreasing from 1146 at 300 °C to 565 g mol−1 at 370 °C.

Fiscal policy is procyclical in developing countries. An ample literature has explained this fact and explored its consequences for aggregate cyclical fluctuations. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are an important source of finance for governments and therefore play a role in the execution of fiscal policy. In this paper, we assess whether MDB disbursements to the sovereign commove with government expenditure and with private sovereign lending, during different stances of fiscal policy and during fiscal crises. We find that multilateral lending to the sovereign is correlated with government expenditure and this correlation does not change if the government is running a surplus or a deficit. However, when the sovereign is having a fiscal crisis associated with unsustainable fiscal policy, this relationship disappears for Regional Development Banks (RDBs) and the World Bank (WB). Finally, we find evidence of synchronization between MDBs and IMF during fiscal crises.

Finding a proper way to manage the enormous amount of waste plastic that is globally produced, is one of the main environmental challenges of our times. Among the different types of chemical recycling, Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) appears as a potential method for the treatment of plastic waste mixes, for sustainable production of biocrude or chemicals with high added value. In this work hydrothermal liquefaction reactions were carried out on a polymeric residue, obtained from an industrial plastic waste collection and recycling process. The residue has a heterogeneous composition consisting not only of polymers but also paper and metals. Two batch experiments were performed in a stainless-steel Parr autoclave at 340 °C, investigating a residence times of 5 hours and the use of an alkaline catalyst (NaOH). The oils obtained from the reactions, as well as the aqueous phases, have been analysed by different analytical techniques such as: FT-IR spectroscopy, GC-MS, GC-FID, IC. The operating conditions used in this work, allowed the degradation of cellulose and polymers with reactive sites for hydrolysis such as PET, nylon and PVAc, while polyolefins (PE, PP) were not attacked. The use of a basic catalyst favoured a greater hydrolysis rate.

Carbonization of anaerobic digestion digestate from an Italian plant fed with local feedstock was investigated by slow pyrolysis (SP) and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC); the properties of pyrochar and hydrochar were compared and framed into the International guidelines for soil improvers/amendments in agriculture. Experiments were carried out in newly designed thermochemical conversion systems, with the aim of generating the original data necessary for future scale-up and for evaluating the characteristics of the product versus existing biochar market standards. SP was carried out in a paddle pyrolysis reactor at 500 °C for 1 h, while several HTC experiments were performed in a custom-made test bench, investigating the influence of temperature (200–250 °C) and time (0.5–3 h) on hydrochar properties. Both processes were run in batch mode. SP showed lower char yield (33.1%w/w db), while the maximum hydrochar yield was obtained at 200°C-0.5 h (72.6%w/w db). Most char properties fall within the thresholds set by biochar standards. The Carbon content was slightly higher for pyrochar (64.3%w/w db) than hydrochar (62.9%w/w db at 250°C-3 h). The specific area was rather low for both chars; however, pyrochar area (23.10 m2 g−1), was one order of magnitude higher than hydrochar. The ash content of pyrochar was nearly twice the hydrochar, while O/C and H/C ratio of the former were lower. The HTC aqueous phase was also characterized in terms of inorganics concentration and organic composition. In average, the concentration of the former increased with reaction severity: more than 50 compounds were identified and 20 quantified. Acetic acid was the most abundant (up to 3.26 g l−1).

How harshly should society punish young lawbreakers in order to prevent or reduce their criminal activity in the future? Through a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we shed light on the question by exploiting two quasi-natural experiments stemming to compare outcomes from relatively harsh or rehabilitative criminal incarceration practices involving young offenders in the 1980’s in England and Wales. According to our local linear regression estimates, young offenders exposed to the harsher youth facilities are 20.7 percent more likely to recidivate in the nine years subsequent to their custody, and they commit on average 2.84 offences more than offenders who experienced prison. Moreover, they are more likely to commit violent offences, thefts, burglaries and robberies. On the contrary, offenders who were sent to the more rehabilitative youth facilities are less likely to reoffend in the future when compared to offenders sent to prison. We conclude that it is effective to keep young offenders separate from their older peers in prison, but only when they are held in institutions that are not solely focused on punishment.