Deprivation index for small areas in Spain

The term deprivation is often used to refer to economic or social shortages in a given geographical area. This concept of deprivation has been identified for years using simple indicators such as income level, education and social class. One of the advantages of using simple indicators is the availability of data, since they come directly from sources of information like censuses and population registers. However, the main disadvantage of these indicators is their limited usefulness when measuring a concept as complex as deprivation with a single variable. One possible solution to this problem is using compound indices, made up of a combination of simple indicators. For years, the concept of material deprivation in Spain has been measured using indices or indicators imported from other countries. However, there are no studies that investigate if all of these variables are really related to material deprivation in Spain. In this context, the objective of this study is to create a synthetic index for material deprivation for the municipalities in Spain, bearing in mind the variables available from the Population and Housing Census. The index was built on a principal components factor analysis. The analysis showed two factors. The first factor showed a high positive correlation to the variables relating to illiteracy rate, unemployment rate and percentage of manual labourers, while the second factor was seen as highly positively correlated to the variables relating to the percentage of homes without access to a vehicle and the dependency index and also correlated, though negatively, to the percentage of foreigners between 16 and 49 who lived abroad in 1991. The variables that make up the first factor can be considered to be an approximation of the concept of deprivation in Spain. This study proposes a deprivation index made up of three simple indicators available from national information sources: percentage of illiteracy, percentage of unemployment and percentage of manual labourers. With this index, the criteria for measuring deprivation in Spanish municipalities can be unified and a comparison of the results of the different studies in our context facilitated.     

When gender bumps into health and safety training: working conditions, readings and challenges drawn from a case study in an industrial chemicals company

Health, safety and environmental issues are at present a social concern and an increasingly referred topic in the so called gender studies. This paper focuses on the relations between training, gender and risk perception in an industrial chemicals company, in Portugal, characterized by a mainly male population and by the presence of high occupational and environmental hazards. After characterizing the company and the training project that started up this reflection, the paper presents the reasons for its focus on gender followed by the essential methodological explanations: 14 interviews were made with male and female workers from the company; their content was transcribed from the audio recordings and it was systematically analyzed. A gender-attentive socio demographic analysis was also undertaken. Although at the beginning the company did not consider the gender issues as a problem nor was it the central topic of the training, which focused on the prevention of occupational and environmental hazards, the results reveal that the gender factor brought to light some working conditions, which so far have not been properly discussed within the group meetings. As a consequence, there is now room for the transformation of the representations on those working conditions.     

Construction and application of an indicator system to assess the ergonomic performance of large and medium-sized construction companies

This article proposes a system of indicators to evaluate the performance of companies in ergonomics for buildings. The system was developed based primarily on studies related to the performance evaluation of the construction industry and on Brazilian standards of ergonomics and work safety and had also the contribution of national and international indicators related to ergonomics, work safety, quality, sustainability, quality of work life and to organizational behavior. The indicators were named, classified and their components were assigned to compose the theoretical model SIDECE--System of Performance Indicators in Ergonomics for Building Construction (as for the Portuguese acronym), serving the major goals of ergonomics: health, safety and workers' satisfaction and production efficiency. The SIDECE is being validated along with the building construction companies in the city of Natal, Brazil, whose practical results, deriving from the application of instruments to collect field data, are under process, to be presented on the occasion of the 18th World Congress on Ergonomics. It is intended that the SIDECE be used by building construction companies as a support tool for excellence management.     

Reflections Toward an Enactive Psychoanalysis

The present work examines the meaning of embodied mind—a key notion in the thinking of biologist and epistemologist Francisco Varela—as an answer for the paradoxes and blind spots originated by the representationist approaches that underlie theories of the mind of most psychological and philosophical schools, including Freudian psychoanalysis. The understanding of this notion implies a radical review of our beliefs regarding the substantial reality of the self, the world, and the relationship between them. For this reason Varela suggests that only a nondiscursive nonanalytic praxis can allow the subject to carry on the observation, inquiry, and acceptance of the experience of himself or herself, the other, and the world as empty and groundless.. Two preliminary reflections are discussed in the paper: (a) the possibility of developing an enactive psychoanalysis, that is, a psychoanalysis that understands the experience of the constitutive frailty of the self as a potentially liberating one rather than as a flaw in the structuring of personality and its defense mechanisms, and (b) how to introduce the method of Mindfulness in the psychotherapeutic setting without interfering with the psychoanalytic listening or the patient and analyst’s relational work.     

FINANCIAL MARKETS' SHUTDOWN AND REACCESS

We employ a discrete‐time parametric duration model on a group of 121 countries over the period 1970–2011 and find that the probability of the end of financial markets' shutdown and reaccess falls as these events become longer. We also show that: (1) shutdown episodes are longer when economic prospects are poor and the degree of financial openness falls, the chief executive has been in office for long periods, and the country has a default history and (2) spells of reaccess tend to be longer when economic growth improves and financial openness increases, there are neither government crises nor government instability, and the country did not default in the past. (JEL C41, G15)     

PRICES,INFLATION, AND SMOKING ONSET: THE CASE OF ARGENTINA

This article examines the effect of tobacco prices on the decision to start smoking in Argentina. Argentina is an interesting case to explore given its high smoking rates, its recent experience with periods of very high and hyperinflation, and the mixed evidence of the effect of prices on smoking onset, particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries. We used data from four cycles of two large national surveys conducted between 2005 and 2011 and discrete‐time hazard models. We found that tobacco prices had a statistically significant and fairly large impact on the hazard of smoking onset, and these findings were robust to alternative specifications. We also found that prices had little effect on the hazards of smoking onset during periods of hyper‐ and very high inflation, which provide some support for the notion that prices lose their informational role in such periods. Governments need to be cognizant that their most important policy tool to reduce tobacco use—taxes that increase real tobacco prices—is likely no longer effective during these times. (JEL C41, H20, I12, I18)     

Trade Dynamics in the Market for Federal Funds

We develop a model of the market for federal funds that explicitly accounts for its two distinctive features: banks have to search for a suitable counterparty, and once they meet, both parties negotiate the size of the loan and the repayment. The theory is used to answer a number of positive and normative questions: What are the determinants of the fed funds rate? How does the market reallocate funds? Is the market able to achieve an efficient reallocation of funds? We also use the model for theoretical and quantitative analyses of policy issues facing modern central banks.