Work Trajectories of Female and Male Immigrants in Spain

This article aims to examine in depth the work trajectories of individuals over time, in order to provide a wider perspective of the employment history of immigrants compared to native people, by gender and for more than one decade (2005–2017) in Spain. We use microdata (cohort and multivariate analysis) from the Labour Force Survey and carry out a comparison for three groups: the Spanish born in Spain, the Spanish born abroad, and the non-Spanish born abroad. The results confirm that the non-Spanish born-abroad group is characterized by the existence of segmented assimilation. All foreigners suffered a loss in their work trajectories, since their employment rate in 2017 has as yet neither reached the level of the last years of the previous economic expansion nor the level of the previous cohorts at the same age.     

Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics: making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art

ABSTRACT

On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.     

A visual planning solution to streamline the processes of hybrid cross-dockings

Cross-docking is a logistic strategy widely adopted both in manufacturing and distribution contexts. Despite the huge number of researches on this topic, most of them remain rather theoretical as they do not pay enough attention to operational aspects and daily functioning patterns of cross-dockings. This article aims at introducing a new focus for cross-docking research by proposing a visual planning solution to manage daily operation of a manufacturing cross-docking. By avoiding complex optimization algorithms and by adopting concepts belonging to the lean management theory, the article shows the potential of visual planning techniques to improve performance of cross-dockings. Starting from a specific industrial context, the shipping warehouse of an Italian company of the oil andand gas sector, a visual management methodology has been proposed to support the operation of cross-dockings. Although developed in a particular context, the proposed methodology and its underlying principles are to be considered general and potentially applicable to a wide range of cross-dockings. The methodology fully exploits an analytical tool, namely, the Safety Margin coefficientthat could be used for capacity planning purposes and to evaluate quantitatively the system performance at a given time instant.     

The role of woodpeckers (family: Picidae) as ecosystem engineers in urban parks: a case study in the city of Madrid (Spain)

Urban Ecosystems - Many species of the family Picidae, such as the woodpeckers, excavate the tree-cavities where they nest. Frequently the cavities are used during a single breeding season and...     

Human Capital,Trade Openness and Growth in Argentina in the 20th Century

We estimate a production function that accounts for the economic performance of the country in the 20th century. We elaborate long term time series whereas most of the recent empirical studies on growth are based on cross section analysis. This approach allows us to follow the various regime changes that can be identified in the rich economic history of Argentina. To evaluate Total Factor Productivity (TFP) we initially test the classical Solow Model. We estimate the speed of convergence of TFP and obtain a non convergence result. This speed of convergence has declined since the 1930s, and we find a phenomenon of divergence in the period 1970–90. We then analyse the impact on production of additional variables recently highlighted in the endogenous growth literature such as the process of catch up of foreign technical progress, human capital and trade openness. Chow tests for this extended production function give us a strong probability of changes in the growth regimes. The estimation, that takes into consideration the break points identified, shows that the impact of trade openness and foreign technology is not stable throughout the century. In what concerns the impact of education on economic growth, we find a strong effect of primary education on growth, and a weaker effect of secondary-university education.     

A Bayesian analysis for the Block and Basu bivariate exponential distribution in the presence of covariates and censored data

In this paper, we introduce a Bayesian Analysis for the Block and Basu bivariate exponential distribution using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods and considering lifetimes in presence of covariates and censored data. Posterior summaries of interest are obtained using the popular WinBUGS software. Numerical illustrations are introduced considering a medical data set related to the recurrence times of infection for kidney patients and a medical data set related to bone marrow transplantation for leukemia.     

Recall searching with and without recall

We revisit the sequential search problem by Hey (J Econ Behav Organ 8:137–144, 1987). In a 2 \(\times \) 2 factorial design, varying fixed and random cost treatments with and without recall, we address open research questions that were originally stated by Hey (1987). Our results provide clear evidence for Hey’s (1987) conjecture that recall negatively affects performance in sequential search. With experience, however, search behavior with and without recall converges toward the optimal reservation rule. We further find that the utilization of optimal reservation rules is independent from the stochastic nature of the search cost.