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a b s t r a c tChildren are prone to the contagion of waterborne diseases without adequate water and sanitation services. When not sick, children and their caregivers without proper access to such services have to allocate their leisure time in order to meet their water and sanitation needs. It is through these health and leisure time use changes that access to water and sanitation services impacts the educational attainment of children. This paper proposes a household utility maximization model in which access and sanitation services determine the child's health, which in turn affects the child's education and the household welfare.Comparative statics indicate that households consider the health gains to the market value of their leisure time, and the changes in the consumption of other goods. The model is applied to data from Brazil. In order to sort out the endogeneity between provision of water and sanitation services, and educational attainment, the paper uses an instrumental approach, based on the technical features of the water systems and an instrument that measures a proxy of water availability within the municipality territory. Estimates suggest that access to water and sanitation services has a positive and significant effect on schooling, when measured by the completed number of school years. These positive effects call for the expansion of the laggard sewerage systems in the country, both at home and at school.

There are many tools and techniques readily available to support the work in requirements activities of software development processes. As a consequence, the high frequency of errors still occurring in requirements activities suggests that the misunderstanding of the relationships among key decisions is the probable reason for this. The present work presents a system dynamics model constructed to make it possible for users to better understand the relations among key decision variables in requirements activities. The model was parameterized with data taken from previous studies and from a software development company so as to run two sets of simulations with three scenarios each. Optimistic, baseline and pessimistic scenarios are created on the basis of different assumptions regarding risk factors related to requirements volatility and people turnover. We used our simulation results to foresee the effects of these risk factors on the quality and cost of work in requirements activities. Up‐to‐date results from the software engineering literature strongly support the simulation outcomes obtained in our research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Resumo: Especificações alternativas do sistema de demanda quase ideal (AIDS) foram utilizadas para estimar as demandas agregadas das carnes bovina, suína e de frango e outros bens de consumo e as suas elasticidades no Brasil. Detectada a necessidade de se utilizar a variável tendência nas equações dos modelos, observou-se uma tendência de crescimento da demanda por carnes e de decrescimento da demanda por outros bens de consumo. A variável dummy para o Plano Real indicou que o mesmo não afetou as demandas. Com base nas elasticidades próprios-preços Marshallianas, as demandas por carnes são inelásticas e a demanda por outros bens de consumo é elástica. As elasticidades preços-cruzados Marshallianas e Hicksianas confirmaram que as carnes bovina, suína e de frango são bens substitutos. As elasticidades-gasto indicaram que todos os bens são normais, exceto a carne suína que é um bem inferior. Como é provável que o gasto com o consumo das famílias aumente ao longo do tempo, ceteris paribus, as elasticidades gasto indicam que a demanda por carnes perderá importância para os outros bens de consumo, que o consumo de carne bovina perderá importância para a carne de frango e que o consumo de carne de porco perderá importância para as outras carnes. Palavras

O presente estudo objetivou estimar as probabilidades de insolvência das cooperativas de crédito do Estado de Minas Gerais, condicionadas aos indicadores contábeis financeiros do sistema Pearls, o qual é recomendado pelo Conselho Mundial do Cooperativismo de Poupança e Crédito. Esse sistema tem como principal objetivo possibilitar o monitoramento do desempenho de cooperativas de crédito singulares, auxiliando os seus administradores a encontrar soluções para deficiências dessas instituições. No presente estudo, classificou-se como insolvente a cooperativa que deixou de enviar balanços para o Banco Central do Brasil, possuía patrimônio líquido negativo ou patrimônio líquido ajustado negativo, ou ainda que se encontrasse classificada nas seguintes situações com o Banco Central do Brasil: paralisada, em liquidação extrajudicial, cancelada/encerrada e em liquidação ordinária. A partir de uma base de dados de 9.456 observações coletadas de uma amostra de 112 cooperativas filiadas ao Sicoob-Crediminas, no período entre janeiro de 1995 e maio de 2008, modelos da classe Logit foram estimados. Os resultados obtidos com o melhor ajuste permitem inferir que os indicadores "operações de crédito vencidas/carteira classificada total", "capital institucional/ ativo total", "ativos não direcionados com a atividade-fim da cooperativa/ativo total" e "rendas de prestação de serviços/despesas administrativas" foram os mais relevantes na determinação da probabilidade de insolvência das cooperativas na amostra. Tais resultados corroboram a hipótese de que o monitoramento de índices contábeis financeiros do sistema Pearls, os quais não têm sido o foco da análise tradicional de balanços, é importante para a determinação da probabilidade de insolvência de cooperativas de crédito, ao auxiliar seus administradores na identificação dos fatores de risco, bem como na criação de um referencial para comparação do desempenho das cooperativas, facilitando o processo de supervisão por parte dos órgãos reguladores. No entanto, a ampliação dos resultados aqui obtidos para períodos posteriores e outras cooperativas de crédito brasileiras deve ser feita com cuidado, de tal modo que especificações alternativas devem ser avaliadas para captar mudanças na conjuntura econômica e na estrutura administrativa das cooperativas, as quais podem influenciar nos indicadores contábeis e financeiros destas.

Traceability of food products and particularly meats is increasingly advocated as a means to provide consumer confidence in credence attributes (e.g., range fed, organic, country of origin) as well as for improved quality control. In the case of food safety, where there are failures in testing and there is not likely to be zero failure rates, traceability may also improve the overall process efficiency and cost effectiveness of recalls. This study relies on case observations to develop a general conceptual model of traceability for food product recall. This conceptual model incorporates quality control in a vertical food supply chain and identifies key factors (e.g. the nature of contamination event and shelf-life of the product) that affect the cost-benefit of traceability in a risk context. Our conceptual model is adapted and parameterized for the context of a simulated recall due to E. coli in ground beef. The results of our simulations indicate that traceability might be valuable in terms of its return in saved recall costs. In addition, the effect of improved quality control measures on the traceability value is simulated and discussed. The simulated results indicate that improved quality controls and traceability seem to be substitutes.Despite this, we argue that traceability might improve information as to the source of quality control failure and therefore might play a complimentary role in achieving quality control improvements.

Theoretical models concerning Credit Unions (CUs) suggest that the type of CU domination determines the way it allocates the monetary value it generates. A borrower-(saver-) dominated CU benefits borrower (saver) members at the expenses of saver (borrower) members, and a neutral CU equally benefits its member groups. This paper applies direct measure of monetary benefits to each member group (Patin & McNiel, 1991a) to test for the existence of dominated behavior in Brazilian CUs, and is the first to apply panel data regressions to identify the determinants of CUs behavior. We use a unique panel data with 40,664 observations taken from 533 CUs affiliated with the largest Brazilian cooperative network. Results indicate Brazilian CUs are dominated by borrowers, but behave close to neutrality. Panel regression estimates show that common or multiple bond type, size and overdue loans of a CU have no effect on its behavior, the greater the total amount of loans over social capital and adjusted equity over total assets are the more likely a CU is borrower dominated, and the greater the age and current operational expenses over total asset of a CU are the more likely a CU is saver dominated.