The aim of this study was to identify the effects of early childhood education (ECE) on literacy scores of 2nd grade students in elementary school. To do that, the Provinha Brasil was administered in Sertãozinho-SP, in conjunction with a socioeconomic questionnaire. Despite external validity problems, the evaluation of the effects of ECE in one municipality is advantageous, as we can estimate the effects of one kind of treatment. Other studies ignore this fact. Often, they estimate an average effect of various treatments effects (not just one), as they use data from different municipalities where ECE programs have different levels of quality. The OLS and Propensity Score Matching results show that students who started school at the ages of 5, 4, and 3 years had literacy scores between 12.22 and 19.54 points higher than those who began school at the age of 6 years or later. Keywords ResumoO objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar os efeitos da Educação Infantil (EI) sobre os escores de alfabetização dos alunos da 2º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Para isso, a Provinha Brasil foi aplicada em Sertãozinho-SP, juntamente com um questionário socioeconômico. Apesar dos problemas de validade externa, a avaliação dos efeitos da EI em um único município é vantajosa, já que se podem estimar os efeitos de um determinado tratamento. Vários estudos ignoram esse fato. Muitas vezes é estimado um efeito médio de vários efeitos de tratamento e não apenas um, já que usam dados de diferentes municípios onde a EI tem diferentes níveis de qualidade. Os resultados por OLS e Propensity Score Matching mostram que alunos que ingressaram com 5, 4, e 3 anos de idade, obtiveram escores de alfabetização cerca de 6% maiores do que os obtidos pelos que ingressaram na escola com 6 anos ou mais.

The goal of the CLARIS project was to build an integrated EuropeanSouth American network dedicated to promote common research strategies to observe and predict climate changes and their consequent socio-economic impacts taking into account the climate and societal peculiarities of South America. Reaching that goal placed the present network as a privileged advisor to contribute to the 308 Climatic Change (2010) 98:307-329 design of adaptation strategies in a region strongly affected by and dependent on climate variability (e.g. agriculture, health, hydro-electricity). Building the CLARIS network required fulfilling the following three objectives: (1) The first objective of CLARIS was to set up and favour the technical transfer and expertise in earth system and regional climate modelling between Europe and South America together with the providing of a list of climate data (observed and simulated) required for model validations;(2) The second objective of CLARIS was to facilitate the exchange of observed and simulated climate data between the climate research groups and to create a South American high-quality climate database for studies in extreme events and long-term climate trends; (3) Finally, the third objective of CLARIS was to strengthen the communication between climate researchers and stakeholders, and to demonstrate the feasibility of using climate information in the decision-making process.

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Most countries lack effective policies to manage climate risks, despite growing concerns with climate change. The authors analyzed the policy evolution from a disaster management to a risk management approach, using as a case study four agricultural droughts that impacted Uruguay’s livestock sector in the last three decades. A transdisciplinary team of researchers, extension workers, and policy makers agreed on a common conceptual framework for the interpretation of past droughts and policies. The evidence presented shows that the set of actions implemented at different levels when facing droughts were mainly reactive in the past but later evolved to a more integral risk management approach. A greater interinstitutional integration and a decreasing gap between science and policy were identified during the period of study. Social and political learning enabled a vision of proactive management and promoted effective adaptive measures. While the government of Uruguay explicitly incorporated the issue of adaptation to climate change into its agenda, research institutions also fostered the creation of interdisciplinary study groups on this topic, resulting in new stages of learning. The recent changes in public policies, institutional governance, and academic research have contributed to enhance the adaptive capacity of the agricultural sector to climate variability, and in particular to drought. This study confirms the relevance of and need to work within a transdisciplinary framework to effectively address the different social learning dimensions, particularly those concerning the adaptation to global change.

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ResumoO objetivo deste trabalho é verificar se as famílias consideram o diferencial de produtividade educacional entre os setores privado e público (em termos de proficiências) ao decidirem sobre a escola de seus filhos. As funções de produção educacionais estimadas pelo modelo de Heckman revelam um diferencial de produtividade em favor do setor privado. Um aumento nos diferenciais de proficiências em matemática e leitura aumenta a probabilidade de as famílias escolherem o setor privado. Além disso, quanto maior a diferença de nível socioeconômico e do percentual de brancos entre os setores privado e público locais factíveis, maior é a probabilidade de a família optar pelo primeiro.Palavras-chave: Escolha do Setor Educacional; Diferencial de Produtividade Inter-setorial em Educação; Modelo de Heckman; Probit. AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to verify whether families take into account the educational productivity differentials between the private and public sectors (in terms of proficiency) when deciding on their children's schools. The production functions for each sector using Heckman Model revealed a productivity differential in favor of the private sector. An increase on the performance differential in Mathematics and Reading increases the odds of families choosing the private sector. Also, the higher the proportion of white students and the greater the difference in socioeconomic status of students in the private sector compared to public sector, the more likely a family will choose the private sector.

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