Abstract
This paper fits in the theory of international agreements by studying the success of stable coalitions of agents seeking the preservation of a public good. Extending Baliga and Maskin, we consider a model of N homogeneous agents with quasi-linear utilities of the form u(j) (r(j); r) = r(alpha) - r(j), where r is the aggregate contribution and the exponent alpha is the elasticity of the gross utility. When the value of the elasticity alpha increases in its natural range (0, 1), we prove the following five main results in the formation of stable coalitions: (i) the gap of cooperation, characterized as the ratio of the welfare of the grand coalition to the welfare of the competitive singleton coalition grows to infinity, which we interpret as a measure of the urge or need to save the public good; (ii) the size of stable coalitions increases from 1 up to N; (iii) the ratio of the welfare of stable coalitions to the welfare of the competitive singleton coalition grows to infinity; (iv) the ratio of the welfare of stable coalitions to the welfare of the grand coalition decreases (a lot), up to when the number of members of the stable coalition is approximately N/e and after that it increases (a lot); and (v) the growth of stable coalitions occurs with a much greater loss of the coalition members when compared with free-riders. Result (v) has two major drawbacks: (a) A priori, it is difficult to convince agents to be members of the stable coalition and (b) together with results (i) and (iv), it explains and leads to the pessimistic Barrett's paradox of cooperation, even in a case not much considered in the literature: The ratio of the welfare of the stable coalitions against the welfare of the grand coalition is small, even in the extreme case where there are few (or a single) free-riders and the gap of cooperation is large. Optimistically, result (iii) shows that stable coalitions do much better than the competitive singleton coalition. Furthermore, result (ii) proves that the paradox of cooperation is resolved for larger values of.. so that the grand coalition is stabilized.

Abstract

Abstract
For uniformly asymptotically affine (uaa) Markov maps on train tracks, we prove the following type of rigidity result: if a topological conjugacy between them is (uaa) at a point in the train track then the conjugacy is (uaa) everywhere. In particular, our methods apply to the case in which the domains of the Markov maps are Canter sets. We also present similar statements for (uaa:) and C-r Markov families. These results generalize the similar ones of Sullivan and de Faria for C-r expanding circle maps with r > 1 and have useful applications to hyperbolic dynamics on surfaces and laminations.

Abstract
We exploit ideas of nonlinear dynamics in a non-deterministic dynamical setting. Our object of study is the observed riverflow time series of the Portuguese Paiva river whose water is used for public supply. The Takens delay embedding of the daily riverflow time series revealed an intermittent dynamical behaviour due to precipitation occurrence. The laminar phase occurs in the absence of rainfall. The nearest neighbour method of prediction revealed good predictability in the laminar regime but we warn that this method is misleading in the presence of rain. The correlation integral curve analysis, Singular Value Decomposition and the Nearest Neighbour Method indicate that the laminar regime of flow is in a small neighbourhood of a one-dimensional affine subspace in the phase space. The Nearest Neighbour method attested also that in the laminar phase and for a data set of 53 years the information of the current runoff is by far the most relevant information to predict future runoff. However the information of the past two runoffs is important to correct non-linear effects of the riverflow as the MSE and MRE criteria results show. The results point out that the Nearest Neighbours method fails when used in the irregular phase because it does not predict precipitation occurrence. © 2007, Birkhäuser Verlag Basel/Switzerland.

Abstract
We consider the. re-scaled PSI20 daily index positive returns r(t)(alpha) and negative returns (-r(t))(alpha) called, after normalization, the. positive and negative fluctuations, respectively. We use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical test as a method to find the values of alpha that optimize the data collapse of the histogram of the. fluctuations with the truncated Bramwell-Holdsworth-Pinton (BHP) probability density function (pdf) fBHP and the truncated generalized log-normal pdf fLN that best approximates the truncated BHP pdf. The optimal parameters we found are alpha(+)(BHP) = 0.48, alpha(-)(BHP) = 0.46, alpha(+)(LN) = 0.50 and alpha(-)(LN) = 0.49. Using the optimal alpha's we compute the analytical approximations of the pdf of the normalized positive and negative PSI20 index daily returns r(t). Since the BHP probability density function appears in several other dissimilar phenomena, our result reveals a universal feature of the stock exchange markets.

Abstract
In this paper we extend M. Lyubich's recent results on the global hyperbolicity of renormalization of quadratic-like germs to the space of C-r unimodal maps with quadratic critical point. We show that in this space the bounded-type limit sets of the renormalization operator have an invariant hyperbolic structure provided r >= 2 + alpha with alpha close to one. As an intermediate step between Lyubich's results and ours, we prove that the renormalization operator is hyperbolic in a Banach space of real analytic maps. We construct the local stable manifolds and prove that they form a continuous lamination whose leaves are C-1 codimension one, Banach submanifolds of the ambient space, and whose holonom is C1+beta for some beta > 0. We also prove that the global stable sets are C-1 immersed (codimension one) submanifolds as well, provided r >= 3 + alpha with alpha close to one. As a corollary, we deduce that in generic, one-parameter families of C-r unimodal maps, the set of parameters corresponding to infinitely renormalizable maps of bounded combinatorial type is a Cantor set with Hausdorff dimension less than one(1).