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The population aging process has caused a financial imbalance in the social security systems of countries based on pay as you go system, as is the case in Brazil. To face this challenge, the Brazilian governments have undertaken several reforms since the 1988 Constitution. Confronting the life cycle hypothesis, the aim of this paper is to estimate the causal effects of Social Security Reforms on the Likelihood of Saving in Brazil by exploring two exogenous events, the 41th (of 2003) and 47th (of 2005) Constitutional Amendments, that reduced the expectations of benefits only for public servants. Using data from the House Budget Surveys, the results of differences-in-differences models show that the reform increased in a range of 2.1 to 2.9 percentage points in the probability of saving of the treated group. The results are in line with the recent literature indicating that reforms contribute to an increase in personal savings.

Artemisia annua L. (Compositae) has been found to contain approximately 8-10 times more artemisinic acid (1) than artemisinin (Qinghaosu) (2), a sesquiterpene lactone endoperoxide, responsible for antimalarial activity (1). Because of its greater abundance and suitable stereochemical configuration, artemisinic acid (1) is a useful chiral synthon for the preparation of biologically active products. Thus, 1 has been con

Emergency Care Units (UPAs) are part of a national health policy implemented by the Brazilian Government. UPAs are fixed prehospital components of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), whose purpose is to provide resolutive emergency care to patients suffering from acute clinical conditions, and to perform the first care in cases of surgical nature. According to the Ministry of Economy, 750 units are operational throughout the country since 2008, and 332 are under construction. Being a public policy in expansion, it is imperative to assess the impact of such units as part of SUS. However, we found few studies that assessed UPAs’ impact, which have examined their specific impact on mortality rates. In our research, we aimed to evaluate the impact of UPAs on hospitalization rates for diseases of the respiratory system. To measure the impact, we used a strategy of Machine Learning through the Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) algorithm. The results point to a decrease in the hospitalization rates by respiratory diseases due to Emergency Care Units. Therefore, these units generate a benefit for the Brazilian health system, being an important element for the care of patients with respiratory diseases.