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Latest news:

31/07/2016 - Back in Porto Alegre after almost two years on the sea shore, in Mar derl Plata, Argentina. I'm going to miss the wine and the bife de chorizo.

Address:

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Economia, UNISINOS,
Av. Unisinos 950, São Leopoldo,
Brasil

Links:

- UNISINOS
- UNISINOS-mapa
- IF-UFRGS
- UFRGS
- Campus do Vale-mapa
- CNPq
- CAPES
- PORTO ALEGRE

Version: 1.0
(July 25, 2005)

Welcome to my homepage!

Present status:

* Professor of the Ph. D. programs in Instituto de Física and Faculdade de Ciências Econômicas, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brasil
* CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) research fellow, level I-A
* Head of the Applied Theoretical Physics Group, Instituto de Fisica - UFRGS.

Research activities

Statistical Physics applied to Economics and Social Sciences: We study models of social groups and economic organizations using methods of statistical physics. We develop models of economic and social organizations explicitly including the interactions between individuals and its capacities of learning and changing their behaviour, analyzing the emergency of collective social behaviours. One of the goals of our work is (to try) to establish the mechanisms that induce a given wealth distribution in an ensemble of economic agents. Particularly we try to describe the origin of the strong income inequality in Latin American and other “Third World” societies (and also the strong inequalities between the GNI of different countries). The objectives of the project are: a) to put in evidence what are the economic instruments that generate a given wealth distribution and b) to determine the necessary changes in those mechanisms that could induce a change in this situation. Two kind of models are studied, one simple conservative exchange model and one more sophisticated model including different kind of agents (entrepreneurs, workers, financial agents, government) and the effect of regulatory mechanisms. We are also working in game theory applied to economic systems and in opinion dynamics, i.e. the impact of authority, ethics, fashion, and social influence in general, on economic, political, linguistic or cultural decisions. The map above exhibits the inequality Gini coefficient around the world. The bigger the Gini coefficient the higher the inequality. So, South America is mainly in red aad not only because of the external debt. But maybe there is a relation between debt and inequality....

Magnetism, Kondo effect and Strongly Correlated Electron Systems: Many uranium compounds like UTe, UNiSi2 or UAsSe undergo a ferromagnetic ordering at a relatively high Curie temperature. Above the ordering temperatures, these materials exhibit a Kondo-like logarithmic decrease of the electrical resistivity, indicating a Kondo behaviour. This logarithmic variation extends down to the ferromagnetic Curie temperature, Tc, suggesting that the Kondo behavior survives inside the ferromagnetic phase, implying that the ferromagnetic order and the Kondo behavior do coexist. This coexistence is known from the 1986 but it has been overlooked from a theoretical point of view. As a minimal model to describe the Kondo-ferro coexistence, we proposed an underscreened Kondo lattice model considering that uranium ions are in the 5f2 configuration with spin 1, and a region of coexistence was obtained. We are also studying other strongly correlated electrons systems like cobalt frustrated superconductors. The picture on the left shows the Eiffel tower, made of iron, a magnetic material, and myself, mainly non-magnetic...

Other interests

I was born in a time when there was not personal computer, neither internet, nor TV at home! So, I love to read, from Emilio Salgari, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas - in my childhood - to Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau, Bulgakov, Julio Cortázar, Bioy Casares, Borges, Philip Roth, Paul Auster, David Lodge and many others, passing through Homero, Cervantes and Shakespeare. I also like to write. I published a book of short stories (in Portuguese) and if you want to taste the flavour of my literature I propose to you a Spanish version of one of my new stories: TRES CRUCES, finalist in the Concurso de Cuentos Clarin, last year.

I also appreciate whisky single malt, red wine, red meat and pasta. And of course while reading I am very often listening to music. Below you can hear some of my favourites: Ariel Ramírez, Di Sarli, Leonard Cohen, Paco de Lucia, Duke E. & J. Hodges.