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Job security provisions are commonly invoked to explain the high and persistent European unemployment rates. This belief has led several countries to reform their labor markets and liberalize the use of fixed-term contracts. Despite how common such contracts have become after deregulation, there is a lack of quantitative analysis of their impact on the economy. To fill this gap, we build a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and firing costs in the tradition of Hopenhayn and Rogerson (1993). We calibrate our model to Spanish data, choosing in part parameters estimated with firm-level longitudinal data. Spain is particularly interesting, since its labor regulations are among the most protective in the OECD, and both its unemployment and its share of fixed-term employment are the highest. We find that fixed-term contracts increase unemployment, reduce output, and raise productivity. The welfare effects are ambiguous.

Una Vida Gozosa es una serie de cinco sermones basados en la epístola a los Filipenses donde el tema central es cómo disfrutar de una vida gozosa. El primer sermón hace un análisis de los elementos que, descritos en la epístola, atentan contra el gozo; a los que se han llamado: ladrones del gozo. Luego, en los cuatro sermones siguientes, se presenta la respuesta del apóstol para anular los efectos de cada uno de estos ladrones. Lo cual se logrará con: Una mente sencilla, sumisa, espiritual y segura.

Some phrases, quotes and stories have been told time after time, even a few of them generation after generation. Some others surf the web on daily basis carrying wisdom from and to different places all over the world.Their wisdom and guidance have been useful for many people. It is very usual to find them nowadays in emails, presentations, seminars, conferences, web sites or simply by the word of mouth."Sparkles" volumes 1 and 2 intend to honor those special phrases and stories that have come from anonymous or unknown authors who at the same time will live in our minds and hearts for ever.

With the development of functional materials (multi-materials, multilayers, ...), the mechanical behavior characterization by conventional macroscopic methods has become progressively difficult. These conventional methods are therefore gradually substituted by multiscale characterization processes. Among these methods, the nanoindentation, this can solve certain challenges of micro-characterization such as the presence of indissociable phases, multilayer systems, ultra-thin coatings, etc. This tool has become a high-precision technique capable of testing very small volumes of matter and providing rich information for material characterization. However, this tool is used mainly to identify the elastic properties and, qualitatively, some parameters such as hardness, ductility and internal stresses.This thesis work focuses on the characterization of elastoplastic behavior by nanoindentation at two scales: the macroscopic scale and the crystal scale.The first challenge of this work is experimental. It involves generating surfaces with properties representative of the studied microstructure. This challenge is important because the material used as a model is 316L steel which is very ductile and whose surface is sensitive to small perturbations. An experimental protocol was implemented at the end of this work, and the errors and dispersions of the nanoindentation response introduced by the different surface generation steps were quantified. Then, a wide database was implemented with different indenter geometries and several depths. This database will feed inverse identification strategies based on a coupling between optimization algorithms and finite element modeling of this test. Two types of algorithm have been applied: Levenberg-Marquardt and genetic algorithms. The latter is very consumer in computing time. Different axisymmetric and 3D FE models have been used. These models have been carefully optimized with respect to computation time.Several identification strategies were employed based on various experimental databases from the nanoindentation test such as the loading-unloading curve, the residual imprint shape and the association of several indent geometries. Some models of isotropic hardening have been identified. On the macroscopic scale, classical isotropic hardening models have been determined. At the grain scale, the crystal plasticity constitutive model of Méric and Cailletaud has been identified. The results obtained were compared on the macroscopic scale with identifications carried out on the same material from the tensile and compression tests. The comparison showed that the combination of multiple indentation geometries makes it possible to reproduce the volume behavior of the 316L with acceptable accuracy. For crystal behavior, micropillar compression tests were used to obtain reference data at this scale. The comparison shows a lot of dispersion in both cases. Indeed, some phenomena related to the density of dislocation very variable from one grain to another are responsible of this dispersion. This dislocation density is not taken into account, as a variable, in the used crystal constitutive model. The use of a more physical law integrating the dislocation density and its evolution makes it possible to improve these results. Finally, a new identification method has been proposed. This method is based on estimating and introducing the real indent geometry in the FE model used for identification. The method has been validated in the case of Berkovich tip and shows very promising results.

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