This book offers a proven approach for reliable mapping of soil-landscape relationships to derive information for policy, planning and management at scales ranging from local to regional. It presents the theoretical and conceptual framework of the geopedologic approach and a bulk of applied research showing its application and benefits for knowledge generation relevant to geohazard studies, land use conflict analysis, land use planning, land degradation assessment, and land suitability analysis. Soil is a vital resource for society at large and an important determinant of the economic status of nations. The intensification of natural disasters and the increased land use competition for food and energy have raised awareness of the relevant role the pedosphere plays in natural and anthropogenic environments. Recent papers and global initiatives show a renewed interest in soil research and its applications for improved planning and management of this fragile and finite resource.

Edited by Nora Lustig, the Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty (Brookings Institution Press and CEQ Institute-Tulane University, 2nd edition, 2022) is a unique manual on the theory and practical methods to estimate the impact of taxation and public spending on inequality and poverty. In addition, the second edition covers frontier topics such as alternative approaches to measure the redistributive effect of education, health, and infrastructure spending. Policymakers, social planners, and economists are provided with a step-by-step guide to applying fiscal incidence analysis, illustrated by country studies. The 2nd edition of the Handbook has two volumes. Volume 1 is comprised of Part I, Methodology, describes what a CEQ Assessment© is and presents the theoretical underpinnings of fiscal incidence analysis and the indicators used to assess the distributive impact and effectiveness of fiscal policy. Part II, Implementation, presents the methodology on how taxes, subsidies, and social spending should be allocated. It includes a step-by step guide to completing the CEQ Master Workbook©, a multi-sheet Excel file that houses detailed information on the country’s fiscal system and the results used as inputs for policy discussions, academic papers, and policy reports. Part III, “Applications,” presents applications of the CEQ framework to low- and middle-income countries and includes simulations of policy reforms. In this 2nd edition, chapters 1, 6, and 8 have been significantly updated and two new country studies have been added to Part III. Parts IV (updated), V (new), and VI (new) are available online only. Part IV contains the CEQ Assessment’s main tools. Part V includes the databases housed in the CEQ Data Center on Fiscal Redistribution. Part VI contains the CEQ Institute’s microsimulation tools. Volume 2 (new) includes a collection of chapters whose purpose is to expand the knowledge and methodological frontiers to sharpen even further the analysis of fiscal policy’s redistributive impact. Topics include: alternative approaches to value in-kind education and health services; alternative methods to evaluate spending on infrastructure; corporate taxes and taxation on capital incomes; inter-temporal fiscal incidence and the redistributive consequences of social insurance pensions; fiscal redistribution, macroeconomic stability and growth; and, the political economy of fiscal redistribution.

The book presents the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, what is and how it has developed over time, since it was founded in 1983. The Institute is today an eminently technical and at the same time autonomous body of the Mexican State.Beyond a chronology of events, this book raises two needs that have marked the Institute's evolution: the first, to properly measure the many components of reality, whether social, economic or natural; and the second, decisive for the public's trust and whose absence would invalidate the purposes of the previous need, to preserve the information from any consideration, other than strictly professional, in all stages of its production and dissemination.This work conveys INEGI's transcendence as an indispensable institution for the country to respond to the fundamental question, common to all human beings: to know and understand the reality of their environment.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Engineering Applications, WEA 2021, held in Medellín, Colombia, in October 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held in a hybrid mode. The 33 revised full papers and 11 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 127 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: computational intelligence; bioengineering; Internet of Things (IoT); optimization and operations research; engineering applications.