arXiv subjects

Gustavo Pedro Ricou

Publications and source records attributed to Gustavo Pedro Ricou.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Don't look now: paying for documented need punishes discovery in US lead-pipe funding

The United States allots USD 15 billion for lead service line replacement in proportion to documented lead, the largest of a growing class of environmental-indicator transfers. Reconstructed exactly, the rule prices looking below zero. Resolving an unknown pipe lowers a state's expected allotment in three of the eight jurisdictions we can measure above the statutory floor, and raises it in none. Below it the allotment cannot move. Systems filing nothing are scored lead-free. We prove no fixed formula on self-reported inventories can pay for need without punishing its measurement, so we made an audited one. The unique additive repair credits unknowns at a rate no filing can move, and is strategy-proof. Discovery is repriced from a median loss of USD 48.63 per line per year to zero. Allocation swings fall from 16.5% of the pool to 0.8%, for an audit costing 1.23% of annual funds. The formula's tilt toward vulnerable systems survives.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2026

One equation allocates playing time in competitive team sports: the rulebook sets the arithmetic and the league sets the habit

Every team sport that lets a team replace players rations the replacements, and the ration settles who plays and for how long. Across eight codes, three in both sexes, we measure how playing time is allocated and find one equation behind it, complete in the one-way codes, its terms separating what the rulebook fixes from what a competition chooses. Under scarcity every league behaves alike: loaded starters are kept on at the same rate on four continents. Under freedom each expresses a preference, and the size of a league's departure is priced near one-for-one by what its own withdrawal minute prices (lambda = 0.87, 95% interval 0.54 to 1.21, twelve leagues), a law confirmed in four out-of-sample predictions and refused in one. The ordering of leagues by appetite persists across a rule change, and club wealth does not price it. Rules are the geometry of a competition; culture is its material.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2026

Playing time tracks recent exposure in fifteen men's and women's football leagues: the denominator gradient and what it does to per-minute injury rates

Football injury incidence is conventionally reported per 1000 hours of exposure, dividing counts by recorded playing time. Where recorded minutes track the workload under study, that division removes part of the association it should scale. We aimed to quantify the two defects contaminating a recorded-minute denominator, outcome truncation and exposure-dependent playing time, and to measure the denominator gradient across leagues and sexes. Retrospective observational cohort study of 88,573 appearances by 1208 male English Premier League players, 2017-2025, with replication from appearance records alone in 628,487 men's and 29,799 women's appearances across 15 European leagues. Changing only the offset moved the seven-day estimate from a rate ratio of 1.27 (95% CI 1.11 to 1.44) to 1.09 (0.95 to 1.25), an attenuation of 0.151 (0.140 to 0.163) that divided away 14.0% of the rate ratio; the outcome truncated recorded minutes but explained none of it (-0.095%, resampled interval -0.41 to 0.20). Independent sources confirmed attribution in 24 of 27 resolved records (88.9%, 71.9 to 96.1). The gradient exceeded the negligible threshold of 0.05 in all 15 leagues: 0.431 to 0.655 in men's competitions, 0.444 to 0.647 in women's. Restricting to starters returned it below that threshold in eight of eight men's leagues but five of seven women's, the bound reaching 0.058 in Sweden. Recorded minutes are not a neutral denominator, and the gradient should be reported before any per-minute rate. These are measurements from public records, not a tested hypothesis, and the remedy is league-specific: run the check locally.

stat.AP↗