Effect of the cash support from the Vision Umurenge Programme on household financial behaviour in Rwanda: The case of direct support (DS)

This study aims to quantify the extent to which poor households receiving cash support from the Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP) allocate their income across major spending categories, mainly consumption, savings, household-level investment, and cash transfers for community participation. The analysis utilises a nationally representative panel dataset of 1642 respondents, collected between 2013 and 2017. A Maximum Likelihood Method (MLM) approach was employed to model four financial behaviours: (i) saving, (ii) consumption, (iii) investment, and (iv) social transfers as a proxy for community participation. The independent variables include the monetary benefits received by individuals over different periods, alongside demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education level, and area of residence (rural-urban), which were controlled in the analysis. The findings reveal a positive and statistically significant effect of the direct cash support provided by the VUP on increased consumption, and marginal effects on individual savings and investment behaviours. However, the data do not provide sufficient evidence to conclusively establish a relationship between participation in the VUP and cash transfers for community participation. The study recommends the intensification of efforts to engage in saving as way to build resilience, and further suggest a periodic increase in the VUP benefits' size to cushion inflation effects

The Burden of Comparison: Relative Socioeconomic Position and Adolescent Socioemotional Development

This paper examines how an adolescent's relative socioeconomic status (SES) within their school influences their socioemotional development and well-being. Although peer effects on academic outcomes are well-documented, less is known about how an individual's socioeconomic rank among peers shapes non-cognitive skills. Using PISA 2022 data and a school fixed effects model, we investigate the relationship between two measures of relative SES–Socioeconomic Rank and Socioeconomic Gap–and a range of outcomes, including socioemotional skills, self-esteem, and attitudes toward school. Our results show that higher within-school SES rank is significantly associated with better socioemotional skills, greater well-being, and stronger academic motivation. We also find important heterogeneity by gender and migrant background. These findings highlight that an individual's relative socioeconomic position, beyond absolute resources, plays a critical role in shaping adolescent non-cognitive development

Relatedness, complexity, and regional development paths in Germany: a sequencing approach

This paper critiques the implementation of the EU's Smart Specialization Strategies (S3), advocating for a deeper analysis of the long-term evolution of regional industrial portfolios. We investigate the changing coherence of these portfolios across 401 German NUTS-3 regions from 1993 to 2018, utilizing skill- and task-based metrics for relatedness and complexity, alongside sequence analysis and optimal matching techniques. We identify various regional trajectory types, enriching the understanding of regional economic development. We find that the majority of regions exhibit a stable coherence of their economic portfolio over time while only a few regions have undergone either more dynamic or fragile development paths. While the selection of priorities in S3 policies is based on the evaluation of the current knowledge base, our findings underscore the importance of historical contexts in regional economic structures, offering insights for enhancing regional diversification strategies and prioritizing capabilities in S3 policy frameworks

Spiral of Silence: Polarizing Content Creation through Moderating Toxicity

This paper investigates how content moderation affects content creation in an ideologically diverse online environments. We develop a model in which users act as both creators and consumers, differing in their ideological affiliation and propensity to produce toxic content. Affective polarization - users' aversion to ideologically opposed content - interacts with moderation in unintended ways. Even ideologically neutral moderation that targets only toxicity can suppress non-toxic content creation, particularly from ideological minorities. Our analysis reveals a content-level externality: when toxic content is removed, non-toxic posts gain exposure. While majority-group creators sometimes benefit from this exposure, they do not internalize the negative spillovers, i.e., increased out-group hostility toward minority creators. This discourages minority expression and polarizes the content supply, ultimately leaving minority users in a more ideologically imbalanced environment: a mechanism reminiscent of the "spiral of silence." Modeling creation as a strategic response to moderation, we underscore the importance of eliciting whether user engagement reflects toxicity or ideological disagreement in guiding platform governance

Earnings Quality in Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Organizations: Evidence From the Microfinance Industry

This study uses data from the microfinance industry to analyze differences in earnings quality between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. The two sets of organizations differ with respect to both governance mechanisms and managerial incentives, and little research has been conducted to investigate how such differences affect the quality of financial reporting. Overall, we find little evidence of differences in earnings quality between our two samples in the aggregate. We do, however, observe significant differences among the types of nonprofit organizations; this finding suggests that the concept of a “nonprofit level of earnings quality” is ill defined

Revealing dynamics: The impact of minimum wage on inequality within Germany's regions

This paper examines the impact of the statutory minimum wage introduction in Germany on within-region inequality. Utilizing SOEP data, we estimate the effects across population subgroups disaggregated by sex. Macro-level findings show that while the interquartile ratio did not change significantly overall, the interdecile and P25/P10 ratios declined by -9% and -5%, respectively. However, disaggregation by groups reveals opposite trends for men and women. For women, the effect on hourly wages is about -5% and statistically significant only in the first year after the reform. On the contrary, for men, it appears later, increases over time, and reaches -10% in 2019-2022.Individual-level analysis reveals that for men the effect is concentrated in the first quartile of wage distribution, with no significant reduction in working hours, contributing to a cumulative and statistically significant decline in inequality. For women, however, there are not only significant spillover effects-with the top quartile experiencing real hourly wage decline -but also a statistically significant reduction in contracted hours, especially for low-wage earners. Both of these factors contribute to the limited effects of policy on women, despite an initial rise in hourly wages at the lower end of the distribution

The effects of field office closures on social assistance take-up and targeting

How does in-person support affect access to safety net programs? I study this question by examining how the closure of field offices has changed welfare and disability assistance caseloads. Using rich administrative data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, I estimate that closures, on average, reduced local caseloads by 11.5% for welfare and a statistically insignificant 1.6% for disability assistance. Declines in welfare caseloads (i) occurred across demographic, health, education, and eligibility groups, (ii) were somewhat larger among young and healthier individuals, and (iii) were suggestively larger among persons less familiar with the programs. On the whole, I find limited change in the relative targeting of benefits

International recognition of European Union “actorness”: Language-based evidence from United Nations general debate speeches 1970–2020

The European Union is often portrayed as a global actor that is said to wield ‘economic’ or even ‘normative’ power. Such perspectives presume that states in the international system recognize EU ‘actorness’ along the modestly growing foreign policy capabilities of the Union over time. Does this hold true? In which contexts does this happen? And which third states have an incentive to do so? This article explores the explicit recognition of EU actorness on the international stage by applying novel natural language processing algorithms to 8,481 speeches in the United Nations General Debate 1970–2020. Dependency parsers help to identify all sentences in which the EU is presented to act while word embedding models uncover in which contexts this takes place. Along these measures the recognition of international EU actorness has indeed increased to comparatively high levels over time. But this is primarily driven by EU member states themselves and happens much more in economic than in normative contexts. Non-EU states recognize actorness when they are geographically close or economically dependent on the EU, while illiberal regimes and great powers systematically avoid presenting the EU in its capability to act on the international stage. The recognition of EU actorness is thus hardly a global phenomenon and rather mirrors power and value-based conflicts in the international system

The inflationary effects of quantitative easing

We provide new evidence on the inflationary effects of Quantitative Easing (QE) using Swedish administrative data at the bank, firm, and product level. For identification, we rely on bank-firm lending relationships and the heterogeneous participation rates of banks in the government bond purchase program by the Swedish central bank. Our results show that the bond purchase program led to a significant and persistent increase in producer prices. Importantly, we find that the degree of financial frictions considerably influences firms' price response: low leverage firms do not change their prices, whereas high leverage firms raise their prices significantly. This divergent pricing behaviour can be rationalized by a significant increase in long-term borrowing and interest rate expenses among high leverage firms. The difference in price responses across high and low leverage firms is less pronounced for exogenous changes in the repo rate implying that the transmission mechanism of QE differs from the one of conventional interest rate policy