Jamaica's food stamp program - impacts on poverty and welfare

The authors examine how the food stamp program affected measures of poverty during devaluation of the Jamaican dollar in the early 1990s. They find that without the food stamp program, the poverty gap in Jamaica would have been much worse, especially in 1990 and 1991. For the country as a whole, not having a food stamp program wouldn't have affected the incidence of poverty significantly, but particular groups among the poor would have fared worse. Households with elderly residents benefited most from the program. Households with young children benefited more than households without, in terms of the poverty headcount and gap. The program also appears to have had more effect on extremely poor households than on those of the transient poor (people who move in and out of poverty). Explicitly incorporating behavioral responses into the model reduces the contribution of food stamps to household consumption and poverty, but the poorest benefited most from the program even after accounting for behavioral responses. The program contributed more to reducing poverty than to smoothing consumption.Poverty Reduction Strategies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Rural Poverty Reduction,Safety Nets and Transfers,Services&Transfers to Poor,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies

Dairi Storytelling and Stories in the Batak Reader of Herman Neubronner Van Der Tuuk

In this article I first discuss how texts of Dairi stories collected in the nineteenth century by Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk relate to storytelling, and question whether the development of written versions of stories necessarily endangers the practice of storytelling. Then I investigate how written versions of Dairi stories in Van der Tuuk\u27s Batak Reader relate to each other and to the printed text, based on texts in manuscripts collected by Van der Tuuk. In conclusion I discuss the possible aim of Van der Tuuk\u27s Batak Reader, focussing on the Dairi section, which has not been dealt with in earlier publications

Voluntary participation and cooperation in a collective-good game.

We study the effect of voluntary participation in the context of a collective-good experiment. We investigate whether the freedom to participate in the game or not increases contribution levels and enhances their evolution. The analysis of two voluntary participation treatments supports a positive effect of an attractive exit option on both contribution levels and their sustainability. We conclude that the voluntary contribution mechanism can provide sustainable cooperation levels and that the usually observed decay of average contribution levels can be counteracted by voluntary participation in the game..Collective Goods; Cooperation; Voluntary participation ; Laboratory experiments.

Productivity growth and economic reform : evidence from Rwanda

Trade, financial, and exchange rate reforms are shown to have exerted a positive impact on the growth of total factor productivity in Rwanda during the period 1995-2003. Based on a constant returns-to-scale Cobb-Douglas production function, this paper regresses total factor productivity on indices of trade, financial, and exchange rate reforms. The analysis determines that trade reforms and financial reforms each contributed positively to improvements in total factor productivity. The data also suggest that the allocation of official development assistance to human capital made a significant contribution to productivity. In contrast, the appreciation of the real exchange rate of the late 1980's hindered productivity or the growth of TFP. Taken together, the findings for Rwanda presented in this paper show that the strong growth of the past decade has not just been due to a"bounce back"effect following the genocide. The results support the notion that policies favorable to trade development, a deepening of the financial sector, and formation of human capital have been effective for increasing aggregate productivity of the economy and stimulating growth in Rwanda. For sustained growth, the Rwandan authorities should continue to build on these policies, while also taking care to maintain an appropriate exchange rate.Economic Theory&Research,Emerging Markets,Debt Markets,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Access to Finance

Children's sleep, health and behaviour

Käesoleva uurimustöö eesmärk oli uurida lasteaedade lapsi – kuidas nende päevase uinaku pikkus ja kvaliteet on seotud ööune pikkuse ja kvaliteediga ning kuidas mõlemad on seotud tervise- ja käitumisprobleemidega. Valim koosnes 112st Tartu linna ja maakonna lapsest. Uuring oli küsimustikupõhine. Lapse kohta täitsid küsimustikud nii uuritava lapse vanemad kui lasteaia rühma õpetajad. Uuringu tulemused aitavad kaardistada päeva- ja ööune mustrite seoseid probleemsete valdkondadega, mis annavad aluse täpsemateks ja mahukamateks uuringuteks. Tulemused ei näidanud statistiliselt olulisi seoseid lõuna- ja ööune vahel. Küll aga oli lühem ööuni ema hinnangul seotud kehvema tervisega, rohkemate valude ja negatiivse meeleoluga. Vanusega laste vastandlik käitumine küll vähenes, kuid rohkem vastandlikku käitumist oli seotud ka lühema lõunaunega. Käitumisprobleemid olid seotud ka uneprobleemidega üldiselt

Alternative psychotherapies: Conceptual elucidation and epidemiological framework

This article elucidates and defines alternative psychotherapies, as well as describes the variables that explain why some professional psychologists are prone to endorse these practices. First, the novel concept of “complementary and alternative psychotherapies” (CAP) is defined within the framework of the established hierarchy of clinical evidence. Second, we report a literature review to aid understanding of the main variables explaining why some clinicians prefer CAP. We review rejection of scientific reasoning, misconceptions about human nature, and pragmatic limitations of evidence-based practice

Reading tealeaves on the potential impact of the privatization of tea estates in Rwanda

The Poverty Reduction Strategy of the Government of Rwanda seeks to unlock the growth and poverty reduction potential of the tea sector through the privatization of tea estates. This paper uses the logic of causal inference and data from the 2004 Quantitative Baseline Survey of the tea sector to assess the potential impact of the privatization program. This entails anormalized comparison of productivity outcomes to account for household heterogeneity in terms of observable and non-observable determinants of these outcomes. The paper also compares living standards between tea and non-tea households. Three main findings emerge from the analysis. Productivity outcomes are generally better in the private sector than in the public sector. Male-headed households outperform female-headed households along all dimensions considered here. And tea households tend to be better off than non-tea households.Crops&Crop Management Systems,Access to Finance,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping,Housing&Human Habitats

R&D Subsidization effect and network centralization. Evidence from an agent-based micro-policy simulation

This paper presents an agent-based micro-policy simulation model assessing public R&D policy effect when R&D and non-R&D performing companies are located within a network. We set out by illustrating the behavioural structure and the computational logic of the proposed model; then, we provide a simulation experiment where the pattern of the total level of R&D activated by a fixed amount of public support is analysed as function of companies’ network topology. More specifically, the suggested simulation experiment shows that a larger “hubness” of the network is more likely accompanied with a decreasing median of the aggregated total R&D performance of the system. Since the aggregated firm idiosyncratic R&D (i.e., the part of total R&D independent of spillovers) is slightly increasing, we conclude that positive cross-firm spillover effects - in the presence of a given amount of support - have a sizeable impact within less centralized networks, where fewer hubs emerge. This may question the common wisdom suggesting that larger R&D externality effects should be more likely to arise when few central champions receive a support

R&D and knowledge dynamics in university-industry relationships in biotech and pharmaceuticals: An agent-based model

In the last two decades, University-Industry Relationships have played an outstanding role in shaping innovation activities in Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals. Despite the growing importance and the considerable scope of these relationships, there still is an intensive and open debate on their short and long term effects on the research system in life sciences. So far, the extensive literature on this topic has not been able to provide a widely accepted answer. This work introduces a new way to analyse University-Industry Relationships (UIRs) which makes use of an agent-based simulation model. With the help of simulation experiments and the comparison of different scenario results, new insights on the effects of these relationships on the innovativeness of the research system can be gained. In particular, focusing on knowledge interactions among heterogeneous actors, we show that: (i) universities tend to shift from a basic to an applied research orientation as a consequence of relationships with industry, (ii) universities' innovative capabilities benefit from industry financial resources but not so much from cognitive resources of the companies, (iii) biotech companies' innovative capabilities largely benefit from the knowledge interaction with universities and (iv) adequate policies in terms of public basic research funding can contrast the negative effects of UIRs on university research orientation. --University-Industry Relationships,Knowledge Dynamics,University Patenting,Technology Transfer,Agent-Based Modelling