Indirect effects of an aid program: how do liquidity injections affect non-eligibles' consumption?

Aid programs in developing countries are likely to affect both the treated and the non-treated households living in the targeted areas. Studies that focus on the treatment effecton the treated may fail to capture important spillover effects. We exploit the unique designof an aid program's experimental trial to identify its indirect effect on consumption for non-eligible households living in treated areas. We find that this effect is positive, and that itoccurs through changes in the insurance and credit markets: non-eligible households receivemore transfers, and borrow more when hit by a negative idiosyncratic shock, because of theprogram liquidity injection; thus they can reduce their precautionary savings. We also testfor general equilibrium effects in the local labor and goods markets; we find no significantchanges in labor income and prices, while there is a reduction in earnings from sales ofagricultural products, which are now consumed rather than sold. We show that this classof aid programs has important positive externalities; thus their overall effect is larger thanthe effect on the treated. Our results confirm that a key identifying assumption - that thetreatment has no effect on the non-treated - is likely to be violated in similar policy designs. Aid programs in developing countries are likely to affect both the treated and the non-treated households living in the targeted areas. Studies that focus on the treatment effecton the treated may fail to capture important spillover effects. We exploit the unique designof an aid program's experimental trial to identify its indirect effect on consumption for non-eligible households living in treated areas. We find that this effect is positive, and that itoccurs through changes in the insurance and credit markets: non-eligible households receivemore transfers, and borrow more when hit by a negative idiosyncratic shock, because of theprogram liquidity injection; thus they can reduce their precautionary savings. We also testfor general equilibrium effects in the local labor and goods markets; we find no significantchanges in labor income and prices, while there is a reduction in earnings from sales ofagricultural products, which are now consumed rather than sold. We show that this classof aid programs has important positive externalities; thus their overall effect is larger thanthe effect on the treated. Our results confirm that a key identifying assumption - that thetreatment has no effect on the non-treated - is likely to be violated in similar policy designs

Village economies and the structure of extended family networks

This paper documents how the structure of extended family networks in rural Mexico relates to the poverty and inequality of the village of residence. Using the Hispanic naming convention, we construct within-village extended family networks in 504 poor rural villages. Family networks are larger (both in the number of members and as a share of the village population) and out-migration is lower the poorer and the less unequal the village of residence. Our results are consistent with the extended family being a source of informal insurance to its members

Family networks and school enrolment: evidence from a randomized social experiment

We present evidence on whether and how a household’s behavior is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family. Using data from the PROGRESA program in Mexico, we exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of heads and spouses in conjunction with the Spanish naming convention to identify the inter and intra generational family links of each household to others in the same village. We then exploit the randomized research design of the PROGRESA evaluation data to identify whether the treatment effects of PROGRESA transfers on secondary school enrolment vary according to the characteristics of extended family. We find PROGRESA only raises secondary enrolment among households that are embedded in a family network. Eligible but isolated households do not respond. The mechanism through which the extended family influences household schooling choices is the redistribution of resources within the family network from eligibles that receive de facto unconditional cash transfers from PROGRESA, towards eligibles on the margin of enrolling children into secondary school

The effect of ownership and competitive pressure on firm performance in transition countries. Micro evidence from Bulgaria, Romania and Poland.

Country; Firm performance; Ownership; Performance;

Some exact results for the multicomponent t-J model

We present a generalization of the Sutherland's multicomponent model. Our extension includes both the ferromagnetic and the antiferromagnetic t-J model for any value of the exchange coupling J and the hopping parameter t. We prove rigorously that for one dimensional chains the ground-state of the generalized model is non-degenerate. As a consequence, the ordering of energy levels of the antiferromagnetic t-J model is determined. Our result rigorously proves and extends the analysis carried out by Sutherland in establishing the phase diagram of the model as a function of the number of components.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX 3.0, no figure

Thermal desorption of cryopumped gases from laser treated copper

Recently, laser processing of copper samples has been demonstrated to produce rough surfaces whose nanostructuring ensures unquestionable advantages for electron cloud mitigation in future particle accelerators. The actual application of laser treated surfaces in accelerators implies that this new material is compliant with many issues, going from impedance vacuum properties to many others. A significant experimental effort is therefore ongoing to study and optimize their various properties of interest. Here we analyze their vacuum behavior versus temperature. To this end, we studied thermal programmed desorption from CO, ${\mathrm{CH}}_{4}$ and ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$ once cryosorbed on laser treated copper substrate and on its flat counterpart. These molecules are typically present in the residual vacuum of any accelerator. The results show that the desorption of such gases from the laser treated substrates occurs in a much broader and higher temperature range with respect to what is observed from the flat substrate. We also show that, at equal doses, treated samples adsorb/desorb significantly more gas than their flat counterpart. These findings can be ascribed to their nanostructured porous morphology. A quantitative analysis is given, allowing to properly estimate fluctuations of the number of molecules during unavoidable temperature variations of the cryogenic vacuum system

Relationship Between Sleep Quality and Quantity with Sports-Related Injury Rates

Click the PDF icon to download the abstract

A smart tablet application to quantitatively assess the dominant hand dexterity

Background and objective: The Nine-Hole Peg Test (NHPT) is the most used test to assess hand dexterity in clinical practice and is considered the gold standard but only evaluates the time needed to complete the task. The aim of this work is to describe a graphic test on a smart tablet to assess in a quantitative as well qualitative way the dominant hand dexterity and to validate it in a cohort of neurological subjects and healthy controls. Methods: The task consists in asking the subject to connect with a graphic line the start and the end point of a pre-defined path, with two different widths, in the most precise and fastest way possible. The path is constituted by a ‘meander’ and a ‘spiral’ part. The subjects perform the task on a smart tablet with a capacitive pen four times. The three parameters of interest considered at each trial are the execution time, length path, and number of interactions with the border. The app automatically computes these three parameters and stores the completed test files. The results of the digital graphic test are compared to the NHPT results. Healthy and pathological subjects are compared to each other, and performances obtained in different repetitions are compared to assess the learning effect in each population. Results: 53 subjects with a definitive diagnosis of neurodegenerative/genetic neurological disorders (34 men, mean age 59.1 ± 16.1) and 78 healthy controls (33 men, mean age 42.5 ± 16.3) were recruited. Among the pathological subjects, 31 also performed the NHPT. The graphic test clearly distinguish between the two populations for all parameters of interest. Moreover, compared to the gold standard NHPT, time has a moderate positive correlation (r = 0.57, p ≤ 0.001), whereas interactions and length have a strong positive correlation (r = 0.81, p ≤ 0.001) and (r = 0.69, p ≤ 0.001), respectively. Conclusions: The proposed digital test can measure in an accurate, quantitative and qualitative way dominant hand disability and can result more informative with respect to the gold standard NHPT. In homogeneous cohort of subjects (for example affected by multiple sclerosis or Parkinson disease), the digital test can be used as an outcome measure in clinical trials as well as a tool for monitoring disease progression at the dominant hand level

Consumption and Investment in Resource Pooling Family Networks

This paper examines a novel motive for resource pooling in family networks in rural economies: to relax credit constraints and facilitate investment in non-collateralizeable assets for which credit market imperfections are most binding. We thus complement established literatures examining risk-sharing motives for resource transfers within family networks, as well as motives based on kinship tax obligations. We do so exploiting the Progresa program data, in which family networks can be identified, households are subject to large exogenous resource inflows, and detailed responses on consumption and an array of investments can be tracked in a household panel over five years. We find that for every dollar that accrues to the family network through Progresa transfers, food consumption expenditures increase by around 65c/ for both households eligible for Progresa and ineligible members of the same family network. Hence the marginal propensity of families to invest/save out of every dollar is around .35, and we document how this is channelled towards easing credit constraints poorer network members face in financing non-collateralizable investments into their children's human capital. We show these consumption and investment benefits of being embedded within a family network are sustained five years after households first experience resource transfers from Progresa. Hence the interplay between resource inflows and resource pooling by family networks can place network members on sustained paths out of poverty