The reactions pertaining to zinc-silver and cadmium-silver batteries Quarterly report

Electrochemical oxidation of zinc, thermal decomposition of silver oxide, and solubility determinations of silver oxides in potassium hydroxide

Pessimism, Optimism and Credit Rationing

In their celebrated contribution on credit rationing, Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) showed that the expected return to the borrower on a loan is increasing in the risk of the project it funds. In this paper, I show that their results do not necessarily carry over to the case where the agents’ preferences can be described by rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU). In particular, a pessimistic probability distortion function for borrowers can yield sufficient concavity in returns for the latter to be decreasing in risk, thus eliminating adverse selection. Whether credit rationing can obtain or not is then shown to depend upon the interaction between borrower pessimism and lender optimism.Keywords: rank-dependent expected utility, credit rationing

Pessimism, Optimism and Credit Rationing

In their celebrated contribution on credit rationing, Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) showed that the expected return to the borrower on a loan is increasing in the risk of the project it funds. In this paper, I show that their results do not necessarily carry over to the case where the agents' preferences can be described by rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU). In particular, a pessimistic probability distortion function for borrowers can yield sufficient concavity in returns for the latter to be decreasing in risk, thus eliminating adverse selection. Whether credit rationing can obtain or not is then shown to depend upon the interaction between borrower pessimism and lender optimism.Keywords: rank-dependent expected utility;credit rationing

The reactions pertaining to zinc-silver and cadmium-silver batteries First quarterly report

Zinc precipitates and thermogravimetric studies of silver oxide for zinc-silver and cadmium-zinc batterie

Sheepskin Effects in the Returns to Education by Ethnic Group: Evidence from Northeastern Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to examine inter-ethnic differences in the returns to education for the three main ethnic groups in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (MRS), Bahia state, in Northeastern Brazil. Our results suggest that sheepskin effects take the traditional form of an additional return to the completion of a diploma for whites, whereas for blacks the additional return stems entirely from the sheepskin-like effect associated with admission to university. We show that it is possible to explain the observed pattern of inter-ethnic differences in the returns to education using a model of statistical discrimination that builds on the work of S. Lundberg and R. Startz and incorporates differences in the cost of acquiring an education that are usually associated with signaling models.Statistical Discrimination, Earnings, Brazil

Aid, peasants and social exclusion

Using unique village census data collected in 2003 and 2008 in Senegal, we assess the impact of a major World Bank-funded Community Driven Development (CDD) program on membership and assortative matching in community-based organizations (CBOs). We implement both standard discrete choice and dyadic regression techniques. We find that channeling development aid through CBOs makes these organizations more inclusive in the sense that a number of tradition-bound assortative matching patterns are partly broken. Ceteris paribus, this leads to more heterogeneous CBOs. On the other hand, the likelihood of CBO membership is reduced in treated villages, with significant differences between men and women. Our results suggest that grassroots level development projects which target CBOs must be carefully designed and executed if they are not to result, paradoxically, in a greater degree of social exclusion, with differentiation by gender playing a crucial role.Community Based Organizations, Dyadic Regression, Gender Differences, Social Exclusion

Matching in Rural Producer Organizations

Using a rich dataset from West Africa we study the determinants of membership in rural producer organizations (RPO). We ...nd that on average it is the more fortunate members of rural society who belong in RPOs. In Senegal, the dominant criteria are land ownership. In Burkina Faso it is economic status and family ties with village authorities. Ethnicity also plays a role: RPO membership is less likely for ethnic groups that traditionally emphasize livestock raising. We also look for evidence of assortative matching along multiple dimensions. To this e¤ect we develop an original methodology based on dyadic regressions. We ...nd robust evidence of assortative matching by physical and ethnic proximity as well as by wealth and social status.keywords: matching;group membership;rural producer organizations;Africa

Racial Discrimination in the Brazilian Labor Market: Wage, Employment and Segregation Effects

The social science literature has done much to document pervasive racial discrimination in Brazil and there is little doubt that a very dark color is a handicap to social advancement. Nevertheless, very few empirical economic studies have attempted to quantify the impact of ethnic discrimination in Brazil. Using data culled from the Pesquisa National por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD), this paper fills this void by analysing ethnic wage and employment gaps, as well as occupational segregation in Brazil, using the Oaxaca decomposition methodology.Occupational Segregation, Unemployment, Earnings, discrimination

Errors in Variables and the Empirics of Economic Growth

We examine cross-sectional empirical evidence on the determinants of economic growth in light of an instrumental variables estimator, based on sample moments of order higher than two, which does not require extraneous instruments and which remains consistent, under quite reasonable assumptions, when measurement errors affect the explanatory variables. We focus on several in‡fluential papers — Barro (1991), Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992), Sachs and Warner (1997a), Easterly and Levine (1997), Levine and Zervos (1998)— and find that many of their results are “fragile”. We argue that the application of our estimator to cross-sectional empirical studies of the determinants of growth yields important insights which may qualify previous findings in the literature, especially given the errors in variables problems which are known to plague commonly used cross-sectional datasets.errors in variables, economic growth