1,944 research outputs found
Distributional effects of educational improvements :are we using the wrong model ?
Measuring the incidence of public spending in education requires an intergenerational framework distinguishing between what current and future generations - that is, parents and children - give and receive. In standard distributional incidence analysis, households are assumed to receive a benefit equal to what is spent on their children enrolled in the public schooling system and, implicitly, to pay a fee proportional to their income. This paper shows that, in an intergenerational framework, this is equivalent to assuming perfectly altruistic individuals, in the sense of the dynastic model, and perfect capital markets. But in practice, credit markets are imperfect and poor households cannot borrow against the future income of their children. The authors show that under such circumstances, standard distributional incidence analysis may greatly over-estimate the progressivity of public spending in education: educational improvements that are progressive in the long-run steady state may actually be regressive for the current generation of poor adults. This is especially true where service delivery in education is highly inefficient - as it is in poor districts of many developing countries - so that the educational benefits received are relatively low in comparison with the cost of public spending. The results have implications for both policy measures and analytical approaches.,Debt Markets,Access to Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Expenditure Analysis&Management
INCOME AND OUTCOMES - A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF INTRAHOUSEHOLD ALLOCATION
There is evidence from several sources that one cannot treat many-person households as a single decision maker. If this is the case, then factors such as the relative incomes of the household members may affect the final allocation decisions made by the household. We develop a method of identifying how ''incomes affect outcomes'' given conventional family expenditure data. The basic assumption we make is that household decision processes lead to efficient outcomes. We apply our method to a sample of Canadian couples with no children. We find that the final allocations of expenditures on each partner depend significantly on their relative incomes and ages and on the level of lifetime wealth
Acknowledgements
The allocation of time is a crucial decision that influences many aspects of household welfare. According to standard theory it depends on the potential wage rate of spouses relative to their domestic productivity. A major problem, however, is that individual productivities are not observed. As a consequence, an important source of difference in household living standards alongside with heterogeneity in preferences and wage rates, cannot be accounted for. This paper presents a new methodology to estimate individual domestic productivity based on the informational content of a standard time use survey, with time inputs observable but domestic output immeasurable. It provides empirical evidence based on a sample of French two-earner couples. As a test of the empirical validity of this approach, the paper shows that the estimate of female domestic productivity is a significant variable in explaining the overall intra-household distribution of resources
Theta oscillations mediate preactivation of highly expected word initial phonemes
Published: 22 June 2018Prediction has been proposed to be a fundamental neurocognitive mechanism. However, its role in language comprehension is currently under debate. In this magnetoencephalography study we aimed to find evidence of word-form phonological pre-activation and to characterize the oscillatory mechanisms supporting this. Participants were presented firstly with a picture of an object, and then, after a delay (fixed or variable), they heard the corresponding word. Target words could contain a phoneme substitution, and participants’ task was to detect mispronunciations. Word-initial phonemes were either fricatives or plosives, generating two experimental conditions (expect-fricative and expect-plosive). In the pre-word interval, significant differences (α = 0.05) emerged between conditions both for fixed and variable delays. Source reconstruction of this effect showed a brain-wide network involving several frequency bands, including bilateral superior temporal areas commonly associated with phonological processing, in a theta range. These results show that phonological representations supported by the theta band may be active before word onset, even under temporal uncertainty. However, in the evoked response just prior to the word, differences between conditions were apparent under variable- but not fixed-delays. This suggests that additional top-down mechanisms sensitive to phonological form may be recruited when there is uncertainty in the signal.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the
Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER) (grant PSI2016–
77175-P to Mathieu Bourguignon, grant PSI2015–65694-P to Nicola Molinaro, Severo Ochoa programme
SEV-2015–490 for Centres of Excellence in R&D), and by the Basque government (grant PI_2016_1_0014 to
Nicola Molinaro). Further support derived from the AThEME project funded by the European Commission 7th
Framework Programme, the ERC- 2011-ADG-295362 from the European Research Council. Finally, Mathieu
Bourguignon was supported by the program Attract of Innoviris (grant 2015-BB2B-10) and by the Marie
Skłodowska-Curie Action of the European Commission (grant 743562)
Crime as a Social Cost of Poverty and Inequality: A Review Focusing on Developing Countries
Whe roral life was still dominant in nowadays industrialized countries, cities were often seen by villagers as the domain of evil, the realm of corruption and violence. The process of accelerated ubanization and economic development was then seen as inherently wicked. The widely publicized criminality and violence observed today in several metropolises of both the developed and developing world seem to justify a posteriori this bucolic bias. The alarming surge of crime and violence in México, Rio or Sao Paulo during the last 20 years or so might indeed be the result of an excessively rapid growth of these"gigapolises". 36 p.
Microsimulation and the formulation of policy: A case study of targeting in the European Union
Over the past 20 years, microsimulation models have come to play an important role in policy analysis, identifying gainers and losers, and characterising the effect on incentives. A natural development of national models is a Europe-wide tax benefit model. The present paper reports results from such a prototype European tax-benefit microsimulation model. The model is used to examine the distributional impact of a simulated policy reform: the introduction of a European Minimum Pension (EMP). In particular it asks how far such a policy is 'targeted' on the poorest pensioners. The analysis shows that the composition of the bottom of the European income distribution is sensitive to assumptions about the comparability of incomes across countries and between households of different types. We conclude that the formulation of policy for the protection of Europe’s poorest people requires an appreciation, not only of the composition and location of this group, but also of the assumptions that have been used to identify it
Aesthetic compatibility assessment of consolidants for wall paintings by means of multivariate analysis of colorimetric data
Background and methods: Wall paintings and architectural surfaces in outdoor environments are exposed to several physical, chemical and biological agents, hence they are often treated with different products to prevent or slow down their deterioration. Among the factors that have to be taken into account in the selection of the most suitable treatment for decorated surfaces, the aesthetic compatibility with the substrate is of great importance in the cultural heritage field; minimizing colour variation after treatment application is a crucial issue in particular for painted surfaces. In the framework of the European Project Nanomatch the color variation induced on wall painting mock-ups by the two innovative consolidants (calcium alkoxides) developed was evaluated using colorimetry in comparison with two traditional products. In this work these innovative consolidants have been also tested in combination with two commercial biocides and the results of colorimetric measurements discussed. Moreover, as the univariate approach didn't allow to draw clear conclusions on the relation between the different sources of data variability, multivariate analysis was performed on colorimetric data. Results: Principal Component Analysis and multi-way Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) were successfully applied to colorimetric data to investigate the short-term effects of the application of different consolidants on wall painting surfaces, making it possible to study at the same time the different sources of data variability, i.e. treatments, painting techniques, pigments. Finally, a ranking list of the treatments under study in terms of colour variation induced on the surface was established, in function of the painting technique and pigment, taking also in consideration the combination consolidant/biocide. In particular, given the true multi-way nature of the data, PARAFAC model turned out to be extremely useful in the study of the dependence of colour variation on pigments, a critical issue for painted surfaces, that was not clear using univariate approach. Conclusions: Multivariate approach to colorimetric data and especially 3-way PARAFAC method resulted a powerful technique to evaluate in short-term the color compatibility of consolidants for wall paintings, improving data interpretation and visualization, and thus outperforming the univariate statistical analysis
Bergman Kernel from Path Integral
We rederive the expansion of the Bergman kernel on Kahler manifolds developed
by Tian, Yau, Zelditch, Lu and Catlin, using path integral and perturbation
theory, and generalize it to supersymmetric quantum mechanics. One physics
interpretation of this result is as an expansion of the projector of wave
functions on the lowest Landau level, in the special case that the magnetic
field is proportional to the Kahler form. This is relevant for the quantum Hall
effect in curved space, and for its higher dimensional generalizations. Other
applications include the theory of coherent states, the study of balanced
metrics, noncommutative field theory, and a conjecture on metrics in black hole
backgrounds. We give a short overview of these various topics. From a
conceptual point of view, this expansion is noteworthy as it is a geometric
expansion, somewhat similar to the DeWitt-Seeley-Gilkey et al short time
expansion for the heat kernel, but in this case describing the long time limit,
without depending on supersymmetry.Comment: 27 page
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