Social Preferences Among the People of Sanquianga in Colombia

The afro-descendent people of the Sanquianga region in the Colombian Pacific Coast live under particularly extreme poverty conditions. Although highly integrated to markets through very frequent interactions, their access to basic social services and stable income generating activities are constrained, and their dependence on their local commons for food, fisheries, wood and firewood is high. Nevertheless, their pro-social preferences are rather high compared to other regions of Colombia and the world. High levels of altruism, sharing, reciprocity and hyper-fairness were observed in a series of Dictator, Ultimatum and Third-Party Punishment experiments conducted with a sample of 186 adults of two villages in the region. One of the more striking findings is that personal material wealth is associated with lower levels of generosity in the DG and UG games. Some explanations based on the historical roots of these small-scale societies may explain such pro-social behavior.poverty, generosity, pro-sociality, experimental economics, dictator,ultimatum, third-party punishment, Sanquianga, Pacific Coast, afro-descendants

Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded in a context of regulations and social norms that the group of users face. Such norms and rules affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives and therefore determine their decision to cooperate or over extract the resources from the common-pool. This paper discusses the importance of social norms in shaping behavior in the commons through the lens of experiments, and in particular experiments conducted in the field with people that usually face these social dilemmas in their daily life. Through a large sample of experimental sessions with around one thousand people between villagers and students, I test some hypothesis about behavior in the commons when regulations and social norms constrain the choices of people. The results suggest that people evaluate several components of the intrinsic and material motivations in their decision to cooperate. While responding in the expected direction to a imperfectly monitored fine on over extraction, the expected cost of the regulation is not a sufficient explanatory factor for the changes in behavior by the participants in the experiments. Even with zero cost of violations, people can respond positively to an external regulator that issues a normative statement about a rule that is aimed at solving the social dilemma.Key words: social norms, regulations, cooperation, collective action, common-pool resources, experiemental economics, field experiments

Attitudes and attributes: a field experiment with public officials and transfer recipients In Colombia

Any system of transfer payments must be administered by officials with some degree of discretionary power over the manner in which funds are allocated. Attitudes of such officials regarding the worthiness of various recipients therefore have implications for resource allocation. Using a sample of actual public servants working in education, health, child care and nutrition programs, and a sample of potential and actual beneficiaries of such programs, we attempt to identify the set of recipient attributes that induce the most generous responses from officials. This is done using a design we call the distributive dictator game" which requires officials to rank recipients, with the understanding that a higher ranking corresponds to an increased likelihood of getting a voucher convertible into cash. Interpreting the ranking as the outcome of a random utility model, we estimate the effects of recipient attributes using a rank-order logistic regression. We find that public officials tend to favor women, married persons, individuals with many minor dependents, and refugees from political violence. "Public officials, transfer recipients, field experiments, rank-order logistic regression.

Risk Attitudes and Well-being in Latin America

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literature on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far from proven. We report on field experiments designed to address many of the problems confounding previous analyses of the links between risk preferences and well-being. Our sample includes more than 3,000 participants who were drawn representatively from six Latin American cities: Bogotá, Buenos Aries, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo, San José. In addition to the experiment which reveals interestingcross-country differences, participants completed an extensive survey that provides data on a variety of well-being indicators and a number of important controls. Focusing on risk preferences, we find little evidence of robust links between risk aversion and wellbeing. However, when we analyze the results of three treatments that add elements of reality to the decision problem, we see that these, more subtle, instruments correlate better with well-being, even after controlling for a variety of other important factors like the accumulation of human capital and access to credit.risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, loss aversion, risk pooling, well-being, Latin America

Systematic review on the validity and the use of pain assessment scales in the hospitalized newborns.

Trabajo fin de grado en EnfermeríaLa existencia del dolor en los más pequeños no se ha empezado a tener en cuenta hasta principios de 1980. Desde entonces han sido estructuradas y validadas un número importante de escalas con la finalidad de hacer más fácil y cuantificable la valoración del dolor en los recién nacidos, pero no se han establecidos unas escalas ideales por encima de otras. Objetivos: Conocer la evidencia disponible sobre las herramientas existentes para la evaluación del dolor en el paciente neonatal hospitalizado, y, en base a unos criterios de selección, obtener las escalas de valoración más adecuadas. Metodología: Se llevó a cabo una revisión sistemática a través de las siguientes bases de datos de ciencias de la salud: Pubmed, Cuiden, Cinahl y Scielo. Resultados: Se obtuvieron 20 escalas de valoración del dolor neonatal que habían sido validadas, de estas, las escalas EDIN, NFCS, NIPS, N-PASS y PIPP cumplen los criterios de selección establecidos. Discusión: Se ha podido observar como a pesar de existir un número elevado de escalas de valoración del dolor neonatal, pocas poseen la suficiente evidencia científica para considerarse adecuadas. Esto, además de la falta de implementación de escalas validadas en las UCINs y la falta de formación específica son las principales barreras percibidas por los profesionales de enfermería.The existence of pain in the smallest was not taken into account until early 1980´s. An important number of different scales have been structured and validated to make the evaluation of pain in newborns easier and quantifiable; however, since then any particular scale has been selected over the rest of them. Aim: The main intention is to know the available evidence on the existing tools for the pain-evaluation in the hospitalized newborn patients and, according to some selection criterial, to achieve the most adequate evaluation scales. Methodology: A sistematic review was carried out by means of the following Health Science data-bases: Pubmed, Cuiden, Cinahl and Scielo. Results: The scales EDIN, NFCS, NIPS, N-PASS and PIPP fulfill the established criteria of selection among the 20 scales for the evaluation of pain in newborns that had been selected. Discussion: It has been posible to observe that just a few scales have enough scientific evidence as to be considered adequate, despsite of the large number of different scales that exist. This, in addition to the lack of implementation of scales validated by the NICUs and the lack of specific formation are the main barriers the nursing proffessionals find

Experiences in Using a Multiparadigm and Multiprogramming Approach to Teach an Information Systems Course on Introduction to Programmi

In the current literature, there is limited evidence of the effects of teaching programming languages using two different paradigms concurrently. In this paper, we present our experience in using a multiparadigm and multiprogramming approach for an Introduction to Programming course. The multiparadigm element consisted of teaching the imperative and functional paradigms, while the multiprogramming element involved the Scheme and Python programming languages. For the multiparadigm part, the lectures were oriented to compare the similarities and differences between the functional and imperative approaches. For the multiprogramming part, we chose syntactically simple software tools that have a robust set of prebuilt functions and available libraries. After our experiments, we found that the students were strongly biased towards memorizing the syntax of these languages, jeopardizing their ability to learn to think algorithmically and logically in order to solve the given problems. We believe that teaching students using multiparadigm and multiprogramming techniques could be discouraging, especially for those students with no programming experience. In this research study, we present the results of applying this approach together with the achievements, failures, and trends of the students who were taught with this multipath system

Gender, education and reciprocal generosity: Evidence from 1,500 experiment subjects

There is not general consensus about if women are more or less generous than men. Although the number of papers supporting more generous females is a bit larger than the opposed it is not possible to establish any definitive and systematic gender bias. This paper provides new evidence on this topic using a unique experimental dataset. We used data from a field experiment conducted under identical conditions (and monetary payoffs) in 6 Latin American cities, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo and San José. Our dataset amounted to 3,107 experimental subjects who played the Trust Game. We will analyze the determinants of behavior of second movers, that is, what determines reciprocal generosity. In sharp contrast to previous papers we found that males are more generous than females. In the light of this result, we carried out a systematic analysis of individual features (income, education, age, etc.) for females and males separately. We found differential motivations for women and men. Third, we see that (individual) education enhances prosocial behavior. Lastly, we see that subjects’ expectations are crucial.reciprocal altruism, gender, education

Collective Action forWatershed Management: Field Experiments in Colombia and Kenya

The dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted in Colombia and Kenya. The Irrigation Game was used to explore the provision and appropriation decisions under asymmetric or sequential appropriation, complemented with a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment which looks at provision decisions under symmetric appropriation. The overall results were consistent with the patterns of previous studies: the zero contribution hypotheses is rejected whereas the most effective institution to increase cooperation was face-to-face communication, and above external regulations, although we find that communication works much more effectively in Colombia. We also find that the asymmetric appropriation did reduce cooperation, though the magnitude of the social loss and the effectiveness of alternative institutional options varied across sites.Collective Action, Watersheds, Field Experiments, Colombia, Kenya