Women in Politics: A New Instrument for Studying the Impact of Education on Growth

This paper tests the growth model of distance to the technological frontier, which states that the closer an economy is to the frontier, the higher the relative importance of innovation relative to imitation as a source of productivity growth. Hence, an economy closer to the technological frontier should invest more in skilled labor since innovation is a skill-intensive activity. I use the proportion of female legislators as an instrument for skilled labor, in contrast to Vandenbussche, Aghion, and Meghir (2006) who used lagged educational expenditures. The results with the new instrument are consistent with the theoretical prediction and the previous results of Vandenbussche, Aghion, and Meghir (2006).distance to the technological frontier; women in politics

Do Gender Quotas Influence Women’s Representation and Policies?

This paper investigates the effect of applying gender quotas on policy decisions. I first examine the effect of gender quotas on the representation of female legislators, study the correlation between gender quotas and different types of government expenditures, and then use quotas as an instrument for the proportion of female legislators to investigate the effect of female legislators on policy outcomes. The results show that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of government expenditure on health and social welfare to GDP by 0.18 and 0.67 percentage points, respectively. The robustness check supports that the effect of quotas on female legislators is likely to be translated into the influence of female policymakers on social welfare.female legislator; gender quotas; policy outcomes

Female Policymaker and Educational Expenditure: Cross-Country Evidence

This paper investigates the influence of women in politics on decision-making using public educational expenditures as the outcome of interest. The results suggest that an increase in the share of female legislators by one percentage point increases the ratio of educational expenditures to GDP by 0.028 percentage points. I then consider some contexts, on which the influence of female legislators may depend. The effect of female legislators on educational policies is strengthened accounting for forms of government, but not influenced by left-wing government, electoral rules, parliamentary system and non-marriage. Moreover, this study supports the hypothesis that the identity of the legislator matters for policy.Education; female legislator; political economy

Corrections to holographic entanglement plateau

We investigate the robustness of the Araki-Lieb inequality in a two-dimensional (2D) conformal field theory (CFT) on torus. The inequality requires that $\Delta S=S(L)-|S(L-\ell)-S(\ell)|$ is nonnegative, where $S(L)$ is the thermal entropy and $S(L-\ell)$, $S(\ell)$ are the entanglement entropies. Holographically there is an entanglement plateau in the BTZ black hole background, which means that there exists a critical length such that when $\ell \leq \ell_c$ the inequality saturates $\Delta S=0$. In thermal AdS background, the holographic entanglement entropy leads to $\Delta S=0$ for arbitrary $\ell$. We compute the next-to-leading order contributions to $\Delta S$ in the large central charge CFT at both high and low temperatures. In both cases we show that $\Delta S$ is strictly positive except for $\ell = 0$ or $\ell = L$. This turns out to be true for any 2D CFT. In calculating the single interval entanglement entropy in a thermal state, we develop new techniques to simplify the computation. At a high temperature, we ignore the finite size correction such that the problem is related to the entanglement entropy of double intervals on a complex plane. As a result, we show that the leading contribution from a primary module takes a universal form. At a low temperature, we show that the leading thermal correction to the entanglement entropy from a primary module does not take a universal form, depending on the details of the theory.Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures; V2, typos corrected, published versio

SUVH1, a Su(var)3-9 family member, promotes the expression of genes targeted by DNA methylation.

Transposable elements are found throughout the genomes of all organisms. Repressive marks such as DNA methylation and histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9) methylation silence these elements and maintain genome integrity. However, how silencing mechanisms are themselves regulated to avoid the silencing of genes remains unclear. Here, an anti-silencing factor was identified using a forward genetic screen on a reporter line that harbors a LUCIFERASE (LUC) gene driven by a promoter that undergoes DNA methylation. SUVH1, a Su(var)3-9 homolog, was identified as a factor promoting the expression of the LUC gene. Treatment with a cytosine methylation inhibitor completely suppressed the LUC expression defects of suvh1, indicating that SUVH1 is dispensable for LUC expression in the absence of DNA methylation. SUVH1 also promotes the expression of several endogenous genes with promoter DNA methylation. However, the suvh1 mutation did not alter DNA methylation levels at the LUC transgene or on a genome-wide scale; thus, SUVH1 functions downstream of DNA methylation. Histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4) trimethylation was reduced in suvh1; in contrast, H3K9 methylation levels remained unchanged. This work has uncovered a novel, anti-silencing function for a member of the Su(var)3-9 family that has previously been associated with silencing through H3K9 methylation

Stochastic Modeling of Hybrid Cache Systems

In recent years, there is an increasing demand of big memory systems so to perform large scale data analytics. Since DRAM memories are expensive, some researchers are suggesting to use other memory systems such as non-volatile memory (NVM) technology to build large-memory computing systems. However, whether the NVM technology can be a viable alternative (either economically and technically) to DRAM remains an open question. To answer this question, it is important to consider how to design a memory system from a "system perspective", that is, incorporating different performance characteristics and price ratios from hybrid memory devices. This paper presents an analytical model of a "hybrid page cache system" so to understand the diverse design space and performance impact of a hybrid cache system. We consider (1) various architectural choices, (2) design strategies, and (3) configuration of different memory devices. Using this model, we provide guidelines on how to design hybrid page cache to reach a good trade-off between high system throughput (in I/O per sec or IOPS) and fast cache reactivity which is defined by the time to fill the cache. We also show how one can configure the DRAM capacity and NVM capacity under a fixed budget. We pick PCM as an example for NVM and conduct numerical analysis. Our analysis indicates that incorporating PCM in a page cache system significantly improves the system performance, and it also shows larger benefit to allocate more PCM in page cache in some cases. Besides, for the common setting of performance-price ratio of PCM, "flat architecture" offers as a better choice, but "layered architecture" outperforms if PCM write performance can be significantly improved in the future.Comment: 14 pages; mascots 201