Essays on Human Capital Accumulation and Inequality.

This thesis is composed by four independent chapters. Their common denominator is the process of human capital accumulation analyzed under different perspectives and using different techniques. In the following I will shortly describe each chapter in more detail. Chapter 1 addresses an important aspect of the effects of trade liberalization that has gained much attention in recent years: raising skill premia. It is motivated by recent evidence showing that trade liberalization in developing countries is often associated with a large increase in wage inequality. I investigate the mechanism through which a trade related increase in the demand for skilled labor affects human capital investment and the wealth distribution of a developing country economy. In particular I focus on a scenario where the liberalizing economy is in a poverty trap. This is because developing economies are often plagued by credit market imperfections. Imperfect financial markets raise the probability that individuals are constrained in their human capital investment decisions and that the economy is a poverty trap. I use a standard overlapping generation model to show how a trade related increase in the demand for skilled labor can release a developing country from a poverty trap, leading to increased human capital accumulation and technology progress. The skill biased technological shock benefits the whole economy and "trickles down" - through the interest rate - to unskilled workers a la Aghion & Bolton (1997). Chapter 2, which is joint work with Lidia Farre, analyzes the educational choices of Argentinean teenagers during different phases of the economic cycle. We use data for Argentinean households over the period 1995-2002 to examine households' response to negative idiosyncratic income shocks in different macroeconomic scenarios. We study how teenagers' school progress responds to household head unemployment during periods of high economic growth and compare it to the response during recession years, when families are more likely to be financially constrained. After accounting for the potential endogeneity of household head unemployment we find that school failure in response to unemployment shocks increases during periods of economic instability. Further we find that for first born boys this results from a greater involvement in labor market activities. Our results add to the existing literature on the long term cost of macroeconomic crises. In Chapter 3 I analyze a different aspect of the Argentinean macroeconomic crisis and the related social costs. Argentina experienced an important increase of informal employment and wage dispersion in the last 20 years. This chapter extends a search model with exogenous human capital accumulation to include an informal sector. The model is parametrized such to fit Argentinean data in order to investigate the effect of employment protection measures on informality, employment and wage dispersion under two different macroeconomic conditions. I find that for low educated workers both severance pay and minimum wages increase informality. In the presence of vii a wage floor severance payments do not affect employment but only shift marginal workers from the covered sector to the unregulated one. I find that a decrease in the return to human capital skills increases the incentives to seek informal employment. Labor market protection measures and declining human capital return are able to explain most of the increase in informality and much of the increase in wage dispersion. Last chapter is coauthored with Christian Dustmann and focuses on the very early phases of human capital investment: pre school years. In this chapter we investigate test score gaps and their evolution for white and ethnic minority children aged 3 and 5 in the UK. We also analyse the effect of early school exposure on test score gaps, and differences in the effect of entry age on early school performance. Ethnic test score gaps at age 3 - when most children are not enrolled in Kindergarten yet - are large. Background characteristics (in particular exposure to the English language) explain part, but not all of this differential. Between the age of 3 and 5, the ethnic test score gap narrows. Exposure to preschool measured at age 5 - even if limited to only a few months - has a larger positive effects on test scores for those minority groups who started from a more disadvantaged position. Further, keeping exposure to pre-school constant, ethnic minority children loose less from entering pre-school at a younger age than majority individuals; for some groups, there is an overall gain from entering school early. Our findings point at a reduction in achievement gaps between minority and majority children in the UK between age 3 and age 5, which is partly due to a larger positive effect of pre-school on achievements of minorities.Human capital; Economic development;

Evolutionary population synthesis: models, analysis of the ingredients and application to high-z galaxies

Evolutionary population synthesis models for a wide range of metallicities, ages, star formation histories, and Horizontal Branch morphologies, including blue morphologies at high metallicity, are computed. The energetics of the post Main Sequence evolutionary phases are evaluated with the fuel consumption theorem. The impact on the models of the stellar evolutionary tracks is assessed. We find modest differences in synthetic broad-band colours as induced by the use of different tracks in our code (e.g. d(V-K) ~ 0.08 mag; d(B-V) ~ 0.03 mag). These differences are smaller than the scatter among other models in the literature, even when the latter adopt the same evolutionary tracks. The models are calibrated with globular cluster data from the Milky Way for old ages, and the Magellanic Clouds plus the merger remnant galaxy NGC 7252, for ages of ~ 0.1 - 2 Gyr, in a large wavelength range from U to K. Particular emphasis is put on the contribution from the Thermally-Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch phase. We show that this phase is crucial for the modelling of young stellar populations by the comparison with observed spectral energy distributions of Magellanic Clouds clusters, which are characterised by high fluxes both blueward and redward the V-band. We find that the combination of the near-IR spectral indices C2 and H2O can be used to determine the metallicity of ~ 1 Gyr stellar populations. We re-analyze the spectral energy distributions of some of the high-z galaxies (2.4 < z < 2.9) observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope by Yan et al. (2004). Their high rest-frame near-IR fluxes are reproduced very well with the models including Thermally-Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch stars for ages in the range 0.6-1.5 Gyr, suggesting formation redshifts around z ~ 3-6.Comment: 29 pages, 30 figures, MNRAS, in press. Very few minor revisions with respect to the submitted version. Improved Figures 2, 18, 19, 23 and 27. More models available at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~maraston

Parental Perceptions of the Management of Childern with Type 1 Diabetes at School: A Broader Perspective

The purpose of this study was to examine parental perceptions related to the care and management of children with Type 1 diabetes at school. Parents of elementary and middle school-age children with Type 1 diabetes completed a survey questionnaire, which included one open-ended question. The questionnaire was developed by the researchers based on original questionnaires by Nabors, Lehmkuhl, Christos, and Andreone (2003) and Lewis, Powers, Goodenough and Poth (2003 ). Permission to use and modify the questionnaires was provided by Nabors and Poth. Results from this study showed a split in parental satisfaction regarding care provided by school personnel in the following areas: level of knowledge and skills on diabetes, ability to handle a hypoglycemic episode, communication between parents and school, and accommodation in meeting the needs of the child at school. The majority of parents offered suggestions for school nurses and school personnel regarding the care of children with diabetes. Suggestions included the need for training and education, more support, and better communication. Findings from this study provide evidence to support specific content for educating school staff, a greater presence of licensed personnel, and more open communication between families and school personnel

Resonances of the Unknown

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevance of second-order cybernetics for a theory of architectural design and related discourse. Design/methodology/approach – First, the relation of architectural design to the concept of “poiesis” is clarified. Subsequently, selected findings of Gotthard Günther are revisited and related to an architectural poetics. The last part of the paper consists of revisiting ideas mentioned previously, however, on the level of a discourse that has incorporated the ideas and offers a poetic way of understanding them

The Funder and the Intermediary, in Support of the Artist: A Look at Rationales, Roles, and Relationships

This article, examining the ecology of funders' use of intermediaries and regranting organizations, came about as a direct offshoot of GIA's Research Initiative on Support for Individual Artists, begun in 2011. As the research team worked to map the pathways that support followed from funder to artist, a complex map of options and routes began to emerge, and intermediaries and regranters were often part of that picture. It became increasingly clear that this was an essential and important part of the overall system. It also emerged that this was an area of philanthropic practice that had been little examined, and about which little had been published. Interviews with funders during the research work also revealed that while a number of foundations were using intermediaries, their practices had independently evolved, and a wide range of methods and procedures were in use. What follows is the first tangible product of GIA's Research Initiative on Support for Individual Artists. In her analysis, Claudia Bach provides both an overview of the range of philanthropic practices involving intermediaries and regranters, as well as an exploration of a number of related topics and questions that emerged during the course of this work