Employers have a role to play in encouraging increased participation in physical activities

Research by Grace Lordan and Debayan Pakrashi quantified the benefits of exercise for mental and physical health. Given that the average person recognizes the benefits but does not meet the recommended amount, how can we motivate people to exercise? Simply disseminating information on the benefits is not enough to motivate people to exercise. Because many of us lack the time or work in sedentary jobs, one policy option is for employers to encourage exercise during work hours. The benefits of a healthier work-force would pay off in terms of reduced absenteeism and productivity gains

Do all activities “weigh” equally?: how different physical activities differ as predictors of weight

In Britain, it is recommended that, to stay healthy, adults should do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every week. The recommendations provided by the U.K. government, however, remain silent in regard to the type of activity that should be done. Using the annual Health Survey for England we compare how different types of physical activities predict a person's weight. In particular, we consider clinically measured body mass index and waist circumference. We document mean slopes emanating from ordinary least squares regressions with these measures as the dependent variables. We show that individuals who walk at a brisk or fast pace are more likely to have a lower weight when compared to individuals doing other activities. Additionally, we highlight that the association between physical activity and weight is stronger for females and individuals over the age of 50. Our overall conclusions are robust to a number of specifications

Roommate effects in health outcomes

We use randomized roommate assignment in dormitories in a college in Kolkata in India to examine peer effects in weight gains among roommates. We use administrative data on weight, height, and test scores of students at the time of college admission and then survey these students at the end of their first and second years in college. We do not find any significant roommate specific peer effect in weight gain. Our results rather suggest that an obese roommate reduces the probability that the other roommates become obese in subsequent years. We examine potential mechanism using survey data on students' eating habits, smoking, exercise, and sleeping patterns. We find that obese roommates sleep longer, which in turn improves the sleep pattern of others, which might explain the weak negative effect of obese roommates on the weight of others in the same room

Mobilizing P2P Diffusion for New Agricultural Practices: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

We run a randomized controlled experiment in which farmers trained on a new rice cultivation method (SRI) teach two other farmers selected by us. We find that farmers invited to teach others are much more likely to adopt new practices than farmers who only receive the BRAC training. Teacher farmers are e¤ective at spreading knowledge and inducing adoption.Incentivizing teachers improves knowledge transmission but not adoption. Matching teachers with farmers who list them as role models does not improve knowledge transmission and may hurt adoption. Using mediation analysis, we find that the knowledge of the teacher is correlated with that of their student, consistent with knowledge transmission. We also find that SRI knowledge predicts adoption of some SRI practices, and that adoption by teachers predicts adoption by their students, suggesting that students follow the example of their teacher. Explicitly mobilizing peer-to-peer (P2P) transmission of knowledge thus seems a cost-e¤ective way of inducing the adoption of new agricultural practices

Does membership in international organizations affect incidence of child labour?

Bibliography: p. 75-80Some pages are in colour

Essays on Migration and Economic Development: With Special Reference To The Chinese Economy

China’s unprecedented growth over the last few decades is a major episode in global economic history. The growth experience of China is similar to that of Japan, the East Asian tigers and the tiger cubs, who all experienced a long period of relatively high and stable growth in the later part of the 20th century. After the economic reforms of the 1980s, China has transformed into the second largest economy of the world, having overtaken Germany and Japan, and is expected to overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world this decade. Rapid economic ascendance has brought on many challenges though, including high inequality and rapid urbanization: China is not only growing at twice the rate of that of the European nations, it is also urbanizing fast since the economic reforms. With about 150 million migrant workers already residing in the major Chinese cities and more potential migrants expected to migrate to the urban growth hubs before the Chinese growth miracle has run its course, a key current policy challenge comes from the increasing inequality between the urban hukou holders and the rural to urban migrants. Three major themes around these developments have been taken up in this thesis: the theoretical macroeconomic puzzle of how a transition economy like China can sustain a fairly constant growth path for decades; the empirical question of just how much of the inequality between rural migrants and urban hukou holders reflects discrimination rather than productivity differentials; the micro-theoretical question of how one can get discrimination in a model wherein individual cities with insiders compete for migrants; and the general question of migrant assimilation as a function of their treatment by the host society

Migration and discrimination in urban China: a decomposition approach

Currently, about 150 million migrant workers reside in the major Chinese cities, where they are treated like second-class citizens by the local city governments and denied access to government jobs and welfare entitlements, with large differences existing in their treatment across the cities. In this paper, we use a new and unique dataset of urban natives and rural to urban migrants from 15 different cities in China to document this differential treatment. We apply a relatively new non-parametric technique, Nopo decomposition, which takes into account differences in the distribution of observable characteristics to decompose the wage gap that exists between the two groups and estimate the extent of discrimination faced by the migrants. Rural-to-urban migrants are found to be discriminated in the urban labour market, but to a lesser extent than has been argued in the literature. We also find that a large gap exists between the national legislation on the treatment of migrants on one hand and the implementation and enforcement by city governments on the other, and that this differential treatment helps explain part of the level of discrimination

Do All Activities "Weigh" Equally? How Different Physical Activities Differ as Predictors of Weight

In Britain, it is recommended that, to stay healthy, adults should do 150 minutes of moderateintensity physical activity every week. The recommendations provided by the U.K. government, however, remain silent in regard to the type of activity that should be done. Using the annual Health Survey for England we compare how different types of physical activities predict a person's weight. In particular, we consider clinically measured body mass index and waist circumference. We document mean slopes emanating from ordinary least squares regressions with these measures as the dependent variables. We show that individuals who walk at a brisk or fast pace are more likely to have a lower weight when compared to individuals doing other activities. Additionally, we highlight that the association between physical activity and weight is stronger for females and individuals over the age of 50. Our overall conclusions are robust to a number of specifications

Do WTO members employ less child labour?

Purpose - Trade liberalization could either exacerbate or ameliorate the incidence of child labour. This paper aims to examine the effect of trade liberalization through membership in the GATT/WTO on the incidence of child labour across countries and over time. The authors examine child labour force participation data and WTO membership for 94 countries between 1980 and 1999. They find that membership in the WTO is negatively correlated with child labour. However, they do not find a statistically significant relationship between openness and child labour and therefore rule out the trade-expanding channel of WTO membership on child labour. Design/methodology/approach - The authors' regression equations examine the effect of GATT or WTO membership on the incidence of child labour. They examine data from 94 countries from 1980 and 1999 and employ a fixed-effects regression. They estimate different models taking different variables as control variables. They find a statistically significant effect negative of WTO membership on the incidence of child labour. They do not find a statistically significant effect of openness on child labour. Findings - The authors find that membership in the WTO did reduce child labour. They do not find a statistically significant effect of openness on child labour. Research limitations/implications - WTO membership does not increase the incidence of child labour as some critics claim. Membership itself is associated with reduced child labour so it may not be necessary to expand trade through international agreements in order to impact the incidence of child labour. Practical implications - Contrary to critics of the WTO, membership does not exacerbate the problem of child labour. Originality/value - This paper presents new data on child labour in a panel across countries over time. It is the first paper to systematically estimate the impact of international agreements on the incidence of child labour