Conditional cash transfers, adult work incentives, and poverty

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. The authors examine whether the PROGRESA program of Mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time, and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty. Using the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time. Their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures.Rural Poverty Reduction,Population Policies,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

"Shouldn't I use a polarquestion?" Proper Question Forms Disentangling Inconsistencies in Dialogue Systems

This work reports on the description of a specific class of clarification requests, adopted for the negotiation of pieces of information part of the common ground for argumentation strategies in human-machine interaction. Two studies are carried out to prove the adequateness of a specific form of polar question in a specific pragmatic situation, where a presupposition is contradicted by a new evidence. Whereas the first one proves the appropriateness of the negative form, the second one also demonstrate how the use of such a form, in the aforementioned pragmatic situation, can affect the principle of robustness, in terms of observability and recoverability, important in human–machine interaction applications. Given the results obtained in the two studies, dialogue systems with such capabilities are, therefore, a desirable goal, as they are expected to lead to improved usability and naturalness in conversation. For this reason, I present here a system capable of detecting conflicts and of using argumentation strategies to signal them consistently with previous observations

Education and life satisfaction: perception or reality?

Using data from the Gallup World Poll, this paper analyze the way in which perceptions on thequality of education affect wellbeing. In addition, we explore if educational quality perceptions aredetermined by objective educational outputs, such as international standardized tests scores (i.e. PISAscores) and individual educational attainment. Results indicate that educational quality perceptionsare positively correlated with standardized test scores but negatively correlated with individualeducational attainment. Similarly, favorable perception on the quality of education contributes tohigher individual wellbeing, even after controlling for individual educational attainment and othertraditional determinants of wellbeingWellbeing, educational quality perceptions, educational outcomes

The Estimation of the NAIRU and the Effect of Permanent Sectoral Employment Reallocation. The Italian Evidence.

This paper analyses the NAIRU making use of a cointegrated VAR and of Italian labour market data. We show that a cointegrated VAR represents a statistically adequate (using Aris Spanos's terminology) approach to the estimation of the NAIRU. This is an effective way to overcome several problems affecting standard structural approach. In particular the paper investigates whether permanent employment shift across Italian industrial sector [measured by the Neumann and Topel (1991)'s employment-based dispersion index] has an effect on unemployment. Among the findings of this paper we emphasize that sectoral employment shifts affect unemployment both in the long- and in the short-term. Moreover, we find that the effect of sectoral reallocation on the unemployment rate occurs only after some delay.Macroeconometrics, Employment Shifts, Italian Economy, NAIRU, VECM

Il NAIRU: la stima e l’effetto della riallocazione settoriale permanente dell’occupazione

Questo saggio analizza il NAIRU utilizzando un VAR cointegrato e dati che riferiscono al mercato del lavoro italiano. In questo saggio si mostrerà perché un VAR cointegrato rappresenta un approccio statisticamente adeguato alla stima del NAIRU, cioè un modo efficace di superare i diversi problemi connessi all’approccio strutturale standard. In particolare il saggio si propone di valutare se uno shift permanente nella composizione settoriale dell’occupazione nell’industria italiana (allo scopo di misurare la variazione settoriale della domanda di lavoro è stato usato l’indice di dispersione riferito all’occupazione sviluppato da Neumann e Topel [34]) ha effetti sulla disoccupazione. I risultati di questo saggio indicano che lo shift settoriale permanente dell’occupazione ha un effetto sulla disoccupazione sia nel lungo che nel breve periodo. Un altro risultato interessante è che l’effetto della riallocazione settoriale sul tasso di disoccupazione si manifesta solo con un certo ritardo.

The Effect of Income on Demand for Micronutrients in Poor Rural Mexico

We estimate income elasticities for a variety of macro- and micro-nutrients using a sample of poor rural households in Mexico. The nutrient-income elasticity is estimated using a linear regression model controlling both for the clustered nature of our data and for the bias due to measurement error in nutrient consumption at the household level. Our preferred estimates (instrumental variable-fixed effect specification for the sample of all households) show a sizeable positive elasticity for some nutrients (especially vitamin A 0.8, vitamin C 0.69 and calcium 0.45). For other nutrients the effect of income on the consumption is still significant but very small (elasticity for fiber is only 0.09 and for iron 0.08). We also test for the robustness of our estimates using a semi-parametric estimator (partially linear model) and whether the presence of zero consumption for specific micronutrients in our sample, such as cholesterol and heme iron, can be a source of bias for our estimates.vitamin A , vitamin C; folate; iron; zinc; calcium; calories; protein; fat; carbohydrates; Income elasticity; partially linear model.

Silent pauses as clarification trigger

Among possible pragmatic feedback an interlocutor can use to acknowledge the degree of understanding of an utterance, clarification requests (CRs) are to be considered. The functional role of CRs can furthermore be expressed via silent pauses - or failed turn-giving moves - which express an understanding problem and are solved through a clarify speech act. In this work, we therefore hypothesise that some silent pauses, in specific conditions, may also have an interactional role which is interpreted by the speaker as a clarification need

The Impact of Oportunidades on Consumption, Savings and Transfers *

In this paper, we estimate the effect of the Mexican conditional cash transfer programme, Oportunidades , on transfers, savings and consumption for treated households. We find positive effects on consumption of non‐durable and durable goods, an increase in savings coupled with a drop in the number and values of loans, and a reduction of in‐kind transfers received by households in treatment areas. These results are consistent with the existing evidence that conditional cash transfer programmes have beneficial effects in both the short and medium term, but that they partly crowd out private transfers.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93746/1/j.1475-5890.2012.00163.x.pd