Local Electoral Incentives and Decentralized Program Performance

This paper analyzes how electoral incentives affected the performance of a major decentralized conditional cash transfer program intended on reducing school dropout rates among children of poor households in Brazil. We show that while this federal program successfully reduced school dropout by 8 percentage points, the program's impact was 36 percent larger in municipalities governed by mayors who faced reelection possibilities compared to those with lame-duck mayors. First term mayors with good program performance were much more likely to get re-elected. These mayors adopted program implementation practices that were not only more transparent but also associated with better program outcomes.decentralization, electoral incentives, conditional cash transfer, impact evaluation

Limits of stakeholder participation in sustainable development : "where facts are few, experts are many"

Extract from: The Mediterranean coastal areas from watershed to the sea : interactions and changes / by L.F. Cassar ... [et al.]. Proceedings of the MEDCORE International conference, Florence, 10th-14th November 2005The notion of including stakeholders, those affected (positively or negatively) by a sustainable development programme in both its design and implementation, has become a central concern for those implementing such programmes. Such an approach is often referred to as ‘stakeholder participation’, as ‘participatory development’ or more simply still as ‘participation’. How best to achieve this has been the topic of a substantial literature, with a host of different methodologies presented and promoted. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but there has been surprisingly little discussion in the sustainable development literature as to the limits and dangers of participation irrespective of the approach employed to ‘best’ facilitate it. Inter-linked with the limits of participation is the role of specialists and expert opinion in sustainable development. This paper discusses the results of participatory exercises conducted in Gozo (Malta) between 2003 and 2005. On the positive side, participation yielded many useful and interesting insights and invoked a sense of ‘involvement’ in sustainable development, but there were problems and these are discussed in this paper. For example, the outcome of the exercise crucially depends upon representation, and a simplified vision of ‘community’ often employed in participation to make it practicable can load the process in favour of certain stakeholder groups at the expense of others.peer-reviewe

Biological Motion induced mu suppression is reduced in Early Psychosis (EP) patients with active negative symptoms and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

There is evidence of genetic and neural system overlap in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Early Psychosis (EP). Five datasets were pooled to compare mu suppression index (MSI), a proxy of mirror neuron activity, in EP, high functioning ASD, and healthy subjects (HS). ASDs and EPs with "active" negative symptoms showed significant differences in mu suppression, in response to Biological Motion/point-light display animation, compared to HS. Preliminary findings suggest that similar neural network deficits in ASD and EP could be driven by the expression of negative symptoms in the latter group of patients. These findings may aid future studies on EP and ASD and facilitate the formulation of new hypotheses regarding their pathophysiology

Impact of elasticity on the piezoresponse of adjacent ferroelectric domains investigated by scanning force microscopy

As a consequence of elasticity, mechanical deformations of crystals occur on a length scale comparable to their thickness. This is exemplified by applying a homogeneous electric field to a multi-domain ferroelectric crystal: as one domain is expanding the adjacent ones are contracting, leading to clamping at the domain boundaries. The piezomechanically driven surface corrugation of micron-sized domain patterns in thick crystals using large-area top electrodes is thus drastically suppressed, barely accessible by means of piezoresponse force microscopy

Electrostatic topology of ferroelectric domains in YMnO3_3

Trimerization-polarization domains in ferroelectric hexagonal YMnO$_3$ were resolved in all three spatial dimensions by piezoresponse force microscopy. Their topology is dominated by electrostatic effects with a range of 100 unit cells and reflects the unusual electrostatic origin of the spontaneous polarization. The response of the domains to locally applied electric fields explains difficulties in transferring YMnO$_3$ into a single-domain state. Our results demonstrate that the wealth of non-displacive mechanisms driving ferroelectricity that emerged from the research on multiferroics are a rich source of alternative types of domains and domain-switching phenomena

Economics of Marital Instability

This paper focuses on the causes of divorce. Section I developsa theoretical analysis of marital dissolution incorporating uncertaintyabout the outcomes of marital decisions into a framework of utilitymaximization and the marriage market. Section II explores the implica-tions of the theoretical analysis with cross-sectional data,primarilythe 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity and the Terman sample. Therelevance of both the theoretical and empirical analyses in explainingthe recent acceleration in the U.S. divorce rate is discussed.