Does the risk of poverty reduce happiness?

We investigate the unexplored link between the risk of poverty and happiness in the context of a developing country. Using unique longitudinal data, we estimate workers’ vulnerability to income poverty and find a strong negative relationship between vulnerability and life satisfaction, over and above the positive income effect commonly documented in the literature. The result is robust and cannot be reduced to the effect of two-sided uncertainty. A matched behavioral experiment shows that respondents are significantly loss averse. We conclude that downside risk is an important determinant of happiness and of economic decisions under uncertainty. Policies that mitigate downward risk may thus have direct impacts on both well-being and efficiency

The Returns to formality and Informality in Urban Africa

This paper addresses the question as to why we observe such large differentials in earnings in urban African labour markets after controlling for observable human capital. We first use a three year panel across Ghana and Tanzania and find common patterns for both countries assuming that movement between occupations is exogenous. Unobserved individual market ability is by far the most important factor explaining the variance of earnings. Sector differences do matter even with controls for ability and the sectoral gap between private wage employment and civil servants is about 50 per cent, once we control for unobserved time-invariant factors. Wage earners earn the same as the selfemployed in both Ghana and Tanzania. An additional important aspect of formality is enterprise size. At most half of the OLS effect of size on earnings can be explained by unobservable ability. Workers in largest firms are the high earners with wage rates which exceed those of civil servants. We then use an extension of the Ghana panel to five years to assess the extent of possible biases from the assumption of exogenous movement. We find evidence that this is important and that OLS may be understating the extent of both the size effect and the private sector wage (negative) premium. The implications of our results for understanding the nature of formal and informal employment in Africa are discussed.

Observations of the chromospheric Evershed flow of sunspot penumbra

The sunspot penumbra is usually observed in the photosphere and it is of particular interest for its magneto-convection which seems to transport the heat from the top of the convection zone into the solar atmosphere. It is well known that the penumbra magnetic field extends in the upper layers of the solar atmosphere forming the so called super-penumbra. Thanks to the application of the Self Organizing Map technique to a spectral dataset containing monochromatic images acquired along the Ca II 854.2 nm and H$\alpha$ 656.28 nm lines, we were able to segment the penumbra and to measure the plasma velocity along the chromospheric portions of penumbral filaments. We found that the head, body and tail of penumbral filaments show vertical flows compatible with the persistence of the Evershed flow. Instead, the inverse Evershed flow has been observed only in the outer portion of the super-penumbra. We found that two opposite Evershed regimes work next to each other, without overlapping and both contribute to the downflow around sunspots. These results confirm the uncombed model of the sunspot penumbra and provide some hints that the downflow around sunspots may be ascribed to the magnetic field dragging the plasma down

Ties that bind:Network redistributive pressure and economic decisions in village economies

In this paper, we identify economic implications of the pressure to share resources within a social network. Through a set of field experiments in rural Tanzania we randomly increased the expected harvest of the treatment group by the assignment of an improved and much more productive variety of maize. We find that treated individuals reduced the interaction with their social network by discussing with fewer people in the village the type of seed they received, so as not to reveal their improved seed. We also find that treated individuals reduced labor input by asking fewer people in the village to work on their farm during the growing season and, as a result, obtained fewer actual harvest gains

Altruism and the pressure to share: Lab evidence from Tanzania

We propose a novel laboratory experiment to document the pressure to share income within social networks in Africa. We find that the redistributive pressure exerted via the possibility of receiving a claim increases altruism, while the possibility of hiding from such claim reduces it. Our results indicate that sharing norms are crucial drivers of giving to other members of the network. We also find that pressure to share has a detrimental effect on the undertaking of profitable but risky investments

Historical solar Ca II K observations at the Rome and Catania observatories

Here we present the little explored Ca II K archives from the Rome and the Catania observatories and analyse the digitised images from these archives to derive plage areas.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to be published in "Nuovo Cimento C" as proceeding of the Third Meeting of the Italian Solar and Heliospheric Communit

How does the human RUNX3 gene induce apoptosis in gastric cancer? Latest data, reflections and reactions.

RUNX3 is the oldest known gene in the RUNX family. Data have demonstrated its function to be thoroughly involved the neurogenesis of the dorsal root ganglia, T-cell differentiation and tumorigenesis of gastric epithelium. As a TGF-beta target, RUNX3 protein is believed to be involved in TGF-beta-mediated tumor suppressor pathway; however, little is known about its role in apoptosis. According to recent data reported by Yamamura et al., (J Biol Chem 2006; 281:5267-76), RUNX3 interacts with FoxO3a/FKHRL1 expressed in gastric cancer cells to activate Bim and induce apoptosis. The cooperation between RUNX3 and the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway component FoxO3a/FKHRL1 suggests the putative role of RUNX3 in the homoeostasis of gastric cells and in stomach cancer control. Here we discuss recent breakthroughs in our understanding of the mechanisms of RUNX3 in gastric malignancy and comment on possible future trends and perspectives

Rather First in a Village than Second in Rome? The Effect of Students' Class Rank in Primary School on Subsequent Academic Achievements

Using panel data on Italian students from 2013 to 2019, we compare the effect of a student's class rank to the effect of class quality in primary school on subsequent academic outcomes. We propose a new strategy to identify the impact of rank while controlling for peer effects, by leveraging grades on class exams to construct the rank, and grades on national standardized tests to control for students' ability. Ranking first in primary school compared to last results in an improvement of 8.1 percentiles in the national standardized test grade distribution in middle school and 7.6 percentiles in high school. Despite the sizable impact of rank, our analysis highlights that a one standard deviation increase in class quality is five-fold greater than a similar increase in rank. Finally, using an extensive student survey, we establish that the rank effect is channeled through sorting into better high schools and psychological mechanisms