Political Islam, Internet Use and Willingness to Migrate: Evidence from the Arab Barometer

This paper investigates the relationship between political Islam, willingness to migrate and Internet use by exploiting the second (2010-2011) and the third (2012-2014) waves of the Arab Barometer. In an effort to explain individual-level willingness to migrate from the Arab world, it investigates the channel through which the more people support political Islam the less they are willing to migrate. At the same time, it explores the fact that the Internet could potentially act as a vehicle of political Islam. Indeed, our findings indicate that there exists a positive relationship between Internet use and individual-level willingness to migrate, while there exists a negative relationship between political Islam and individual-level willingness to migrate. The findings indicate also that there is no significant effect of Internet use on political Islam

Investment, insurance and weather shocks: Evidence from Cambodia

The livelihoods of poor people in developing countries are increasingly dependent on weather shocks whose effects are exacerbated by the lack of access to adequate insurance markets allowing risk hedging. Index-based insurance underwrites a weather risk as a proxy for economic loss: when the index falls below a certain level, farmers automatically get a payment. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of an Index-based insurance on investment decisions in profitable but risky inputs in presence of weather shocks by means of an incentivized lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Cambodia. The protocol is designed so as to study the extent to which investment decisions change under risk or ambiguity, for different levels of initial wealth, under contract nonperformance (i.e., when claims are not repaid by the insurer) and when the insurance is fully subsidized. The findings indicate that, while the mere presence of a market for insurance increases investment, the strength of the effect crucially depends upon the level of initial wealth and upon the subjects' ability to correctly assess the probability of a shock

Frequency of symbol occurrences in simple non-primitive stochastic models

We study the random variable Y-n representing the number of occurrences of a given symbol in a word of length n generated at random. The stochastic model we assume is a simple non-ergodic model defined by the product of two primitive rational formal series, which form two distinct ergodic components. We obtain asymptotic evaluations for the mean and the variance of Y-n and its limit distribution. It turns out that there are two main cases: if one component is dominant and non-degenerate we get a Gaussian limit distribution; if the two components are equipotent and have different leading terms of the mean, we get a uniform limit distribution. Other particular limit distributions are obtained in the case of a degenerate dominant component and in the equipotent case when the leading terms of the expectation values are equal

Frequency of symbol occurrences in bicomponent stochastic models

We give asymptotic estimates of the frequency of occurrences of a symbol in a random word Generated by any bicomponent stochastic model. More precisely, we consider the random variable Y-n representing the number of occurrences of a given symbol in a word of length n generated at random; the stochastic model is defined by a rational formal series r having a linear representation with two primitive components. This model includes the case when r is the product or the sum of two primitive rational formal series. We obtain asymptotic evaluations for the mean value and the variance of Yn and its limit distribution

Localized states and interaction induced delocalization in Bose gases with quenched disorder

Very diluted Bose gas placed into a disordered environment falls into a fragmented localized state. At some critical density the repulsion between particles overcomes the disorder. The gas transits into a coherent superfluid state. In this article the geometrical and energetic characteristics of the localized state at zero temperature and the critical density at which the quantum phase transition from the localized to the superfluid state proceeds are found.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figur