Are Estimates of Poverty in Latin America Reliable?

Are Estimates of Poverty in Latin America Reliable?

The New Global Poverty Estimates ? Digging Deeper into a Hole

Recently, the World Bank released ?updated? global poverty estimates. These new numbers are based on a new price survey and a new benchmark international poverty line of $1.25 in 2005 purchasing power parities (PPPs). The new figures purport to describe world poverty since 1981, and thus affect our understanding of the world over the last quarter century of globalization. (...)The New Global Poverty Estimates ? Digging Deeper into a Hole

The Emperor’s New Suit: Global Poverty Estimates Reappraised

The recent revision of the World Bank’s global poverty estimates based on a new $1.25 (2005 PPP) poverty line underlines their unreliability and lack of meaningfulness. It is very difficult to justify various aspects of the Bank’s approach. In the short term, less weight should be given to the Bank’s poverty estimates in monitoring the first MDG. In the longer term, a solution to the observed problems requires adopting an altogether different method. Such an alternative exists but requires global institutional coordination. Until it is implemented, the crisis in the monitoring of global consumption poverty can be expected to intensify. Subsequent versions of this paper, correcting errors or extending the argument, will be made available on socialanalysis.orgMillennium Development Goals, poverty, purchasing power parities (PPPs), world poverty

Low density approach to the Kondo-lattice model

We propose a new approach to the (ferromagnetic) Kondo-lattice model in the low density region, where the model is thought to give a reasonable frame work for manganites with perovskite structure exhibiting the "colossal magnetoresistance" -effect. Results for the temperature- dependent quasiparticle density of states are presented. Typical features can be interpreted in terms of elementary spin-exchange processes between itinerant conduction electrons and localized moments. The approach is exact in the zero bandwidth limit for all temperatures and at T=0 for arbitrary bandwidths, fulfills exact high-energy expansions and reproduces correctly second order perturbation theory in the exchange coupling.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted by PR

Ferromagnetism within the periodic Anderson model: A new approximation scheme

We introduce a new approach to the periodic Anderson model (PAM) that allows a detailed investigation of the magnetic properties in the Kondo as well as the intermediate valence regime. Our method is based on an exact mapping of the PAM onto an effective medium strong-coupling Hubbard model. For the latter, the so-called spectral density approach (SDA) is rather well motivated since it is based on exact results in the strong coupling limit. Besides the T=0 phase diagram, magnetization curves and Curie temperatures are presented and discussed with help of temperature-dependent quasiparticle densities of state. In the intermediate valence regime, the hybridization gap plays a major role in determining the magnetic behaviour. Furthermore, our results indicate that ferromagnetism in this parameter regime is not induced by an effective spin-spin interaction between the localized levels mediated by conduction electrons as it is the case in the Kondo regime. The magnetic ordering is rather a single band effect within an effective f-band.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures, Phys. Stat. Sol. in pres

Development Aid and Economic Growth: A Positive Long-Run Relation

We analyze the growth impact of official development assistance to developing countries. Our approach is different from that of previous studies in two major ways. First, we disentangle the effects of two components of aid: a developmental, growth-enhancing component, and a geopolitical, possibly growth-depressing component. Second, our specifications allow for the effect of aid on economic growth to occur over long time-lags. Our results indicate that developmental aid promotes long-run growth. The effect is large and robustly significant, and withstands an array of robustness checks including alternative specifications, choices of the proxy for development aid, and treatments of outliers.official development assistance, economic growth

DESAP 1: A structural design program with stress and displacement constraints. Volume 1: Theoretical and user's manual

A finite element program is presented for computer-automated, minimum weight design of elastic structures with constraints on stresses (including local instability criteria) and displacements. Volume 1 of the report contains the theoretical and user's manual of the program. Sample problems and the listing of the program are included in Volumes 2 and 3. The element subroutines are organized so as to facilitate additions and changes by the user. As a result, a relatively minor programming effort would be required to make DESAP 1 into a special purpose program to handle the user's specific design requirements and failure criteria