Voting after the bombing: Can terrorist attacks change the outcome of democratic elections?

Economists have recently turned their attention to the effects of terrorism. One much debated effect of terrorist attacks is its impact on the results of democratic elections. We use the electoral consequences of the terrorist attacks of the 11-M in Madrid to analyze this issue. We consider this particular experiment since the attack took place only three days before the 2004 Congressional Election, which allows the use of credible identification criteria. In particular, we use the advance voting by Spanish residents abroad, who cast their vote before the terrorist attack, to identify the effect of the bombing. We exploit this macabre natural experiment to run a difference-in-differences estimation using data on three consecutive Congressional elections. Our empirical results indicate that a terrorist attack can have a large impact on the outcome of democratic elections.Difference-in-differences, terrorism, elections, natural experiment

Ethnic polarization, potential conflict and civil wars

This paper analyzes the relationship between ethnic fractionalization, polarization, and conflict. In recent years many authors have found empirical evidence that ethnic fractionalization has a negative effect on growth. One mechanism that can explain this nexus is the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on rent-seeking activities and the increase in potential conflict, which is negative for investment. However the empirical evidence supporting the effect of ethnic fractionalization on the incidence of civil conflicts is very weak. Although ethnic fractionalization may be important for growth, we argue that the channel is not through an increase in potential ethnic conflict. We discuss the appropriateness of indices of polarization to capture conflictive dimensions. We develop a new measure of ethnic heterogeneity that satisfies the basic properties associated with the concept of polarization. The empirical section shows that this index of ethnic polarization is a significant variable in the explanation of the incidence of civil wars. This result is robust to the presence of other indicators of ethnic heterogeneity, other sources of data for the construction of the index, and other data structures.Ethnic diversity, conflict, indices of diversity

Fighting against Malaria: Prevent wars while waiting for the "miraculous" vaccine

The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million clinical cases of malaria occur annually and observed that during the 80's and part of the 90's its incidence increased. In this paper we explore the influence of refugees from civil wars on the incidence of malaria in the refugee-receiving countries. Using civil wars as an instrumental variable we show that for each 1,000 refugees there are between 2,000 and 2,700 cases of malaria in the refugee receiving country. On average 13% of the cases of malaria reported by the WHO are caused by forced migration as a consequence of civil wars.Civil wars, forced migration, economic impact

The curse of aid

Foreign aid provides a windfall of resources to recipient countries and may result in the same rent seeking behavior as documented in the “curse of natural resources” literature. In this paper we discuss this effect and document its magnitude. Using data for 108 recipient countries in the period 1960 to 1999, we find that foreign aid has a negative impact on democracy. In particular, if the foreign aid over GDP that a country receives over a period of five years reaches the 75th percentile in the sample, then a 10-point index of democracy is reduced between 0.6 and one point, a large effect. For comparison, we also measure the effect of oil rents on political institutions. The fall in democracy if oil revenues reach the 75th percentile is smaller, (0.02). Aid is a bigger curse than oil.Foreign aid, democracy, conditionality

For public service or money : understanding geographical imbalances in the health workforce

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, especially in developing countries. The authors investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data obtained from contingent valuation questions, they find that household consumption and the student's motivation to help the poor, which is their proxy for intrinsic motivation, are the main determinants of willingness to work in a rural area. The authors investigate who are willing to help the poor and find that women are significantly more likely to help than men. Other variables, including a rich set of psycho-social characteristics, are not significant. Finally, the authors carry out some simulations on how much it would cost to make the entire cohort of starting nurses and doctors choose to take up a rural post.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Educational Sciences,Economic Theory&Research,Housing&Human Habitats

For public service or money: Understanding geographical imbalances in the health workforce in Ethiopia

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, and especially in developing countries. In this paper we investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data obtained from contingent valuation questions, we find that household consumption and the student’s motivation to help the poor, which is our proxy for intrinsic motivation, are the main determinants of willingness to work in a rural area. We investigate whoe is willing to help the poor and find that women are significantly more likely than men. Other variables, including a rich set of psychosocial characteristics, are not significant. Finally, we carry out some simulation on how much it would cost to make the entire cohort of starting nurses and doctors chooseto take up a rural post.Health care delivery, health workers, labour supply, public service

Finite mixture analysis of beauty-contest data using generalised beta distributions

This paper introduces a mixture model based on the beta distribution, without preestablished means and variances, to analyze a large set of Beauty-Contest data obtained from diverse groups of experiments (Bosch-Domenech et al. 2002). This model gives a better t of the experimental data, and more precision to the hypothesis that a large proportion of individuals follow a common pattern of reasoning, described as iterated best reply (degenerate), than mixture models based on the normal distribution. The analysis shows that the means of the distributions across the groups of experiments are pretty stable, while the proportions of choices at dierent levels of reasoning vary across groups.Keywords: Beauty-Contest experiments, decision theory, reasoning hierarchy, finite mixture distribution, beta distribution, EM algorithm.

Migração de analógico para digital da rede sísmica do CIVISA mediante o desenho de um sistema de aquisição de dados e um rádio telemetria Wi-Fi

ABSTRACT: In September of 2016 a new digital communications network for the Azores Civil Protection (SRPCBA) was inaugurated providing digital, voice and Ethernet LAN telemetry capabilities to the Centre for Information and Seismovolcanic Surveillance of the Azores (CIVISA). During 2017, the telemetry links from all monitoring techniques were reconnected to the new communication system. In 2018 the CIVISA has started the migration from analogue to digital seismic stations and this process allow to liberate few short period geophones. At the CIVISA’s Information and Communication Technologies Support group (SATIC), motivated by the availability of sensors, an instrumentation project was started with the objective of develop affordable digital data acquisition system (DAS) for geophones and a Wi-Fi telemetry to transmit seismic data to the Data Acquisition Centre (CAD) of CIVISA, in Ponta Delgada. The DAS design uses Do It Yourself (DIY) modules for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, microcontrollers and low power computer boards.RESUMO: Em setembro de 2016, foi inaugurada uma nova rede de comunicações digitais para o Serviço Regional de Proteção Civil e Bombeiros dos Açores (SRPCBA), fornecendo capacidades de telemetria digital e voz ao Centro de Informação e Vigilância Sismovulcânica dos Açores (CIVISA). Em 2017, os enlaces de rádio das diversas técnicas de monitorização passaram para o sistema atual. Em 2018, o CIVISA iniciou a migração das estações sísmicas analógicas para digitais e este processo libertou alguns geofones. No grupo de Serviço de Apoio às Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (SATIC), motivado pela disponibilidade de sensores, iniciou-se um projeto com o objetivo de desenvolver um instrumento de aquisição de dados acessível (DAS) para geofones e um rádio Wi-Fi para retransmitir dados para o Centro de Aquisição de Dados (CAD), em Ponta Delgada. O DAS utiliza dispositivos Do It Yourself (DIY) para aplicações de Internet de Coisas (IoT) e computadores de baixa potência.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Why ethnic fractionalization? Polarization, ethnic conflict and growth

This paper ia an attempt to clarify the relationship between fractionalization, polarization and conflict. The literature on the measurement of ethnic diversity has taken as given that the proper measure for heterogeneity can be calculated by using the fractionalization index. This index is widely used in industrial economics and, for empirical purposes, the ethnolinguistic fragmentation is ready available for regression exercises. Nevertheless the adequacy of a synthetic index of hetergeneity depends on the intrinsic characteristics of the heterogeneous dimension to be measured. In the case of ethnic diversity there is a very strong conflictive dimension. For this reason we argue that the measure of heterogeneity should be one of the class of polarization measures. In fact the intuition of the relationship between conflict and fractionalization do not hold for more than two groups. In contrast with the usual problem of polarization indices, which are of difficult empirical implementation without making some arbitrary choice of parameters, we show that the RQ index, proposed by Reynal-Querol (2002), is the only discrete polarization measure that satisfies the basic properties of polarization. Additionally we present a derivation of the RQ index from a simple rent seeking model. In the empirical section we show that while ethnic polarization has a positive effect on civil wars and, indirectly on growth, this effect is not present when we use ethnic fractionalization.Ethnic heterogeneity, civil wars, economic developement

Actividades lúdicas para desarrollar habilidades sociales en niños de cinco años de una institución educativa inicial pública, Chiclayo

El objetivo general de esta investigación fue, proponer actividades lúdicas para mejorar el desarrollo de las habilidades sociales en niños de cinco años de una Institución Educativa Inicial Pública, Chiclayo. El tipo de investigación es básica, con un enfoque cuantitativo – descriptivo con propuesta, respecto al diseño es propositivo no experimental con una propuesta y validado por tres expertos, la población está conformada por 25 estudiantes del aula de cinco años, la muestra es considerada igual a la población, la técnica es la observación, siendo el instrumento la ficha de observación validado por expertos, la confiabilidad es de 0.87 según Alfa de Cronbach; con respecto a los resultados encontramos que el 20% se encuentra en proceso y el 80% en inicio, además no se evidencia estudiante en el nivel logrado; la conclusión fue que el nivel de desarrollo de las habilidades sociales se encuentran con mucha carencia en dimensiones como; habilidades para relacionarse, autoafirmación y expresión de emociones, interpretando que los estudiantes no se relacionan entre compañeros, así mismo no expresan sus desacuerdos o acuerdos, carecen de sentimientos ante situaciones de solidaridad, por lo cual se concluye que sus habilidades sociales no han sido desarrolladas