Long-term effects of a mandatory multistage program: the New Deal for young people in the UK

The New Deal For Young People is the major welfare-to-work program in the UK. It is a mandatory multistage policy targeted at the 18-24 year old unemployed. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the program in terms of enhancing the (re)employment probability of participant males. I exploit the eligibility rule to identify a suitable counterfactual relying upon a simple regression discontinuity design. By exploiting such a discontinuity I am able to non parametrically identify (Hahn et al., 2001) a local average treatment effect (LATE). While relying upon the non parametric local linear regression method I am able to push forward such a parameter to a "global" dimension, implicitly adding parametric structure. No evidence of possible general equilibrium as well as substitution effects is found by a co- hort specific approach (before and after the program). The main result is that the program enhances employability by about 6-7%.Labour market policy evaluation, regression discontinuity, non parametric

Understanding Social Interactions: Evidence from the Classroom

There is a large literature on social interactions and still little is known about the economic mechanisms leading to the high level of clustering in behavior that is so commonly observed in the data. In this paper we present a model in which agents are allowed to interact according to three distinct mechanisms, and we derive testable implications on the mean and the variance of the outcomes within and across groups. The empirical tests allow us to distinguish which mechanism(s) generates the observed patterns in the data. In our application we study the performance of undergraduate students and we find that social interactions take the form of mutual insurance. Such a result bears crucial policy implications for all those situations in which social interactions are important, from teamwork to class formation in education and co-authorship in academic research.social interactions, peer effects, teamwork

The thermodynamic theory of black holes

Studiando le equazioni di Einstein-Maxwell si ricava la soluzione di Kerr-Newman che descrive il comportamento generale di un buco nero rotante e carico. Questa soluzione dipende da tre parametri m, a e Q che definiscono rispettivamente la massa, il momento angolare e la carica del buco nero. Per a=Q= 0 si ottiene la soluzione di Schwarzschild che presenta un orizzonte deglieventi in r= 2m. Per a= 0 si ottiene la soluzione di Reissner-Nordstrøm per buchi neri carichi e per Q= 0 la soluzione di Kerr per buchi neri rotanti. La termodinamica dei buchi neri è l’area di studio che cerca di estendere ai buchi neri le leggi e i principali risultati della termodinamica classica e di farli riconciliare conl’esistenza degli orizzonti degli eventi. Ciò è possibile solo con l’inclusione della meccanica quantistica. Nonostante il collasso gravitazionale conduca, apparentemente, a uno stato di entropia illimitata, l’inclusionedi questi effetti quantistici elimina questa divergenza, assegnando a un buco nero una entropia definita. Jacob Bekenstein, nel 1972, congetturò che l’entropia del buco nerofosse proporzionale all’area del suo orizzonte degli eventi A. Hawking, nel 1974, mostrò che i buchi neri emettono radiazione termica corrispondente a una certa temperatura (temperatura di Hawking). Questo permette di di fissare il coefficiente di proporzionalità tra S e A. Sulla base di questi risultati si dimostra che i buchi neri sono soggetti almeno alle primedue leggi della termodinamica, mentre le condizioni di Nernst per la terza legge dellatermodinamica non sono soddisfatte completamente: non c’è una chiara ragione termodinamica per cui un buco nero non possa essere raffreddato sotto lo zero assoluto e convertito in una singolarità nuda. Tra i risultati di questa teoria si ha che tutta l’informazione riguardo allo stato termodinamico del buco nero è contenuta nella relazione di Smarr, che lega M, J e Q

A novel nanoporous graphite based on graphynes: first-principles structure and carbon dioxide preferential physisorption

8 págs.; 4 figs.; 1 tab.Ubiquitous graphene is a stricly 2D material representing an ideal adsorbing platform due to its large specific surface area as well as its mechanical strength and resistance to both thermal and chemical stresses. However, graphene as a bulk material has the tendency to form irreversible agglomerates leading to 3D graphitic structures with a significant decrease of the area available for adsorption and no room for gas intercalation. In this paper, a novel nanoporous graphite formed by graphtriyne sheets is introduced; its 3D structure is theoretically assessed by means of electronic structure and molecular dynamics computations within the DFT level of theory. It is found that the novel layered carbon allotrope is almost as compact as pristine graphite but the inherent porosity of the 2D graphyne sheets and its relative stacking leads to nanochannels that cross the material and whose subnanometer size could allow the diffusion and storage of gas species. A molecular prototype of the nanochannel is used to accurately determine first-principles adsorption energies and enthalpies for CO2, N2, H2O, and H2 within the pores. The proposed porous graphite presents no significant barrier for gas diffusion and shows a high propensity for CO2 physisorption with respect to the other relevant components in both pre- and postcombustion gas streams.The work has been funded by the Spanish grant FIS2013- 48275-C2-1-P. Allocation of computing time by CESGA (Spain) is also acknowledged.Peer reviewe

Class Size and Class Heterogeneity

We study how class size and composition affect the academic and labor market performances of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. We rely on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. Our results suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the class-size would result in a 0.1 standard deviation deterioration of the average grade. Further, the effect is heterogenous as female and higher income students seem almost immune to the size of the class. Also, the effects on performance of class composition in terms of gender and ability appears to be inverse U-shaped. Finally, a reduction of 20 students (one standard deviation) in one's class size has a positive effect on monthly wages of about 80 Euros (115 USD) or 6% over the average.class size, heterogeneity, experimental evidence, academic performance, wages

Life after (Soft) Default

We analyze the impact of soft credit default (i.e. a delinquency of 90+ days) on individual trajectories. Using a proprietary dataset on about 2 million individuals for the years 2004 to 2020, we find that a soft default has substantial and long-lasting (i.e. up to ten years after the event) negative effects on credit score, total credit limit, home-ownership status, and income

Family Networks and School Enrolment: Evidence from a Randomized Social Experiment

We present evidence on whether and how a household's behavior is influenced by the presence and characteristics of its extended family. Using data from the PROGRESA program in Mexico, we exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of heads and spouses in conjunction with the Spanish naming convention to identify the inter and intra generational family links of each household to others in the same village. We then exploit the randomized research design of the PROGRESA evaluation data to identify whether the treatment effects of PROGRESA transfers on secondary school enrolment vary according to the characteristics of extended family. We find PROGRESA only raises secondary enrolment among households that are embedded in a family network. Eligible but isolated households do not respond. The mechanism through which the extended family influences household schooling choices is the redistribution of resources within the family network from eligibles that receive de facto unconditional cash transfers from PROGRESA, towards eligibles on the margin of enrolling children into secondary school.extended family network, PROGRESA, resource sharing, schooling

Extended Family Networks in Rural Mexico: A Descriptive Analysis

We provide descriptive evidence on the characteristics of a household’s extended family network using data from the Progresa social assistance program in rural Mexico. We exploit information on the paternal and maternal surnames of household heads and their spouses and the patronymic naming convention to identify the inter and intra generational family links of each household to others in the village. This provides an almost complete mapping of extended family networks structures across 506 Mexican villages, covering 22,000 households and over 130,000 individuals. We then provide evidence on – (i) whether husbands and wives differ in the extent to which members of their extended family are located in geographic proximity; (ii) the characteristics that predict the existence of extended family links; (iii) the similarity of households within the same family network in terms of their poverty, and how this differs within and between generations of the extended family.extended family network, Progresa