Civil Conflict and Three Dimensions of Ethnic Inequality

Presentado como comunicación en el Department of Political Science, Columbia University in the City of New York, en noviembre de 2012 Presentado como comunicación en "Concentration on Conflict", Civil Conflict and Rationality. Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, celebrado del 10 al 12 de junio de 2013 en Barcelona (España)Most empirical studies on civil conflict are not able to find a significant relationship between interpersonal-measures of economic inequality and the likelihood of conflict. When individuals belong to groups, general inequality (measured by the Gini) can be decomposed into three components: between-group inequality (BGI), within-group inequality (WGI), and ‘Overlap’ (which is inversely related to the economic segregation of groups). This paper shows that is possible to establish a robust empirical relation between group-based measures of income differences and con- flict. Drawing on over 200 individual-level surveys from 89 countries, we create a new data set that allows us to measure these three components and to examine their empirical relationship with civil conflict. Consistent with Esteban and Ray’s (2011) argument about the need for labor and capital to fight civil wars, we find a strong, robust positive association between WGI and civil conflict. And consistent with the “contact hypothesis” in sociology, we find that the economic segregation of groups (as measured by a lower Overlap component) is often associated with more civil conflict. Since some components of inequality are associated with more civil conflict but others are associated with less, the analysis helps explain why it has been difficult to identify a relationship between general inequality and civil war. And the strong finding for WGI underscores the value of developing clear theories about how the internal characteristics of groups influence the incidence of civil conflictPeer Reviewe

Mymarommatoidea, a Superfamily of Hymenoptera New for the Hawaiian Islands

The family Mymarommatidae, represented by an unidentified species of Palaeomymar Meunier related to P. goethei (Girault), is reported for the first time from the Hawaiian Islands

Income inequality and redistribution in post-industrial democracies: Demographic, economic, and political determinants

This article analyzes the determinants of market income distribution and governmental redistribution. The dependent variables are LIS data on market income inequality (measured by the Gini index) for households with a head aged 25 to 59 and the percent reduction in the Gini index by taxes and transfers. We test the generalizability of the Goldin/Katz hypothesis that inequality has increased in the United States because the country failed to invest sufficiently in education. The main determinants of market income inequality are (in order of size of the effect) family structure (single mother households), union density, deindustrialization, unemployment, employment levels, and education spending. The main determinants of redistribution are (in order of magnitude) left government, family structure, welfare state generosity, unemployment, and employment levels. Redistribution rises mainly because needs rise (that is, unemployment and single mother households increase), not because social policy becomes more redistributive

The political economy of pension reform: Latin America in comparative perspective

Since pension schemes-along with health care and education-absorb the largest amount of social expenditure in all countries, their reform has a potentially major impact both on the fiscal situation of the state and on the life chances of citizens who stand to win or lose from new arrangements. This makes pension reform a highly controversial issue; and, except for the addition of new programmes and benefits, major restructuring of existing pension systems has been extremely rare in advanced industrial democracies. It was also rare in Latin America before the 1980s and 1990s. But there has been a great deal of experimentation within the region during the past decade. This paper examines the larger economic, social and political context of Latin American pension reform and compares experiences in different countries of the region with options available in Western European societies during the same period. The authors argue that the type of pension reform undertaken in Latin America has been an integral part of the structural adjustment programmes pursued by Latin American governments, under the guidance of international financial institutions (IFIs). Although there was a range of possible remedies to the problems of pension systems in different Latin American countries, neo-liberal reformers and the international financial institutions preferred privatization over all others. They claimed that privatization would be superior to other kinds of reform in ensuring the financial viability of pension systems, making them more efficient, establishing a closer link between contributions and benefits and promoting the development of capital markets-thus increasing savings and investment. And they were able to push through some of their suggestions for reform in spite of considerable opposition from pensioners, trade unions and opposition political parties. Interestingly enough, their pressure proved least effective in the more democratic countries of the region. In Costa Rica, for example, citizens preferred to reform the public system-eliminating the last pockets of privilege for public sector workers and ensuring that new levels of contribution would be adequate to provide minimum benefits for the aged and infirm. In Uruguay, citizens forced a public referendum, through which they rejected a proposal for privatization. At a later stage, they did permit the introduction of private investment accounts, but not at the cost of eliminating the public programme. In Argentina and Peru, after the legislature refused to authorize partial privatization, this was eventually pushed through by presidential decree. Only in Chile and Mexico has there been a complete shift to private pension funds-but, in both cases, influential sectors of the elite, including the military, have been allowed to keep their previous, publicly managed group funds. Looking at the only privatized pension system in existence long enough to allow for some assessment of its consequences-that of Chile-the authors find that many of the claims made by supporters of privatization are not substantiated by the evidence. The first discrepancy between neo-liberal predictions and the reality of Chilean pension reform has to do with efficiency. All previous claims to the contrary, private individual accounts have proven more expensive to manage than collective claims. In fact, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, by the mid-1990s administration of the Chilean system was the most expensive in Latin America. The second disproved claim involves yield. When administrative costs are discounted, privately held and administered pension funds in Chile show an average annual real return of 5.1 per cent between 1982 and 1998. Furthermore high fees and commissions-charged at a flat rate on all accounts-have proven highly regressive. When levied against a relatively modest retirement account, for example, these standard fees reduced the amount available to the account holder by approximately 18 per cent. When applied to the deposit of an individual investing 10 times more, the reduction was slightly less than 1 per cent. The third discrepancy involves competition. Although it was assumed that efficiency within the private pension fund industry would be associated with renewed competitiveness-while the public pension system represented monopoly-the private sector has in fact become highly concentrated. The three largest pension fund administrators in Chile handle 70 per cent of the insured. And to reduce advertising costs, public regulators are limiting the number of transfers among companies that any individual can make. A fourth unfulfilled promise of privatization in Chile has to do with expansion of coverage. It was assumed that the existence of private accounts would increase incentives for people to take part in the pension sc heme, but in fact this has not happened. Coverage and compliance rates have remained virtually constant. A fifth major claim was that the conversion of the public pension system into privately held and administered accounts would strengthen capital markets, savings and investment. But a number of studies have recently concluded that, at best, this effect has been marginal. And finally, the dimension of gender equity within a fully privatized pension scheme is being subjected to increasing scrutiny. Women typically earn less money and work fewer years than men. Therefore, since pension benefits in private systems are strictly determined by the overall amount of money contributed to them, women are likely to receive considerably lower benefits. Public pension systems, in contrast, have the possibility of introducing credits for childcare that reduce this disadvantage. Sweden is an example of countries that have embarked on this course. In the latter part of the paper, Huber and Stephens widen their comparative framework to include recent pension reforms in advanced industrial countries. There, where economic crisis was not as severe and where pressure from international financial institutions was not significant, much broader options for reform were available. In fact, although long-established systems were under stress, no developed country opted for complete privatization. Complex measures were taken to strengthen the funding base of national pension systems, including changes in investment procedures and changes in rules for calculating pension benefits. Reforms also increased retirement age, as well as the number of years required to qualify for a full pension. But even the most thoroughgoing reforms retained a central role for public schemes in ensuring old-age benefits. In conclusion, the authors consider steps that can be taken to craft pension reforms with more desirable results than those obtained to date in Latin America. They recommend measures that address the problem of an aging population by increasing the ability of each generation to pay for its own pensions-rather than relying primarily on the contributions of preceding generations of insured workers. Pension payments should be invested in a variety of financial instruments and benefits must ultimately be related to the yields obtained. Such a strategy does not require introduction of privately managed, individually held, investment funds. On the contrary, risk is lessened by relying instead on collectively managed funds, in which accounts can either be identified with individuals or-more equitably-with generations of contributors. Reformed public pension systems should also contain minimum 'citizenship pensions' that guarantee subsistence income in old age to all individuals as a matter of right. Such a measure, financed from general tax revenue rather than from personal contributions, is not beyond the means of medium income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, some Nordic countries introduced citizenship pensions when their GNP per capita was lower than that of most Latin American countries today

The State and Poverty Alleviation in Advanced Capitalist Democracies

We analyze the impact of the state on the incidence of poverty in the working-age population of 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 using an unbalanced panel design. We utilize poverty measures based on micro-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study in conjunction with pooled time series data from the Huber, Ragin and Stephens (1997) database. We argue that economic factors including de-industrialization and unemployment largely explain pre-tax, pre-transfer poverty rates of the working age population in advanced capitalist states. These rates, however, are theoretical as advanced democracies redistribute resources through taxes and transfers. We show that the extent of redistribution (measured as poverty reduction via taxes and transfers) is explained directly by welfare state generosity as well as constitutional structure (number of veto points) and the strength of the left, both in unions and in government

The Welfare State and Gender Equality

This paper examines the determinants of several indicators of economic well being of women. The feminist literature has suggested that women's well being is best measured through both the economic status of women and power relations vis-à-vis men. Barbara Hobson has proposed that the percentage of single mothers in poverty and married women's income as a proportion of both spouses' income effectively measure economic status and power relations. The dependent variables are calculated from micro data available in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive, which now contains enough countries and time points to allow multivariate statistical analysis with a sufficiently large number of independent variables to test a broad range of hypotheses on the determinants of gender egalitarian outcomes while controlling for other possible determinants. In the case of poverty among single mothers, the LIS data also allow us to go beyond Hobson's single indicator to investigate the extent to which government action is responsible for poverty reduction. Hence, we analyze 4 dependent variables: 1) pre tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, 2) reductions in single mothers' poverty due to taxes and transfers, 3) post tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, and 4) women's wages relative to spouses' wages. In these analyses, we test feminist theories along with theories of economic structure, labor market institutions, state structure and political power

Gravitational Radiation from First-Order Phase Transitions

It is believed that first-order phase transitions at or around the GUT scale will produce high-frequency gravitational radiation. This radiation is a consequence of the collisions and coalescence of multiple bubbles during the transition. We employ high-resolution lattice simulations to numerically evolve a system of bubbles using only scalar fields, track the anisotropic stress during the process and evolve the metric perturbations associated with gravitational radiation. Although the radiation produced during the bubble collisions has previously been estimated, we find that the coalescence phase enhances this radiation even in the absence of a coupled fluid or turbulence. We comment on how these simulations scale and propose that the same enhancement should be found at the Electroweak scale; this modification should make direct detection of a first-order electroweak phase transition easier.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Robust artificial neural networks and outlier detection. Technical report

Large outliers break down linear and nonlinear regression models. Robust regression methods allow one to filter out the outliers when building a model. By replacing the traditional least squares criterion with the least trimmed squares criterion, in which half of data is treated as potential outliers, one can fit accurate regression models to strongly contaminated data. High-breakdown methods have become very well established in linear regression, but have started being applied for non-linear regression only recently. In this work, we examine the problem of fitting artificial neural networks to contaminated data using least trimmed squares criterion. We introduce a penalized least trimmed squares criterion which prevents unnecessary removal of valid data. Training of ANNs leads to a challenging non-smooth global optimization problem. We compare the efficiency of several derivative-free optimization methods in solving it, and show that our approach identifies the outliers correctly when ANNs are used for nonlinear regression

The K2 Mission: Characterization and Early results

The K2 mission will make use of the Kepler spacecraft and its assets to expand upon Kepler's groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of exoplanets and astrophysics through new and exciting observations. K2 will use an innovative way of operating the spacecraft to observe target fields along the ecliptic for the next 2-3 years. Early science commissioning observations have shown an estimated photometric precision near 400 ppm in a single 30 minute observation, and a 6-hour photometric precision of 80 ppm (both at V=12). The K2 mission offers long-term, simultaneous optical observation of thousands of objects at a precision far better than is achievable from ground-based telescopes. Ecliptic fields will be observed for approximately 75-days enabling a unique exoplanet survey which fills the gaps in duration and sensitivity between the Kepler and TESS missions, and offers pre-launch exoplanet target identification for JWST transit spectroscopy. Astrophysics observations with K2 will include studies of young open clusters, bright stars, galaxies, supernovae, and asteroseismology.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, Accepted to PAS