Gender Bias and The Indonesian Financial Crisis: Were Girls Hit Hardest?

We analyze how the financial crisis affected a wide range of investments in Indonesian children and children's outcomes including school enrollment, immunizations, and mortality. Our dataset is the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas), a large nationally representative sample. We build on past research by differentiating outcomes for boys and for girls, and by separating regions heavily affected by the financial crisis from others that were relatively unhurt. Along most dimensions, children were well protected. Contrary to some theory and press reports, girls did not fare worse than boys during the crisis.

Are Investments in Daughters Lower When Daughters Move Away?

In much of the developing world daughters receive lower education and other investments than do their brothers, and may even be so devalued as to suffer differential mortality. Daughter disadvantage may be due in part to social norms that prescribe that daughters move away from their natal family upon marriage, a practice known as virilocality. We evaluate the effects of virilocality on female disadvantage using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. We find little support for the hypothesis. There is no evidence that the overall pattern of rough equality in the treatment of boys and girls in Indonesia masks differences according to post-marital residential practice. Virilocal groups do not have "missing daughters." Nor is there other evidence of son preference, such as in relatively low height for- age or education for girls and women in virilocal areas. Explanations of daughter disadvantage as due to virilocality should be subject to further scrutiny and contextualization.

The growing importance of family and community: an analysis of changes in the sibling correlation in earnings

This study presents evidence that the correlation in brothers’ earnings has risen in recent decades. We use two distinct cohorts of young men from the National Longitudinal Surveys and estimate that the correlation in earnings between brothers rose from 0.26 to 0.45. This suggests that family and community influences shared by siblings have become increasingly important in determining economic outcomes. We find that neither the correlation in years of schooling nor the rising return to schooling accounts for this increase. We also argue that the PSID is not an appropriate dataset for analyzing changes over time because of its sampling design, small sample of siblings, and high attrition rate.Income ; Education

Gender Bias and The Indonesian Financial Crisis: Were Girls Hit Hardest?

We analyze how the financial crisis affected a wide range of investments in Indonesian children and children's outcomes including school enrollment, immunizations, and mortality. Our dataset is the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas), a large nationally representative sample. We build on past research by differentiating outcomes for boys and for girls, and by separating regions heavily affected by the financial crisis from others that were relatively unhurt. Along most dimensions, children were well protected. Contrary to some theory and press reports, girls did not fare worse than boys during the crisis.

The Costs of Teenage Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing: Analysis with a Within-School Propensity Score Matching Estimator

Teen out-of-wedlock mothers have lower education and earnings than peers who have children later. This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS) to examine the extent to which the apparent effects of out-of-wedlock teen fertility are not causal, but are due to pre-existing disadvantages of the young women and their families. We use a novel fixed-effect matching method to study this problem. We find that mothers-to-be were substantially disadvantaged before their teen out-of-wedlock fertility. At the same time, we cannot rule out that out-of-wedlock fertility reduces education substantially, although far less than the cross-sectional comparisons of means suggest.

Does Industrialization = "Development"? The Effects of Industrialization on School Enrollment and Youth Employment in Indonesia

This study examines the relationship between rising manufacturing employment and school enrollment in Indonesia from 1985 to 1995, a time of rapid industrialization. In comparison with cross- national studies, this study has a larger sample size of regions, defines data more consistently, and conducts better checks for causality and specification. Overall, enrollment is slightly higher and youth labor force participation slightly lower in regions with more manufacturing. The causal links between manufacturing and enrollments remain unclear. At the household level, employment of adult females in manufacturing is associated with lower enrollment, higher labor force participation, and more household responsibilities for female youth.

When are layoffs acceptable? Evidence from a quasi-experiment

Many authors have discussed a decline in internal labor markets and an apparent shift to a new employment contract, characterized by less commitment between employer and employee and more portable skills. These discussions occur without much evidence on what employment contract employees currently feel is fair. We perfomed quasi-experimental surveys to study when employees in the U.S. and Canada feel that layoffs are fair. Layoffs were perceived as more fair if they were due to lower product demand than if the result of employee suggestions. This result appears to be solely due to norms of reciprocity (companies should not punish employees for their efforts), rather than norms of sharing rents, as new technology was also considered a justification for layoffs. Consistent with theories of distributive and procedural equity, layoffs were perceived as more fair if the CEO voluntarily shared the pain. CEO bonuses due to layoffs lowered their reported fairness only slightly. Respondents in Silicon Valley were not more accepting of layoffs than were those in Canada on average, although the justifications considered valid differed slightly.New employment contract, fairness, justifications, layoffs, survey, Leex

Industrialization and Infant Mortality

On average, infant mortality rates are lower in more industrialized nations, yet health and mortality worsened during early industrialization in some nations. This study examines the effects of growing manufacturing employment on infant mortality across 274 Indonesian districts from 1985 to 1995, a time of rapid industrialization. Compared with cross-national studies we have a larger sample size of regions, more consistent data definitions, and better checks for causality and specification. We can also explore the causal mechanisms underlying our correlations. Overall the results suggest manufacturing employment raised living standards, housing quality, and reduced cooking with wood and coal, which helped reduce infant mortality. At the same time, pollution from factories appears quite harmful to infants. The overall effect was slightly higher infant mortality in regions that experienced greater industrialization.Industrialization, infant mortality, Indonesia, pollution, indoor air pollution

Diffusive Boundary Layers in the Free-Surface Excitable Medium Spiral

Spiral waves are a ubiquitous feature of the nonequilibrium dynamics of a great variety of excitable systems. In the limit of a large separation in timescale between fast excitation and slow recovery, one can reduce the spiral problem to one involving the motion of a free surface separating the excited and quiescent phases. In this work, we study the free surface problem in the limit of small diffusivity for the slow field variable. Specifically, we show that a previously found spiral solution in the diffusionless limit can be extended to finite diffusivity, without significant alteration. This extension involves the creation of a variety of boundary layers which cure all the undesirable singularities of the aforementioned solution. The implications of our results for the study of spiral stability are briefly discussed.Comment: 6 pages, submitted to PRE Rapid Com

Book Review

Book review of "Effective Approaches to Settlement: A Handbook for Lawyers and Judges" by Wayne D. Brazil. Clifton, N.J.: Prentice Hall Law & Business 1988