Wage responsiveness and labor market disequilibrium

The objectives of this paper are : (i) to empirically probe on the validity of the hypothesis that wages are relatively unresponsive to labor market disequlibrium; and (ii) to investigate whether the dramatically diverse rates of unemployment observed across certain Latin American countries obey fundamentally different wage dynamics or are the product of diversity in labor market distortions and other labor market policies. The indications found are that core unemployment may not affect market wages, whereas transient unemployment does. Policymaking should reflect the distinction.Environmental Economics&Policies,Youth and Governance,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Markets,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Macroeconomic adjustment and the labor market in four Latin American countries

Implicit in standard macroeconomics of adjustment is the assumption of well-integrated labor markets that are responsive to relative prices. But segmentation of the labor market is usually said to be an important source of labor market rigidities. In particular, if segmentation involves different degrees of real wage rigidity among different groups in the labor force, nominal devaluation may be ineffective and inequitable in its impact. This paper uses a model of labor market segmentation in which regulations are necessary to distinguish between the formal and informal sectors. Using standard econometric techniques to estimate four simultaneous equations, the authors examine the effect of devaluation on relative wages in four countries. They found that formal wages are more responsive than informal wages to inflation and that devaluation of the exchange rate, by increasing the wage gap, is a source of sluggish labor mobility. In addition, they found that expanding wage differentials during adjustment imposes a greater burden on the poorest workers, making adjustment policies less politically sustainable. Finally, they found evidence to support the hypothesis that nominal devaluation would probably be ineffective with a segmented labor market.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Labor Markets,Health Economics&Finance

Gauge field theory approach to spin transport in a 2D electron gas

We discuss the Pauli Hamiltonian including the spin-orbit interaction within an U(1) x SU(2) gauge theory interpretation, where the gauge symmetry appears to be broken. This interpretation offers new insight into the problem of spin currents in the condensed matter environment, and can be extended to Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. We present a few outcomes of the present formulation: i) it automatically leads to zero spin conductivity, in contrast to predictions of Gauge symmetric treatments, ii) a topological quantization condition leading to voltage quantization follows, and iii) spin interferometers can be conceived in which, starting from a arbitrary incoming unpolarized spinor, it is always possible to construct a perfect spin filtering condition.Comment: Invited contribution to Statphys conference, June 2009, Lviv (Ukraine

Preface "Nonlinear processes in oceanic and atmospheric flows"

Nonlinear phenomena are essential ingredients in many oceanic and atmospheric processes, and successful understanding of them benefits from multidisciplinary collaboration between oceanographers, meteorologists, physicists and mathematicians. The present Special Issue on ``Nonlinear Processes in Oceanic and Atmospheric Flows'' contains selected contributions from attendants to the workshop which, in the above spirit, was held in Castro Urdiales, Spain, in July 2008. Here we summarize the Special Issue contributions, which include papers on the characterization of ocean transport in the Lagrangian and in the Eulerian frameworks, generation and variability of jets and waves, interactions of fluid flow with plankton dynamics or heavy drops, scaling in meteorological fields, and statistical properties of El Ni\~no Southern Oscillation.Comment: This is the introductory article to a Special Issue on "Nonlinear Processes in Oceanic and Atmospheric Flows'', published in the journal Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, where the different contributions are summarized. The Special Issue itself is freely available from http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/special_issue103.htm

Child education and work choices in the presence of a conditional cash transfer programme in rural Colombia

This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Accion on a variety of outcomes one year after its implementation. In early reports, we focussed on the effects of the programme on school enrolment. In this paper, we both expand those results, by carefully analysing anticipation effects along with other issues, and complement them with an analysis of child labour - both paid and unpaid (including domestic) work. The child labour analysis is made possible due to a rich time use module of the surveys that has not previously been analysed. We find that the programme increased the school participation rates of 14 to 17 year old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points, and had lower, but non-negligible effects on the enrolment of younger children of between 1.4 and 2.4 percentage points. In terms of work, the effects are generally largest for younger children whose participation in domestic work decreased by around 10 to 12 percentage points after the programme but whose participation in income-generating work remained largely unaffected by the programme. We also find evidence of school and work time not being fully substitutable, suggesting that some, but not all, of the increased time at school may be drawn from children's leisure time

Probabilistic Inference from Arbitrary Uncertainty using Mixtures of Factorized Generalized Gaussians

This paper presents a general and efficient framework for probabilistic inference and learning from arbitrary uncertain information. It exploits the calculation properties of finite mixture models, conjugate families and factorization. Both the joint probability density of the variables and the likelihood function of the (objective or subjective) observation are approximated by a special mixture model, in such a way that any desired conditional distribution can be directly obtained without numerical integration. We have developed an extended version of the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the parameters of mixture models from uncertain training examples (indirect observations). As a consequence, any piece of exact or uncertain information about both input and output values is consistently handled in the inference and learning stages. This ability, extremely useful in certain situations, is not found in most alternative methods. The proposed framework is formally justified from standard probabilistic principles and illustrative examples are provided in the fields of nonparametric pattern classification, nonlinear regression and pattern completion. Finally, experiments on a real application and comparative results over standard databases provide empirical evidence of the utility of the method in a wide range of applications

Dynamics of Holes and Universality Class of the Antiferromagnetic Transition in the Two Dimensional Hubbard Model

The dynamics of a single hole (or electron) in the two dimensional Hubbard model is investigated. The antiferromagnetic background is described by a N\`eel state, and the hopping of the carrier is analyzed within a configuration interaction approach. Results are in agreement with other methods and with experimental data when available. All data are compatible with the opening of a mean field gap in a Fermi liquid of spin polarons, the so called Slater type of transition. In particular, this hypothesis explains the unusual dispersion relation of the quasiparticle bands near the transition. Recent photoemission data for Ca$_2$CuO$_2$Cl$_2$ are analyzed within this context.Comment: New results and comparison with recent data adde