Assets at marriage in rural Ethiopia

"This paper contributes to the economic analysis of marriage and the family by examining and analyzing the relative importance of potential determinants of assets brought to marriages in rural Ethiopia. One potential determinant is assortative matching, whereby the rich marry the rich and the poor marry the poor, generating a positive correlation between assets brought to marriage by both spouses. Another determinant explored is compensating parental transfers at marriage, whereby parents reduce assets transferred to their marrying children if their spouses bring more. The third determinant analyzed is parents' strategic behavior to improve the marriage-market ranking of their children by transferring more assets to them at the time of marriage." from TextIntrahousehold allocation ,Intergenerational transfers ,Marriage market ,Inheritance ,

Social roles, human capital, and the intrahousehold division of labor

Using detailed data from rural Pakistan, this paper investigates whether human capital, learning by doing, gender, and one's status within the family affect the division of labor within households. Results suggest the presence of returns to individual specialization in all farm, nonfarm, and home-based activities. The intrahousehold division of labor is influenced by comparative advantage, based on human capital and by long-lasting returns to learning by doing, but we also find evidence of a separate effect of gender and family status. Households seem to operate as hierarchies with sexually segregated spheres of activity. The head of household and his or her spouse provide most of the labor within their respective spheres of influence; other members work less. When present in the household, daughters-in-law work systematically harder than daughters of comparable age, build, and education. Other findings of interest are that there are increasing returns to scale in most household chores, that larger households work more off-farm, and that better educated individuals enjoy more leisure.employment ,Gender ,Pakistan Social conditions. ,Labor Gender issues. ,Household surveys Pakistan. ,

Control and ownership of assets within rural Ethiopian households

This paper investigates how the control and devolution of productive assets are allocated among husband and wife. Using detailed household data from rural Ethiopia, the authors show that assets brought to marriage, ownership of assets, control within marriage, and disposition upon death or divorce are only partly related.Rural families Ethiopia ,assets ,

Human capital, productivity, and labor allocation in rural Pakistan

This paper investigates whether human capital affects the productivity and labor allocation of rural households in four districts of Pakistan. The investigation shows that households with better-educated males earn higher off-farm income and divert labor resources away from farm activities toward nonfarm work. Education has no significant effect on productivity in crop and livestock production. The effect of human capital on household incomes is partly realized through the reallocation of labor from low-productivity activities to nonfarm work. Female education and nutrition do not affect productivity and labor allocation in any systematic fashion, a finding that is consistent with the marginal role women play in market-oriented activities in Pakistan. As a by-product, our estimation approach also tests the existence of perfect labor and factor markets; the hypothesis that such markets exist is strongly rejected.employment ,Gender ,Female labor ,Income distribution ,Labor Gender issues. ,Labor productivity. ,Pakistan. ,Nutrition ,

Correlations and enlarged superconducting phase of tt-J⊥J_\perp chains of ultracold molecules on optical lattices

We compute physical properties across the phase diagram of the $t$-$J_\perp$ chain with long-range dipolar interactions, which describe ultracold polar molecules on optical lattices. Our results obtained by the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) indicate that superconductivity is enhanced when the Ising component $J_z$ of the spin-spin interaction and the charge component $V$ are tuned to zero, and even further by the long-range dipolar interactions. At low densities, a substantially larger spin gap is obtained. We provide evidence that long-range interactions lead to algebraically decaying correlation functions despite the presence of a gap. Although this has recently been observed in other long-range interacting spin and fermion models, the correlations in our case have the peculiar property of having a small and continuously varying exponent. We construct simple analytic models and arguments to understand the most salient features.Comment: published version with minor modification

Beyond Water-Quality Regulations for CAFOs? Manure Management Costs to Meet Air-Quality Objectives

Federal policy on manure management has focused on water-quality protection. However, animal agriculture is an important source of ammonia-nitrogen and other air emissions, increasing attention on air-quality concerns. Policies to address air emissions would influence both the costs of meeting water-quality objectives and environmental tradeoffs. We consider hypothetical policies at a regional level.manure management, confined animals, water quality, air quality, regional optimization, Chesapeake Bay, Environmental Economics and Policy,

QCD resummation in the framework of supersymmetry

Motivated by current searches for electroweak superpartners at the Large Hadron Collider, we present precision predictions for pair production of such particles in the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We make use of various QCD resummation formalisms and match the results to pure perturbative QCD computations. We study the impact of scale variations and compare our results to predictions obtained by means of traditionally used Monte Carlo event generators.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, contribution to the proceedings of Moriond QCD 201