Cuban immigrants in the United States: what determines their earnings distribution?

Este artículo analiza la distribución de ingresos condicionales de los inmigrantes cubanos en los Estados Unidos usando OLS y analizando una Regresión Cuantílica. Los datos usados en este estudio fueron tomados del American Community Survey (ACS) de los Estados Unidos y fueron suministrados por IPUMS (2011). Los resultados muestran que incrementos en los ingresos asociados a diferentes características socioeconómicas tales como: el sexo, estado civil, etnia, manejo del idioma inglés y educación varían entre las diferentes distribuciones de ingresos.In this paper the conditional earnings distribution of Cuban immigrants in the U.S. using OLS and Quantile Regression is analyzed. The data used in the study come from the 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) in the U.S. provided by IPUMS (2011). The results show that increments in earnings associated with different socioeconomic characteristics such as: sex, marital status, ethnicity, proficiency in English and education vary across the earnings distribution.Este artigo analisa a distribuição de ingressos condicionais dos imigrantes cubanos nos Estados Unidos usando OLS e analisando uma Regressão Quantílica. Os dados usados neste estudo foram tomados do American Community Survey (ACS) dos Estados Unidos e foram subministrados por IPUMS (2011). Os resultados mostram que incrementos nos ingressos associados a diferentes características socioeconômicas tais como: o sexo, estado civil, etnia, manejo do idioma inglês e educação variam entre as diferentes distribuições de ingressos

Global Burden of Disease and Economic Growth

Relationships between health and economic prosperity or economic growth are difficult to assess. The direction of the causality is often questioned and the subject of a vigorous debate. For some authors, diseases or poor health had contributed to poor growth performances especially in low-income countries. For other authors, the effect of health on growth is relatively small, even if one considers that investments which could improve health should be done. It is argued in this paper that commonly used health indicators in macroeconomic studies (e. g. life expectancy, infant mortality or prevalence rates for specific diseases such as malaria or HIV/AIDS) imperfectly represent the global health status of population. Health is rather a complex notion and includes several dimensions which concern fatal (deaths) and non-fatal issues (prevalence and severity of cases) of illness. The reported effects of health on economic growth vary accordingly with health indicators and countries included in the analyses. The purpose of the paper is to assess the effect of a global health indicator on growth, the so-called disability-adjusted life year (DALY) that was proposed by the World Bank and the WHO in 1993. Growth convergence equations are run on 159 countries over the 1999-2004's period, where the potential endogeneity of the health indicator is dealt for. The negative effect of poor health on economic growth is not rejected thus reinforcing the importance of achieving MDGs.Disease Global Burden;DALYs;economic growth;macroeconomic health impact;cross-country analysis

For Many Injured Veterans, A Lifetime of Consequences

One out of every ten veterans alive today was seriously injured at some point while serving in the military, and three-quarters of those injuries occurred in combat. For many of these 2.2 million wounded warriors, the physical and emotional consequences of their wounds have endured long after they left the military, according to a Pew research Center survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,853 veterans conducted from July 18 to Sept. 4, 2011.Veterans who suffered major service-related injuries are more than twice as likely as their more fortunate comrades to say they had difficulties readjusting to civilian life. They are almost three times as likely as other veterans to report they have suffered from post-traumatic stress (PTS). And they are less likely in later life to be in overall good health or to hold full-time jobs

Cross Cultural Meta-analysis of Personality and Leadership Effectiveness and Evaluation of Changes Over Time

The research integrates and expands upon trait theory and culturally-endorsed leadership theory by performing a meta-analysis of the big five personality traits relationships with leadership effectiveness through a cultural and temporal lens. Using only organizational and military/government samples, this investigation delivers three important contributions; corroborates support for trait theory, reveals trait variability, and identifies trends in global leadership. In order to be a “Great Man”, a person needs to be born with the right traits at the right time in the right place. Consistent with prior meta-analytical research, big five traits consistently predicted leadership effectiveness, further supporting trait theory. While all traits demonstrated variability by culture and time, agreeableness and extraversion were most pronounced. Germanic and Confucian cultures produced uniquely different results for extraversion. Agreeableness appeared culturally consistent, and not only increased over time, but also produced two distinctly different time periods. Culturally-endorsed leadership theory may explain these outcomes. Results are discussed with respect to cultural convergences, globalization and the nascent field of global leadership

A methodology to estimate impacts of domestic policies on deforestation: Compensated Successful Efforts for “avoided deforestation” (REDD)

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism is in charge of distilling the right incentives for fostering forest conservation with appropriate compensation of foregone revenues, which in turn is related to avoided deforestation (how many hectares of forests are saved). Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-as-usual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far. In other words, proposals have focused on a baseline (or cap)-and-trade approach, which relevance is questionable because resulting financial compensations are subject to unfairness if estimations of avoided deforestation are not reliable. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking compensations to real efforts that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide more efficient incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is due partly to structural factors, and partly to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate / underlying causes, or economic / institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach. In addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective, this approach guarantees fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period.avoided deforestation, REDD, climate change, baseline scenario, Forest

Deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries

This paper establishes a link between deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries. The latter exhibit rapid deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in credit booms and crunches episodes: data available on the last years show a coincidence between higher macroeconomic instability and deforestation increases. This paper provides a theoretical explanation and econometric investigations of this phenomenon. A key ingredient of the model is the existence of two sectors: a modern agricultural sector and a subsistence one, which are hypothesised to catch the basic features of Latin American agricultural sectors. Agricultural production relies on three production factors: land, capital and labour. Agents clear forested areas in order to increase agricultural lands. Interest rates movements have an effect on agricultural decisions and thus on deforestation since they induce factor movements between the agricultural sectors. It is shown that deforestation occurs in response to interest rates increases or decreases primarily because of the irreversible character of forest conversion. Econometric tests are conducted on the 1948-2005 period on an exhaustive sample of Latin American countries. The database on deforestation is a compilation of FAO censuses and several measures of credit cycles are calculated as well. The main output of the paper is to evidence a link between credit cycles and deforestation. The results are robust to the introduction of usual control variables in deforestation equations.Credit cycles;deforestation;Latin America

SOEP as a Source for Research on Ageing: Issues, Measures and Possibilities for Improvement

Demographic change is a key consequence of the development of modern societies. The prolongation of life expectancy, shifts of mortality into later life and long-term low fertility rates cause essential changes in population structures - with an increase in the number and proportion of older people as a key feature. The changes in mortality patterns can be seen as a success of modern society. But demographic shifts imply new risks and challenges as well as opportunities for modern societies, as they affect individual life courses as well as societies as a whole. The present low birth rates also predict low birth numbers in the future, since the number of potential mothers decreases. At the same time, life expectancies are not expected to decrease. As a consequence, the relation between old and young people will change in Germany in the next decades. In 2050, just about half of the population will be of working age and more than 30 percent will be 65 years old or older. The number of the 20 to under 65-years-olds will decrease from 50 million to a figure between 35 and 39 million in the next 40 years (Federal Statistical Office, 2006). Furthermore, the working age population will undergo an ageing process, implying that in 2050, nearly 40 percent of the working-age population will be between 50 and 64 years old (Federal Statistical Office, 2006). In order to understand the labour market and the fiscal implications of these population trends, it is very illustrative to analyse the proportion of older individuals in relation to the working population, the so-called old-age dependency ratio. According to the Federal Statistical Office (2006) the old-age dependency ratio will grow from 32 percent in 2005 to 60 or 64 percent by 2050. This projection indicates that in 40 years, for every three persons of working-age in Germany there will be two persons receiving a pension. If we consider the age cut at 67, the results are not much more optimistic, indicating that increasing the legal retirement age alone is not a solution for the sustainability of the public pension systems and for the decrease in the labour force. The proportion of people of very old age is also growing. While the 80+ population was nearly 4 million in 2005, it will grow to 10 million by 2050 (Federal Statistical Office, 2006). This trend has inter alia, important consequences for health care provision. In this demographic context, interdisciplinary research of ageing and later life gains in relevance. Thus, research on ageing becomes an increasingly crucial task for major surveys like the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). As part of the "research infrastructure" they are called upon to invest in its potentials and attractiveness for research on ageing and later life.

Deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries

This paper establishes a link between deforestation and credit cycles in Latin American countries. The latter exhibit rapid deforestation rates as well as macroeconomic instability that is often rooted in credit booms and crunches episodes: data available on the last years show a coincidence between higher macroeconomic instability and deforestation increases. This paper provides a theoretical explanation and econometric investigations of this phenomenon. A key ingredient of the model is the existence of two sectors: a modern agricultural sector and a subsistence one, which are hypothesised to catch the basic features of Latin American agricultural sectors. Agricultural production relies on three production factors: land, capital and labour. Agents clear forested areas in order to increase agricultural lands. Interest rates movements have an effect on agricultural decisions and thus on deforestation since they induce factor movements between the agricultural sectors. It is shown that deforestation occurs in response to interest rates increases or decreases primarily because of the irreversible character of forest conversion. Econometric tests are conducted on the 1948-2005 period on an exhaustive sample of Latin American countries. The database on deforestation is a compilation of FAO censuses and several measures of credit cycles are calculated as well. The main output of the paper is to evidence a link between credit cycles and deforestation. The results are robust to the introduction of usual control variables in deforestation equations.Credit cycles, deforestation, Latin America