The Informal Sector During Crisis and Transition

employment, mobility, informal sector, transition, dual economy, Bulgaria

Revealed Informal Activity

What does it mean to be in the informal sector? Many characterizations have been used in the literature, for example, firms that are unregistered or employ a small workforce or firms/economic enterprises that do not have access to formal capital markets. But many people participate in both formal and informal activities, while classification of participation is often based on primary employment. This creates limitations to the analytical power of existing measures of informality. We develop a method for assigning households to the informal sector by inferring informal sector activity using income and expenditure surveys. We apply this method to the case of Bulgaria using LSMS income and expenditure surveys before and after a significant economic reform and compare it to those made using other indicators of informal sector activity. Our work shows that the informal sector acts as a buffer for households during periods of crisis when formal sector employment opportunities are limited. It shows the limitations of alternative stylized measures of informality in assessing the vulnerability of households involved in the informal sector, especially during periods of extreme economic hardship.informal labour markets, crisis, Bulgaria

Migration as a Substitute for Informal Activities: Evidence from Tajikistan

How is migration related to informal activities? They may be complementary since new migrants may have difficulty finding employment in formal work, so many of them end up informally employed. Alternatively, migration and informality may be substitutes since migrants' incomes in their new locations and income earned in the home informal economy (without migration) are an imperfect trade-off. Tajikistan possesses both a very large informal sector and extensive international emigration. Using the gap between household expenditure and income as an indicator of informal activity, we find negative significant correlations between informal activities and migration: the gap between expenditure and income falls in the presence of migration. Furthermore, Tajikistan's professional workers ability to engage in informal activities enables them to forgo migration, while low-skilled non-professionals without post-secondary education choose to migrate instead of working in the informal sector. Our empirical evidence suggests migration and informality substitute for one another.remittances, migration, informal, Tajikistan

Where to Work? Gender Differences in Labor Market Outcomes during Economic Crisis

In Central and Eastern European women started the process of transition from socialist to market economies with a status quo that differed markedly from women in both de-veloped western and traditional developing economies. They enjoyed an equal or higher level of education than men, virtually no unemployment, only temporary labor force departures, lavish maternity and child related benefits. Using panel data constructed from the 1995 and 1997 Bulgarian Integrated Household Surveys, our results reveal striking gender differences with respect to the reallocation of male and female employ-ees to and out of the public and private sectors.Employment, Mobility, Gender, Household

vSPARQL: A View Definition Language for the Semantic Web

Translational medicine applications would like to leverage the biological and biomedical ontologies, vocabularies, and data sets available on the semantic web. We present a general solution for RDF information set reuse inspired by database views. Our view definition language, vSPARQL, allows applications to specify the exact content that they are interested in and how that content should be restructured or modified. Applications can access relevant content by querying against these view definitions. We evaluate the expressivity of our approach by defining views for practical use cases and comparing our view definition language to existing query languages

Primary Health Eye Care: evaluation of the competence of medical students in performing fundoscopy with the direct ophthalmoscope

Background: To evaluate the skill of fifth-year medical students at the University of Cape Town in the performance of fundoscopy at the end of their ophthalmology rotation. Methods: The design was a prospective cohort study. The study was conducted at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The ability of fifth-year medical students to perform fundoscopy on mannequin heads fitted with fundus photographs using direct ophthalmoscopes was evaluated. The outcome measures used were ability to see the fundus and ability to recognise fundus pathology. Results: The fundus photographs could be seen in 95% of cases. The correct diagnosis could be made in only 57% of cases. Conclusion: Medical students at the University of Cape Town need more than the current one week of practical ophthalmology training to improve their fundoscopy skills

A configuration system for the ATLAS trigger

The ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider will be exposed to proton-proton collisions from beams crossing at 40 MHz that have to be reduced to the few 100 Hz allowed by the storage systems. A three-level trigger system has been designed to achieve this goal. We describe the configuration system under construction for the ATLAS trigger chain. It provides the trigger system with all the parameters required for decision taking and to record its history. The same system configures the event reconstruction, Monte Carlo simulation and data analysis, and provides tools for accessing and manipulating the configuration data in all contexts.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, contribution to the Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP06), 13.-17. Feb 2006, Mumbai, Indi

Kinematic modelling of a 3-axis NC machine tool in linear and circular interpolation

Machining time is a major performance criterion when it comes to high-speed machining. CAM software can help in estimating that time for a given strategy. But in practice, CAM-programmed feed rates are rarely achieved, especially where complex surface finishing is concerned. This means that machining time forecasts are often more than one step removed from reality. The reason behind this is that CAM routines do not take either the dynamic performances of the machines or their specific machining tolerances into account. The present article seeks to improve simulation of high-speed NC machine dynamic behaviour and machining time prediction, offering two models. The first contributes through enhanced simulation of three-axis paths in linear and circular interpolation, taking high-speed machine accelerations and jerks into account. The second model allows transition passages between blocks to be integrated in the simulation by adding in a polynomial transition path that caters for the true machining environment tolerances. Models are based on respect for path monitoring. Experimental validation shows the contribution of polynomial modelling of the transition passage due to the absence of a leap in acceleration. Simulation error on the machining time prediction remains below 1%