Childhood health and educational investment under risk

En: IZA Journal of Labor & Development, 6:2. doi: 10.1186/s40175-016-0068-4A huge literature shows that childhood health and educational attainment are highly correlated. However, estimates for the effect of childhood health on educational attainment under risk generally confound the effect of liquidity constraints and of lack of insurance against risk. It is unclear whether the correlation between health and education under uninsured risk would remain if the capital markets were perfect and household faced no liquidity constraints. This paper fills in this lacuna in the literature. We develop a two period model of investment in education when future labor earnings are stochastically dependent on current investments in schooling and health. It is found that when there is uninsured risk, then parental investment in a child’s education will be inefficient even in the presence of perfect capital markets. Under certain assumptions, there will be a positive correlation between childhood health and educational investment. Health inequalities will translate into educational inequalities in an environment of uninsured risk. We are able to show that when perfect insurance markets are present, investments in child health and schooling will be optimal. From the policy perspective, this argues for the development of insurance markets. The results also suggest that policy interventions that target higher levels of educational investment among the population need to account for the effect of childhood differences in health

Complexity Studies in Some Piece wise Continuous Dynamical Systems

The, “Complex systems”, stands as a broad term for many diverse disciplines of science and engineering including natural & medical sciences. Complexities appearing in various dynamical systems during evolution are now interesting subjects of studies. Chaos appearing in various dynamical systems can also be viewed as a form of complexity. For some cases nonlinearities within the systems and for other cases piecewise continuity property of the system are responsible for such complexity. Dynamical systems represented by mathematical models having piecewise continuous properties show strange complexity character during evolution. Interesting recent articles explain widely on complexities in various systems. Observable quantities for complexity are measurement of Lyapunov exponents (LCEs), topological entropies, correlation dimension etc. The present article is related to study of complexity in systems having piecewise continuous properties. Some mathematical models are considered here in this regard including famous Lozi map, a discrete mathematical model and Chua circuit, a continuous model. Investigations have been carried forward to obtain various attractors of these maps appearing during evolution in diverse and interesting pattern for different set of values of parameters and for different initial conditions. Numerical investigations extended to obtain bifurcation diagrams, calculations of LCEs, topological entropies and correlation dimension together with their graphical representation

Vocational Education and Training Reform in India: Business Needs in India and Lessons to be Learned from Germany. Working paper

India is among the countries with the lowest proportion of trained youth in the world. Even worse, vocational education in secondary schools has received very limited funding since the mid-1980s;nit has remained non-aspirational, of poor quality and involves little industry collaboration. The Vocational Education and Training (VET) system in Germany, in contrast, shows a much higher proportion of youth participation, more intense involvement of the private sector and is anchored in the law