28,057 research outputs found
The impact of remittances on poverty and human capital : evidence from Latin American household surveys
This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration-the potential income that the migrant may have made at home. The main findings of the study are the following: (1) regardless of the counterfactual used remittances appear to lower poverty levels in most recipient countries; (2) yet despite this general tendency, the estimated impacts tend to be modest; and (3) there is significant country heterogeneity in the poverty reduction impact of remittances'flows. Among the aspects that have been identified in the paper that may leadto varying outcomes across countries are the percentage of households reporting remittances income, the share of remittances of recipient households belonging to the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, and the relative importance of remittances flows with respect to GDP. While remittances tend to have positive effects on education and health, this impact is often restricted to specific groups of the population.Population Policies,Remittances,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Achieving Shared Growth,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping
Efficient model chemistries for peptides. I. Split-valence Gaussian basis sets and the heterolevel approximation in RHF and MP2
We present an exhaustive study of more than 250 ab initio potential energy
surfaces (PESs) of the model dipeptide HCO-L-Ala-NH2. The model chemistries
(MCs) used are constructed as homo- and heterolevels involving possibly
different RHF and MP2 calculations for the geometry and the energy. The basis
sets used belong to a sample of 39 selected representants from Pople's
split-valence families, ranging from the small 3-21G to the large
6-311++G(2df,2pd). The reference PES to which the rest are compared is the
MP2/6-311++G(2df,2pd) homolevel, which, as far as we are aware, is the more
accurate PES of a dipeptide in the literature. The aim of the study presented
is twofold: On the one hand, the evaluation of the influence of polarization
and diffuse functions in the basis set, distinguishing between those placed at
1st-row atoms and those placed at hydrogens, as well as the effect of different
contraction and valence splitting schemes. On the other hand, the investigation
of the heterolevel assumption, which is defined here to be that which states
that heterolevel MCs are more efficient than homolevel MCs. The heterolevel
approximation is very commonly used in the literature, but it is seldom
checked. As far as we know, the only tests for peptides or related systems,
have been performed using a small number of conformers, and this is the first
time that this potentially very economical approximation is tested in full
PESs. In order to achieve these goals, all data sets have been compared and
analyzed in a way which captures the nearness concept in the space of MCs.Comment: 54 pages, 16 figures, LaTeX, AMSTeX, Submitted to J. Comp. Che
Stability Conditions for Coupled Autonomous Vehicles Formations
In this paper, we give necessary conditions for stability of coupled
autonomous vehicles in R. We focus on linear arrays with decentralized
vehicles, where each vehicle interacts with only a few of its neighbors. We
obtain explicit expressions for necessary conditions for stability in the cases
that a system consists of a periodic arrangement of two or three different
types of vehicles, i.e. configurations as follows: ...2-1-2-1 or
...3-2-1-3-2-1. Previous literature indicated that the (necessary) condition
for stability in the case of a single vehicle type (...1-1-1) held that the
first moment of certain coefficients of the interactions between vehicles has
to be zero. Here, we show that that does not generalize. Instead, the
(necessary) condition in the cases considered is that the first moment plus a
nonlinear correction term must be zero
The politics of intergovernmental deficits: Theory and evidence
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we present a model of decentralized fiscal policy-making where a "coordination failure" problem arises. Second, we make an effort in order to empirically test this approach by developing an empirical investigation based on the recent experience of two countries: Argentina and Great Britain.
Density of states of a binary Lennard-Jones Glass
We calculate the density of states of a binary Lennard-Jones glass using a
recently proposed Monte Carlo algorithm. Unlike traditional molecular
simulation approaches, the algorithm samples distinct configurations according
to self-consistent estimates of the density of states, thereby giving rise to
uniform internal-energy histograms. The method is applied to simulate the
equilibrium, low-temperature thermodynamic properties of a widely studied glass
former consisting of a binary mixture of Lennard-Jones particles. We show how a
density-of-states algorithm can be combined with particle identity swaps and
configurational bias techniques to study that system. Results are presented for
the energy and entropy below the mode coupling temperature.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted by J Chem Phy
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