Global production and free access to Landsat-scale Evapotranspiration with EEFlux and eeMETRIC

EEFlux (Earth Engine Evapotranspiration Flux) is a version of the METRIC (mapping evapotranspiration at high resolution with internal calibration) application that operates on the Google Earth Engine (EE). EEFlux has a web-based interface and provides free public access to transform Landsat images into 30 m spatial evapotranspiration (ET) data for terrestrial land areas around the globe. EE holds the entire Landsat archive to power EEFlux along with NLDAS/CFSV2 gridded weather data for estimating reference ET. EEFlux is a part of the upcoming OpenET platform (https://openetdata.org/ ) that has leveraged nonprofit funding to provide ET information to all of the lower 48 states for free, as a means to foster water exchange between agriculture, cities and environment (Melton et al., 2020). The METRIC version in OpenET is named eeMETRIC, and includes cloud detection and time integration of ET snapshots into monthly ET estimates. EEFlux and eeMETRIC employ METRIC’s “mountain” algorithms for estimating aerodynamics and solar radiation in complex terrain. Calibration is automated and ET images are computed for download in seconds using EE’s large computational capacity

How many educated workers for your economy? European targets, optimal public spending, and labor market impact

This paper studies optimal taxation schemes for education in a search- matching model where the labor market is divided between a high-skill and a low-skill sector. Two public policy targets - maximizing the total employment level and optimizing the social surplus - are studied according to three different public taxation strategies. We calibrate our model using evidence from thirteen European countries, and compare our results with the target from the Europe 2020 Agenda for achievement in higher education. We show that, with current labor market char- acteristics, the target set by governments seems compatible with the social surplus maximization objective for some countries, while being too high for other countries. For all countries, maximizing employment would imply higher educational spending than that required for the social surplus to reach its maximum.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Human capital formation and public debt: Growth and welfare effects of three different deficit policies

Greiner A. Human capital formation and public debt: Growth and welfare effects of three different deficit policies. Working Papers in Economics and Management. Vol 05-2015. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University, Department of Business Administration and Economics; 2015.In this paper we analyze an endogenous growth model with human capital that results from public educational spending. We allow for public debt and analyze three different debt policies: a balanced government budget, a slight deficit policy where debt grows but less than GDP, and a strong deficit policy where debt grows at the same rate as GDP. We find that the balanced budget policy and the policy with a slightly growing public debt are equivalent as concerns long-run economic growth. Further, those two rules yield higher growth than a debt policy where public debt grows at the same rate as GDP, unless the government is a creditor. As concerns welfare, it can be demonstrated that a strong deficit policy yields lower welfare than a balanced budget and a slight deficit, unless initial debt ratios are low and the intertemporal elasticity of substituion is high. Finally, it is demonstrated that there may exist an inverted U-shaped relation between welfare and deficit financed educational spending

Worker remittances and the global preconditions of ‘smart development’

With the growing environmental crisis affecting our globe, ideas to weigh economic or social progress by the ‘energy input’ necessary to achieve it are increasingly gaining acceptance. This question is intriguing and is being dealt with by a growing number of studies, focusing on the environmental price of human progress. Even more intriguing, however, is the question of which factors of social organization contribute to a responsible use of the resources of our planet to achieve a given social result (‘smart development’). In this essay, we present the first systematic study on how migration – or rather, more concretely, received worker remittances per GDP – helps the nations of our globe to enjoy social and economic progress at a relatively small environmental price. We look at the effects of migration on the balance sheets of societal accounting, based on the ‘ecological price’ of the combined performance of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. Feminism in power, economic freedom, population density, the UNDP education index as well as the receipt of worker remittances all significantly contribute towards a ‘smart overall development’, while high military expenditures and a high world economic openness are a bottleneck for ‘smart overall development’

Optimal redistributive tax and education policies in general equilibrium

This paper studies optimal linear and non-linear income taxes and education subsidies in two-type models with endogenous human capital formation, endogenous labor supply, and endogenous wage rates. Assuming constant human capital elasticities, human capital investment should be efficient under optimal linear policies, whether general equilibrium effects are present or not. Hence, education subsidies should not be used for distributional reasons. Due to general equilibrium effects, optimal linear income taxes may even become negative. Optimal non-linear policies exploit general equilibrium effects for redistribution. The high-skilled type optimally has a negative marginal income tax rate and a positive marginal education subsidy. The low-skilled type optimally faces a positive marginal income tax rate and a marginal tax on education. Simulations demonstrate that general equilibrium effects have only a modest effect on optimal non-linear policies

Racism as a determinant of health: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Despite a growing body of epidemiological evidence in recent years documenting the health impacts of racism, the cumulative evidence base has yet to be synthesized in a comprehensive meta-analysis focused specifically on racism as a determinant of health. This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013, and conducted predominately in the U.S., were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with poorer mental health (negative mental health: r = -.23, 95% CI [-.24,-.21], k = 227; positive mental health: r = -.13, 95% CI [-.16,-.10], k = 113), including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other outcomes. Racism was also associated with poorer general health (r = -.13 (95% CI [-.18,-.09], k = 30), and poorer physical health (r = -.09, 95% CI [-.12,-.06], k = 50). Moderation effects were found for some outcomes with regard to study and exposure characteristics. Effect sizes of racism on mental health were stronger in cross-sectional compared with longitudinal data and in non-representative samples compared with representative samples. Age, sex, birthplace and education level did not moderate the effects of racism on health. Ethnicity significantly moderated the effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants.<br /