Detection and measurement of digital imbalances on a local scale related to the mechanism for production and distribution of cultural information

Through different projects, the iArtHis_Lab (www.iarthislab.es) research group has been analyzing the mechanisms for the production and distribution of cultural information on the Internet since 2015. Furthermore, this research group has considered the possibilities of reusing this information in the form of structured data to generate new knowledge and value through computational processing techniques. The interest of this research is derived from two main motivations. First, there is the need to examine and unveil the informational gaps that the digital society is producing in the cultural field. Secondly, there is the need to evaluate the potential connections between such inequalities and the development of the so-called creative economy.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Andalucía Tech. Centro de Estudios Andaluces of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) [Metodologías de datos aplicadas al análisis de las exposiciones artísticas para el desarrollo de la economía creativa, PRY128-17]

Mentoring, Educational Services, and Incentives to Learn: What Do We Know About Them?

This paper reviews recent studies on the effectiveness of services and incentives offered to disadvantaged youth. We focus our analysis on three types of interventions: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards. The objective of this article is threefold. First, we explain alternative theoretical points of view in favor (or against – when applicable) each of these interventions. Then, we discuss how recent empirical work has affected that view, and we summarize the latest findings. We conclude with a discussion on what questions remain to be examined. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand what educational interventions work and for whom, and to use as a starting point to illuminate the debate on where to go next.cognitive and non-cognitive skills, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, at-risk youth, resilience, deviancy training, deterrence, primary- and high-school, post-secondary education, remedial programs, incentives on inputs and outputs

Child Care, Maternal Employment and Persistence: A Natural Experiment from Spain

Reconciling work and family is high on many governments' agenda, especially in countries, such as Spain, with record-low fertility and female labor force participation rates. This paper analyzes the effects of a large-scale provision of publicly subsidized child care in Spain in the early 1990s, addressing the impact on mothers’ short- and long-run employment outcomes (up to four years after the child was eligible to participate in the program). Exploiting the staggered timing and age-targeting of this child-care expansion, our estimates show that the policy led to a sizable increase in employment (8%), and hours worked (9%) of mothers with age-eligible (3-year-old) children, and that these effects persisted over time. Heterogeneity matters. While persistence is strong among mothers with a high-school degree, the effects of the program on maternal employment quickly fade away among those without a high-school degree. These findings are consistent with the program reducing the depreciation of human capital. The lack of any results among college educated mothers, which represent less than one tenth of mothers, is most likely due to the fact that they are able to pay day care (even when it is mainly privately supplied), and that most of them are already strongly attached to the labor force.quasi-natural experiment, childcare, preschool children, mother's labor supply, differences-in-differences-in-differences

Les polítiques actives d'ocupació, a estudi

Les polítiques actives d'ocupació, com els serveis d'ocupació pública i els programes d'assistència a les petites empreses, tenen diferent efectivitat en funció del sector o grup poblacional al qual van dirigides, de manera que per poder oferir-les a aquells individus que més profit en poden treure, cal entendre les institucions i la realitat econòmica i social del seu entorn. Aquest estudi avalua l'efectivitat relativa d'ambdues estratègies en els salaris i la probabilitat de treballar de diferents subgrups poblacionals a Romania a finals dels anys noranta, on l'economia de transició es basa en importants xarxes socials i un desenvolupat mercat de treball dual, amb un sector formal i un altre informal, i els resultats obtinguts difereixen dels obtinguts per a Europa Occidental.Las políticas activas de ocupación, como los servicios de empleo público y los programas de asistencia a las pequeñas empresas, tienen diferente efectividad en función del sector o grupo poblacional al que van dirigidas, por lo que para poderlas ofrezer a aquellos individuos que más provecho les pueden sacar, hay que entender las instituciones y la realidad económica y social de su entorno. Este estudio evalúa la efectividad relativa de ambas estrategias en los salarios y la probabilidad de trabajar de distintos subgrupos poblacionales en Rumanía a finales de los años noventa donde la economía de transición se basa en importantes redes sociales y un desarrollado mercado de trabajo dual, con un sector formal y otro informal y los resultados obtenidos difieren de los obtenidos para Europa Occidental

Unintended Effects of a Family-Friendly Law in a Segmented Labor Market

Family-friendly laws may backfire if not all workers with access to the policies use them. Because these policies are costly to the employer, hiring practices may consequently be affected at the detriment of the at-risk population who may end up accessing the policy. We exploit a 1999 Spanish law that granted all workers with children under 7 years the right to work part-time. Most importantly, the law declared a layoff invalid if the worker had previously asked for a work-week reduction due to family responsibilities. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) methodology, we first find evidence that the law increased part-time work among eligible mothers with a permanent contract, but had no effect on eligible fathers or mothers with a temporary contract. This effect is driven by the less-educated women. Then, using both a DD and a DDD approach, we analyze the effects of the law among the at-risk population, i.e., childbearing-aged women with no children under 7. We find that this policy led to the unintended effect of decreasing the likelihood of being employed with a permanent contract among the at-risk high-school graduate women (relative to their male counterpart), while increasing their relative likelihood of having a fixed-term contract job. These findings suggest that, after the law, employers preferred hiring childbearing-aged men under permanent contracts (offering fixed-term contracts to childbearing-aged women).temporary employment, flexible work arrangement laws, European unemployment

The Part-Time Pay Penalty in a Segmented Labor Market

While much of the literature that investigates the part-time (PT) / full-time (FT) hourly wage differential and its causes focuses on average effects, very few studies analyze the heterogeneous effects of PT work across different subgroups, despite the policy relevance of understanding channels behind the (raw) PT penalty in different labor markets. This paper is the first to examine the implications of switching to PT work for women's subsequent earnings trajectories, distinguishing by their type of contract: permanent or fixed-term. Using a 21-year unbalanced Social Security records panel of over 76,000 prime-aged women strongly attached to the Spanish labor market, we find that PT work aggravates the segmentation of the labor market insofar there is a PT pay penalty and this penalty is larger and more persistent in the case of women with fixed-term contracts. The paper discusses problems arising in empirical estimation, and how to address them. It concludes with policy implications relevant for Continental Europe and its dual structure of employment protection.fixed-term and permanent contract, hourly wage levels and growth, prime-aged women, fixed-effects estimator, differential measurement error of HS variable, underlying channels

Immigrants' Assimilation Process in a Segmented Labor Market

While much of the literature on immigrants' assimilation has focused on countries with a large tradition of receiving immigrants and with flexible labor markets, very little is known on how immigrants adjust to other types of host economies. With its severe dual labor market, and an unprecedented immigration boom, Spain presents a perfect natural experiment to analyze immigrations' assimilation process. Using data from the 2000 to 2008 Spanish Labor Force Survey, we find that immigrants are more occupationally mobile than natives, and that much of this greater flexibility is explained by immigrants' assimilation process soon after arrival. However, we find little evidence of convergence, especially among women and high skilled immigrants. This suggests that instead of integrating, immigrants are occupationally segregating, implying that there is both imperfect substitutability and underutilization of immigrants' human capital.immigrants' assimilation effects, cohort effects, occupational distributions and mobility, segmented labor markets

Ecosistema y explosión de las fuentes en la sociedad datacéntrica: nuevos materiales para la investigación cultural. Análisis del sistema expositivo español como estudio de caso

An ecosystem of heterogeneous, mass-scale sources that are globally distributed, together the transition to a new knowledge economy based on the value of data, define the epistemological paradigms that are of our times. Given this new scenario, the purpose of this essay is to explore, through specific examples taken from the Exhibitium Project, how to face the double challenge of accessing to this new ecosystem of sources and transforming their content into reusable data for cultural interpretation.Este trabajo forma parte de los resultados de investigación del proyecto «Generación de conocimiento sobre exposiciones artísticas temporales para su reutilización y aprovechamiento multivalente», financiado por la Fundación BBVA y coordinado por el grupo de investigación iArtHis_Lab de la Universidad de Málaga. Véase en: http://www.exhibitium.com. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech