Employment, Well-Being and Gender

This book examines welfare effects of gender-related inequalities in Korean households and labor markets. It uses subjective well-being data to show that reductions of excessive levels of working hours did improve family well-being in the past decade. Moreover, benefits from major life events like marriage can differ greatly by sex if traditional gender roles dominate and women contribute much less than men to household earnings. Furthermore, the study examines dynamics in rural East Asian economies and their impact on individual welfare outcomes. Both land redistribution and productivity-enhancing reforms are found to have been highly beneficial for Korean development. The Indonesian case study demonstrates the importance of cash-crop decisions and the growing non-farm sector for rural development

Micro Evidence on the Adjustment of Sticky-Price Goods: It's How Often, not How Much

We use a unique panel data set to analyze price setting in restaurants in Switzerland 1977-93, for items known to have sticky prices. The macroeconomic environment during this time period allows us to examine how firms adjust prices at low (0%) and fairly high (7%) inflation. Our results indicate that firms strongly react to inflation in the timing of their price adjustment: hazard of price changes is increasing with time and becomes steeper at higher inflation rates. However, we find little evidence that the amount by which they change the price responds to the inflation rate.sticky prices; inflation; nominal inertia

Rural Income Dynamics in Post-Crisis Indonesia

Indonesia is, what the World Development Report 2008 calls, a transforming country characterized by increasing rural-urban income disparities and high poverty rates. Bearing these facts in mind, it is striking how little is known about causes and mechanism of the underlying determinants of poverty in rural Indonesia. In this study we aim to shed more light on the determinants of rural incomes and poverty in Indonesia. Drawing on a unique and highly detailed rural household panel data set for Central Sulawesi we investigate what are the drivers of rural income growth. Moreover, exploiting the panel structure of our data set we are able to control explicitly for individual- and time-specific effects and for endogeneity issues in our estimations. In addition, in order to identify whether our findings might hold lessons for all of Indonesia, we upscale our analysis to the national level by comparing our results with the national household data survey SUSENAS. Our results indicate that a sharp increase in rural incomes took place in the post-crisis period. Moreover, the ability to alleviate poverty and to enjoy income growth has been strongly associated with a households ability to diversify into the non-farm sector of the economy, to focus on higher value-added agricultural activities and its ability to invest into new production techniques. These results seem to hold for most of rural Indonesia and are robust to various model specifications. --Rural non-farm income,agricultural productivity growth,rural poverty

Employment, Well-Being and Gender

This book examines welfare effects of gender-related inequalities in Korean households and labor markets. It uses subjective well-being data to show that reductions of excessive levels of working hours did improve family well-being in the past decade. Moreover, benefits from major life events like marriage can differ greatly by sex if traditional gender roles dominate and women contribute much less than men to household earnings. Furthermore, the study examines dynamics in rural East Asian economies and their impact on individual welfare outcomes. Both land redistribution and productivity-enhancing reforms are found to have been highly beneficial for Korean development. The Indonesian case study demonstrates the importance of cash-crop decisions and the growing non-farm sector for rural development

Azobenzene photocontrol of peptides and proteins

The last few years have witnessed significant advances in the use of light as a stimulus to control biomolecular interactions. Great efforts have been devoted to the development of genetically encoded optobiological and small photochromic switches. Newly discovered small molecules now allow researchers to build molecular systems that are sensitive to a wider range of wavelengths of light than ever before with improved switching fidelities and increased lifetimes of the photoactivated states. Because these molecules are relatively small and adopt predictable conformations they are well suited as tools to interrogate cellular function in a spatially and temporally contolled fashion and for applications in photopharmacology

Developing an Effective EU Grant Management and Monitoring System

Obtaining grant money from the European Union and implementation of grant funded projects is a long and difficult process due to complex rules for applying and reporting. The core reasons for such state are lack of systematic and comprehensive approach to programming rules on EU level, lack of knowledge management system and an inefficient reporting system based on periodic reports. The problems related with grant funded projects are well researched and documented, as is shown in literature review. Many solutions exist but none of them tackle the core problems and thus remain partial, either in methodology or geo-political sense. We propose a solution comprising three components – developed methodology and procedures, continuous support and knowledge management and IT component of the solution. The IT solution has been tested and test results are presented

The Trade Facilitation Impact of the Chinese Diaspora

Using an enhanced dataset on the population share of overseas Chinese in 1970 and 1990, this paper analyzes the impact of the Chinese diaspora on facilitating China’s bilateral trade during the period 1973- 2013. Our findings suggest substantial trade-creation effects resulting from the presence of ethnic Chinese in the trade partner population. Diaspora impacts on Chinese bilateral imports are in general higher than those found for exports. Coethnic networks play a larger role as long as the partner country does not have an RTA with China in place. Among export sectors, effects found were strongest for food, as well as for machinery & transport equipment. In regards to imports, coethnic networks matter mostly for raw materials, machinery & transport equipment, and chemicals