Earnings Mobility in Times of Growth and Decline: Argentina from 1996 to 2003

In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. Various considerations led us to expect that mobility would be divergent—that is, that the individuals who started with the highest initial earnings would enjoy the largest earnings gains in pesos. Contrary to expectations and for a wide range of specifications, mobility is found to be mostly convergent, sometimes neutral, and never divergent. We then demonstrate how generally rising inequality and convergent mobility can be reconciled. Thus, the panel data analysis performed in this paper presents a picture of economic growth that is much more pro-poor than what one gets from cross-sectional inequality comparisons

Involvement of plastid, mitochondrial and nuclear genomes in plant-to-plant horizontal gene transfer

This review focuses on plant-to-plant horizontal gene transfer (HGT) involving the three DNA-containing cellular compartments. It highlights the great incidence of HGT in the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) of angiosperms, the increasing number of examples in plant nuclear genomes, and the lack of any convincing evidence for HGT in the well-studied plastid genome of land plants. Most of the foreign mitochondrial genes are non-functional, generally found as pseudogenes in the recipient plant mtDNA that maintains its functional native genes. The few exceptions involve chimeric HGT, in which foreign and native copies recombine leading to a functional and single copy of the gene. Maintenance of foreign genes in plant mitochondria is probably the result of genetic drift, but a possible evolutionary advantage may be conferred through the generation of genetic diversity by gene conversion between native and foreign copies. Conversely, a few cases of nuclear HGT in plants involve functional transfers of novel genes that resulted in adaptive evolution. Direct cell-to-cell contact between plants (e.g. host-parasite relationships or natural grafting) facilitate the exchange of genetic material, in which HGT has been reported for both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, and in the form of genomic DNA, instead of RNA. A thorough review of the literature indicates that HGT in mitochondrial and nuclear genomes of angiosperms is much more frequent than previously expected and that the evolutionary impact and mechanisms underlying plant-to-plant HGT remain to be uncovered.Fil: Sánchez Puerta, María Virginia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Biología Agrícola de Mendoza. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Biología Agrícola de Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Biología; Argentin

How Demanding Should Equality of Opportunity Be, and How Much Have We Achieved?

[Excerpt] This chapter proposes tests of various notions of equality of opportunity and applies them to intergenerational income data for the United States and Britain. Agreement is widespread that equality of opportunity holds in a society if the chances that individuals have to succeed depend only on their own efforts and not on extraneous circumstances that may inhibit or expand those chances. What is contentious, however, is what constitutes effort and circumstances. Most people, we think, would say that the social connections of an individual\u27s parents would be included among circumstances: equality of opportunity is incomplete if some individuals get ahead because they have well-connected parents. This and other channels through which circumstances affect income opportunities in an intergenerational context are discussed in Section 2. Section 3 then formulates four, increasingly stringent criteria for equality of opportunity. In Section 4, we turn to an empirical implementation of these criteria to test for equality of opportunity in the United States and Britain. The results, presented in Section 5, provide only the weakest of support for equality of opportunity in the United States and no support at all in Britain. Concluding remarks are presented in Section 6

Earnings Mobility in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela: Testing the Divergence of Earnings and the Symmetry of Mobility Hypotheses

This paper examines changes in individual earnings during positive and negative growth periods in three Latin American economies: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. We ask whether those individuals who start in the best economic position are those who experience the largest earnings gains or the smallest earnings losses; this is the “divergent mobility” hypothesis. We also compare periods of positive economic growth with those of negative economic growth, asking whether those groups of individuals that experience large positive earnings gains when the economy is growing are the same as those that experience large earnings losses when the economy is contracting; this is the “symmetry of mobility” hypothesis. We find very occasional support for the divergent mobility hypothesis in scattered years in the cases of Mexico and Venezuela, and no support at all in the case of Argentina. Rather, earnings mobility is most frequently convergent or neutral in all three countries. As for the symmetry of mobility hypothesis, we find that it is rejected in most cases; rather, those groups that gain the most when the economy is growing are also the ones that gain the most when the economy is contracting. Furthermore, we explain how the absence of divergence is compatible with rising inequality in the countries under study

Homofobia y agresiones verbales. La sanción por transgredir la masculinidad hegemónica. Colombia 1936-1980

El texto que a continuación se analiza hace un recorrido por la situación social, médica y jurídica de las personas homoeróticamente inclinadas en Colombia, en un período histórico que abarca desde el año 1936 hasta el 1980, delimitación que es acogida por el autor, Walter Alonso Bustamante, con base en una ley que se añade por proyecto al Código Penal colombiano de 1936, la misma que es derogada en el año de 1980, la cual criminalizaba el comportamiento homosexual. Sin embargo, aunque esta sea la delimitación temporal escogida por el autor, a lo largo de la obra se experimenta un juego táctico con el tiempo que justifica las premisas utilizadas para elaborar dicha ley o para entender las categorías y nominaciones a los que son sometidos los sujetos homoeróticos y los orígenes o mejor las raíces de los discursos medicalizadores del homosexualismo, además de diversas premisas de análisis de que se vale Bustamante para desarrollar su argumentación

Income Mobility in Latin America

[Excerpt] In the last decades Latin American countries have experienced substantial macroeconomic instability. While the region as a whole experienced economic growth during most of the 1990’s and 2000’s, there were also years of stagnation as well as economic decline

Cuerpos degenerados y conductas anormales: la transgresión a las sexualidades legitimadas en Medellín entre 1957 y 1966

A partir de cinco artículos descritos en el periódico Sucesos Sensacionales respecto al travestismo y al homosexualismo en Medellín, el texto hace una aproximación al rol desempeñado por la prensa sensacionalista en la regulación de ciertas conductas y comportamientos de tipo erótico, consideradas como anormales e inmorales. En este sentido, el homosexualismo representa el cuerpo utilizado como instrumento de placer, lo que deja como consecuencia una transgresión al orden establecido el cual dicta que el cuerpo se degenera cuando el erotismo se desvía, es decir, cuando el individuo se entrega a los “placeres prohibidosde la carne”

La mediación familiar. El encuentro de las partes como apertura a la transformación

En el presente escrito, se delinean algunos de los hallazgos atinentes a los objetivos trazados en la investigación referida, en especial, los que se centraronen el concepto de la transformación en el tratamiento de los conflictos de familia1. Para ello, se arrimaron a la investigación, además de la opinión de expertos, la descripción y contrastación de la percepción de quienes como partes intervinieron en los encuentros de mediación realizados. En el texto se hace referencia igualmente, a los conflictos de pareja y de familia, relievando lasdiferencias y semejanzas que estos presentan al momento de su génesis y de sutratamiento; se pone de manifiesto, asimismo, el concepto de mediación familiar,desde el cual se acentúan, finalmente, los elementos que ofrecen la posibilidad de la transformación de los conflictos y de las relaciones de familia

Señales de humo. La destrucción bibliográfica durante la Guerra Civil

During the Second Spanish Republic the book ceased to be a mere information medium to become a symbol. In the popular libraries of athenaeums and syndicates, the book represented the possibility of a better life for the people and a threat to the privileges of the ruling classes. On the other hand, ecclesiastical libraries and archives, notarial archives and of all kinds kept a past that some wanted to erase. When the Spanish Civil War began, there were attacks on the bibliographic heritage perpetrated by both sides