The Dynamics of Job Creation and Job Destruction: Is Sub-Saharan Africa Different?

Agricultural production is an important source of income and employment for developing countries, yet it is the cause of serious environmental problems. Though ECO-labels appear as a promising alternative to control the negative effects of agriculture on the environment and to increase the income of rural poor, the proportion of agricultural land and exports certified as is quite small. We investigate the factors that affect the adoption of certified organic coffee in Colombia and in particular study the effect of economic incentives on adoption. We find that those who have lower cost of adoption are more likely to be certified as organic. Correcting for sample selection, we find that certified organic production is 40% less productive and 31% less costly than non-certified production. Given the price premium in 2007, certified organic production is 15% less profitable than non-organic production. We find that in order to make organic production attractive, the price premium of certified organic coffee should be about 5 times higher than in 2007. --Job Creation,Job Destruction,Job Reallocation,Firm Dynamics,Africa,Ethiopia

The Impact of a Cash Transfer Program on Cognitive Achievement: The Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador

Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students’ test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador, on students’ cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and the sample used, we find that there is no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions.cash transfers, test scores, regression discontinuity

The Impact of Interest in School on Educational Success in Portugal

Notwithstanding increased educational expenditure, Portugal continues to record poor educational outcomes. Underlining the weak expenditure-educational success link, a large body of work in educational economics displays that there is a tenuous relationship between a range of school inputs and cognitive achievement. Among others, the inability to establish a clear link between inputs and success has been attributed to the difficulty of controlling for unobserved attributes such as ability, motivation and interest. Against this background, and inspired by a large body of work in educational psychology which explicitly measures constructs such as educational motivation and interest, this paper examines whether a child’s interest in school has any bearing on educational success after controlling for the kinds of variables typically used in educational economics analyses. We rely on two data sets collected in Portugal in 1998 and 2001 and examine the interest-educational success link using both cross-section and panel data. Our estimates suggest that after controlling for time-invariant unobservable traits and for the simultaneous determination of interest and achievement, there is little support for the idea that prior interest in school has a bearing on future educational success.schooling, Portugal, educational outcomes, interest in school

Metrics with Galilean Conformal Isometry

The Galilean Conformal Algebra (GCA) arises in taking the non-relativistic limit of the symmetries of a relativistic Conformal Field Theory in any dimensions. It is known to be infinite-dimensional in all spacetime dimensions. In particular, the 2d GCA emerges out of a scaling limit of linear combinations of two copies of the Virasoro algebra. In this paper, we find metrics in dimensions greater than two which realize the finite 2d GCA (the global part of the infinite algebra) as their isometry by systematically looking at a construction in terms of cosets of this finite algebra. We list all possible sub-algebras consistent with some physical considerations motivated by earlier work in this direction and construct all possible higher dimensional non-degenerate metrics. We briefly study the properties of the metrics obtained. In the standard one higher dimensional "holographic" setting, we find that the only non-degenerate metric is Minkowskian. In four and five dimensions, we find families of non-trivial metrics with a rather exotic signature. A curious feature of these metrics is that all but one of them are Ricci-scalar flat.Comment: 20 page

A derivation of two quadratic transformations contiguous to that of Gauss via a differential equation approach

The purpose of this note is to provide an alternative proof of two quadratic transformation formulas contiguous to that of Gauss using a differential equation approach

Remittances, Liquidity Constraints and Human Capital Investments in Ecuador

Over the last decade Ecuador has experienced a strong increase in financial transfers from migrated workers, amounting to 6.4 percent of GDP and 31.5 percent of total exports of goods and services in 2005. This paper investigates how remittances via trans-national networks affect human capital investments through relaxing resource constraints and facilitate households in consumption smoothing by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks. In particular, we explore the effects of remittances on school enrolment and child work in Ecuador. Identification relies on instrumental variables, exploiting information on source countries of remittances and regional variation in the availability of bank offices that function as formal channels for sending remittances. Our results show that remittances increase school enrolment and decrease incidence of child work, especially for girls and in rural areas. Furthermore, we find that aggregate shocks are associated with increased work activities, while remittances are used to finance education when households are faced with these shocks. This suggests that liquidity constraints and vulnerability to covariate risk are especially relevant in rural areas, as it affects household’s investments in human capital of school age children. In this context both child labour supply and transnational remittances serve as coping mechanisms.migration, remittances, trans-national networks, education, child labour, Ecuador