Practical Modified Gini Index. ACES Working Papers, 2012

The Gini index is the most common method for estimating the level of income inequality in countries. In this paper we suggest a simple modification that takes into account the moderating effect of in-kind government benefits. Unlike other studies that use micro level data that is rarely available for many countries or over a period of time, the proposed modified Gini index could be calculated using just the regularly available data for each country. Such data includes the original Gini coefficient, government consumption expenditures, GDP and total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. This modified version of the Gini index allows us to calculate the level of inequality more precisely, and make better comparisons between countries and over time

Interactive Tool for Researching Large Unstructured Document Collections

Reviewing large document collections is an activity that arises commonly in certain professional contexts such as investigative journalism. Such document collections can arise in many use contexts such as investigative journalism; academic research; litigation, arbitration or other legal context; audit; research using document archives; etc. The collections may include a large number of documents, including scanned images of documents or handwritten documents, and are often devoid of structure or organization. This makes it difficult to sift through such collections and identify important pieces of information. This disclosure describes a tool that enables easier access to such collections and features that support review and research based on such document collections. Automated techniques such as optical character recognition, entity recognition, indexing, etc. are utilized to process the document collection to index the documents and to generate timelines, connection graphs, or other views on the collection. A user interface is provided that enables users to search the collection, view event timelines, make annotations, take notes, and collaborate with others. The described techniques facilitate sensemaking and can help surface latent insight

Bradycardia as a Marker of Chronic Cocaine Use: A Novel Cardiovascular Finding

Few studies have examined the effects of chronic cocaine use on the resting surface electrocardiogram (ECG) between exposures to cocaine

Decomposing culture: An analysis of gender, language, and labor supply in the household

Despite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household and the impact of ethnic enclaves, and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact

Decomposing culture: An analysis of gender, language, and labor supply in the household

Despite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household and the impact of ethnic enclaves, and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact