"Public Employment and Women: The Impact of Argentina’s Jefes Program on Female Heads of Poor Households"

In 2002, Argentina implemented a large-scale public employment program to deal with the latest economic crisis and the ensuing massive unemployment and poverty. The program, known as Plan Jefes, offered part-time work for unemployed heads of households, and yet more than 70 percent of the people who turned up for work were women. The present paper evaluates the operation of this program, its macroeconomic effects, and its impact on program participants. We report findings from our 2005 meetings with policymakers and visits to different project sites. We find that Jefes addresses many important community problems, is well received by participants, and serves the needs of women particularly well. Some of the benefits women report are working in mother-friendly jobs, getting needed training and education, helping the community, and finding dignity and empowerment through work.

Single-Dirac-Cone topological surface states in TlBiSe2 class of Topological Insulators

We have investigated several strong spin-orbit coupling ternary chalcogenides related to the (Pb,Sn)Te series of compounds. Our first-principles calculations predict the low temperature rhombohedral ordered phase in TlBiTe2, TlBiSe2, and TlSbX2 (X=Te, Se, S) to be topologically Kane-Mele Z2 = -1 nontrivial. We identify the specific surface termination that realizes the single Dirac cone through first-principles surface state computations. This termination minimizes effects of dangling bonds making it favorable for photoemission (ARPES) experiments. Our analysis predicts that thin films of these materials would harbor novel 2D quantum spin Hall states, and support odd-parity topological superconductivity. For a related work also see arXiv:1003.2615v1. Experimental ARPES results will be published elsewhere.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2010). Submitted March 201

The Meltdown of the Global Economy: A Keynes-Minsky Episode?

The enormity and pervasiveness of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 makes it relevant to analyze the circumstances that can explain this catastrophe. This will also provide clues to the appropriate remedial measures needed to prevent future occurrences of similar developments. The paper begins with some theoretical concerns relating to factors that could trigger a similar crisis. The first of these concerns relates to the deregulated financial institutions and the growing uncertainty that can be witnessed in these liberalized financial markets. The secondrelates to financial engineering with innovations in these markets, simultaneously providing cushions against risks while generating flows of liquidity that remain beyond the conventional sources of bank credit. Interpreting the role of uncertainty, one can observe the connections between investment and finance, both of which are subject to changes in the state of expectations. The initial formulation can be traced back to John Maynard Keynes's General Theory (1936), where liquidity preference is linked to asset prices and new investments. The Keynesian analysis of the impact of uncertainty related expectations was reformulated in 1986 by Hyman P. Minsky, who introduced the possibility of sourcing external finance through debt, which further adds to the impact of uncertainty. Minsky's characterization of deregulated financial markets considers the newfangled sources of nonbank credit, especially with the involvement of banks in the securities market under the universal banking model. As for the institutional arrangements that provide for profits on transactions, financial assets bought and sold in the primary market as initial public offerings of stocks are usually transacted later, in the secondary market, where these are no longer backed by physical assets.In the upswing, finance creates a myriad of financial claims and liabilities, and thus becomes increasingly remote from the real economy, while innovations to hedge and insulate assets continue to proliferate in the financial market, especially in the presence of uncertainty. The paper dwells on an account of the pattern of the financial crisis and its spread in the United States. This is appended by a stylized account of the turn of events in terms of a theoretical model that highlights the role of uncertainty in the process

Emergence of Fermi pockets in an excitonic CDW melted novel superconductor

A superconducting (SC) state (Tc ~ 4.2K) has very recently been observed upon successful doping of the CDW ordered triangular lattice TiSe$_2$, with copper. Using high resolution photoemission spectroscopy we identify, for the first time, the momentum space locations of the doped electrons that form the Fermi sea of the parent superconductor. With doping, we find that the kinematic nesting volume increases whereas the coherence of the CDW order sharply drops. In the superconducting doping, we observe the emergence of a large density of states in the form of a narrow electron pocket near the \textit{L}-point of the Brillouin Zone with \textit{d}-like character. The \textit{k}-space electron distributions highlight the unconventional interplay of CDW to SC cross-over achieved through non-magnetic copper doping.Comment: 4+ pages, 5 figures; Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2007

Disorder enabled band structure engineering of a topological insulator surface

Three dimensional topological insulators are bulk insulators with $\mathbf{Z}_2$ topological electronic order that gives rise to conducting light-like surface states. These surface electrons are exceptionally resistant to localization by non-magnetic disorder, and have been adopted as the basis for a wide range of proposals to achieve new quasiparticle species and device functionality. Recent studies have yielded a surprise by showing that in spite of resisting localization, topological insulator surface electrons can be reshaped by defects into distinctive resonance states. Here we use numerical simulations and scanning tunneling microscopy data to show that these resonance states have significance well beyond the localized regime usually associated with impurity bands. At native densities in the model Bi$_2$X$_3$ (X=Bi, Te) compounds, defect resonance states are predicted to generate a new quantum basis for an emergent electron gas that supports diffusive electrical transport

Chemically gated electronic structure of a superconducting doped topological insulator system

Angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy is used to observe changes in the electronic structure of bulk-doped topological insulator Cu$_x$Bi$_2$Se$_3$ as additional copper atoms are deposited onto the cleaved crystal surface. Carrier density and surface-normal electrical field strength near the crystal surface are estimated to consider the effect of chemical surface gating on atypical superconducting properties associated with topological insulator order, such as the dynamics of theoretically predicted Majorana Fermion vortices