Essays on Female Empowerment and Its Health Consequences in West Africa

Part 1: The Impact of Female Empowerment on Men's Extramarital Sexual Behavior: Evidence from West Africa Improving women's bargaining power to negotiate safer sex with their partner is widely seen as fundamental to reducing women's vulnerability to HIV infection, although little causal evidence has been provided. This paper uses exogenous variation in a determinant of female bargaining power, women's kin support, to identify the causal effect of women's empowerment on men's extramarital sexual behavior. I establish the relevance of kin support shocks for measures of bargaining power such as women's reported decision-making authority over major and daily household purchases, women's healthcare, and household cooking decisions. Reduced form estimates indicate that having one more adult male sibling alive leads to a decrease of 1.3 percent in the probability of her husband's extramarital behavior. However, the number of living adult female siblings does not influence her husband's behavior. A measure of shocks to kin support, captured by the death of a woman's young siblings, is shown to increase her husband's extramarital behavior. The kin support measures are balanced across observables and results are robust to excluding households in which women's relatives reside, as well as alternate definitions of the kin support measures. This suggests that a woman's bargaining power within the household does influence the likelihood of her husband's extramarital sexual behavior, and thus her risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Part 2: Kin Support, Female Bargaining Power, and Fertility Do decreases in a woman's bargaining power relative to her husband lead to higher fertility? This paper attempts to answer this question in the context of West Africa using shocks over time to a determinant of a woman's bargaining power, her kin support, to identify the causal effect. Kin support shocks are captured by deaths of a woman's young siblings, which are argued to be an indication that the woman's natal family has suffered a negative shock. The shocks are shown to be relevant across couples for women's reported household decision-making authority. I exploit differences in the timing of the shocks across couples over time to estimate how changes in a woman's bargaining power impact a couple's fertility. A couple is on average 2.5 percentage points more likely to have a child in any given year after the woman has experienced an additional post-marriage young sibling death. The effect is robust to removing village-year and country-cohort-year effects among other controls. Analysis of the dynamics of fertility changes relative to the timing of the shocks support the validity of the findings

Chapter Autonomous Sensors: Existing and Prospective Applications

Diseases & disorder

Statistics on EU trade: Highlight on its heterogeneous structure and recommendations for practical applications

We present here an analysis of trade data, which highlights differences between Member States of the European Union, and also differences between chapters of traded products. We carry out a statistical description of quantity and value of traded products between the EU and third countries. This allows in particular to obtain specific threshold values, which are useful for filtering huge datasets. We present the results obtained on a dataset covering a wide area of trade involving the EU. These results make up a relevant source of information for specialists of antifraud and antimoney-laundering.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Autonomous Sensors: Existing and Prospective Applications

Diseases & disorder

Brazilian equity risk premium analysis: a macroeconomic approach

Double Degree Masters in Economics Program from Insper and NOVA School of Business and EconomicsThis research studies the role of fluctuations in the aggregate consumption-wealth ratio proposed by Lettau and Ludvigson (2001) as a predictor of stock returns in the Brazilian economy. Using quarterly data, evidence for predictability of asset growth was found with an ̅2 of over 45% and a highly significant coefficient as expected, in contrast to absence of statistical evidence for predictability of stock returns or excess returns. Regressions containing those fluctuations also resulted in worse ̅2. For the data used, dividend yield was not capable of showing predictive power also. The predictability of the returns on the Brazilian economy is not rejected but data fails to show the expected results. Finding macroeconomic data that represent the same agent was a big obstacle. After testing many different datasets and different model specifications, data still failed to show any explanatory power over returns or excess returns.NSBE - UN

The Medicina Station Status Report

General information about the Medicina Radio Astronomy Station, the 32-m antenna status, and the staff in charge of the VLBI observations is provided. In 2012, the data from geodetic VLBI observations were acquired using the Mark 5A recording system with good results. Updates of the hardware were performed and are briefly described

La valorizzazione del capitale umano nella formazione professionale. Percorsi creativi e futuri innovativi per giovani senegalesi.

Analisi critica di “Percorsi Creativi e Futuri innovativi per giovani senegalesi ed ivoriani”, progetto sulla formazione in settori innovativi. Presentati i contenuti, i punti di forza e debolezza dell’iniziativa, si forniscono indicazioni conclusive nate da un’esperienza sul campo a sostegno della valorizzazione della persona nella cooperazione. Il fattore di crescita del territorio è il giovane con le sue ambizioni e non in quanto forza lavoro. Si insiste poi sulla formazione digitale: riduce i costi, migliora la qualità della formazione stessa. L’alfabetizzazione digitale è necessaria laddove le informazioni non sono accessibili a tutti

The H1N1 (2009) influenza pandemic: insights into its dynamics from different types of epidemiological data

For the assessment of the transmission potential and the severity of the recent H1N1 (2009) influenza pandemic, a series of different types of epidemiological data were used. We describe the way these data have been employed to estimate some key epidemiological parameters of the pandemic. A preliminary statistical analysis of European data related to Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) provided interesting insights into the severity of the pandemic as this was manifested in Europe.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Chapter Vibration Energy Harvesting: Linear and Nonlinear Oscillator Approaches

Optical physic