Does Inequality Harm Income Mobility and Growth? An Assessment of the Growth Impact of Income and Education Inequality in Paraguay 1992-2002

Latin America is the most unequal region of the world in terms of income or expenditure, as well as regarding other aspects of economic or social exclusion. The region suffered the lost decade of the nineteen eighties, and experienced a modest recovery in the nineteen nineties. In the nineteen nineties, most of the governments implemented stabilization politics, more or less close to the proposals of the Washington Consensus. Paraguay itself, however, neither suffered a debt crisis nor a mayor economic instability during the eighties, so the stabilization policies would not have been necessary or useful for the Paraguayan economy and business cycles in the nineties. Nevertheless, many of the macroeconomic policies applied in Paraguay during the nineties were close to the Washington Consensus. The most striking macroeconomic result of the decade was a per capita income decrease beginning in late 1995, hand in hand with a poverty increase after 1996. Given the persistently high levels of poverty incidence in Paraguay to date, understanding the determinants of growth at the household level in Paraguayan economy remains an important but under-researched field in economics. This appears to be particularly true for the question whether inequality has a positive or negative effect on economic growth, a question that is both fundamental in (development) economics and highly relevant for poverty reduction policies. Although the effect of inequality on growth has important implications for poverty (Bourguignon, 2004; Ravallion, 1997), empirical evidence on this link is virtually inexistent for Paraguay.

Operads and Phylogenetic Trees

We construct an operad $\mathrm{Phyl}$ whose operations are the edge-labelled trees used in phylogenetics. This operad is the coproduct of $\mathrm{Com}$, the operad for commutative semigroups, and $[0,\infty)$, the operad with unary operations corresponding to nonnegative real numbers, where composition is addition. We show that there is a homeomorphism between the space of $n$-ary operations of $\mathrm{Phyl}$ and $\mathcal{T}_n\times [0,\infty)^{n+1}$, where $\mathcal{T}_n$ is the space of metric $n$-trees introduced by Billera, Holmes and Vogtmann. Furthermore, we show that the Markov models used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees from genome data give coalgebras of $\mathrm{Phyl}$. These always extend to coalgebras of the larger operad $\mathrm{Com} + [0,\infty]$, since Markov processes on finite sets converge to an equilibrium as time approaches infinity. We show that for any operad $O$, its coproduct with $[0,\infty]$ contains the operad $W(O)$ constucted by Boardman and Vogt. To prove these results, we explicitly describe the coproduct of operads in terms of labelled trees.Comment: 48 pages, 3 figure

Modelica - A Language for Physical System Modeling, Visualization and Interaction

Modelica is an object-oriented language for modeling of large, complex and heterogeneous physical systems. It is suited for multi-domain modeling, for example for modeling of mechatronics including cars, aircrafts and industrial robots which typically consist of mechanical, electrical and hydraulic subsystems as well as control systems. General equations are used for modeling of the physical phenomena, No particular variable needs to be solved for manually. A Modelica tool will have enough information to do that automatically. The language has been designed to allow tools to generate efficient code automatically. The modeling effort is thus reduced considerably since model components can be reused and tedious and error-prone manual manipulations are not needed. The principles of object-oriented modeling and the details of the Modelica language as well as several examples are presented

Determinants of Student Achievements in the Primary Education of Paraguay

The idea that schooling scores depend on a combination of family background characteristics, ability and school (institutional) variables is quite clear. Regarding the issue of intergenerational transmission of inequality in the educational system, the most important question would be if and to what extent could a better institutional performance of the school service compensate for problems related to family background. By means of the estimation of a reduced form equation for selected scores, we investigate the impact of institutional performance on scores after controlling for family background and individual characteristics. We do this by using a novel data set and an OLS and quantile regression approach to analyze how heterogeneous the process of score generation can be. By providing integral health solutions, minimizing under-nutrition and providing ideal conditions in the classroom, training teachers can impact positively on low and mean learning outcomes, thus contributing to an improved educational quality and breaking cycles of intergenerational transmission of inequality. Increasing learning outcomes for levels above the median, only strengthens the transmission of inequality. Consequently, the equality approach should focus on trying to improve the worst scores and our results show that this can be reached at a significant level closing teacher training gaps, improving classroom conditions and improving health and nutrition.

Domain formation and growth in spinodal decomposition of a binary fluid by molecular dynamics simulations

The two initial stages of spinodal decomposition of a symmetric binary Lennard-Jones fluid have been simulated by molecular dynamics simulations, using a hydrodynamics-conserving thermostat. By analyzing the growth of the average domain size R(t) with time, a satisfactory agreement is found with the R(t)t1/3 Lifshitz-Slyozov growth law for the early diffusion-driven stage of domain formation in a quenched homogeneous mixture. In the subsequent stage of viscous-dominated growth, the mean domain size appears to follow the linear growth law predicted by Siggia

Direct mail selection by joint modeling of the probability and quantity of response

Operations such as integration or modularization of databases can be considered as operations on database universes. This paper describes some operations on database universes. Formally, a database universe is a special kind of table. It turns out that various operations on tables constitute interesting operations on database universes as well.

On information in static and dynamic factor models

This paper employs concepts from information theory in factor models. We show that in the exact factor model the whole distribution of eigenvalues of the covariance matrix contributes to the information and not only the largest ones. In addition, we derive the condition that the first q say eigenvalues diverge whereas the rest remain bounded in the static model rather than having to assume it. Finally, we calculate information in static and dynamic factor models, which can be used to find the dimensions of the factor space. We illustrate the concepts with simulation experiments.

Stratifying multiparameter persistent homology

A fundamental tool in topological data analysis is persistent homology, which allows extraction of information from complex datasets in a robust way. Persistent homology assigns a module over a principal ideal domain to a one-parameter family of spaces obtained from the data. In applications data often depend on several parameters, and in this case one is interested in studying the persistent homology of a multiparameter family of spaces associated to the data. While the theory of persistent homology for one-parameter families is well-understood, the situation for multiparameter families is more delicate. Following Carlsson and Zomorodian we recast the problem in the setting of multigraded algebra, and we propose multigraded Hilbert series, multigraded associated primes and local cohomology as invariants for studying multiparameter persistent homology. Multigraded associated primes provide a stratification of the region where a multigraded module does not vanish, while multigraded Hilbert series and local cohomology give a measure of the size of components of the module supported on different strata. These invariants generalize in a suitable sense the invariant for the one-parameter case.Comment: Minor improvements throughout. In particular: we extended the introduction, added Table 1, which gives a dictionary between terms used in PH and commutative algebra; we streamlined Section 3; we added Proposition 4.49 about the information captured by the cp-rank; we moved the code from the appendix to github. Final version, to appear in SIAG

Nest-Site Selection by Female Black-Capped Chickadees: Settlement Based on Conspecific Attraction?

Female Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) solicit extrapair copulations (EPCs) from neighboring high-ranking males, and these EPCs result in extrapair young. Females might choose to locate their nests near the territory boundaries of attractive males to facilitate access to EPCs. Other hypotheses might also explain choice of nest site, namely (1) habitat characteristics, (2) prey abundance, and (3) previous experience. We tested these four hypotheses in 1996 and 1997. Out of 27 habitat characteristics measured, we found only one that was significantly different between nests and control sites in both years. The abundance of large trees was lower at nest sites than at control sites in each year and when years were pooled. Relative prey abundance did not differ between nests and control sites for either year of the study. We found no different in interyear nest placement based on female experience; experienced females nester farther than 60 m from their previous nest sites in both years of the study. In 1996, females whose neighboring males were higher ranked than their social partner located their nests significantly closer to territory boundaries than did females whose nearest neighbors were lower ranked than their social partner. In 1997, all pairs nested near territory boundaries. We conclude that choice of nest location in Black-capped Chickadees is influenced by conspecific attraction based on mating tactics