How Well Does the US Social Insurance System Provide Social Insurance?

This paper answers the question posed in the title within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic, wage-rate shocks that are privately observed. When the model social insurance system is comprised by the US social security and income tax system, then the maximum ex-ante welfare gain to improved insurance is equivalent to a 12.3 percent increase in consumption. We determine the reasons behind this large welfare gain. We also analyze two parametric reforms of the model social insurance system. One reform increases welfare very little, whereas the other achieves nearly all of the maximum possible welfare gain.Social Insurance; Social Security; Idiosyncratic Shocks; Private Information

How Does Growth Affect Labor Income by Gender? A Structural Path Analysis for Tanzania

This paper uses structural path analysis to examine the transmission channels through which an initial shock travels through the economy to affect other accounts of a Social Accounting Matrix. The focus is on the impact of shocks on labor income by gender in Tanzania and the analysis is used to characterize what we call the concentration, strength, and speed of various transmission channels.Gender; Labor income; Social Accounting Matrix; Structural Path Analysis; Tanzania

Comparing the impact of food and energy price shocks on consumers : a social accounting matrix analysis for Ghana

Many countries have been affected by food and oil price shocks. Rising energy costs have manifested themselves through higher prices of gas at the pump and through price increases for many other goods such as kerosene and transport. But in some countries there has also been some degree of protection for consumers for example when authorities have chosen to try to keep electricity tariffs affordable through implicit subsidies (which are unfortunately often poorly targeted). For food prices, the effect on consumers has often been more rapid than for oil-related products, as the increase in import prices have been typically fully passed on to consumers and has often been accompanied by increases in the prices of domestically produced foods. Recent attention has therefore rightly been focused on food prices, but the issue of oil prices is important as well. While food prices tend to have a larger direct impact on consumers due to the larger share of food in total household consumption, oil prices may have larger multiplier effects than food prices because oil-related products are used as intermediary products in many productive sectors. It therefore remains an open question as to whether the medium-term impact of food or oil prices is likely to be larger in any given country. It also remains open to question as to whether urban as opposed to rural households are most likely to be affected. While urban households are likely to rely on consumption of imported goods more than rural households, the weight of food and possibly oil-related products may well be larger in the consumption patterns of rural than urban households. Answering these questions may be useful to guide discussions on compensatory measures that governments can take to respond to the twin crisis of higher food and oil prices. In this context the objective of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the multiplier impact of both types of price shocks using a recent Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana. The paper finds that both the direct impacts of food prices and the indirect impacts of oil prices are potentially large, so that both should be dealt with by authorities when considering compensatory measures to protect households from higher consumer prices.Markets and Market Access,Food&Beverage Industry,Energy Production and Transportation,Emerging Markets,Access to Markets

Gender, Time Use, and Labor Income in Guinea: Micro and Macro Analyses

Higher incomes for women can have significant beneficial impacts for poverty reduction both in the short run by providing more resources to households and in the long run by increasing investments in the human capital of children. Substantial research has been done using microeconomic household survey data on gender disparities in labor incomes in developing countries in recent years. The first contribution of this paper is to summarize some of that research as applied to Guinea. However, microeconomic studies may not necessarily provide insights on how broad structural shifts in an economy could affect differently opportunities for work and income generation for men and women. In the second part of the paper, we use a recent Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Guinea to assess how growth in various sectors of the economy could affect the incomes of women and men both directly and indirectly through multiplier effects. We find that an expansion of sectors oriented primarily towards domestic consumption could have a larger positive impact on the labor income share of women than an expansion of export-oriented sectors.Gender; Labor income; Social Accounting Matrix; Guinea

Performance of Fe y Alegria high school students in Colombia : is it a matter of Fe (faith) or Alegria (joy) ?

Fe y Alegria is a catholic network of schools that started operations in Colombia in 1971, and in 2009 served more than 72,000 students in 61 schools. This paper assesses the performance of Fe y Alegria secondary schools in Colombia using test scores for Spanish and mathematics, as well as detailed information on the characteristics of the household to which students belong. Simple statistics suggest that Fe y Alegria schools perform worse than other schools for all years in the sample. However, Fe y Alegria schools also cater to poorer students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Once controls are included for student background, Fe y Alegria schools actually often perform as well and in some cases better than other schools for mathematics and Spanish, thus partially reversing the previous finding.Tertiary Education,Secondary Education,Gender and Education,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education

Testing a DSGE model and its partner database

There is now an impetus to apply dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models to forecasting. But these models typically rely on purpose-built data, for example on tradable and nontradable sector outputs. How then do we know that the model will forecast well, in advance? We develop an early warning test of the database-model match and apply that to a Colombian model. Our test reveals where the combination should work (consumption) and where not (in investment). The test can be adapted to look at many likely sources of DSGE model failure.Monetary Policy, Sectoral Model, DSGE, Forecast Performance, Kalman Filter. Classification JEL: F47; E01; C61

Exports and labor income by gender: a social accounting matrix analysis for Senegal

Higher incomes for women can have significant beneficial impacts for poverty reduction both in the short run by providing more resources to households and in the long run by increasing investments in the human capital of children. While substantial research has been done using microeconomic household survey data on gender disparities in labor incomes in developing countries, these studies may not necessarily provide insights on how broad structural shifts in an economy could affect differently opportunities for work and income generation for men and women. In this paper, we use a recent Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Senegal to assess how growth in various sectors of the economy, and especially in exports from tourism, could affect the incomes of women and men both directly and indirectly through multiplier effects. We find that a tourism export boom could lead to increase not only in the level of income of Senegalese women, but also in their share of total labor income in the economy.Input-output analysis; Senegal; Gender; Tourism

Oil price shocks, poverty, and gender: a social accouting matrix analysis for Kenya

In a similar way to Input-Output (IO) tables, Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) have been used in the literature mostly to assess the distributional impact of changes in production structure on household income. Yet they can also be used to assess the impact on price shocks on the cost of goods consumed by households. The key advantage of SAMs over IO tables is that the data from household surveys on the incomes and consumption patterns of various categories of households can be directly integrated into the modeling exercise in order to conduct the distributional analysis. This is illustrated with a discussion of the impact of oil price shocks in Kenya on different types of households defined according to the gender of the household head as well as poverty status. We find that due to some differences in consumption patterns, poorer households are likely to be affected more by oil price hikes than the non-poor, and that household with female heads could also be more affected than households with male heads.Input-output analysis; Social accounting matrix; Price model; Kenya; Gender

Improving the Power Electronics Laboratory teaching/learning process: an interactive web tool

European Higher Education Area; Power Electronics Laboratory; educational methods Resumen: The forthcoming European Higher Education Area implies an important change in the teaching/learning process: it is necessary to get students more involved as well as to promote their independence and active participation. To achieve this objective, the new teaching methodologies aimed at more effective and appropriate learning for professional practice involve the use of audiovisual, computer and multimedia tools on the part of lecturers. Therefore, a web tool, based on a content management system, has been developed for the teaching in Power Electronics Laboratory. Moreover, the use of these multimedia tools makes possible to promote the students independence. Finally, the use of this web tool results in a very significant increase in the motivation students.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The Teaching of Vocabulary through the Multisensory Approach to EFL Third Age Adults in a Public Nursing Home in Pereira, Colombia

El aprendizaje del idioma inglés es un proceso que conlleva beneficios cognitivos, personales, sociales y de crecimiento. Esta investigación cualitativa tuvo como objetivo integrar a una población de adultos mayores en lecciones de vocabulario en inglés basadas en los principios de la teoría de la andragogía