Accounting for Wage Inequality in India

This paper investigates the evolution and structure of wage inequality among adult male workers engaged in regular and casual wage employment in India during a period of radical economic change. The analysis exploits data from nationally representative employment surveys and uses decomposition techniques to examine the role played by educational achievement and industry affiliation. This paper finds that there are striking differences for the two groups of workers. Wage inequality rose between 1983 and 1999 among regular workers but fell among casual workers. While human capital (as embodied in age and education) is one of the major factors explaining both the level of and change in regular wage inequality, geographic location is the key determinant of casual wage inequality. Industry affiliation plays an equally important role for both sets of workers. These are also consistently the most important contributors to changes in inequality though the directional effects differ among the different sets of workers.India, wage inequality, inequality decomposition, segmented labour market

The Structure of Wages in India, 1983-1999

This paper examines the structure of wages for adult male workers within a dual labour market framework using micro survey data for three years spanning almost two decades. Augmented Mincerian wage equations are estimated for different types of workers – those with regular wage or salaried jobs and those with casual or contractual jobs - using a set of human capital measures and a variety of worker, industry and state characteristics after correcting for potential selection bias. This paper finds that the returns to education and experience are significantly different for these two types of workers consistent with the notion of segmented labour markets - while casual workers face at best flat returns the returns for regular workers are positive and rising in education level. There is some evidence of significant changes in the returns to education for regular workers over time. The widening of the gap between graduate and primary education and the rise in wage inequality could possibly be a consequence of trade liberalisation and other reforms pursued during the 1990s.wages, returns to education, segmented labour markets, India

Towards Deep Semantic Analysis Of Hashtags

Hashtags are semantico-syntactic constructs used across various social networking and microblogging platforms to enable users to start a topic specific discussion or classify a post into a desired category. Segmenting and linking the entities present within the hashtags could therefore help in better understanding and extraction of information shared across the social media. However, due to lack of space delimiters in the hashtags (e.g #nsavssnowden), the segmentation of hashtags into constituent entities ("NSA" and "Edward Snowden" in this case) is not a trivial task. Most of the current state-of-the-art social media analytics systems like Sentiment Analysis and Entity Linking tend to either ignore hashtags, or treat them as a single word. In this paper, we present a context aware approach to segment and link entities in the hashtags to a knowledge base (KB) entry, based on the context within the tweet. Our approach segments and links the entities in hashtags such that the coherence between hashtag semantics and the tweet is maximized. To the best of our knowledge, no existing study addresses the issue of linking entities in hashtags for extracting semantic information. We evaluate our method on two different datasets, and demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique in improving the overall entity linking in tweets via additional semantic information provided by segmenting and linking entities in a hashtag.Comment: To Appear in 37th European Conference on Information Retrieva

A self excitation and control system for wind tunnel dynamic stability measurements

The paper describes the design and development of a fast acting self-excitation and control system based on the principles of regenerative and negative feedback for phase resonance testing of aerodynamic models in wind tunnels. Simulation tests and analyses using a linearized model of the drive system are carried out, and results indicate that the system would function even if the system damping becomes neutral or negative. Experiments for dynamic stability measurements show that the control system meets all specifications and performs satisfactorily even in the presence of moderate amounts of turbulence in the air flow

Are Per Capita Real GDP Series in African Countries Non-stationary or Non-linear? What does Empirical Evidence Reveal?

This paper extends the applied time series literature in economic development, by testing whether the per capita real GDP time series in 27 African countries are non-stationary or non-linear and globally stationary over the relatively long period from 1960 to 2007. Using the non- linear unit root tests developed recently by Kapetanios, Shin and Snell (2003) the results show that in one-third of the countries, the series are stationary with non-linear mean reversion. Policy implications are indicated.Mean reversion, non-linear unit root tests, GDP per capita

Boron in the Pariette Wetlands, Uinta Basin, UT

Boron is a naturally occurring mineral in shale and coal beds formed in marine environments, as found in the Uinta Basin. Mining activity and the application of excess irrigation water on agricultural lands in the Pariette watershed lead to mobilization of B via surface run off. Water quality monitoring records from 2006- 2009 reported violations of Utah B standard for irrigation water 43-100% of the time, for water flowing through the Pariette Wetlands. This study aims to determine B distribution in abiotic (water, sediments) and biotic samples (macroinvertebrates, aquatic vegetation, fish, bird eggs), and to establish correlations between B concentrations in the samples. Abiotic samples had average B concentrations of 2.87 ± 0.8 mg L-1 in water and 51.65 mg kg-1 in sediments. The concentrations exceeded established lowest-observable-adverse-effect levels (LOAELs) for aquatic plants and sensitive invertebrates like crustaceans. The total average B concentration in benthic macroinvertebrates (28.45 ± 12.04 mg kg-1) was higher than B concentrations in their habitat (sediment and water). Benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) biodiversity was low in all four wetland units with increased populations of pollution tolerant taxa like Chironomidae (midges). Reduced numbers of freshwater BMIs such as Ephemeroptera (mayflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies) or Trichoptera (caddisflies) indicate environmental stress and impaired conditions. Submerged plants (Potamageton (pondweed) and Chara (stonewort)) had higher total average B concentrations than emergent plants (Typha domingensis and Typha latifolia (cattails), Scirpus acutus (bulrush), and Phragmites austalis (common reed)), and higher B concentrations than the water, suggesting B bioconcentration. The B content in waterfowl and fish food sources were not high enough to impact adult birds or freshwater fish tolerant of poor water quality. Simple linear statistical correlations between B in biotic samples (bird eggs, fish) and their habitats and food sources were poor to non-existent; however, positive correlations and high p–values established using Mantel test coefficients suggest possible pathways for exposure to B via ingestion. We concluded that even though B bioconcentrates in aquatic vegetation it is not biomagnifing in aquatic food-chain components we investigated in the Pariette Wetlands. In addition to continued water monitoring, we recommend using submerged vegetation and macroinvertebrates to alert site managers to adverse effects of B on wetland fish and bird eggs