Does the World Bank have any impact on human development in the poorest countries? Some preliminary evidence from Africa

In an attempt to better understand the impact of the World Bank on human development in poor countries, we use cross-country data on African countries, for the 1990-2002 period, to examine this relationship. The coefficient estimates of our parsimonious fixed-effects models indicate that while loans and grants of the Bank have had a positive impact on some relatively short-term indicators of health and education in an average African country, there is little evidence to suggest that such loans and grants have helped these countries to consolidate on the short-term gains

The Chow ring for the classifying space of GO(2n)GO(2n)

Let $GO(2n)$ be the general orthogonal group scheme (the group of orthogonal similitudes). In the topological category, Y. Holla and N. Nitsure determined the singular cohomology ring $H^*_{\rm sing}(BGO(2n,\mathbb C),\mathbb F_2)$ of the classifying space $BGO(2n,\mathbb C)$ of the corresponding complex Lie group $GO(2n,\mathbb C)$ in terms of explicit generators and relations. The author of the present note showed that over any algebraically closed field of characteristic not equal to $2$, the smooth-\'etale cohomology ring $H_{\rm sm-\'et}^*(BGO(2n),\mathbb F_2)$ of the classifying algebraic stack $BGO(2n)$ has the same description in terms of generators and relations as the singular cohomology ring $H^*_{\rm sing}(BGO(2n,\mathbb C),\mathbb F_2)$. Totaro defined for any reductive group $G$ over a field, the Chow ring $A^*_G$, which is canonically identified with the ring of characteristic classes in the sense of intersection theory, for principal $G$-bundles, locally trivial in \'etale topology. In this paper, we calculate the Chow group $A^*_{GO(2n)}$ over any field of characteristic different from $2$ in terms of generators and relations.Comment: 11 page

Is education the panacea for economic deprivation of Muslims? Evidence from wage earners in India, 1987-2005

Few researchers have examined the nature and determinants of earnings differentials among religious groups, and none has been undertaken in the context of conflict-prone multi-religious societies like the one in India. We address this lacuna in the literature by examining the differences in the average (log) earnings of Hindu and Muslim wage earners in India, during the 1987-2005 period. Our results indicate that education differences between Hindu and Muslim wage earners, especially differences in the proportion of wage earners with tertiary education, are largely responsible for the differences in the average (log) earnings of the two religious groups across the years. By contrast, differences in the returns to education do not explain the aforementioned difference in average (log) earnings. In conclusion, we discuss some policy implications