Consumption inequality and intrahousehold allocations

The current literature on consumption inequality treats all adults within the household equally, making the implicit assumption that all consumption inequality is between, not within, households. However, increased marital sorting on earnings and the subsequent rise in the share of women's income in the household may have important implications for consumption inequality measured at the individual level. We use an extension of the collective framework of Chiappori to estimate a rule for assigning resources to individual household members. We then construct a measure of individual level inequality by looking at implied changes in intra-household allocations and explore the implications of our framework for the measurement of individual level, versus household level, consumption inequality. Our analysis, which is based on households comprising one or two adults, suggests that the conventional approach of ignoring intra-household allocations underestimates the level of cross-sectional consumption inequality by 30% and overstates the trend by two-thirds. Our findings also indicate that increases in marital sorting on wages and hours worked can simultaneously explain virtually all of the decline in within household inequality and a substantial fraction of the rise in between household inequality in the UK since the 1970s

Evaluating search and matching models using experimental data

This paper introduces an innovative test of search and matching models using the exogenous variation available in experimental data. We take an off-the-shelf Pissarides matching model and calibrate it to data on the control group from a randomized social experiment. We then simulate a program group from a randomized experiment within the model. As a measure of the performance of the model, we compare the outcomes of the program groups from the model and from the randomized experiment. We illustrate our methodology using the Canadian Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP), a social experiment providing a time limited earnings supplement for Income Assistance recipients who obtain full time employment within a 12 month period. We find two features of the model are consistent with the experimental results: endogenous search intensity and exogenous job destruction. We find mixed evidence in support of the assumption of fixed hours of labor supply. Finally, we find a constant job destruction rate is not consistent with the experimental data in this context

Self-organisation to criticality in a system without conservation law

We numerically investigate the approach to the stationary state in the nonconservative Olami-Feder-Christensen (OFC) model for earthquakes. Starting from initially random configurations, we monitor the average earthquake size in different portions of the system as a function of time (the time is defined as the input energy per site in the system). We find that the process of self-organisation develops from the boundaries of the system and it is controlled by a dynamical critical exponent z~1.3 that appears to be universal over a range of dissipation levels of the local dynamics. We show moreover that the transient time of the system $t_{tr}$ scales with system size L as $t_{tr} \sim L^z$. We argue that the (non-trivial) scaling of the transient time in the OFC model is associated to the establishment of long-range spatial correlations in the steady state.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Journal of Physics

The Anthropologist’s Guide to the Female Experience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – or ADHD – is a neurodevelopmental disorder that has been recognized in young boys for decades. Meanwhile, a significant part of the population has been suffering with it, often unknowingly, in silence. ADHD is one of the best-researched disorders in medicine, but only regarding boys, and there is a need for broader research on ADHD – especially in girls and women. Only within the past thirty years has diagnostic criteria been introduced that is inclusive of the experiences of the adult, and female, population. This study deals with the female experience of ADHD in 21st century Norway. This study also holds a second goal, which is to contribute to more research on ADHD within the anthropological discipline, Anthropological studies regarding ADHD in women are even tougher to come by. This project is developed from an autoethnographic basis, as the project has been conducted by a woman with ADHD. In combination with the film “How Can I Explain To You What I Am Trying To Explain To You?” this thesis seeks to enable for an insight in to a lesser known reality of the disorder, as well as an insight into the challenges one can face when in a process of researching oneself

Norwegian dairy farmer's preferences for breeding goal traits and associations with herd and farm characteristics

The aims of this study were to investigate variation and clustering in breeding goal trait preferences among Norwegian dairy farmers and to identify factors with a systematic influence on their preferences. An internet-based questionnaire was sent out to dairy farmers connected to the Norwegian co-operative breeding organization Geno (N = 8222), of which 10.8% answered (N = 888). Of the 15 suggested traits fertility had the highest overall ranking, while parasite resistance and methane emission had the lowest. Four distinct preference clusters were identified by the means of cluster analysis, of which two had a high preference for milk production. Differences in terms of farm and herd characteristics between clusters suggests a mixture of systematic and intrinsic effects on breeding goal trait priorities. This study shows that Norwegian dairy farmers’ preferences for breeding goal traits fall into four distinct clusters, both affected by herd and farm characteristics along with intrinsic value

Self-organized critical earthquake model with moving boundary

A globally driven self-organized critical model of earthquakes with conservative dynamics has been studied. An open but moving boundary condition has been used so that the origin (epicenter) of every avalanche (earthquake) is at the center of the boundary. As a result, all avalanches grow in equivalent conditions and the avalanche size distribution obeys finite size scaling excellent. Though the recurrence time distribution of the time series of avalanche sizes obeys well both the scaling forms recently observed in analysis of the real data of earthquakes, it is found that the scaling function decays only exponentially in contrast to a generalized gamma distribution observed in the real data analysis. The non-conservative version of the model shows periodicity even with open boundary.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted version in EPJ

Boundary effects in a random neighbor model of earthquakes

We introduce spatial inhomogeneities (boundaries) in a random neighbor version of the Olami, Feder and Christensen model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 1244 (1992)] and study the distributions of avalanches starting both from the bulk and from the boundaries of the system. Because of their clear geophysical interpretation, two different boundary conditions have been considered (named free and open, respectively). In both cases the bulk distribution is described by the exponent $\tau \simeq {3/2}$. Boundary distributions are instead characterized by two different exponents $\tau ' \simeq {3/2}$ and $\tau ' \simeq {7/4}$, for free and open boundary conditions, respectively. These exponents indicate that the mean-field behavior of this model is correctly described by a recently proposed inhomogeneous form of critical branching process.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures ; to appear on PR

The self-organized critical forest-fire model on large scales

We discuss the scaling behavior of the self-organized critical forest-fire model on large length scales. As indicated in earlier publications, the forest-fire model does not show conventional critical scaling, but has two qualitatively different types of fires that superimpose to give the effective exponents typically measured in simulations. We show that this explains not only why the exponent characterizing the fire-size distribution changes with increasing correlation length, but allows also to predict its asymptotic value. We support our arguments by computer simulations of a coarse-grained model, by scaling arguments and by analyzing states that are created artificially by superimposing the two types of fires.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure