How Is Convergent Mobility Consistent with Rising Inequality? A Reconciliation in the Case of Argentina

[Excerpt] This is a paper on earnings mobility in Argentina during the macroeconomic growth and contractions that have characterized that nation’s economy from 1996 to the present. Since 1996, real GDP growth has fluctuated widely. For most of the 1990s, Argentina was seen as a model of successful policymaking. Having pegged its exchange rate to the dollar under a currency board type arrangement in 1991, Argentina had succeeded in ending hyperinflation, reducing inflation rates to single-digit levels. Greater economic stability attracted foreign investment inflows, contributing to an acceleration in economic growth; indeed, even as lenders withdrew their financing in East Asia in 1997, capital inflows continued to Argentina. Then, Argentina entered into a prolonged recession. The combination of the hard peg of the local currency to the U.S. dollar and excessive borrowing led to an unsustainable fiscal situation and, ultimately, to the collapse of the economy at the end of 2001 (See Figure 1). Gross Domestic Product fell by 13.5 percent from the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002, and the share of the population in poverty reached 58 percent in October 2002, versus 38 percent in October 2001, according to the official moderate poverty line. This paper addresses the distributional consequences of these macroeconomic events. (Note: Here and throughout the paper, “distribution of income” means the entire density or cumulative distribution function; it does not mean “inequality.”) Who benefited the most from Argentine economic growth? Who lost the most in economic decline? Are those who started rich getting richer in growth periods and losing more in recessionary periods, or is it the other way around? Are the answers to these questions the same for all measures of initial advantage

Earnings Mobility in Times of Growth and Decline: Argentina from 1996 to 2003

In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. To answer these questions, we test two hypotheses both unconditionally and conditionally. The ?divergence of earnings? hypothesis holds that in any given year, the highest earning individuals are those who experienced the largest earnings gains or the smallest earnings losses in pesos. The ?symmetry of gains and losses? hypothesis holds that those groups that gained the most in pesos when the economy grew are those that lost the most in pesos when the economy contracted. Both hypotheses are decisively rejected in the data. Rather, we find that it is the lowest income individuals and groups who gain the most in pesos, whether in good times or in bad. Thus, the panel data analysis performed in this paper presents a picture of economic growth that is much more pro-poor than one gets from cross sectional inequality comparisons.finance, growth, inequality, Argentina, survey, gains, losses

Labor market policy research for developing countries : recent examples from the literature - what do we know and what should we know?

This paper documents recent advances of research on labor market institutions, behavior, and policies in developing countries and makes suggestions for future research. The four areas of research analyzed are: i) theoretical and empirical implications of employment protection legislation on labor outcomes; ii) the issue of shifting from job to worker protection, namely, the different alternatives to severance pay: unemployment insurance and unemployment insurance savings accounts and their application to developing countries; iii) the effect of active labor market programs, particularly of training, on labor market outcomes; and iv) the causes and consequences of informality in the labor market, with special emphasis on the efforts to model the informal sector. The focus of the four sections is on theoretical and empirical work on published in the last five to seven years, and each one concludes with new directions for future research.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Labor Standards,Population Policies,Political Economy

The Mauritanian labor market through the lens of the 2004 national household survey

This paper provides a snapshot of Mauritania’s labor market using data from the 2004 national household survey. The results show that the labor market is characterized by lower participation rates, lower employment-to-population rates, and relatively higher unemployment rates than in neighboring countries. The non poor fare better in the labor market than the poor. Although the labor force participation of the poor is higher than that of the non poor, the poor display a higher unemployment rate and a lower employment rate than the non poor. The data also suggest a negative correlation between wage employment and poverty. Substantial differences in labor market indicators emerge when disaggregating the analysis by gender and age-group. Female non-participation is extremely high. Women systematically earn less than men independently of their sector and type of employment and controlling for other factors, such as education. Young adults face considerable difficulties in entering the labor market: more than half of the population aged 15-24 is neither studying nor participating in the labor force. As gender disparities remain important for similar levels of education, more work is needed to understand whether cultural factors may prevent women from entering the labor market. Concerning young adults, future poverty reduction strategies need to pay more explicit attention to the promotion of employment through informed labor market policies.Labor Markets,Population Policies,Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Policies,

The Skill Content of Occupations across Low and Middle Income Countries: Evidence from Harmonized Data

Using new and harmonized worker-level survey data on tasks at work in the developing world, this paper constructs, for the first time, a measure of the skill content of occupations for 10 low and middle-income countries. Following Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003), Acemoglu and Autor (2011), and Autor and Handel (2013), we map tasks into non-routine analytical, non-routine interpersonal, and routine & manual skill groups. We find significant differences in the skill mix used by workers across different occupations, with selected white-collar occupations being intensive in Analytical and Interpersonal skills, while others — mostly blue collar, but not only — being more intensive in Routine and Manual skills. We also find that the rankings of occupations along the skill dimensions are quite stable across countries, and they correlate significantly higher between middle- and low-income countries than between them and the United States. Hence, the common practice of assuming the same skill structure for occupations in the United States and other countries can be misleading. Finally, we find that the heterogeneity of skill content between occupations (within countries) tends to decrease with the level of income, while the heterogeneity within occupations decreases only weakly (or not at all) for higher income levels. Taken together, these results suggest that as countries develop, they tend to adopt and use certain skills more widely, especially across occupations. This may suggest some degree of specialization in skills content of tasks as countries develop, especially moving towards less occupation-specific Analytical or Interpersonal skills that are becoming increasingly relevant across the board

Mendelian Randomisation Confirms the Role of Y-Chromosome Loss in Alzheimer’s Disease Aetiopathogenesis in Men

Mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY) is a common ageing-related somatic event and has been previously associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, mLOY estimation from genotype microarray data only reflects the mLOY degree of subjects at the moment of DNA sampling. Therefore, mLOY phenotype associations with AD can be severely age-confounded in the context of genome-wide association studies. Here, we applied Mendelian randomisation to construct an age-independent mLOY polygenic risk score (mloy-PRS) using 114 autosomal variants. The mloy-PRS instrument was associated with an 80% increase in mLOY risk per standard deviation unit (p = 4.22 × 10−20) and was orthogonal with age. We found that a higher genetic risk for mLOY was associated with faster progression to AD in men with mild cognitive impairment (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.23, p = 0.01). Importantly, mloy-PRS had no effect on AD conversion or risk in the female group, suggesting that these associations are caused by the inherent loss of the Y chromosome. Additionally, the blood mLOY phenotype in men was associated with increased cerebrospinal fluid levels of total tau and phosphorylated tau181 in subjects with mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Our results strongly suggest that mLOY is involved in AD pathogenesis.P.G.-G. (Pablo García-González) is supported by CIBERNED employment plan CNV-304-PRF-866. CIBERNED is integrated into ISCIII (Instituto de Salud Carlos III). I.d.R is supported by a national grant from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III FI20/00215. A.C. (Amanda Cano) acknowledges the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities under the grant Juan de la Cierva (FJC2018-036012-I). M.B. (Mercé Boada) and A.R. (Agustín Ruiz) are also supported by national grants PI13/02434, PI16/01861, PI17/01474, PI19/01240, and PI19/01301. The Genome Research @ Fundació ACE project (GR@ACE) is supported by Grifols SA, Fundación bancaria “La Caixa”, Fundació ACE, and CIBERNED. Acción Estratégica en Salud is integrated into the Spanish National R + D + I Plan and funded by ISCIII (Instituto de Salud Carlos III)—Subdirección General de Evaluación—and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER—“Una manera de hacer Europa”). Genotyping of the ACE MCI-EADB samples was performed in the context of EADB (European Alzheimer DNA biobank) funded by the JPco-fuND FP-829-029 (ZonMW project number 733051061). This work was supported by a grant (European Alzheimer DNA BioBank, EADB) from the EU Joint Program—Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND). Partial funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málag

Genome-wide meta-analysis for Alzheimer's disease cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers

Amyloid-beta 42 (A beta 42) and phosphorylated tau (pTau) levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) reflect core features of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) more directly than clinical diagnosis. Initiated by the European Alzheimer & Dementia Biobank (EADB), the largest collaborative effort on genetics underlying CSF biomarkers was established, including 31 cohorts with a total of 13,116 individuals (discovery n = 8074; replication n = 5042 individuals). Besides the APOE locus, novel associations with two other well-established AD risk loci were observed; CR1 was shown a locus for A beta 42 and BIN1 for pTau. GMNC and C16orf95 were further identified as loci for pTau, of which the latter is novel. Clustering methods exploring the influence of all known AD risk loci on the CSF protein levels, revealed 4 biological categories suggesting multiple A beta 42 and pTau related biological pathways involved in the etiology of AD. In functional follow-up analyses, GMNC and C16orf95 both associated with lateral ventricular volume, implying an overlap in genetic etiology for tau levels and brain ventricular volume.Peer reviewe

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis