82 research outputs found
Growth, distribution and poverty in Madagascar
No full textThis paper presents an applied microsimulation model built on household data with explicit treatment of heterogeneity of skills, labor preferences and opportunities, and consumption preferences at the individual and/or household level, while allowing for an endogenous determination of relative prices between sectors. The model is primarily focused on labor markets and labor allocation at the household level, but consumption behavior is also modeled. Modeling choices are driven by a desire to make the best possible use of microeconomic information derived from household data. This framework supports analysis of the impact of different growth strategies on poverty and income distribution, without making use of the “representative agent” assumption. The model is built on household survey data and represents the behavior of 4,508 households. Household behavioral equations are estimated econometrically. Different sets of simulation are carried out to examine the comparative statics of the model and study the impact of different growth strategies on poverty and inequality. Simulation results show the potential usefulness of this class of models to derive both poverty and inequality measures and transition matrices without prior assumptions regarding the intra-group income distribution. Market clearing equations allow for the endogenous determination of relative prices between sectors. The impact of different growth strategies on poverty and inequality is complex given general equilibrium effects and the wide range of household positions in markets for factors and goods markets. Partial equilibrium analysis or the use of representative households would miss these effects.Microeconomics Madagascar. ,Madagascar. ,Labor market. ,Poverty. ,TMD ,
Was Gordon Robilliard right? Integrative systematics suggests that Dendronotus diversicolor Robilliard, 1970 is a valid species
No full textNudibranch molluscs of the genus Dendronotus Alder and Hancock, 1845 are widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. Taxonomic studies on the genus Dendronotus have been problematic due to high variability in colour pattern in many species, as well as in external morphology and anatomy. In the present paper, we studied specimens of Dendronotus from northern Pacific presumably belonging to the species Dendronotus albus MacFarland, 1966. Molecular and morphological data revealed the existence of two distinct species among the material examined: D. albus, which has a wide range from Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands (from where we report this species for the first time) to California in North America, and the pseudo-cryptic species Dendronotus diversicolor Robilliard, 1970, which has been previously considered a junior synonym of D. albus. D. diversicolor occurs from California to British Columbia in sympatry with D. albus. D. albus and D. diversicolor can be clearly distinguished by colour pattern, internal and external morphology and molecular sequence data. Despite some similarities in radular and external morphology between D. albus and D. diversicolor, these two species are phylogenetically distant and belong to different clades within the genus Dendronotus which suggests convergent evolution.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author
Empowerment and Desired Fertility in Sub Saharan Africa
No full textInternational audienceDespite some decline, most Sub Saharan African countries still exhibit very high levels of fertility, resulting in the lengthening of the phase of strong population growth. Using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data collected over a pooled sample of more than 430,000 married women living in 33 countries, the author examines the relationship between empowerment and desired fertility. The author constructs six different proxies of empowerment: two “objective” proxies (education and labor force participation), three “subjective” proxies (say in household decisions, non-acceptance of domestic violence, and no son preference), and a “relative” proxy (small spousal age difference). The author first shows that these six dimensions are related with one another and highly variable from one country to another across the region. the author then explores the relationship of these dimensions with desired fertility at the individual level. On the pooled sample, the author find that there is a strong and negative relationship between all six dimensions of empowerment and desired fertility: in other words, women who have a low degree of empowerment tend to want a higher number of children. This result still holds when taking into account country fixed-effects to account for country-level characteristics. However, when examining more closely the relationship at the country level, the author finds that there is some variation on the strength of the relationship and that its sign is reversed for some indicators in some countries. Lastly, the author finds that local context matters which suggests that empowerment policies should address both the individual and collective dimensions of empowerment
Towards Human-Competitive Game Playing for Complex Board Games with Genetic Programming
No full textRecent works have shown that Genetic Programming (GP) can be quite successful at evolving human-competitive strategies for games ranging from classic board games, such as chess, to action video games. However to our knowledge GP was never applied to modern complex board games, so-called eurogames, such as Settlers of Catan, i.e. board games that typically involve four characteristics: they are non zero-sum games, multiplayer, with hidden information and random elements. In this work we study how GP can evolve artificial players from low level attributes of a eurogame named “7 Wonders”, that features all th
A gendered 1993-94 Social Accounting Matrix for Bangladesh
No full textThis working paper documents the construction of a 1993-94 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bangladesh. The SAM distinguishes 10 agricultural sectors —including two different kinds of rice technology — and 19 manufacturing sectors, out of 43 sectors in total. It also differentiates between twelve socio-economic groups, allowing detailed analysis of household welfare and poverty. The SAM has ten factors of production: one type of capital, one type of land and eight different types of labor which are disaggregated by both level of education and gender. The innovative feature of the SAM is that it separates out female and male labor value-added for each educational level and in eachsector of the economy, providing a base for gender-sensitive analyses of policy changes. The SAM is estimated with a cross-entropy approach, which makes efficient use of all available data in a framework that incorporates prior information and constraints.Mathematical models. ,Households. ,Labor Gender issues. ,Rice Bangladesh. ,TMD ,
A Continuous Approach to Genetic Programming
No full textAbstract. Differential Evolution (DE) is an evolutionary heuristic for continuous optimization problems. In DE, solutions are coded as vectors of floats that evolve by crossover with a combination of best and random individuals from the current generation. Experiments to apply DE to automatic programming were made recently by Veenhuis, coding full program trees as vectors of floats (Tree Based Differential Evolution or TreeDE). In this paper, we use DE to evolve linear sequences of imperative instructions, which we call Linear Differential Evolutionary Programming (LDEP). Unlike TreeDE, our heuristic provides constant management for regression problems and lessens the tree-depth constraint on the architecture of solutions. Comparisons with TreeDE and GP show that LDEP is appropriate to automatic programming
- …
