49 research outputs found
Remittances and poverty in Ghana
No full textThe author uses a large, nationally representative household survey to analyze the impact of internal remittances (from Ghana) and international remittances (from African and other countries) on poverty in Ghana. With only one exception, he finds that both types of remittances reduce the level, depth, and severity of poverty in Ghana. But the size of the poverty reduction depends on how poverty is being measured. The author finds that poverty is reduced more when international, as opposed to internal, remittances are included in household income, and when poverty is measured by the more sensitive poverty measures-poverty gap and squared poverty gap. For example, the squared poverty gap measure shows that including international remittances in household expenditure (income) reduces the severity of poverty by 34.8 percent, while including internal remittances in such income reduces the severity of poverty by only 4.1 percent. International remittances reduce the severity of poverty more than internal remittances because of the differential impact of these two types of remittances on poor households. Households in the poorest decile group receive 22.7 percent of their total household expenditure (income) from international remittances, as opposed to only 13.8 percent of such income from internal remittances. When these"poorest of the poor"households receive international remittances, their income status changes dramatically and this in turn has a large effect on any poverty measure-like the squared poverty gap-that considers both the number and distance of poor households beneath the poverty line.Remittances,Economic Conditions and Volatility,Gender and Development,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping,Poverty Lines
The short-cut test
No full textAbstractThe short-cut test detects existence and uniqueness of “Laplacians” on finitely ramified, graph-directed fractals. Previous results by Sabot, Nussbaum and the author are improved and extended. It opens up the way for further studies because it combines well established spectral, dynamical and analytic techniques. Its algorithmic and recursive structure is designed to provide computable and flexible criteria
Design Guide for Aerodynamics Testing of Earth and Planetary Entry Vehicles in a Ballistic Range
No full textThe purpose of this manual is to aid in the design of an aerodynamics test of an earth or planetary entry capsule in a ballistic range. In this manual, much use is made of the results and experience gained in 50 years of ballistic range aerodynamics testing at the NASA Ames Research Center, and in particular, that gained in the last 27 years, while the author was working at NASA Ames. The topics treated herein include: Data to be obtained; flight data needed to design test; Reynolds number and dynamic similarity of flight trajectory and ballistic range test; capabilities of various ballistic ranges; Calculations of swerves due to average and oscillating lift and of drag-induced velocity decreases; Model and sabot design; materials, weights and stresses; Sabot separation; Launches at angle of attack and slapping with paper to produce pitch/yaw oscillations
The spectra of the laplacians of fractal graphs not satisfying spectral decimation
No full textWe consider the spectra of the Laplacians of two sequences of fractal graphs in the context of the general theory introduced by Sabot in 2003. For the sequence of graphs associated with the pentagasket, we give a description of the eigenvalues in terms of the iteration of a map from (C-2)(3) to itself. For the sequence of graphs introduced in a previous paper by the author, we show that the results found therein can be related to Sabot's theory
The impact of labor market regulations
No full textThe authors investigate the impact of labor market regulations in settings where compliance is incomplete. They review some stylized facts about labor market behavior, present an analytical model that may explain such behavior, and provide a checklist for assessing the distortionary impact of a regulation such as the minimum wage. They take as their starting point the limited evidence about the distortionary effects of such regulations and argue that there may be natural limits on the efficiency losses engendered by labor market regulations. First, the regulations may not be binding at market equilibrium. For example, minimum wages may be set so low that they are ineffective. Second, even if they are binding, the relevant elasticities of supply and demand may be so low that the regulations have little impact on efficiency. Third, even if the regulations are binding and elasticities are sizable, compliance may be low. The authors argue that the likelihood of compliance will be greatest when the regulations are binding and the relevant elasticities are sizable. That is, if the distortionary costs of regulations are not rendered insignificant by the first two reasons, then the returns to noncompliance will be high and, other things being equal, employers will evade or avoid the regulations, thereby minimizing the imact on efficiency. The argument rests on profit maximization subject to a hard budget constraint. Public enterprises, which are not concerned only with profit maximization and often have softer budget constraints than the private sector, may be more willing to conform to profit-reducing regulations, but in this case the authors argue that compliance may reduce already-existing efficiency losses.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Labor Policies,Public Health Promotion,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies
Primitivisme et surréalisme : une « synthèse » impossible ?
No full textCet article s’interroge sur le statut complexe de la figure du « primitif » au sein du surréalisme, et particulièrement au sein de l’œuvre d’André Breton. L’A. s’attache à montrer d’abord que le surréalisme s’inscrit clairement dans la lignée d’un certain nombre de mouvements culturels et artistiques se fondant sur une réévaluation critique des schémas mentaux et esthétiques imposés par le « rationalisme » occidental. Mais il cherche également à souligner l’ambiguïté constitutive du primitivisme surréaliste, en quête d’une primitivité à la fois lointaine et originaire, qui ferait coïncider l’homme primitif et le primitif en l’homme. Les différentes formes prises par le primitivisme surréaliste, notamment ses formes littéraires, témoignent alors de manière exemplaire de cette ambiguïté et de la synthèse impossible entre la théorie surréaliste du primitif et une pratique primitiviste.The article puts questions on the complex status of “the Primitive” within Surrealism, and particularly within some works of André Breton. The author at first aims at showing that Surrealism prolongs some cultural and artistic movements based on critics about the intellectual and esthetical ideals of the occidental rationalism. But he aims especially at showing the fundamental ambiguity of a surrealist primitivism, which searches a kind of “Primitivity” (both distant and original), as operating a coincidence between the primitive man and the primitive in man. The varied forms of the surrealist primitivism, particularly its literary forms, finally testifies that the synthesis between the surrealist theory of the Primitive and a primitivist practice is impossible
Impact of the International Coffee Agreement's export quota system on the World's coffee market
No full textEx-post simulations of the global coffee model over the recent period of operation of the International Coffee Agreement's export quota system, (1981-86) show the following. The quota system had a stabilizing effect on world coffee prices in the 1981-85 period. In 1986, when coffee prices increased sharply due to the drought in Brazil and the export quotas were suspended, prices would have been 24 percent higher in the absence of quotas over the 1981-85 period. However, the quotas have reduced export revenues (in real terms), except for such large producers as Brazil and Colombia. These countries gained form the scheme because they face very small or even zero marginal export revenues from increased exports, due to their large market shares. In projections of the coffee market, with and without the export quota system, prices would be substantially lower during the first half of the 1990s if the quota system were suspended in 1990. But prices would recover in the second half of the decade as production and exports declined in lagged response to the very low prices of the first half.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Crops&Crop Management Systems
Where has all the education gone?
No full textCross-national data on economic growth rates show that increases in educational capital resulting from improvements in the educational attainment of the labor force have had no positive impact on the growth rate of output per worker. In fact, contends the author, the estimated impact of growth of human capital on conventional nonregression growth accounting measures of total factor productivity is large, strongly significant, and negative. Needless to say, this at least appears to contradict the current conventional wisdom in development circles about education's importance for growth. After establishing that this negative result about the education-growth linkage is robust, credible, and consistent with previous literature, the author explores three possible explanations that reconcile the abundant evidence about wage gains from schooling for individuals with the lack of schooling impact on aggregate growth: 1) that schooling creates no human capital. Schooling may not actually raise cognitive skills or productivity but schooling may nevertheless raise the private wage because to employers it signals a positive characteristic like ambition or innate ability; 2) that the marginal returns toeducation are falling rapidly where demand for educated labor is stagnant. Expanding the supply of educated labor where there is stagnant demand for it causes the rate of return to education to fall rapidly, particularly where the sluggish demand is due to limited adoption of innovations; and 3) that the institutional environments in many countries have been sufficiently perverse that the human capital accumulated has been applied to activities that served to reduce economic growth. In other words, possibly education does raise productivity, and there is demand for this more productive educated labor, but demand for educated labor comes from individually remunerative but socially wasteful or counterproductive activities - a bloated bureaucracy, for example, or overmanned state enterprises in countries where the government is the employer of last resort - so that while individuals'wages go up with education, output stagnates, or even falls.Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Growth
U.S. trade policy towards developing countries
No full textThe United States has often been criticized for protectionist measures taken against developing country products. Yet, average agricultural protection has reemained practically nil in the U.S. over time, while rising in the European Common Market (E.C.M) and, even more, Japan. It further appears that manufactured imports from developing countries have increased much more rapidly, and reached higher levels, in the U.S. than in the E.C.M and, in particular, Japan. The U.S.-Japan comparisons for manufactured goods do not conform to the data on the extent of nontariff barriers, as measured by the share of imports from the developing countries which are subject to such trade barriers. The solution to the puzzle lies in part in the inadequacies of data on the share of imports subject to nontariff measures for gauging the protective effects of such measures and in part in the reliance on formal measures of protection in the United States as against the informal measures in Japan. More generally, one may explain the results obtained by reference to the openness of the U.S. market that has generally been more hospitable to imports from developing countries than have the markets of other industrial countries, particularly Japan.Poverty Assessment,Trade and Regional Integration,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade Policy
Is the discount on the secondary market a case for LDC debt relief?
No full textIn 1988, the prices on the secondary market of LDC debt averaged 50 cents per dollar of face value. From the observation of such discount, this paper goes one step further and argues thatthe debt should be written down in order to account for the discrepancy between the face and market value of the debt. The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 spells out the model, section 2 calculates the socially efficient and the post-default growth rates of the economy. Section 3 shows that the lenders, if they were to monitor the investment and the consumption strategy of the borrower, would choose a lower investment strategy than the socially efficient one. Section 4 shows how an optimum rescheduling can achieve the equilibrium described in section 3. Section 5 shows the dynamic inconsistency of the optimal strategy spelled out in section 4, and shows the link with the"debt overhang"literature. Section 6 investigates the empirical relevance of the"debt overhang".Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Strategic Debt Management,Financial Intermediation
