1,721,696 research outputs found
Heterogeneous effects of sustainable agriculture practices: Micro-evidence from Malawi
No full textAre the effects of sustainable agricultural practices heterogeneous across agroecology and wealth in Malawi?Would a wealth-enhancing policy be associated with increased effectiveness of these practices? Focusing on a nationally representative set of Malawian agricultural households, the article answers the above questions by employing plot-level panel data matched with a set of geo-referenced rainfall and temperature records. The findings suggest a positive correlation between aggregate yield and the adoption of organic fertilizer. A similar result holds for legume intercropping and for hybrid seeds, which are associated to reductions in yield volatility between the two waves. Nevertheless, these effects appear heterogeneous across the agro-ecological zone of adoption, since a reduced number of farmers in selected locations can improve yields through the adoption of these practices. Further exploration suggests that less wealthy households show higher returns when adopting hybrid seeds or legume intercropping. Wealthier households, in contrast, report high yield only when treated with technology-enhancing practices, such as organic fertilizers and soil erosion control measures
Cognitive functioning and depressive symptoms in the aging population: The buffering role of marital status
No full textThis study examines the moderating role of marital status in the relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive functioning in older adults from 12 European countries. Using longitudinal panel data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we hypothesize that marriage buffers the negative effects of depression on cognitive abilities, focusing on immediate and delayed memory and verbal fluency.
Building on the Social Ambivalence and Disease (SAD) model, we argue that not only the presence of a marital relationship, but also its quality, plays a crucial role in shaping mental and cognitive health.
Our findings indicate that marriage has a protective effect on verbal fluency, likely due to the cognitive stimulation provided by spousal interactions. This buffering effect does not extend to other cognitive domains, such as immediate and delayed memory, which may be more influenced by neurobiological factors. Moreover, we find that in the context of depression symptoms married women benefit more from the protective effects of marriage than men, possibly due to gender differences in social engagement within relationships. The results underscore the importance of both marital support and relationship quality for cognitive health. From a policy perspective, initiatives promoting spousal engagement, horizontal networking, and peer-support programs may help reduce the cognitive risks associated with depression and social isolation in older adults
Geographical and Multi-criteria Approach for Hydrogeological Risk. Evaluation in Decision Making Processes
No full textThe catastrophes occurring in recent years and a changed awareness not only among “experts” but in the whole society of the reasons for hydro-geological calamities are in fact pointing out the urgency of a correct policy for the preven-tion of hydro-geological risk and the development of more adequate systems for forecasting disasters. In the light of a problem of this entity, it is necessary to act on two fronts: careful planning and programming of the use of territorial re-sources, as well as setting up decision making support systems that can improve the efficiency of the actions taken. In this paper the topic of planning in areas with hydro - geological risk is deal with, through the implementation of two different methodologies: the former is a probabilistic - quantitative one for the definition of the hydraulic dangerousness; the latter is a qualitative one (able to consider also social, economic, cultural and political aspects) for the definition of vulnerability considered as the ability of a territorial system to answer to the calamitous events
Gender, Weather Shocks and Welfare: Evidence from Malawi
No full textThis paper explores the gender-differentiated effects of weather shocks on households’ welfare in Malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records. Results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare, reducing consumption, food consumption and daily caloric intake. The negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women, a finding that sheds light on the gender-unequal impact of temperature shocks. Our evidence also suggests that women’s vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to women’s land tenure security, as temperature shocks significantly impact women’s welfare only in patrilineal districts, where statistics show that investment in agricultural technologies is lower
Predicting chaos through an harmonic balance technique: an application to the time-delayed Chua's circuit
No full textIEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS: PART
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The legal origin of income inequality
No full textThe legal origin movement is implicitly functionalist, while it explicitly prioritizes economic dimensions of development. From this perspective, the empirical findings presented in this paper seem to uncover the existence of a paradox. On the one hand, common law countries are apparently characterized by countless advantages, yet they do not grow faster than civil law countries. On the other hand, common law countries present a more unequal distribution of income, thus suggesting that also from a static perspective there is no a priori reason to prefer a common law system. To further investigate this paradox, we analyze if common law countries are at least characterized by a better kind (earned) of inequalities. However, as the economic distinction between inequalities of opportunities and inequalities of effort is too fragile, this proved to be an impossible task. We are therefore left with the unsolved riddle of the contradicting results obtained by the legal origins literature. From a more practical perspective, the empirical findings seem to disprove the dogma that common law countries are under every condition the perfect benchmark for reforms in developing countries
La pianificazione collaborativa a differenti scale territoriali. Nuove opportunità nell’uso delle ICT
No full textThe value of local climate and weather information: an economic valuation of the decentralised meteorological provision in Kenya
No full textThe development of Sub-Saharan Africa will become increasingly constrained by the acute climate sensitivity of livelihood practices. Weather and climate services can improve climate risks to development by informing plans and decisions that ultimately reduce losses/maximize beneficial opportunities from climate variability and change. Yet, such services are typically highly aggregated, and notoriously difficult to communicate, especially to smallholder farmers and pastoralists where the need is greatest. Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) are decentralizing service provision, and in so doing, offering disaggregated, contextualized, and more easily understandable localized weather and seasonal information products relative to national level equivalents. This article uses household productive income (2014–2015) across Kitui County to model the economic value of KMD’s local seasonal forecast and advisory products. The findings suggest that, after controlling for alternative explanations, households receiving KMD’s local advisories and seasonal forecasts have marginally higher income levels compared to the counterfactual of using national level equivalents. When marginal appreciations in productive income are compared to the costs of establishing and maintaining KMD’s decentralized provision, the investment is economically viable and comparable with similar initiatives within and outside Kenya
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