149 research outputs found
The effect of non-personnel resources on educational outcomes: Evidence from South Africa
No full textLittle credible evidence exists on the effect of material resources on school quality in developing countries. This paper studies the impact of non-personnel funding on educational outcomes exploiting the peculiar way in which these resources are allocated in South Africa. Government funding follows quintiles constructed on the basis of school poverty scores. This creates discrete jumps in the allocation of funding and we use a regression discontinuity approach to analyze its effects on school outcomes
at the end of high school. Our results show a small but positive effect of resources on student throughput during the last years of high school, and on the number of students writing the matriculation exam. However, additional resources do not translate into a higher number of successful exams, leading to an overall negative effect on pass rates. We suggest that these findings may have to do with schools reacting to the per-pupil nature of funding.Miquel Pellicer, GIGA, Hamburg and SALDRU
Patrizio Piraino, University of Cape TownWe acknowledge funding from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme through the NOPOOR
project: "Enhancing knowledge for renewed policies against poverty". We would like to thank participants at the SALDRU seminar at the University of Cape Town, and at the RP3 GIGA seminar for useful comments. We are grateful to Rob Garlick for detailed and very useful feedback on an earlier draft. All errors are ours
Estimating intergenerational income mobility on sub-optimal data. A machine learning approach
No full textMuch of the global evidence on intergenerational income mobility is based on sub-optimal data. In particular, two-stage techniques are widely used to impute parental incomes for analyses of lower-income countries and for estimating long-run trends across multiple generations and historical periods. We propose applying machine learning methods to improve the reliability and comparability of such estimates. Supervised learning algorithms minimize the out-of-sample prediction error in the parental income imputation and provide an objective criterion for choosing across different specifications of the first-stage equation. We use our approach on data from the United States and South Africa to show that under common conditions it can limit the bias generally associated to mobility estimates based on imputed parental income
Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and the Inheritance of Employers
No full textOur analysis of intergenerational earnings mobility modifies the Becker-Tomes model to incorporate the intergenerational transmission of employers, which is predicted to increase the intergenerational elasticity of earnings. About 6% of young Canadian men have the same main employer as their fathers but this is positively related to paternal earnings and rises discretely at the top of the distribution. We use a switching regression model and identify two regimes associated with the inheritance of employers that have different intergenerational earnings elasticities. The model also demonstrates that the inheritance of employers plays a role in understanding observed nonlinearities.intergenerational mobility, job search, networks
Information, mobilization, and demand for redistribution: A survey experiment in South Africa
No full textThis paper presents a survey experiment in South Africa that focuses on the role of mobilization for demand for redistribution. Previous literature has found that providing information on inequality raises concerns about inequality but need not lead to a change in tax preferences. We argue that mobilization might provide the missing link between information and political behavior regarding demand for redistribution. We operationalize mobilization from an individual perspective as the belief that a decrease in inequality is feasible. If this belief is absent, information about inequality might simply increase the pessimism of respondents and remain inconsequential for policy preferences. We test this idea with a survey experiment in two townships of Cape Town, which includes one pure information and two mobilization treatments. The first mobilization treatment informs respondents about the (much lower inequality) in neighboring countries. The second provides elite support for redistribution via video messages of South African leaders. Consistent with previous literature, we find that pure information on inequality increases concern for inequality but has no effects on tax preferences. Mobilization treatments, in contrast, shake the belief that a decrease in inequality is feasible and consequently lead to a change in tax preferences. While the mechanism regarding information on lower inequality in neighboring countries is as expected, the one for the videos is puzzling: videos make people believe that inequality is more, instead of less, inevitable, and this leads to lower tax preferences. We conjecture that this is due to a lack of credibility of the leaders considered which makes viewers more pessimistic and has a demobilizing effect. An important innovation of the survey experiment is action outcomes where respondents are offered to send an SMS or sign a petition to disseminate their tax preferences.Miquel Pellicer: GIGA Hamburg and SALDRU, University of Cape Town
Patrizio Piraino: School of Economics and SALDRU, University of Cape Town
Eva Wegner: GIGA Hamburg and SALDRU, University of Cape Town. Corresponding Author: eva.wegner@ giga-hamburg.de.
We would like to acknowledge the funding of the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme through the "NOPOOR - Enhancing knowledge for renewed policies against poverty” project.
We would also like to thank the participants at the 2014 Toronto Political BehaviourWorkshop, of the panel on redistribution at the EPSA Annual Meeting (2014), and at the UNU-WIDER conference on \Inequality
measurement, trends, impacts, and policies” for helpful comments. We would also like to thank Jan Schenk for his feedback on our questionnaire and treatment design throughout this project
Les edats d’«In memoriam»
No full textRemarks on "In memoriam", the largest poem by Gabriel Ferrater, nn the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of the author
Impact of photovoltaic technology and feeder voltage level on the efficiency of façade building-integrated photovoltaic systems
No full textsponsorship: This project receives the support of the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund ERDF, Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship and the Province of Limburg. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 751159. Special thanks goes to C. Sheehan from Bourns for providing the required inductor specifications. Patrizio Manganiello was previously with IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, Leuven, Belgium. (European Union, European Regional Development Fund ERDF, Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Province of Limburg, European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie|751159, Marie Curie Actions (MSCA)|751159)status: Published onlin
Modulatory effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on words and non-words reading task
No full textTITLE:
Modulatory effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on words and non-words reading task
AUTHOR(S):
Margherita Forgioneb, Patrizio Tressoldi b, Daniela Mapelli b, Paulo Sergio Boggio a
a Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Sao Paulo
b Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italia
INTRODUCTION:
In recent past tDCS has gained much attention for rehabilitation purposes. Moreover, few studies have been conducted to investigate its efficacy on reading process. The aim of these studies was to investigate the role of left and right posterior temporal cortex in words and non-words reading process, through tDCS. We focused on the online task to see if it can influence the subjects’ performance. We hypothesized that the anodal stimulation would facilitate the task execution compared to sham and cathodal, in terms of reaction times and accuracy.
METHOD:
Twenty good readers were tested in 3 sessions (sham, anodal, cathodal), with different online task (text reading or music listening). tDCS was applied bilaterally over posterior temporal lobe, with a current of 1,5 mA, lasting for 20 minutes. Participants had to read aloud words or non-words, before and after stimulation. We recorded reaction times and accuracy for words and non-words, before and after stimulation.
RESULTS:
Regarding reaction times, we found significant effect of cathodal tDCS in short words reading task. Similarly, we also found an improvement in reading accuracy for non-words after tDCS. The online task doesn’t seem to affect the performance.
CONCLUSIONS:
We found a modulatory effect of cathodal tDCS in words reading task, suggesting a compensatory mechanisms of the right hemisphere. To verify this hypothesis, we are investigating different montages, involving left or right hemisphere. Further studies are necessary to understand the modulation effects of this technique, in addition with other methodologies, such as eye tracker, and with clinical sample, in particular dyslexics
Incerta glòria de Joan Sales: viatge entre les edicions i les traduccions
No full textJoan Sales’ Incerta glòria has a complicated textual history, as most of the literature
published in Spain during Franco’s dictatorship. As the novel deals with
the Spanish Civil War according to the losers’ viewpoint it was carefully read by
censors and of course censored. The editions of the novel published after the first
(1956) were continously changed and enlarged by the author who was, at the same
time, the publisher. After the author’s death in 1983, it was his wife who edited
the subsequent editions. It would be necessary therefore to have the text edited
and checked according to textual criticism. The article aims at reconstructing the
textual history of Incerta glòria from an external standpoint
Research on the Automobile Aerodynamic Field at the Politecnico di Torino in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
No full textWith this paper the author first of all wants to honor the memory of Professor Alberto Morelli with whom he had the privilege of working for many years at the Politecnico di Torino. Morelli radically changed the way of designing car body shapes, while bringing the aspect of reducing the aerodynamic resistance of a vehicle to the attention of car designers. Morelli’s research activity began in the early 1950s and, between the 1950s and 1960s, he designed and built a number of car prototypes, whose coefficient of aerodynamic resistance was substantially reduced compared to that of the cars of that time, sometimes resorting to revolutionary architectures such as a “diamond” arrangement of the wheels. A fundamental step of Morelli's research in the field of vehicle aerodynamics was the Pininfarina full-scale wind tunnel project, which was set up between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, and was inaugurated in 1972: fifty years have therefore passed since that occasion. An impressive result, obtained in the second half of the 1970s, was the maquette of the Pininfarina-CNR car, which had front air intakes, internal flows as well as other external details, such as rear-view mirrors: in this case, the Cx value was 0.20. His activity continued with significant results in the field of car aerodynamics, in particular concerning the interaction between the wakes of the car and of the wheels
Essays on child labour and schooling in Ghana
No full textThis thesis consists of three papers on child labour and schooling in Ghana. The first paper examines the correlates of child labour and schooling, as well as the trade-off between work and schooling of children aged 5-17 years with the 2013 Ghana Living Standard Survey data. A bivariate probit model is used since the decisions to participate in schooling and in the labour market are interdependent. The results show that there is a gender gap both in child work and schooling. In particular, boys are less likely to work (and more likely to be enrolled in schools) relative to girls. Whereas parent education, household wealth and income of the family are negatively correlated with child work, these factors influence schooling positively. In addition, parents‟ employment status, ownership of livestock, distance to school, child wage and schooling expenditure increase the probability of child labour and reduce the likelihood of school enrolment. In terms of the relationship between child labour and schooling, the results show that an additional hour of child labour is associated with 0.15 hour (9 minutes) reduction in daily hours of school attendance; and the effect is bigger for girls relative to boys. Also, one more hour of child labour is associated with an increase in the probability of a child falling behind in grade progression by 1.4 percentage points. The second paper estimates the impact of Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme on schooling outcomes (enrolment, attendance hours, repetition and test scores) and child labour in farming and non-farm enterprises. Using longitudinal data, the paper employs three different quasi-experimental methods (propensity score matching, difference-in-difference, and difference-in-difference combined with matching). Overall, the results show that the LEAP programme had no effect on school enrolment and test scores, but it increased the weekly hours of class attendance by 5.2 hours and reduced repetition rate by 11 percentage points for children in households that benefited from the programme. In addition, there was heterogeneity in these impacts, with boys benefiting more relative to girls. In terms of child labour, the results show that the programme had no effect on the extensive margin of child labour in farming and non-farm enterprises. However, the LEAP programme reduced the intensity of farm work done by children by as much as 2.6 hours per day. The largest impact of the programme, in terms of iii reduction in the intensity of child labour in farming, occurred in female-headed and extremely poor households. The last paper investigates the impact of mothers‟ autonomy or bargaining power in the household on their children’s schooling and child labour in Ghana. The paper uses a noneconomic measure of women’[s autonomy, which is an index constructed from five questions on power relations between men and women. The paper employs both an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. Overall, the results suggest that ignoring the endogeneity of mothers‟ autonomy underestimates its true impact on schooling and child labour. They also show that an increase in mothers‟ autonomy increases school enrolment and hours of class attendance, with girls benefiting more than boys. The paper finds a negative relationship between mothers‟ autonomy and both the extensive and intensive margin of child labour. In addition, it demonstrates that improvement in women’s autonomy has bigger impacts on rural children’s welfare relative to urban children
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