1,721,038 research outputs found
Control of Resources, Bargaining Power and the Demand of Food: Evidence from PROGRESA
Full text linkI use a structural model of households to recover how much resources each individual controls in the context of the Mexican PROGRESA program. I find that the eligibility to receive the cash transfers induces a redistribution of resources from the father to both the mother and children, although the mother is the one benefiting the most. With these information I compute individual poverty rates and quantify to what extent the program reduces within-household inequality. I also combine these measures to construct a proxy for women’s bargaining power and, using causal identification techniques, I estimate its direct effects on household demand for food. Exploiting random assignment of the cash transfers as an instrumental variable for the treatment of interest, I show that mothers having majority control of household resources relative to fathers increase food consumption as a share of the household budget by 6.5-8.3 percent. I use these estimates to argue that, by knowing (i) The distribution of pre-program resources inside the household, and (ii) How much influence each decision maker can have on the desired policy outcome, a policymaker can improve the cost-effectiveness of a cash transfer program by targeting the cash to resource shares in addition to gender.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Estimating household resource shares: A shrinkage approach
No full textCollective models identifying resource shares are promising tools to analyze intra-household welfare and poverty. However, their empirical application has proven difficult in practice as authors contend with large standard errors and unstable estimates. This paper uses a prominent framework to show how a common feature of the structure of these models makes the task so difficult and proposes an empirical strategy to stabilize the estimates
Informational Shocks and Street-Food Safety: A Field Study in Urban India
Full text linkWe investigate whether improvements in street-food safety can be achieved by providing information to vendors in the form of a training. Among randomly assigned vendors in Kolkata, India, we find large improvements in knowledge and awareness but little change in observed behavior. We provide two main explanations for these findings. First, information acquisition by itself does not make it significantly easier for vendors to provide customers with safer food options. Second, although consumers have a positive willingness to pay for perceived hygiene, they struggle to distinguish between safe and contaminated food. We recommend policies targeting supply-side constraints and consumers' awareness
A predictive micromechanically-based model for damage and permanent deformations in copolymer sutures
No full textAn effective description of the mechanical behavior of biodegradable copolymers suture threads requires the analysis of their response under cyclic loading and the prediction of the fundamental damage and residual stretches effects. In this paper we propose a micromechanically-based model adopting a new form of Worm Like Chain free energy for the copolymer chains, which takes care of the insurgence of residual stretches on the basis of a rigorous statistical mechanics result. Under the affinity hypothesis we subsequently derive the macroscopic response of the material. The obtained model has a clear physical interpretation and depends on a small number of parameters, which can be fitted by a simple uniaxial test. The effectiveness of the theoretical results has then been verified by performing cyclic tests on Monocryl® monofilament sutures and showing the ability of the model in predicting with high accuracy the history dependence, the damage and permanent deformations in the obtained response
Mono- and polynuclear complexes from the reaction of palladium acetate with alpha-substituted thioethers and thiols
No full textPalladium acetate reacts with α-substituted thioethers (RSCH(R′)Z; Z=ester, ketone, sulphone, substituted methyl) and the thiol HSCH2C(O)Me to give complexes whose composition and nuclearity depend mainly on the electronic properties of the sulphur ligand. If it contains sufficiently acidic hydrogen atoms, the acetato group is partially or totally removed as acetic acid to give complexes of the type [Pd3(μ-O2CMe)3(μ-RSCR′Z)3] and [Pd(SCH2C(O)Me)2]6. The stability of the trimers decreases with the steric hindrance of the substituents at the sulphur and at the methine carbon atoms. Stable mixed sphere complexes are obtained also with carboxylato ligands different from acetato as PhCOO− and MeSCH2COO−. When the substituted thioether has poor electronwithdrawing groups, its reaction with palladium acetate affords complexes of the type [Pd(η1-OAc)2(RSCH2Z)2], in which the sulphur donor atom has simply replaced one oxygen atom of the acetato ligand
The effect of experts' opinion on prices of art works: The case of Peter Brueghel the Younger
No full textExperts’ opinion affects prices of traded goods in several markets. In the art markets, their role is especially important but hard to identify. We focus on the unique case of leading expert Klaus Ertz, who published a catalogue raisonné in 2000 to clarify attributions of paintings by Old Master Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who was abundantly copied. We collected the sales of his paintings (autograph) as well as those from his atelier and followers (non-autograph) over the period 1972–2017. Using a difference-in-difference identification strategy, we establish that Ertz’s expertise had a significant effect on the prices of autograph works: Buyers were willing to pay roughly 60% more for works sold at auctions considered autograph after Ertz’s intervention
Tunable shear stiffness in a metamaterial sheet
No full textIn this paper a metamaterial sheet constituted by a periodic pattern of square tensegrity cells (T-bar) subjected to a uniform equibiaxial pressure is studied. In particular, a minimal mass lattice is analytical determined by imposing stability and material failure conditions. Interestingly, the shear stiffness of this optimized lattice is very small in comparison to the other moduli and exhibits a linear dependence on the applied load. This behavior suggests the interesting possibility of tailoring new materials with force tunable shear modulus
IVBOUNDS: Stata module providing instrumental variable method to bound treatment-effects estimates with potentially misreported and endogenous program participation
No full textivbounds provides an estimate of the bounds of the average causal effect for compliers (Imbens and Angrist, 1994) when both noncompliance and misreporting of treatment status are present. The approach follows the estimation procedure developed in Tommasi and Zhang (2020). When iv(varname_iv) is binary, the command estimates the bounds of the local average treatment effect (LATE). When iv(varname_iv) is binary and covariates are included, the command estimates the bounds of the unconditional LATE (Frölich, 2007). In both cases, the estimated bounds coincide with those in Ura (2018). When iv(varname_iv) is discrete, the command estimates the bounds of the weighted average of LATEs (WLATE). When iv(varname_iv) is discrete and covariates are included, the command estimates the bounds of the conditional WLATE. In the latter case, the user must specify the number of strata to discretise the propensity score. The inference procedure follows Dehejia and Wahba (1999) and Battistin and Sianesi (2011). ivbounds assumes a binary treat(varname_t), a binary or discrete iv(varname_iv), and a continuous or discrete depvar. The bounds can be improved if external information regarding the treatment misclassification probability in treat(varname_t) is available
Damage, Self-Healing, and Hysteresis in Spider Silks
No full textAbstractIn this article, we propose a microstructure-based continuum model to describe the material behavior of spider silks. We suppose that the material is composed of a soft fraction with entropic elasticity and a hard, damageable fraction. The hard fraction models the presence of stiffer, crystal-rich, oriented regions and accounts for the effect of softening induced by the breaking of hydrogen bonds. To describe the observed presence of crystals with different size, composition, and orientation, this hard fraction is modeled as a distribution of materials with variable properties. The soft fraction describes the remaining regions of amorphous material and is here modeled as a wormlike chain. During stretching, we consider the effect of bond-breaking as a transition from the hard- to the soft-material phase. As we demonstrate, a crucial effect of bond-breaking that accompanies the softening of the material is an increase in contour length associated with chains unraveling. The model describes also the self-healing properties of the material by assuming partial bond reconnection upon unloading. Despite its simplicity, the proposed mechanical system reproduces the main experimental effects observed in cyclic loading of spider silks. Moreover, our approach is amenable to two- or three-dimensional extensions and may prove to be a useful tool in the field of microstructure optimization for bioinspired materials
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