Labor Informality Effects of a Poverty-Alleviation Program

In the midst of a serious macroeconomic crisis Argentina implemented a large social program – the Programa Jefes de Hogar (PJH) – that provides cash transfers to unemployed household heads meeting certain criteria. In practice, giving the difficulties in monitoring informal jobs, the unemployment requirement of the PJH would imply a disincentive for the program participants to search for a formal job. By applying matching techniques we evaluate the empirical relevance of this prediction during the period of strong economic growth that followed the crisis. We find some evidence on the informality bias of the PJH when the value of the transfer was relatively high compared to wages in the formal labor market.informality, employment, Argentina, evaluation, program, Jefes

Fault-tolerant control under controller-driven sampling using virtual actuator strategy

We present a new output feedback fault tolerant control strategy for continuous-time linear systems. The strategy combines a digital nominal controller under controller-driven (varying) sampling with virtual-actuator (VA)-based controller reconfiguration to compensate for actuator faults. In the proposed scheme, the controller controls both the plant and the sampling period, and performs controller reconfiguration by engaging in the loop the VA adapted to the diagnosed fault. The VA also operates under controller-driven sampling. Two independent objectives are considered: (a) closed-loop stability with setpoint tracking and (b) controller reconfiguration under faults. Our main contribution is to extend an existing VA-based controller reconfiguration strategy to systems under controller-driven sampling in such a way that if objective (a) is possible under controller-driven sampling (without VA) and objective (b) is possible under uniform sampling (without controller-driven sampling), then closed-loop stability and setpoint tracking will be preserved under both healthy and faulty operation for all possible sampling rate evolutions that may be selected by the controller

Large-signal stability conditions for semi-quasi-Z-source inverters: switched and averaged models

The recently introduced semi-quasi-Z-source in- verter can be interpreted as a DC-DC converter whose input- output voltage gain may take any value between minus infinity and 1 depending on the applied duty cycle. In order to generate a sinusoidal voltage waveform at the output of this converter, a time-varying duty cycle needs to be applied. Application of a time-varying duty cycle that produces large-signal behavior requires careful consideration of stability issues. This paper provides stability results for both the large-signal averaged and the switched models of the semi-quasi-Z-source inverter operating in continuous conduction mode. We show that if the load is linear and purely resistive then the boundedness and ultimate boundedness of the state trajectories is guaranteed provided some reasonable operation conditions are ensured. These conditions amount to keeping the duty cycle away from the extreme values 0 or 1 (averaged and switched models), and limiting the maximum PWM switching period (switched model). The results obtained can be used to give theoretical justification to the inverter operation strategy recently proposed by Cao et al. in [1].Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, Florence, Italy, 201

Modulation Classification for MIMO-OFDM Signals via Approximate Bayesian Inference

The problem of modulation classification for a multiple-antenna (MIMO) system employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is investigated under the assumption of unknown frequency-selective fading channels and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The classification problem is formulated as a Bayesian inference task, and solutions are proposed based on Gibbs sampling and mean field variational inference. The proposed methods rely on a selection of the prior distributions that adopts a latent Dirichlet model for the modulation type and on the Bayesian network formalism. The Gibbs sampling method converges to the optimal Bayesian solution and, using numerical results, its accuracy is seen to improve for small sample sizes when switching to the mean field variational inference technique after a number of iterations. The speed of convergence is shown to improve via annealing and random restarts. While most of the literature on modulation classification assume that the channels are flat fading, that the number of receive antennas is no less than that of transmit antennas, and that a large number of observed data symbols are available, the proposed methods perform well under more general conditions. Finally, the proposed Bayesian methods are demonstrated to improve over existing non-Bayesian approaches based on independent component analysis and on prior Bayesian methods based on the `superconstellation' method.Comment: To be appear in IEEE Trans. Veh. Technolog

Is Social Assistance Contributing to Higher Informality in Turkey?

Although still low for European standards, investments in Social Assistance (SA) transfers in Turkey have been increasing in recent years. The government is expanding access to subsidized health for individuals in the informal sector through a rapid expansion of the Green Card program. Generous non-contributory programs, such as the Green Card, may create perverse incentives for individuals to join or remain in the informal sector as they can access free services without paying taxes and/or contributions, thus potentially being able to get higher “net” labor earnings than in the formal sector. Despite the fact that the Green Card is a large and generous program offered to individuals in the informal sector, empirical analysis in this report does not find an actual impact of the program (or of its rapid expansion) on informality. The reason behind this finding is the existence of a very large differential in wages between formal and informal workers explained by differences worker’s productivity. Low-wage workers facing the possibility to move from the informal sector to the formal sector would have strong incentives to do so even if this would imply losing all SA benefits. As such, the expected monetary and job security gains of having a formal job dominate those of having an informal job even after accounting for SA transfers.Informality, Social Assistance, Green Card, Turkey

Distribucion del Ingreso en América Latina: Caracterización de las Diferencias entre Países.

Este trabajo explora las diferencias entre las distribuciones del ingreso de las áreas urbanas de América Latina a través de ejercicios de microsimulaciones. Los principales insumos de estos ejercicios lo constituyen los microdatos de las encuestas de hogares de 16 países de la región. Los resultados indican que las diferencias entre países en los retornos a la educación formal y a factores inobservables en términos de salarios horarios dan cuenta de gran parte de las diferencias en pobreza y desigualdad entre las economías de la región. Las diferencias en términos de estructura sectorial del empleo, horas trabajadas, empleo, fecundidad, estructura de edades, diferencias salariales por género y edad, y aun de estructura educativa parecen tener, en promedio, un papel algo menor.Distribución, ingreso, pobreza, América Latina, descomposiciones.