The Impact of a Cash Transfer Program on Cognitive Achievement: The Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador

Throughout Latin America, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs play an important role in social policy. These programs aim to influence the accumulation of human capital, as well as reduce poverty. In terms of educational outcomes, a number of impact evaluation studies have shown that such programs have led to an increase in school enrollment, ensured regular school attendance and led to a reduction in child labor. Theoretically, such cash transfer programs may also be expected to exert a positive impact on students’ test scores, but related empirical evidence is scarce. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the impact of a cash transfer program, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano of Ecuador, on students’ cognitive achievements. The paper uses a regression discontinuity strategy to identify the impact of the program on second grade cognitive achievement. Regardless of the specification and the sample used, we find that there is no impact of the program on test scores, suggesting that attempts at building human capital, as measured by cognitive achievement, require additional and alternative interventions.cash transfers, test scores, regression discontinuity

The Impact of Interest in School on Educational Success in Portugal

Notwithstanding increased educational expenditure, Portugal continues to record poor educational outcomes. Underlining the weak expenditure-educational success link, a large body of work in educational economics displays that there is a tenuous relationship between a range of school inputs and cognitive achievement. Among others, the inability to establish a clear link between inputs and success has been attributed to the difficulty of controlling for unobserved attributes such as ability, motivation and interest. Against this background, and inspired by a large body of work in educational psychology which explicitly measures constructs such as educational motivation and interest, this paper examines whether a child’s interest in school has any bearing on educational success after controlling for the kinds of variables typically used in educational economics analyses. We rely on two data sets collected in Portugal in 1998 and 2001 and examine the interest-educational success link using both cross-section and panel data. Our estimates suggest that after controlling for time-invariant unobservable traits and for the simultaneous determination of interest and achievement, there is little support for the idea that prior interest in school has a bearing on future educational success.schooling, Portugal, educational outcomes, interest in school

Metrics with Galilean Conformal Isometry

The Galilean Conformal Algebra (GCA) arises in taking the non-relativistic limit of the symmetries of a relativistic Conformal Field Theory in any dimensions. It is known to be infinite-dimensional in all spacetime dimensions. In particular, the 2d GCA emerges out of a scaling limit of linear combinations of two copies of the Virasoro algebra. In this paper, we find metrics in dimensions greater than two which realize the finite 2d GCA (the global part of the infinite algebra) as their isometry by systematically looking at a construction in terms of cosets of this finite algebra. We list all possible sub-algebras consistent with some physical considerations motivated by earlier work in this direction and construct all possible higher dimensional non-degenerate metrics. We briefly study the properties of the metrics obtained. In the standard one higher dimensional "holographic" setting, we find that the only non-degenerate metric is Minkowskian. In four and five dimensions, we find families of non-trivial metrics with a rather exotic signature. A curious feature of these metrics is that all but one of them are Ricci-scalar flat.Comment: 20 page

Unemployment Assistance and Transition to Employment in Argentina

In 2001-02, Argentina experienced a wrenching economic crisis. Plan Jefes, implemented in May 2002, was Argentinas institutional response to the increase in unemployment and poverty triggered by the crisis. The program provided a social safety net and appears to have successfully protected some families against indigence. Despite this success, the continued existence of the program, which provides benefits to eligible unemployed individuals for an unlimited duration, may have unappealing long-term consequences. Reliance on the plan may reduce the incentive to search for work and in the long-run may damage individual employability and perpetuate poverty. Motivated by these concerns,this paper examines the effect of participating in Plan Jefes on the probability of exiting from unemployment. Regardless of the data set, the specification and the empirical approach, the paper shows that individuals enrolled in the Plan are between 12 to 19 percentage points less likely to transit to employment as compared to individuals who applied but did not join the Plan. The negative effect of the program tends to be larger for females and as a consequence, over time, the program becomes increasingly feminized. Prima facie, the estimates suggest that programs such as Plan Jefes need to re-consider the balance between providing a social safety net and dulling job-search incentives. --Unemployment assistance programs,unemployment transitions,Argentina

On a new class of summation formulae involving the Laguerre polynomial

By elementary manipulation of series, a general transformation involving the generalized hypergeometric function is established. Kummer’s first theorem, the classical Gauss summation theorem and the generalized Kummer summation theorem due to Lavoie et al. [Generalizations of Whipple’s theorem on the sum of a 3 F 2, J. Comput. Appl. Math. 72 (1996), pp. 293–300] are then applied to obtain a new class of summation formulae involving the Laguerre polynomial, which have not previously appeared in the literature. Several related results due to Exton have also been given in a corrected form

An extension of Saalschütz's summation theorem for the series _<i>r</i>+3F_<i>r</i>+2

The aim in this research note is to provide an extension of Saalschütz's summation theorem for the series r+3Fr+2(1) when r pairs of numeratorial and denominatorial parameters differ by positive integers. The result is obtained by exploiting a generalization of an Euler-type transformation recently derived by Miller and Paris [Transformation formulas for the generalized hypergeometric function with integral parameter differences. Rocky Mountain J Math. 2013;43, to appear]