Rural Income Generating Activities: A Cross Country Comparison

This paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable variables and aggregates from household surveys to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households in order to determine: 1) the relative importance of the gamut of income generating activities in general and across wealth categories; 2), the relative importance of diversification versus specialization at the household level; and 3) the influence of rural income generating activities on poverty and inequality. Analysis of the RIGA cross country dataset paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space and diversification across rural households. This is true across countries in all four continents, though less so in the African countries included in the dataset. For most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities, and the largest share of households have diversified sources of income. Diversification, not specialization, is the norm, although most countries show significant levels of household specialization in non-agricultural activities as well. Nevertheless, agricultural based sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries, both in terms of the overall share of agriculture in rural incomes as well as the large share of households that still specialize in agricultural sources of income.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics,

Rural Household Access to Assets and Agrarian Institutions: A Cross Country Comparison

Agriculture is at the core of the livelihoods of a large share of rural households throughout the developing world. Agricultural growth is a major engine for overall economic growth and possibly the single most important pathway out of poverty in the rural space. This paper characterizes household access to assets and agrarian institutions of households engaged in agricultural activities in a sample of developing countries. The evidence presented in the paper draws from 15 nationally representative household surveys from four regions of the developing world. We find that the access of rural households to a range of agricultural-specific assets (including land and livestock) and institutions is in general low, though highly heterogeneous across countries, and by categories of households within countries. A large share of rural agricultural households do not use or have access to basic productive inputs, agricultural support services or output markets, and in general it is the landless and the smallest landowners who suffer significantly more from this lack of access. We relate this to the households' ability to engage successfully in commercial farming and find consistent supporting evidence for the hypothesis that this lack of access is significantly constraining their potential to engage successfully in agriculture.rural non farm, assets, agrarian institutions, household surveys, Consumer/Household Economics, O13, O57, Q12,

Article going forward from b to a? Proposals for the eurozone crisis

After reviewing the main determinants of the current Eurozone crisis, this paper discusses the feasibility of introducing fiscal currencies as a way to restore fiscal space in peripheral countries, such as Greece, which have so far adopted austerity measures in order to abide by their commitments with Eurozone institutions and the IMF. We show that the introduction of fiscal currencies would speed up the recovery, without violating the rules of Eurozone Treaties. At the same time, these processes could help the transition of the euro from its current status of single currency to a status of “common clearing currency” along the lines proposed by Keynes at Bretton Woods as a system of international settlements. Eurozone countries could therefore move from “Plan B” aimed at addressing member state domestic problems, to a “Plan A” of a better European monetary system

The financial fragility and the crisis of the Greek government sector

The purpose of this paper is to develop Minskyan financial fragility indices for the government sector and to examine the financial structure of the Greek government before and after the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2009. We provide empirical evidence that clearly shows the growing financial fragility of the Greek public sector in the 2000s. We also assess the effectiveness of the implemented bailout adjustment programmes in Greece and claim that the conducted austerity measures and fiscal consolidation have not significantly improved the financial posture of the Greek government sector. We argue that the implementation of fiscal and wage austerity in an economy that lacks structural competitiveness produces prolonged recession and unemployment with adverse feedback effects on the financial fragility of the government

Bending in the holograms stored in hydrogel matrices

The study of the optical properties and behaviour of holograms stored in hydrogel matrices when the material is immersed in liquid medium represent a very important challenge currently. Hydrogels are 3D polymer networks capable of undergoing reversible volume changes. These hydrogels can be chemically modified to obtain materials with different properties such as to be sensitive to a range of relevant analytes. Emergent applications require that the holograms stored in hydrogels be time-stable in a liquid medium. One of the most important applications of this type of system are holographic sensors. Holographic sensors have advantages over other types of sensors such as the possibility of miniaturization due to the use of holographic techniques, the ability to produce three-dimensional images, real-time quantification, possibility of low-cost mass manufacturing and label-free analyte- responsive. Due to these advantages, these sensors have great potential to be used in different areas such as environmental detection, veterinary testing, pharmaceutical bioassays and medical diagnosis. Therefore, the optical behaviour of the holograms and the optimization of the hydrogel’s matrices must be well studied. When volume phase holograms are stored in hydrogels matrices in liquid medium, the holographic planes can undergo a bending process that give rise to asymmetries in the lateral lobes around the Bragg angle. This bending affect to the diffraction efficiency, wavelength of maximum diffraction efficiency and the angular sensibility. These parameters are used as signal transducers in holographic sensors in transmission mode. The general aim of this work has been study the bending that is produced in the holographic planes when unslanted transmission volume phase holographic grating with a frequency of 1200 lines/mm have been stored in hydrogel matrices based on acrylamide (AA) and N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) using different solvents (dimethyl sulfoxide, water and buffer solution) during the manufacturing process. Considering previous works on bending, and grating attenuated hologram.This work was supported by the by “Generalitat Valenciana” of Spain (projects PROMETEO/2021/006 and IDIFEDER/2021/014, cofunded by European Union through the FEDER Programme) and by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” of Spain (projects FIS2017-82919-R and PID2019-106601RB-I00)

Processing of Holographic Hydrogels in Liquid Media: A Study by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Diffraction Efficiency

The storage of time-stable holographic gratings in hydrogel matrices when the material is immersed in aqueous media is a real challenge at present. The optimization of the storage stages of the holograms must be properly investigated to identify the most suitable development processes. For this reason, this work is focused on the study of the optimization of the washing stages of the hydrogels based on acrylamide and N,N’-methylenebis(acrylamide) once unslanted transmission holograms have been stored. High-performance liquid chromatography and UV-visible measurements have been employed in our system to analyze the composition of the washing solutions. PBST and DMSO:H2O are used as solvents in the washing stages. The diffraction efficiencies are measured during the washing stages and after the storing of the holograms during several days in PBST. Maximum diffraction efficiencies of 38 and 27.6% are reached when PBST and DMSO:H2O are employed, respectively, for the washing process. Holograms show temporal stability after being stored immersed in PBST at 4 °C for 4 days.This research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain, under project PID2019-106601RB-I00 and AdBiHol-PID2019-110713RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”; Generalitat Valenciana, Spain, under projects CDEIGENT/2018/024, GRISOLIAP/2019/143, PROMETEO/2021/006, PROMETEO/2020/094 and IDIFEDER/2021/014 (co-funded by European Union through the FEDER Program). M. I. Lucío acknowledges her Juan de la Cierva Incorporación grant (IJC 2018-035355-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M. I. Lucío and A. Beléndez acknowledge the Programa Propio para el fomento de la I + D + I del Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Transferencia de Conocimiento of the Universidad de Alicante for the grant “Ayudas para estancias de personal investigador invitado“ (INVA20-02). K. Berramdane thanks to the government of Algeria for her scholarship offered to develop her thesis in the Holography and Optical Processing Group at the University of Alicante (Spain)

Fiscal Policy and the Economics of Financial Balances

This paper presents the main features of the macroeconomic model being used at The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, which has proven to be a useful tool in tracking the current financial and economic crisis. We investigate the connections of the model to the New Cambridge approach, and discuss other recent approaches to the evolution of financial balances for all sectors of the economy. We will finally show the effects of fiscal policy in the model, and its implications for the proposed fiscal stimulus on the U.S. economy. We show that the New Cambridge hypothesis, which claimed that the private sector financial balance would be stable relative to income in the short run, does not hold for the short term in our model, but it does hold for the medium/long term. This implies that the major impact of the fiscal stimulus in the long run will be on the external imbalance, unless other measures are taken

Physical mechanical consolidation and protection of Miocenic limestone used on Mediterranean historical monuments: the case study of Pietra Cantone (southern Sardinia, Italy)

The present work aims to study the consolidating and protective chemical treatments of the Pietra Cantone, a Miocenic (lower Tortonian) limestone widely used in important monuments and historical buildings of Cagliari (southern Sardinia, Italy). Similar limestones of the same geological period have also been used in several important monuments of Mediterranean area, i.e., Malta and Gozo Islands, Matera (central Basilicata, Italy), Lecce (southern Puglia, Italy) and Balearic Islands (Spain). The Pietra Cantone limestone shows problems of chemical–physical decay, due to their petrophysical and compositional char- acteristics: high porosity (on average 28–36 vol%), low cemented muddy-carbonate matrix, presence of phyllosil- icates and sindepositional sea salts (\3%). So, after placed in the monument, this stone is easily alterable by weath- ering chemical processes (e.g., carbonate dissolution and sulfation) and also by cyclic mechanisms of crystalliza- tion/solubilization of salts and hydration/dehydration of hygroscopic phases of the clay component. To define the mineralogical-petrographic features (composition, texture) of limestone, the clay and salt crystalline phases, the optical microscope in polarized light and diffraction anal- ysis were used. To define the petrophysical characteristics (i.e., shape and size distribution of porosity, surface area(SBET), matrix microstructures, rock composition) and interactions of chemical treatments with rock, SEM–EDS analysis and N2 porosimetry with BET and BJH methods were used. To evaluate the efficacy of Na/K-silicates, ethyl silicate consolidants and protective nano-molecular silane monomer water repellent, the mechanical strengths (uni- axial compressive strength, point load and flexural resis- tance), water/helium open porosity, water absorption and vapour permeability data determined before and after the chemical treatments of the Pietra Cantone samples from monument were compared