Role of informal sector recycling in waste management in developing countries

Many thousands of people in developing country cities depend on recycling materials from waste for their livelihoods. With the focus of the Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction, and of waste strategies on improving recycling rates, one of the major challenges in solid waste management in developing countries is how best to work with this informal sector to improve their livelihoods, working conditions and efficiency in recycling.The general characteristics of informal recycling are reviewed, highlighting both positive and negative aspects. Despite the health and social problems associated with informal recycling, it provides significant economic benefits that need to be retained. Experience shows that it can be highly counterproductive to establish new formal waste recycling systems without taking into account informal systems that already exist. The preferred option is to integrate the informal sector into waste management planning, building on their practices and experience, while working to improve efficiency and the living and working conditions of those involved. Issues associated with integrating informal recycling into the formal waste management sector are discussed.     

Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation.     

Female Labor Supply,Human Capital,and Welfare Reform

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer‐term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full‐time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone‐mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts.     

The Polls--Trends: Labor Unions in the United States

In this study, we analyze data on public opinion and attitudestoward labor unions from the iPOLL Databank at the Roper Centerfor Public Opinion Research (University of Connecticut), theAmerican National Election Study, and the Current PopulationSurvey. Despite recent developments that suggest labor unionsare in decline, we find organized labor has maintained reasonablystrong public support. Although the data indicate that Americansremain skeptical about how much confidence they can place inunions and their leaders, the results make clear that the publiccontinues to recognize the need for unions to protect the rightsof workers. These results hold potentially important implicationsfor the future of organized labor in the United States.     

Minimal path decomposition of complete bipartite graphs

This paper deals with the subject of minimal path decomposition of complete bipartite graphs. A path decomposition of a graph is a decomposition of it into simple paths such that every edge appears in exactly one path. If the number of paths is the minimum possible, the path decomposition is called minimal. Algorithms that derive such decompositions are presented, along with their proof of correctness, for the three out of the four possible cases of a complete bipartite graph.     

Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption

In this article we argue that the life-cycle model that allows demographics to affect household preferences and relaxes the assumption of certainty equivalence can generate hump-shaped consumption profiles over age that are very similar to those observed in household-level data sources and, in particular, match the differences in shape across different education groups. Liquidity constraints or myopia are not required to explain the empirical features of observed life-cycle patterns.     

Does output predict unemployment? A look at Okun's law in Greece

Using a dynamic specification of Okun's law, the authors examine the relationship between unemployment and output in Greece over the period 2000–12. While Granger causality tests indicate that real output is important to understanding future movements in unemployment, Okun's ratio is found to be 3:1, implying that a 1 per cent increase in unemployment was associated with a 3 per cent decrease in real output during the 13‐year period under study. Also, asymmetric analysis shows that the response of unemployment to real output is stronger during contractions of real economic activity than in expansionary periods.