Child Malnutrition and Mortality in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Cross-Country Analysis

In this article, after having identified the main clusters of food-insecure households worldwide, and summarily analyzed their livelihood profiles, we discuss the interaction and relevance of the most relevant key economic and social factors causing child malnutrition and mortality. On the basis of an essential but consistent World Bank database, covering all developing and transition countries, we also carry out a cross-country econometric analysis on relations of income and non-income factors with child malnutrition and mortality. Our main findings are threefold. First, among income factors, each country's overall level of economic development is paramount, but income distribution also plays an important role. Second, taking into account that public provision of basic services tends to increase with economic growth, each country's relative propensity to spend on basic services is significantly and negatively correlated with child malnutrition and mortality. Third, gender-related cultural factors also play a large role.     

Societal Transition, Policy Changes and Family Formation: Evidence from Hungary

The paper uses the Hungarian Generations and Gender Survey ‘Turning Points in the Life-course’ (HGGS) to describe recent changes in union formation, onset of childbearing, leaving home and cohabitation. By estimating survivor functions and semi-parametric hazard regression models with time-varying covariates for the timing of first union and first birth, we find a long delay among the youngest cohorts, but also remarkably strong period effects. Reduced employment, increased educational enrolment, and a higher level of uncertainty are important drivers behind these changes. Moreover, our evidence suggests that certain policy changes during the transition have exacerbated this effect, having an asymmetric impact on family formation – depending on the social status of individuals.Aassve, A., Billari, F. C. et Spéder, Zs., 2006. Société en transition, changements de politiques et formation de la famille: le cas de la Hongrie. Revue europé enne de démographie 22: 127–152.     

A Dynamic Model for Binary Panel Data With Unobserved Heterogeneity Admitting a √n‐Consistent Conditional Estimator

A model for binary panel data is introduced which allows for state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity beyond the effect of available covariates. The model is of quadratic exponential type and its structure closely resembles that of the dynamic logit model. However, it has the advantage of being easily estimable via conditional likelihood with at least two observations (further to an initial observation) and even in the presence of time dummies among the regressors.     

The Collaborations-Relations Between Western (Secular) Law and Religious<Emphasis Type=Italic> Nomoi</Emphasis> Groups in Today’s Multicultural Context: The Cases of France and Canada

In the last decade, under the pressing processes of immigration and globalisation, many Western constitutional democracies have moved from a number of religions sharing a common culture to today’s age of diversity. What current democracies are facing is the lack of overlapping consensus over basic constitutional “values”. The nature, scope and force of such values are likely to be affected by competing and, sometimes, contested fundamental reasons and worldviews. From here stems the dilemma between “unity” and “diversity”. This essay starts with a broad consideration on the principle of religious freedom, strictly related to the separation as well as collaboration between secular States and Churches; then the author analyses two case-studies (France and Canada), pointing out some specific legal approaches. In particular he focuses the analyses over the French “droit commun” and the Canadian arbitral tribunals that, especially in family law, allow disputes to be arbitrated using religious jurisdictions.     

Parsimonious periodic autoregressive models for time series with evolving trend and seasonality

Statistics and Computing - This paper proposes an extension of Periodic AutoRegressive (PAR) modelling for time series with evolving features. The large scale of modern datasets, in fact, implies...     

Decentralization and growth: Do informal institutions and rule of law matter?

We develop a model of the interactions among decentralization, informal institutions and the rule of law. The model sheds light on the ambiguous empirical results reported in the literature regarding the growth effects of the policy of devolving fiscal responsibility to local governments. We find that the distribution of civicness within a country determines the magnitude of the effects of decentralization on its regional convergence, as well as whether decentralization fosters or dampens the country’s national growth. We perform a series of simulated “reforms” using Monte Carlo methods parameterized using OECD countries data set. We then test our findings using a panel data set of 23 OECD countries covering the period 1975–2010. We find that the short and the long run growth effect of decentralization policy depends on the size of the policy reform and can range from extremely negative to positive depending on the rule of law, the level of social capital and its regional dispersion, in line with the model predictions.     

Exploring unobserved heterogeneity in perinatal and neonatal mortality risks: The case of an Italian sharecropping community, 1900–39

Previous researchers have found that traditional determinants explain only a limited part of the variation in perinatal and infant mortality at the family level. In the study reported in this paper, we explored the factors that make the perinatal/neonatal death risk more heterogeneous across families. We estimated logistic regressions with cluster random effects at the maternal level, using data from the Italian village of Granarolo from 1900 to 1939. We estimated the effects of selected predictors on perinatal/neonatal mortality and unexplained inter-family variation. We found that non-rural skilled and lower-skilled workers experienced higher perinatal and neonatal mortality risks. Unexplained heterogeneity at the maternal level was lower for women living in sharecropper families than for those in landless labourer and non-rural worker families. Unexplained perinatal and neonatal mortality components were also due to socio-economic differences and were not necessarily related only to maternal biological features or shared genetic frailty.     

The power of (extended) monitoring in robust clustering

We complement the work of Cerioli, Riani, Atkinson and Corbellini by discussing monitoring in the context of robust clustering. This implies extending the approach to clustering, and possibly monitoring more than one parameter simultaneously. The cases of trimming and snipping are discussed separately, and special attention is given to recently proposed methods like double clustering, reweighting in robust clustering, and fuzzy regression clustering.