Poverty and the business cycle: A regional panel data analysis for Spain using alternative measures of unemployment

Conventional wisdom predicts that changes in the aggregate unemployment rate may significantly affect a country’s income distribution and, consequently, have a relevant impact on the evolution of its poverty rate. However, the relationship between labour macroeconomic indicators and poverty seems to have become weaker recently. Using panel data on unemployment and poverty for Spanish regions, we estimate a system GMM model to model this relationship using alternative measures of the unemployment rate. We also test the hypothesis of asymmetric effects of the business cycle on the share of poor individuals in the population. Our results show that unemployment has a positive impact on severe poverty, while inflation has a negative effect. We also highlight the extent to which results differ when alternative intra-household unemployment distribution-sensitive measures are considered. Regarding the existence of asymmetric business cycle effects on severe poverty, our results show that despite the fact that the Great Recession has had a strong and positive effect on severe poverty, the effects of expansions and recessions on poverty are not significantly different.     

Union Formation Implications of Race and Gender Gaps in Educational Attainment: The Case of Latin America

We use census microdata to assess the levels of educational homogamy in six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico. This paper contributes to the literature on homogamy in three ways. First, by conducting a comparative analysis between countries belonging to the still little-studied region of Latin America, which is still undergoing intense and varied processes of demographic, economic, social, and political modernization. Second, by simultaneously including variables of structural and individual nature. Finally, by making progress with respect to the interactions between educational homogamy and other important variables associated with high levels of social inequality in the region: race, ethnicity and birthplace.     

Investigating the impact of Hurricane Maria on an ongoing birth cohort in Puerto Rico

Population and Environment - Prior to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico already had 200+ hazardous waste sites, significant contamination of water resources, and among the highest rates of preterm birth...     

A doubly restricted exponential dispersion model

In this paper, we propose and develop a doubly restricted exponential dispersion model, i.e. a varying dispersion generalized linear model with two sets of restrictions, a set of linear restrictions for the mean response, and at the same time, for another set of linear restrictions for the dispersion of the distribution. This model would be useful to consider several situations where it is necessary to control/analyze drug-doses, active effects in factorial experiments, mean-variance relationships, among other situations. A penalized likelihood function is proposed and developed in order to achieve the restricted parameters and to develop the inferential results. Several special cases from the literature are commented on. A simply restricted varying dispersion beta regression model is exemplified by means of real and simulated data. Satisfactory and promising results are found.     

Bayesian modeling of autoregressive partial linear models with scale mixture of normal errors

Normality and independence of error terms are typical assumptions for partial linear models. However, these assumptions may be unrealistic in many fields, such as economics, finance and biostatistics. In this paper, a Bayesian analysis for partial linear model with first-order autoregressive errors belonging to the class of the scale mixtures of normal distributions is studied in detail. The proposed model provides a useful generalization of the symmetrical linear regression model with independent errors, since the distribution of the error term covers both correlated and thick-tailed distributions, and has a convenient hierarchical representation allowing easy implementation of a Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme. In order to examine the robustness of the model against outlying and influential observations, a Bayesian case deletion influence diagnostics based on the Kullback–Leibler (K–L) divergence is presented. The proposed method is applied to monthly and daily returns of two Chilean companies.     

The Transition to Self-Employment and Perceived Skill-Mismatches: Panel Data Evidence from Eleven EU Countries

Social Indicators Research - Some studies using either objective or subjective indicators, find that self-employed individuals are less likely to be or to report being skill-mismatched in...     

Does deregulation decrease unemployment? An empirical analysis of the Spanish labour market

Spain underwent two major labour reforms in 2010 and 2012 under the assumption that deregulating the labour market and decentralizing collective bargaining would automatically reduce unemployment (deregulation hypothesis). This article highlights the impact of demand and the sectoral structure of the economy to explain the behaviour of this variable (structural hypothesis). Analysing subnational panel data, the authors assess the capacity of these two hypotheses to explain unemployment trends. Their results cast doubt on the deregulation hypothesis and indicate the importance of cyclical and structural factors.     

A relational analysis of migration in old age: How transnational ties affect migration decisions

Recently, the role of personal ties in migration decisions has received considerable attention. However, this aspect has seldom been studied in the context of retirement. This paper addresses this gap by shedding light on the composition of personal networks, types of mobility patterns and retirement locations for four groups of older adults. To this end, two methodological approaches are employed: (1) a qualitative Social Network Analysis to examine the composition of older adults' personal networks and (2) thematic coding to analyse the relational aspects of migration decisions. This paper draws on 29 semi-structured interviews conducted in Spain and Switzerland in 2020 and 2021. The findings demonstrate that pre-retirement migration trajectories shape personal network composition. Moreover, personal ties play a critical role in older adults' mobility patterns and choices of retirement location. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the impact of personal networks on migration decisions of older adults.