Changing Gender Norms and Marriage Dynamics in the United States

Using a regional measure of gender norms from the General Social Surveys and marital histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study explored how gender norms were associated with women's marriage dynamics between 1968 and 2012. Results suggested that a higher prevalence of egalitarian gender norms predicted a decline in marriage formation. This decline was, however, only true for women without a college degree. For college‐educated women, the association between gender norms and marriage formation became positive when gender egalitarianism prevailed. The findings also revealed an inverted U‐shaped relationship between gender norms and divorce: An initial increase in divorce was observed when gender norms were predominantly traditional. The association, however, reversed as gender norms became egalitarian. No differences by education were found for divorce. The findings partially support the gender revolution framework but also highlight greater barriers to marriage for low‐educated women as societies embrace gender equality.     

MONETARY POLICY AND ANTI‐CYCLICAL BANK CAPITAL REGULATION

The financial crisis of 2008–2009 revived attention given to booms and busts in bank credit, and their effects on real activity. This interest sparked two different strands of research in macro. The first one focuses on monetary policy in the context of financial frictions. The second studies capital regulation in banking. To the best of our knowledge, so far these two topics have mostly been studied in isolation from each other. Thus, we still lack an understanding of how monetary policy and bank capital regulation interact in the presence of financial fragility. This paper aims to contribute to furthering this understanding. Specifically, we ask how the monetary policy rule should look like in the presence of cyclical capital requirements. We extend the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with bank capital in Aliaga‐Díaz and Olivero by introducing price rigidities in the spirit of the New‐Keynesian literature. We find that: First, anti‐cyclical requirements have important stabilization properties relative to the case of constant requirements. This is true for all types of fluctuations that we study, which include those caused by productivity, preference, fiscal, monetary, and financial shocks. Second, output and consumption volatilities present in the no regulation economy can be recovered with anti‐cyclical requirements as long as the policy rate responds only slightly to credit spreads. Third, monetary policy rules that respond to credit conditions also perform better in terms of welfare. (JEL E32, E44)     

Nesting patterns among Neotropical species assemblages: can reserves in urban areas be failing to protect anurans?

Nestedness among species assemblages implies that sites of lower species richness are subsets of richer sites in a regional species pool. This nestedness is a reflection of a non-random process of species loss as a consequence of factors that promote the disaggregation of assemblages. The impoverishment of assemblage diversity is more often observed in fragmented landscapes. This non-random process has important implications for conservation. We recorded 95 species of anurans across 22 protected areas, of which 11 sites were in an urban matrix and 11 were in a non-urban matrix. We found that sites in the urban matrix had lower richness and high values of nestedness with no spatial autocorrelation among geographic distances and species composition. Thus, species were non-randomly distributed across the landscape and a nested pattern was documented from non-urban matrix sites to urban matrix sites. The impoverishment of assemblages toward the urban matrix sites may suggest that protected areas in an urban matrix are less suitable for anuran conservation than those in a non-urban matrix sites. Both the ecological revitalization of protected areas in urban matrix and protection of non-urban forested sites are needed for the conservation of Neotropical anurans.     

Mapping Colombian Citizens’ Views Regarding Ordinary Corruption: Threat,Bribery, and the Illicit Sharing of Confidential Information

A few studies conducted in France, Latin America, China and Sub-Saharan Africa have examined the extent to which specific behaviors by politicians, state officials, professionals or simple citizens were considered by the public either as corrupt/intolerable or acceptable/tolerable. These studies have shown a great diversity of positions among participants, ranging from “zero tolerability” to “non-zero tolerability”, to high tolerance to favoritism, and to complete tolerability. The present study analyzed Colombian lay persons’ views as a function of three separate factors characterizing acts of corruption: (a) the current status or position in society of the person who behaved in a corrupt way (politician, judge, entrepreneur or ordinary citizen), (b) the motive behind the act of corruption (nepotism or monetary gain), and (c) the means used for obtaining the underserved benefit (threatening the person, bribery or illicitly sharing of confidential information). As expected, four qualitatively different perspectives were identified. The first one (60 % of the participants) was the expected Zero Tolerance view because all acceptability ratings were extremely low. The second one (32 %) was called Never Very Tolerable because ratings, although always low, varied as a function of the means used: Threat and bribery were considered as more intolerable than use of information. The third one (7 %) was called Depends on Means because the ratings were affected by the means used to a larger extent than in the preceding case. The fourth one (1 %) was called Always Tolerable because in all cases, the ratings were high. In no cases did acceptability depend much on the status of the person performing the corrupt act or of the motives behind the act. Although only a small minority of participants agreed with the last two views, it is probably enough to create a climate of suspicion in the country.     

Gender Differences in Unemployment Dynamics and Initial Wages over the Business Cycle

Using administrative data from Spanish Social Security for the period 2002–2013, we explore differences between unemployed men and women in: their probabilities to find a job, their initial wages if they find a new job, and the likelihood to fall back into unemployment. We estimate bivariate proportional hazard models for unemployment duration and for the consecutive job duration for men and women separately, and decompose the gender gap using a non-linear Oaxaca decomposition. Gender differentials in labour market outcomes are procyclical, probably due to the procyclical nature of typically male occupations. While a higher level of education protects women in particular from unemployment, having children hampers women’s employment and initial wages after unemployment. There are lower gender gaps in the public sector and in high technology- firms. Decompositions show that the gender gaps are not explained by differences in sample composition. Indeed, if women had similar characteristics to men, the gender gap would be even wider.     

Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of yard vegetation in urban residential areas: implications for conservation planning

Residential green areas often represent a significant portion of a city’s green infrastructure which has generated great interest in studying the factors that contribute to the formation of plant associations in residential yards. This project evaluated the external factors to the household social-ecological system that influence the availability of plants for residential landscapes and how they may influence the presence of native plants in residential yards on households within the Río Piedras watershed in the metropolitan area of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The methods used included a residential survey with open and closed questions that addressed the sources of plants used in landscaping and an evaluation of ornamental plant species inventories from local nurseries. A total of 432 yards were surveyed. Yard plants in this watershed have multiple sources. Aside from obtaining plants at local nurseries, natural dispersion, exchanges among family and friends and historical plantings can be just as important sources of yard plants. Our results also suggest that the majority of residents do not know where to get native plants which could represent a challenge for the development and implementation of initiatives for natives gardening. At the same time, most commercial nurseries have a deficit of native plants in their inventories. This information is critical to species conservation strategies that seek the inclusion of urban residential areas and may help improve initiatives about the involvement of individual citizens in sustainable gardening practices at the residential scale.     

Strong laws for associated random variables

We study the almost sure convergence and rates of weighted sums of associated random variables under the classical assumption of existence of Laplace transforms. This assumption implies the existence of every moment, so we address the same problem assuming a suitable decrease rate on tail joint probabilities which only implies the existence of finitely many moments, proving the analogous characterizations of convergence and rates. Still relaxing further the assumptions on moment existence, we also prove a Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund for associated variables without means, complementing existing results for this dependence structure.     

Wavelet-based Bayesian nonlinear regression for the air pollution effects on clinic visits in small areas of Taiwan

We revisit the complete clinic visit records and environmental monitoring data at 50 townships and city districts of Taiwan. Extending the earlier analyses, here we consider a Bayesian analysis using Daubechies wavelet. Appropriate model selection is also considered using Bayesian model averaging. Temperature, dew point, and NO₂ and CO of the current day and the previous day are identified as the pollutants in different areas of the island following some spatial pattern.     

Competing risks simulation with the survsim R package

The goal of this work is to describe how the last version available of the survsim R package can be used to simulate a cohort in a competing risks context by means of a cause-specific hazards model following the ideas introduced by Beyersmann in 2009, and also allowing for individual heterogeneity through a random effect. An example of its application based on a real cohort will be discussed.