The impact of tourism and finance on women empowerment

The Goal-5 of United Nations Development Agenda for gender equality and women empowerment through equalizing the ratio of girls and boys enrolment in primary education remains suffered in almost every part of the globalized world, which does not even violate the basic human rights while it is the mandatory foundation for global peace and prosperity. The contribution of international tourism development to empower women is the key initiative of the developed world to provide an equal opportunity to the women to sustain their livelihoods. This study focused on the role of international tourism development on women empowerment through mediating a number of financial factors in a panel of 24 selected European countries, over a period of 1990–2015. The results show that financial intermediaries act as a catalyst to empower women through international tourism. More specifically, tourism and financial factors promote (i) gender parity in tertiary enrollment, (ii) gender parity in primary and secondary school enrollment, (iii) female employment, and (iv) women’s share in non-agriculture wage employment, while the results further support the (i) growth-led tourism, (ii) finance-led growth, (iii) growth stimulate women empowerment, and (iv) tourism-induced women’s empowerment hypothesis across countries.     

The Intergenerational Effect of Cambodia's Genocide on Children's Education and Health

We investigate the intergenerational impact of conflict on the educational and health outcomes of children born years after the conflict ended by exploiting geographical variation in the intensity of the genocide that occurred during the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime in Cambodia. We find that children of individuals who were of prime marriage age during the genocide and experienced greater intensity of genocide have worse educational and health outcomes. In particular, for each standard deviation increase in the intensity of the genocide, average children's normal grade progression rate decreases by 0.03 standard deviations and average children's height‐for‐ age Z‐score decreases by 0.06 standard deviations. We examine several channels through which genocide could affect children born to survivors after the conflict and find suggestive evidence that the marriage market acts as a channel that transmits the adverse impact of conflict across generations. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of mortality rates and post‐KR internal migration.     

Native‐Migrant Wage Differential Across Occupations: Evidence from Australia

We investigate wage differential by migrant status across white‐collar and blue‐collar occupations in Australia. Migrants are observed to have a higher wage; this difference, however, does not exist once we control for covariates. The unconditional wage differential varies over wage distribution as well as by occupation. Significant wage differentials are found above the median: positive for white‐collar workers and negative for blue‐collar workers. Using recently developed decomposition methods based on Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009) we decompose wage differentials across their distribution. Overall, the wage advantage of migrants reflects their superior labour market characteristics, and in particular, their levels of education. We find that English language proficiency plays an important role in wage differences among immigrants from non‐English speaking countries.     

Natural disaster and risk-sharing behavior: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - Using a unique field experiment in rural Bangladesh, this paper investigates how exposure to a natural disaster affects risk-sharing behavior. We conducted a...     

Estimation and hypothesis testing in multivariate linear regression models under non normality

This paper discusses the problem of statistical inference in multivariate linear regression models when the errors involved are non normally distributed. We consider multivariate t-distribution, a fat-tailed distribution, for the errors as alternative to normal distribution. Such non normality is commonly observed in working with many data sets, e.g., financial data that are usually having excess kurtosis. This distribution has a number of applications in many other areas of research as well. We use modified maximum likelihood estimation method that provides the estimator, called modified maximum likelihood estimator (MMLE), in closed form. These estimators are shown to be unbiased, efficient, and robust as compared to the widely used least square estimators (LSEs). Also, the tests based upon MMLEs are found to be more powerful than the similar tests based upon LSEs.     

Multidimensional Human Opportunity Index

One fact that emerges from the evaluation of the Millennium Development Goals is that not all countries met all the goals and there are significant complementaries among failing on specific goals. This paper proposes the Multidimensional Human Opportunity Index (MHOI) that focuses on the complementaries among access to multiple services. We focus on access to services for children, with the aim of capturing equality in opportunity for children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. This index builds on the Human Opportunity Index of the World Bank that measures children’s access to a basic service, such as access to clean water. However, the MHOI differs from the parent index in that we measure joint access to multiple services or access to a bundle of services. We apply the MHOI on two Himalayan states of South Asia, Nepal and Bhutan, and show that although each basic service is available to a large proportion of the population, only two-thirds in Bhutan and one half in Nepal have access to the bundle of basic services in 2011–2012.     

A guide to the design and analysis of small clinical studies

Clinical studies, which have a small number of patients, are conducted by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions. Examples of constraints that lead to a small clinical study include a single investigative site with a highly specialized expertise or equipment, rare diseases, and limited time and budget. We consider the following topics, which we believe will be helpful for the investigator and statistician working together on the design and analysis of small clinical studies: definitions of various types of small studies (exploratory, pilot, proof of concept); bias and ways to mitigate the bias; commonly used study designs for randomized and nonrandomized studies, and some less commonly used designs; potential ethical issues associated with small underpowered clinical studies; sample size for small studies; statistical analysis methods for different types of variables and multiplicity issues. We conclude the paper with recommendations made by an Institute of Medicine committee, which was asked to assess the current methodologies and appropriate situations for conducting small clinical studies.     

The substitutability of labor between immigrants and natives in the Canadian labor market: circa 1995

This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity between Canadian-born and immigrant workers. These are examined by estimating a set of wage equations using a generalized Leontief production function. The paper finds that, in general, there is no displacement of Canadian-born workers by immigrants. Recent immigrants affect the native-born positively, while older immigrants are neither substitute nor complement for natives. However, the effects differ across industries. Overall, the evidence that immigrants harm the opportunities of native-born workers is scant.

Demographic transition and the emerging windows of opportunities and challenges in Bangladesh

The aim of this paper is to examine the demographic transition and the emerging window of opportunities and challenges in Bangladesh. The study utilizes time series data from national level population surveys, censuses and the population projections and estimates produced by the United Nations Population Division. The ongoing demographic transition in Bangladesh leads to many changes in the size and age structure of the rapidly growing population of the country, giving rise to economic and social opportunities as well as policy challenges. The window of opportunity that has emerged since the 1990s will not last long and will not be repeated in the near future. It will reach its peak during the 2020s and will remain open until the 2030s. This demographic dividend needs to be managed efficiently in order to be transformed into better and sustainable economic growth. Understanding demographic challenges must therefore be a priority for the Government of Bangladesh, which must formulate policies to harvest the benefits of the demographic opportunities.