Inequality of Opportunity in Indian Women

Social Indicators Research - Inequality of opportunity (IOp) in any society is defined as that part of overall inequality which arises from factors beyond the control of an individual...     

Television Coverage of State Government

An empirical analysis of 3,334 state and local television newsstories in 10 cities clarifies the reluctance of commercialtelevision newscasters to cover state government. Contrary towhat many television news directors assert, television's minimalattention to state government cannot be attributed to an allegednegative relationship between state government and newscastratings. Rather, it appears to stem from the high cost of obtainingfilmed coverage of state government in a timely fashion.     

Strong convergence rates of probabilistic integrators for ordinary differential equations

Probabilistic integration of a continuous dynamical system is a way of systematically introducing discretisation error, at scales no larger than errors introduced by standard numerical discretisation, in order to enable thorough exploration of possible responses of the system to inputs. It is thus a potentially useful approach in a number of applications such as forward uncertainty quantification, inverse problems, and data assimilation. We extend the convergence analysis of probabilistic integrators for deterministic ordinary differential equations, as proposed by Conrad et al. (Stat Comput 27(4):1065–1082, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11222-016-9671-0), to establish mean-square convergence in the uniform norm on discrete- or continuous-time solutions under relaxed regularity assumptions on the driving vector fields and their induced flows. Specifically, we show that randomised high-order integrators for globally Lipschitz flows and randomised Euler integrators for dissipative vector fields with polynomially bounded local Lipschitz constants all have the same mean-square convergence rate as their deterministic counterparts, provided that the variance of the integration noise is not of higher order than the corresponding deterministic integrator. These and similar results are proven for probabilistic integrators where the random perturbations may be state-dependent, non-Gaussian, or non-centred random variables.

     

WOMEN PREFER LARGER GOVERNMENTS: GROWTH,STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION,AND GOVERNMENT SIZE

The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in economic structure: the increase in the share of government spending in gross domestic product (GDP), and the increase in female labor force participation. We argue that these two changes are causally related. We develop a growth model based on Galor and Weil (1996) where female participation in market activities, fertility, and government size, in addition to consumption and saving, is endogenously determined. Rising incomes lead to a rise in female labor force participation as the opportunity cost of staying at home and caring for the children increases. In our model, higher government spending decreases the cost of performing household chores, including, but not limited to, child rearing and child care, as in Rosen (1996) . We also use a wide cross‐section of data for developed and developing countries and show that higher market participation by women is positively and robustly associated with government size. We then investigate the causal link between participation and government size using a novel unique data set that allows the use of the relative price of productive home appliances as an instrumental variable. We find strong evidence of a causal link between female market participation and government size. This effect is robust to the country sample, time period, and a set of controls in the spirit of Rodrik (1998) . (JEL O4, E62, H11)     

International guidelines and the inclusion of disabled people. The Ugandan story

Uganda has made much progress towards including disabled people in its mainstream development, particularly in the political agenda. The exact process by which this has been achieved and the relationship between this and international guidelines and legislation are not known. This study undertakes to examine this from two specific perspectives: (1) How do international documents relevant to disabled people relate to national legislation in Uganda? (2) What can this comparison, together with the perceptions of stakeholders, tell us about how the legislation and services could improve? International legislation and Ugandan legislation is reviewed and compared. Data from 5 semi‐structured key informant interviews and 6 focus group discussions involving a total of 38 people are collected and analysed. The themes arising from the data are related to the documents, legislation, policies and other relevant literature. The results examine the barriers to service provision; the role of change; the importance of representation; policy and legislation issues; and the effects of devolution. Five specific findings relate to how legislation and services can improve: more resources to increase access for disabled people; strong leadership and collaboration between Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) funding bodies and governments; awareness raising and training; representation from all impairment groups; and raising the profile of disabled people through further legislation.     

River basin planning as a strategy for rural development in Nigeria

River basin planning has existed in one form or another since the third millenium B.C. when some of the earliest civilizations evolved in the great drainage basins of Mesopotamia, Egypt and north-west India. It has, however, undergone several modifications before finally culminating in the comprehensive planning for simultaneous development of all resources of a river basin.The idea of river basin planning was first mooted in Nigeria by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the late 1960s. Beginning in the early 1970s, the Federal government of Nigeria also came to the belief that river basin planning could play a significant role in the country's development. At the height of the ‘oil boom’ in 1976 and with the incipient manifestation of structural problems in the national economy, the government took a giant step in river basin planning by the establishment of 11 river basin development authorities. River basin planning is viewed as a ‘new approach’ to rural development and has involved more substantial capital outlay than all the other rural programmes combined.This paper examines the implementation and impact of these projects, which are large-scale and capital intensive, and which may be incompatible with a strategy aimed at improving the lot of the peasant farmers. The projects have wrought havoc on the prevailing rural economy and social-economic structures. Even if they were to achieve the primary objective of increasing rural productivity, this may be at a great cost to the rural populace and the environment.Perhaps more important is that river basin planning has the potential of substituting one form of dependency for another (food importation being substituted for the importation of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, equipment, machines and foreign experts). The projects are thus benefiting a powerful combination of interests comprising local and foreign contractors, land speculators, bureaucrats, rural elites and incipient capitalist farmers who have not borne any losses in the process of implementation.     

Community councils as a medium for public participation: a case study in Grampian region

Planning authorities in Scotland are obliged to consult the public before finalising policies and proposals to be included in their development plans. Community councils are intended to operate as ‘the voice of a neighbourhood’ and this paper analyses an attempt by a regional planning authority to use community councils as a vehicle for consulting the public in the preparation of a structure plan for a rural area. The paper concludes that the attempt was unsuccessful because the community councils were not clear about the role they were expected to play; nor were they adequately prepared for their role. The authors believe, however, that the involvement of community councils has potential for promoting greater public participation in the preparation of development plans.     

Differential impact of Web site content: Exploring the influence of source (public relations versus news), modality,and participation on college students’ perceptions

This experiment examined the impact of source, modality, and participation on perceptions of credibility, salience, attitudes, and general Web site evaluation. The data showed no significant differences between online stories coming from either public relations or news sources on any of the study's dependent variables. However, significant differences did emerge for the effects of multimedia and audience engagement.