The Effect of Chinese Demand and Supply Shocks on Peruvian Exporters

We study the impact of Chinese supply and demand shocks on Peruvian firm-product exports. Our results indicate that Chinese competition has a positive and significant effect on Peruvian firm exports, which suggests that firms are either (1) concentrating on markets where competition is tougher, (2) increasing R&D efforts, and/or (3) benefiting from a comparative advantage. The demand from China also has an overall positive and significant effect on Peruvian exports, but negative effect on the subset of data pertaining to minerals. This suggests that Peruvian commodities are being redirected from other markets to China.     

Peru in the 21st century : Challenges and possibilities

The Peruvian 21st century study, initially conceived in 1981 and still going on, is a large programme consisting of several interlinked projects. Simulations have been done on the future of 10 key national sectors, and these simulations have then been integrated to produce scenarios describing alternative feasible futures. At the same time, a group of desired scenarios has been constructed using personal interviews and a consultation process. There has been initial work on a third project examining key external factors affecting Peruvian development. Still to be undertaken are projects identifying specific development strategies and analysing the national planning process. Especially noteworthy products of the study are the user-friendly spreadsheet models, which make the feasible futures component of the study highly accessible to interested decision makers.     

Social Security and Private Transfers in Developing Countries: The Case of Peru

Do social security systems "crowd out" private transfers fromyounger to older generations? This question has generated muchtheoretical discussion, but little empirical work exists toconfirm or refute this crowding-out hypothesis. We investigatethe connection between social security and private transfersin Peru, using the Peruvian Living Standards Survey, and findthat private transfers from young to old would have been nearly20 percent higher without social security benefits. This indicatesthat the Peruvian social security system is less effective atdelivering benefits to the elderly than a simple assignmentof government expenditures would suggest. Social security'sdisplacement of private transfers, while significant, is lessthan that predicted by models with widespread altruistic transfers.     

The International Transmission of Bank Liquidity Shocks: Evidence from an Emerging Market

I exploit the 1998 Russian default as a negative liquidity shock to international banks and analyze its transmission to Peru. I find that after the shock international banks reduce bank‐to‐bank lending to Peruvian banks and Peruvian banks reduce lending to Peruvian firms. The effect is strongest for domestically owned banks that borrow internationally, intermediate for foreign‐owned banks, and weakest for locally funded banks. I control for credit demand by examining firms that borrow from several banks. These results suggest that international banks transmit liquidity shocks across countries and that negative liquidity shocks reduce bank lending in affected countries.     

学校社会工作介入高校贫困大学生心理健康问题研究

近些年,随着高等教育的扩招,高校贫困生群体日益扩大,贫困生引发的各种各样的问题、事件已成为高校和社会关注的焦点问题。本文首先阐述了我国高校贫困大学生心理现状,在此基础上分析了高校贫困大学生心理问题产生的原因,探讨了学校社会工作在高校贫困大学生心理健康问题中的介入策略,有效的解决贫困生的心理问题,不仅拥有丰富的科学文化知识,而且成为人格健全、积极向上、勇于实践、开拓进取的新时期的大学生。     

Conditional Cash Transfers, Schooling, and Child Labor: Micro-Simulating Brazil's Bolsa Escola Program

A growing number of developing economies are providing cashtransfers to poor people that require certain behaviors on theirpart, such as attending school or regularly visiting healthcare facilities. A simple ex ante methodology is proposed forevaluating such programs and used to assess the Bolsa Escolaprogram in Brazil. The results suggest that about 60 percentof poor 10- to 15-year-olds not in school enroll in responseto the program. The program reduces the incidence of povertyby only a little more than one percentage point, however, andthe Gini coefficient falls just half a point. Results are betterfor measures more sensitive to the bottom of the distribution,but the effect is never large.     

Evaluating the Stability of School Performance Estimates over Time

When using school performance indicators for the purposes of accountability and school choice, it is very important that measures are stable over time. This issue is very relevant when the system is based on the allocation of students to the same teachers for the whole educational cycle (e.g. at primary school level). Using administrative data provided by the National Evaluation Committee for Education (INVALSI), we explore the stability of performance estimates for Italian primary schools. We first construct school performance metrics using INVALSI standardised tests, by taking advantage of a rich array of individual‐level variables (including prior achievement) that allow us to estimate a school effect in a ‘value added’ perspective. We assess differences in performance across schools and the persistence of these differences across cohorts. We find that controlling for compositional differences is important; therefore, estimates of school performances are unstable across metrics, and correlations across cohorts decline over time.     

Currency-Induced Credit Risk in a Dollarized Economy

We analyze the effects of exchange rate fluctuations on corporate credit default in a dollarized economy. The application, before an exogenous exchange rate shock, of a new regulation concerning currency-induced credit risk (CICR) in the Peruvian banking system created natural conditions for a comparison between exposed and unexposed corporate borrowers. We use firm-level data to find that CICR and debt dollarization have opposite effects on credit risk. While CICR increases default, debt dollarization reduces it. Our results suggest that banks transfer exchange risk as a hedging mechanism by lending to such borrowers in dollars only.     

Child Labor, School Attendance, and Intrahousehold Gender Bias in Brazil

An extensive survey data set of Brazilian households is usedto test whether intrahousehold gender bias affects the decisionsof mothers and fathers to send their sons and daughters to workand to school. An intrahousehold allocation model is examinedin which fathers and mothers may affect the education investmentand the child labor participation of their sons and daughtersdifferently because of differences in parental preferences ordifferences in how additional schooling affects sons' and daughters'acquisition of human capital. Brazilian household survey datafor 1998 are used to estimate the impact of each parent's educationon the labor market participation and school attendance of theirsons and daughters. For labor market participation, the father'seducation has a greater negative impact than the mother's educationon the labor status of sons. The father's education also hasa greater impact on sons' labor status than on daughters'. Forschooling decisions, the mother's education has a greater positiveimpact than the father's education on daughters' school attendance,but fathers have a greater positive impact on sons' school attendancethan on daughters'.     

Trade Reform Dynamics and Technical Efficiency: The Peruvian Experience

Markets around the world are becoming more competitive becauseof changing operating and regulatory environments. One suchchange—the loosening of trade restrictions— is amacroeconomic policy shift that should have a microeconomicimpact on industrial efficiency. Specifically, competitive pressureshould discipline or eliminate inefficient producers. This articleexplores whether or not there is such a dynamic link. It usesa previously unexploited data set to gauge the impact of the1990 Peruvian reform on plant-level technical efficiency. Theresults support the argument that the degree of protection andthe level of efficiency are inversely related.     

The blindfold witness? An accountant's response to slavery and atrocity in the Devil's Paradise

This study discusses the case of a professional accountant who was alleged to have been wilfully blind to the enslavement and barbaric treatment of indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon during the early twentieth century. Ideological positioning and the prospect of personal advancement are discussed as possible motives for such blindness. The practitioner in question claimed ignorance of the abuses in his midst. He contended that his responsibilities as an accountant did not extend to investigating the condition of labour and that the brutal treatment of indigenous peoples in the upper reaches of the supply chain was deliberately hidden from his view by the client company. The findings have implications for current day discourses about the role of accountants and auditors in detecting and addressing modern slavery.     

Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

Several developing economies have recently introduced conditionalcash transfer programs, which provide money to poor familiescontingent on certain behavior, usually investments in humancapital, such as sending children to school or bringing themto health centers. The approach is both an alternative to moretraditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complementto the supply of health and education services. Unlike mostdevelopment initiatives, conditional cash transfer programshave been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectivenessusing experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluationresults for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica,Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressingmany of the failures in delivering social assistance, such asweak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfareimpacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generationof programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasingenrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raisinghousehold consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however,including the potential of conditional cash transfer programsto function well under different conditions, to address a broaderrange of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, andto prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.      

A profile of communication apprehension in accounting majors: Implications for teaching and curriculum revision

Practitioners have consistently noted that entry-level accountants exhibit inadequate communication skills (Andrews & Sigband, 1984). Academics and practitioners agree that accounting students' writing and oral communication skills are the two major areas needing more attention in the curriculum (Simons & Higgins, 1993). Daly (1978) and McCroskey (1984) have found that poor communication is a result of either poor skills, apprehension, or both. This suggests a need to determine the level of apprehension in accounting majors prior to making curriculum/classroom changes. This study examines the level of communication apprehension in accounting majors. The results show that accounting majors have higher apprehension toward both written and oral communications than other business majors. Gender differences were found only for oral communication apprehension, with female accounting majors reporting the highest apprehension. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

由武术课期中教学检查引发的思考

长期以来,我校武术课教学内容定格在初级拳、初级剑、二十四式太极拳三个内容上,2010年后增设太极功夫扇,2012年为了校运会表演试行棍术项目实验课。通过2010-2012年2次期中教学检查中我们发现,武术课堂教育中存在着诸多不利于课堂教学的因素,学生完成武术套路演练时,步型不准确、功架偏高、基本动作完成不足、动作的质量较低、左右转换方向混乱、套路的演练不熟练、没有手眼配合、学生对武术课不重视、认识武术的能力偏低等。这不仅影响了整套动作的完成,也导致了学生考试成绩和课堂教学的效果不理想。为此,应该加大对武术文化的宣传和理论课教育、注重利用多媒体教学的方式、根据地区文化优势引进名师讲学和表演、提高老师和学生的技术水平、提升课堂教学能力,同时在已有的教学大纲的基础上增加散打等实用内容的训练内容来丰富教学效果。     

Academies 2 – The New Batch: The Changing Nature of Academy Schools in England

The English education system has undergone large‐scale restructuring through the introduction of academy schools. The most salient feature of these schools is that, despite remaining part of the state sector, they operate with more autonomy than the predecessors they replaced. Two distinct periods of academy school introduction have taken place, under the auspices of different governments. The first batch was initiated in the 2002–03 school year by the Labour government of the time, and was a school improvement programme directly aimed at turning around badly performing schools. The second batch involved a mass academisation process following the change of government in May 2010 and the Academies Act of that year, which resulted in increased heterogeneity of new academies. This paper compares the two batches of introduction with the aim of getting a better understanding of their similarities and differences, and their importance for education policy. To do so, we study what types of schools were more likely to change to academy status in the two programmes, and the impact of this change on the quality of new pupil enrolments into the new types of school. Whilst we do point out some similarities, these are the exception rather than the norm. For the most part, our analysis reveals a number of marked dissimilarities between the two programmes, in terms of both the characteristics of schools that became academies and the changes in pupil intakes that occurred post‐conversion.     

The Impact of Children on Women's Paid Work*

This paper investigates how and when differences in work behaviour between men and women develop, focusing on the evolution of the gender gaps over the period of family development. The findings support the theory that gender differences in the formal labour market stem from the presence of children in the home and that childbirth and children entering school are critical times in women's employment. Births mark a dramatic decline in participation in work for women, while school entry is a time of considerable turnover in participation. The length of absence from work following a subsequent birth is closely related to whether the mother was in work between births, while maternity pay and leave entitlements appear to influence the precise timing of the return to work. In addition, a return to work following birth is often only temporary. The gradual decline in women's relative wages following the first birth appears to stem from the accumulation of several shorter periods of unusually low wage growth for women around the times of birth and school entry. There is also a sharp movement into part‐time work for women following childbirth and a transition towards non‐permanent positions and non‐supervisory roles at both critical points.     

深度贫困地区农村人口金融能力测评及影响因素分析

选取我国湖南省、湖北省、江西省和陕西省四个省份中九个深度贫困县的1058户农村人口的调研数据,从金融知识、金融意识、金融技能、金融行为四个方面对农村人口金融能力进行测评,分析其影响因素,结果显示：深度贫困地区农村人口金融能力整体较低,且贫困人口比非贫困人口的金融能力更低;农村人口金融能力受金融教育时间、受教育程度、家庭社会关系、家庭人均收入等因素影响;农村贫困人口与非贫困人口金融能力的影响因素各有异同。     

Funding and School Accountability: The Importance of Private and Decentralised Public Funding for Pupil Attainment

We discuss the issue of how schools should be financed, concentrating on the role of private funding and public funding via subnational governments as accountability mechanisms in the provision of educational services. The historical evolution of school regulation in Italy and Spain has created differences in the percentage of pupils who attend private schools, the percentage of private school funding coming from public and private sources and the percentage of public school funding that comes from central or local government sources. We take advantage of these institutional diversities rooted in history to estimate the disciplining role of these different sources of funding in the context of an educational production function using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. Our results provide support to both accountability mechanisms and point to the presence of an important interplay between them.     

Specialization in Bank Lending: Evidence from Exporting Firms

We develop a novel approach for measuring bank specialization using granular data on borrower activities and apply it to Peruvian exporters and their banks. We find that borrowers seek credit from banks that specialize in their export destinations, both when expanding exports and when exporting to new countries. Firms experiencing country-specific export demand shocks adjust borrowing disproportionately from specialized banks. Specialized bank credit supply shocks affect exports disproportionately to countries of specialization. Our results demonstrate that firm credit demand is bank- and activity-specific, which reduces banking competition and affects the transmission and amplification of shocks through the banking sector.     

Central versus local education finance: a political economy approach

This paper models voters’ preferences over central versus local education policies when there are private alternatives. Education is financed by income taxes and individuals are mobile between communities. Public education levels are chosen by majority vote. Contrary to conventional wisdom, centralisation may benefit the rich and poor, while the middle class prefer decentralised education. The model is also extended to include peer effects. Peer effects increase the support for central school finance, even in the community with good public schools.