DISPARITIES IN THE BENEFITS FROM DEMOCRATIC REFORM IN NIGERIA: A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

There is data evidence that welfare has improved post–democratic reform in Nigeria. However, the distribution or concentration of the benefits in subgroups of the population is unknown. In this paper, the question of differential welfare impacts across and within gender following democratic reform in Nigeria is explored. Two related hypotheses are investigated. First, there is no disparity in the income and returns-to-education benefits of democratic reform across genders in Nigeria. Second, there are no within-gender disparities in the impact of democratic reform on income and returns to education in Nigeria. From the results, both hypotheses are rejected. Though men and women both benefitted from democratic reforms, economically significant within- and between-gender differences exist.     

Les conséquences de la proximité de l’information contenue dans les états financiers et de l’information rétroactive relative aux prévisions de flux de trésorerie

Le Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) et l’International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), dans leur projet conjoint de norme relative à la présentation des états financiers, remettent à l’étude les éléments de base de la présentation des états financiers. Les discussions préliminaires des deux organismes dans le cadre de ce projet indiquent qu’ils entendent modifier les états financiers exigés de manière à accroître la proximité de l’information liée à la performance relative à chaque période. Les auteurs apportent des preuves en ce qui a trait à ce changement potentiel en analysant l’incidence de la proximité de l’information contenue dans les états financiers sur la capacité des investisseurs d’assimiler les propriétés sérielles des données relatives aux flux de trésorerie et aux régularisations qui sont présentées, pertinentes à la formulation de prévisions. Ils examinent également le rôle que joue l’information rétroactive dans cette relation. Les résultats expérimentaux de l’étude semblent indiquer que les investisseurs non professionnels sont en mesure d’assimiler plus rapidement la relation entre les flux de trésorerie et les régularisations de la période courante et la matérialisation des flux de trésorerie futurs lorsque l’information contenue dans les états financiers est présentée dans un seul état plutôt que lorsqu’elle est subdivisée en deux états. Les auteurs constatent en outre que les investisseurs non professionnels affichent des degrés plus faibles d’erreurs prévisionnelles absolues et une dispersion des prévisions moins grande lorsque l’information contenue dans les états financiers leur est communiquée dans un seul état. Enfin, les auteurs démontrent que les investisseurs non professionnels à qui sont communiquées sur une seule page des observations rétroactives exhaustives quant aux résultats assimilent plus rapidement l’information au départ et, une fois l’apprentissage intégré, formulent des prévisions exactes avec plus de régularité que les investisseurs à qui sont communiquées en deux pages des observations rétroactives, exhaustives ou limitées. Dans l’ensemble, les résultats de l’étude tendent à démontrer l’efficacité des solutions de rechange quant à la présentation des états financiers et l’utilité potentielle de la communication d’observations rétroactives plus exhaustives.     

WAGES AND WORKPLACE COMPUTER USE IN CHILE

This paper presents robust evidence regarding the impact of computer use in the workplace in Chile during the period 2000–2006. The key contribution of this paper is to present evidence for a developing country using matching techniques and assuming a homogeneous treatment effect. Wage impact is then measured through the nearest neighbor and kernel estimators. The results consistently show that there is a premium associated with the use of computers in the workplace, interpreted as an increase in worker productivity arising from the inclusion of an additional production factor (i.e., the computer). Estimates indicate a premium of around 26% for 2000 and 16% for 2006.     

On the Ramsey equilibrium with heterogeneous consumers and endogenous labor supply

In this paper, we address the stability issue, stressing the role of labor supply, in a Ramsey model with heterogeneous households subject to borrowing constraints. Making labor supply endogenous leads us to prove the existence of two kinds of steady state: the one where everybody supplies labor, the other where only the most patient agent refrains from working. Going beyond models with inelastic labor supply, we show how preferences of impatient agents affect the saddle-path stability of each type of steady state and the occurrence of endogenous cycles. When their elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption exceeds one, instability and cycles are less likely, requiring lower degrees of capital-labor substitution. Conversely, elasticity values below one promote the emergence of fluctuations. We end the paper by showing the existence of the intertemporal equilibrium under market incompleteness, using a local approach based on the first-order conditions.     

Testing for unobserved heterogeneity in exponential and Weibull duration models

We examine the use of the likelihood ratio (LR) statistic to test for unobserved heterogeneity in duration models, based on mixtures of exponential or Weibull distributions. We consider both the uncensored and censored duration cases. The asymptotic null distribution of the LR test statistic is not the standard chi-square, as the standard regularity conditions do not hold. Instead, there is a nuisance parameter identified only under the alternative, and a null parameter value on the boundary of the parameter space, as in Cho and White (2007a). We accommodate these and provide methods delivering consistent asymptotic critical values. We conduct a number of Monte Carlo simulations, comparing the level and power of the LR test statistic to an information matrix (IM) test due to Chesher (1984) and Lagrange multiplier (LM) tests of Kiefer (1985) and Sharma (1987). Our simulations show that the LR test statistic generally outperforms the IM and LM tests. We also revisit the work of van den Berg and Ridder (1998) on unemployment durations and of Ghysels et al. (2004) on interarrival times between stock trades, and, as it turns out, affirm their original informal inferences.     

Prejudice and gender differentials in the US labor market in the last twenty years

Earnings differentials between men and women have experienced a stable convergence during the 1980s, following a process started in the late 1970s. However, in the 1990s the convergence has almost stopped. The first objective of the paper is to evaluate if discrimination, defined as explicit prejudice, may have a role in explaining this slowdown in the convergence. The second objective is to assess whether the prediction of a decrease in the proportion of prejudiced employers implied by the Becker’s model of taste discrimination is taking place and if so at what speed. These objectives are achieved by developing and estimating a search model of the labor market with matching, bargaining, employer’s prejudice and worker’s participation decisions. The results show that the proportion of prejudiced employers is estimated to be decreasing at an increasing speed, going from about 69% in 1985 to about 32% in 2005. Therefore prejudice is not estimated to be a relevant factor in explaining the slower convergence between male and female earnings in the 1990s. The results are consistent with the Becker’s model of taste discrimination if one is willing to assume a very slow adjustment process.     

Maternal employment,migration, and child development

We analyze the roles of and interrelationships among school inputs and parental inputs in affecting child development through the specification and estimation of a behavioral model of household migration and maternal employment decisions. We integrate information on these decisions with observations on child outcomes over a 13-year period from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). We find that the impact of our school quality measures diminishes by factors of 2 to 4 after accounting for the fact that families may choose where to live in part based on school characteristics and labor market opportunities. The positive statistical relationship between child outcomes and maternal employment reverses sign and remains statistically significant after controlling for its possible endogeneity. Our estimates imply that when parental responses are taken into account, policy changes in school quality end up having only minor impacts on child test scores.     

基于J2EE的MVC开发框架探讨

随着J2EE技术的发展,产生了许多优秀的基于MVC模式的Java Web框架。如何根据实际项目的特点选择合适的Web框架进行项目开发成为系统开发人员面临的一个重要挑战。本文对J2EE应用中几种流行的MVC开发框架进行了深入比较分析和探讨。     

J2EE企业级应用开发技术发展趋势

J2EE企业级开发技术的发展可以反映为MVC框架的变迁。Struts依靠其前期的成功,目前仍旧占有大量的用户市场,Struts2.0的推出,进一步巩固Struts的应用地位。Hibernate框架实现了高效的数据持久化,极大提高了数据库层逻辑的开发效率,并且可以与Struts相融合。Spring技术作为轻型框架,依靠IoC在J2EE应用中占有重要地位,随着新技术的补充和完善,Spring技术的未来值得期待。     

Assessing the Possible Antipoverty Effects of Recent Rises in Age‐Specific Minimum Wages in New Zealand

Real minimum wages increased by nearly 33 percent for adults and 123 percent for teenagers in New Zealand between 1999 and 2008. Where fewer than 2 percent of workers were being paid a minimum wage at the outset of this sample period, more than 8 percent of adult workers and 60 percent of teenage workers were receiving hourly earnings close to the minimum wage by the end of this period. These policy changes provide a unique opportunity to estimate the effects of the minimum wage on poverty. Although minimum wage workers are more likely to live in the poorest households, they are relatively widely dispersed throughout the income distribution. This is particularly true of teenage minimum wage workers. Furthermore, low‐income households often do not contain any working members. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in minimum wages, even without a loss in employment or hours of work, would lower the relative poverty rate by less than one‐tenth of a percentage point.