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We estimate the direct and indirect effects of recruitment bonuses paid to teachers working in rural schools in Peru on their retention and student learning. This is the first study to estimate the indirect effects of a bonus aimed at attracting teachers to disadvantaged schools. This is important for assessing whether the incentive has improved the distribution of teaching resources and for estimating the direct effect without bias. We exploit the exogenous variation produced in the size of the bonus by the rule used to classify rural schools, and allow ineligible schools to be affected if they have an eligible school nearby. We find the bonus produces positive direct effects on teacher retention but also a negative spillover on the probability of filling teacher vacancies in neighboring schools. This spillover indicates that the bonus is redistributing resources between equally disadvantaged schools. We also find that the bonus has no direct effects on student learning and produces a positive spillover on the scores of students in neighboring schools. We argue these results are due to the poor pedagogical skills of the teachers being mobilized by the scheme. A reasonable policy alternative is a scheme that targets talented teachers with larger bonuses.

We study a two-dimensional theory of gravity coupled to matter that is relevant to describe holographic properties of black holes with two equal angular momenta in five dimensions (with or without cosmological constant). We focus on the near-horizon geometry of the near-extremal black hole, where the effective theory reduces to Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity coupled to a massive scalar field. We compute the corrections to correlation functions due to cubic interactions present in this theory. A novel feature is that these corrections do not have a definite sign: for AdS$_5$ black holes the sign depends on the mass of the extremal solution. We discuss possible interpretations of these corrections from a gravitational and holographic perspective. We also quantify the imprint of the JT sector on the UV region, i.e. how these degrees of freedom, characteristic for the near-horizon region, influence the asymptotically far region of the black hole. This gives an interesting insight on how to interpret the IR modes in the context of their UV completion, which depends on the environment that contains the black hole.

This paper analyzes the relative importance of short-term financial constraints "vis-a-vis" skills and other background factors when explaining higher education access in Peru. We focus on the disparities in university enrollment between rich and poor households. We use a novel household survey that includes special tests to measure cognitive and socio-emotional skills of the urban population age 14-50. These are complemented with retrospective data on basic education and family socioeconomic conditions in a multinomial model. We find that the strong correlation between university enrollment and family income in urban Peru is not only explained by short-term credit constraints, but also by poor cognitive skills and by family and educational backgrounds affecting tastes and aptitudes for formal education. Family income explains, at most, half of the university access gap between poor and non-poor households. The other half is related to differences in parental education, educational backgrounds, and cognitive skills. Our results indicate that credit or scholarship schemes alone will not suffice to change the regressive nature of higher education enrollment in Peru, and that such programs will face strong equity-efficiency trade-offs.

We estimate the direct and indirect effects of recruitment bonuses paid to teachers working in rural schools in Peru on their retention and student learning. This is the first study to estimate the indirect effects of a bonus aimed at attracting teachers to disadvantaged schools. This is important for assessing whether the incentive has improved the distribution of teaching resources and for estimating the direct effect without bias. We exploit the exogenous variation produced in the size of the bonus by the rule used to classify rural schools, and allow ineligible schools to be affected if they have an eligible school nearby. We find the bonus produces positive direct effects on teacher retention but also a negative spillover on the probability of filling teacher vacancies in neighboring schools. This spillover indicates that the bonus is redistributing resources between equally disadvantaged schools. We also find that the bonus has no direct effects on student learning and produces a positive spillover on the scores of students in neighboring schools. We argue these results are due to the poor pedagogical skills of the teachers being mobilized by the scheme. A reasonable policy alternative is a scheme that targets talented teachers with larger bonuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have found that differences in school characteristics can explain a significant share of the difference in cognitive skill between advantaged and disadvantaged children. These estimates, however, can be biased if the effect of schools depends on the skill attained by children before they enter school. I use longitudinal information on test scores for a large sample of Peruvian children to reassess the importance of schools for the urban/rural cognitive skill gap observed at age 8. I propose a decomposition strategy that allows the skill attained during early childhood to influence the effect of schools. I find a negative relation between early childhood skill and the effect of schools in the rural domain and confirm that schools account for a significant share (around 34%) of the urban/rural cognitive skill gap. This reveals that it is possible to exploit the equalizing potential of improvement in rural schools despite the large cognitive skill deficits of rural children. It is not "too late" for rural children currently at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reduced astrocytic gap junctional communication and enhanced hemichannel activity were recently shown to increase astroglial and neuronal vulnerability to neuroinflammation. Moreover, increasing evidence suggests that neuroinflammation plays a pivotal role in the development of Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease, an autosomal lethal neurodegenerative disorder that is mainly caused by mutations in the NPC1 gene. Therefore, we investigated whether the lack of NPC1 expression in murine astrocytes affects the functional state of gap junction channels and hemichannels. Cultured cortical astrocytes of NPC1 knock-out mice (Npc1−/−) showed reduced intercellular communication via gap junctions and increased hemichannel activity. Similarly, astrocytes of newborn Npc1−/− hippocampal slices presented high hemichannel activity, which was completely abrogated by connexin 43 hemichannel blockers and was resistant to inhibitors of pannexin 1 hemichannels. Npc1−/− astrocytes also showed more intracellular Ca2+ signal oscillations mediated by functional connexin 43 hemichannels and P2Y1 receptors. Therefore, Npc1−/− astrocytes present features of connexin based channels compatible with those of reactive astrocytes and hemichannels might be a novel therapeutic target to reduce neuroinflammation in NPC disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peruvian monetary poverty declined by 12 percentage points in only four years. Based on the Alkire-Foster multidimensional headcount, we build a simple comparative framework to measure the tension between this result and a broader indicator of deprivation. We select six dimensions and apply this framework to Peruvian data for 2004 and 2008. The results indicate that if we rely only on monetary standards, there is an increased risk of classifying as non-poor individuals who still suf fer significant deprivation. Deprivations are similar across regions and are largely related to the lack of adequate water and sanitation services. This last result reveals an opportunity to focalize public investment ef forts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reduced astrocytic gap junctional communication and enhanced hemichannel activity were recently shown to increase astroglial and neuronal vulnerability to neuroinflammation. Moreover, increasing evidence suggests that neuroinflammation plays a pivotal role in the development of Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease, an autosomal lethal neurodegenerative disorder that is mainly caused by mutations in the NPC1 gene. Therefore, we investigated whether the lack of NPC1 expression in murine astrocytes affects the functional state of gap junction channels and hemichannels. Cultured cortical astrocytes of NPC1 knock-out mice (Npc1⁻/⁻) showed reduced intercellular communication via gap junctions and increased hemichannel activity. Similarly, astrocytes of newborn Npc1⁻/⁻ hippocampal slices presented high hemichannel activity, which was completely abrogated by connexin 43 hemichannel blockers and was resistant to inhibitors of pannexin 1 hemichannels. Npc1⁻/⁻ astrocytes also showed more intracellular Ca²⁺ signal oscillations mediated by functional connexin 43 hemichannels and P2Y₁ receptors. Therefore, Npc1⁻/⁻ astrocytes present features of connexin based channels compatible with those of reactive astrocytes and hemichannels might be a novel therapeutic target to reduce neuroinflammation in NPC disease.