Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

About: Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México is a education organization based out in Mexico City, Mexico. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Population. The organization has 1098 authors who have published 2532 publications receiving 39083 citations. The organization is also known as: Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico & Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology.

Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program

Abstract: We investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty alleviation program in which self-reported information, followed by a household visit, is used to determine eligibility. In the model we propose and estimate, underreporting may be due to a deception motive, and overreporting to an embarrassment motive. We find that underreporting of goods and desirable home characteristics is widespread, and that overreporting is common with respect to goods linked to social status. Larger program benefits encourage underreporting and discourage overreporting. We also estimate the costs of lying and embarrassment for different goods, and show that the embarrassment cost for lacking a good is proportional to the percentage of households who own the good. (JEL: D01, I32, I38, C25)

Does Realized Skewness Predict the Cross-Section of Equity Returns?

Abstract: We use intraday data to compute weekly realized variance, skewness, and kurtosis for equity returns and study the realized moments' time-series and cross-sectional properties We investigate if this week's realized moments are informative for the cross-section of next week's stock returns We find a very strong negative relationship between realized skewness and next week's stock returns A trading strategy that buys stocks in the lowest realized skewness decile and sells stocks in the highest realized skewness decile generates an average weekly return of 19 basis points with a t-statistic of 370 Our results on realized skewness are robust across a wide variety of implementations, sample periods, portfolio weightings, and firm characteristics, and are not captured by the Fama-French and Carhart factors We find some evidence that the relationship between realized kurtosis and next week's stock returns is positive, but the evidence is not always robust and statistically significant We do not find a strong relationship between realized volatility and next week's stock returns

A sequential quadratic programming algorithm with an additional equality constrained phase

Abstract: A sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method is presented that aims to overcome some of the drawbacks of contemporary SQP methods It avoids the diculties associated with indefinite quadratic programming subproblems by defining this subproblem to be always convex The novel feature of the approach is the addition of an equality constrained phase that promotes fast convergence and improves performance in the presence of ill conditioning This equality constrained phase uses exact second order information and can be implemented using either a direct solve or an iterative method The paper studies the global and local convergence properties of the new algorithm and presents a set of numerical experiments to illustrate its practical performance

Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Abstract: We present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (i) unconditional grants, (ii) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (iii) both of the above. After two years, we find (i) no impact on student test scores from providing school grants, (ii) some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives, and (iii) significant positive effects from providing both programs. Most important, we find strong evidence of complementarities between the programs, with the effect of joint provision being significantly greater than the sum of the individual effects. Our results suggest that combining spending on school inputs (the default policy) with improved teacher incentives could substantially increase the cost-effectiveness of public spending on education.