Academic stress in master’s students and its modulatory variables: a between-groups design

The present investigation tries to establish the descriptive profile of the academic stress of the students of the masters in education and to identify which sociodemographic and situational variables play a modulator role. This investigation is based on the Person-Surroundings Research Program and the systemical cognitive model of academic stress. The study can be characterized as transectional, correlational and non experimental. The collection of the information was made through the SISCO inventory of Academic Stress which was applied to 152 students. The main results suggest that 95% of the master students report having felt academic stress a few times but with medium-high intensity. Variables gender, civil state, attending masters and institutional support of the attending masters act as modulators in academic stress.

On the design of education conditional cash transfer programs and non education outcomes: the case of teenage pregnancy

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school performance reduces teenage pregnancy; the program can increase teenage pregnancy if it does not condition on school performance. Then, using an original data base, we estimate the causal impact on teenage pregnancy of two education CCTs implemented in Bogot´a (Subsidio Educativo, SE, and Familias en Acci´on, FA); both programs differ particularly on whether school success is a condition for renewal or not. We show that SE has negative average effect on teenage pregnancy while FA has a null average effect. We also find that SE has either null or no effect for adolescents in all age and grade groups while FA has positive, null or negative effects for adolescents in different age and grade groups. Since SE conditions renewal on school success and FA does not, we can argue that the empirical results are consistent with the predictions of our model and that conditioning renewal of the subsidy on school success crucially determines the effect of the subsidy on teenage pregnancy

A Network model of systemic risk : identifying the sources of dependence across institutions

We design a financial network model that explicitly incorporates linkages across institutions through a direct contagion channel, as well as an indirect common exposure channel. In particular, common exposure is setup so as to link the financial to the real sector. The model is calibrated to balance sheet data on the colombian financial sector. Results indicate that commercial banks are the most systemically important financial institutions in the system. Whereas government owned institutions are the most vulnerable institutions in the system.