Structure and contents of the BHPS data

by | Mar 22, 2023 | economics

 

 

1. Visit the BHPS website (https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps) and familiarize yourself
with the basic structure and contents of the BHPS data. What features make it a
suitable data set for the estimation of the BM model?
2. Open the file BM_data.dta and create a do-file in which you will code answers to
the following questions.
(a) What is the sample size? What is the sex ratio in the sample?
(b) What is the sample unemployment rate? What is the sample unemployment rate
2
of men? Of women? Or workers in each education category?
(c) What proportion of initial spells are right-censored (end of the spell not observed
in the data)? Answer the same question for each type of first spell (employment or
unemployment spell).
3. Still in the same do-file, construct the initial (spell-1) CDF of paid log wages logw1
(call it G) and its density. Produce plots of those two objects.
4. Create a variable categorizing logw1 into 25 percentile bins, and a variable contain-
ing the mean spell-1 duration (spelldur1) within each of these bins. Plot those mean
durations against the wage percentiles. Is this consistent with the BM model?
5. Derive the formulas for per-period average job-to-job (J2J), job-to-unemployment
(J2U ), and unemployment-to-job (U2J) transition rates in the BM model. Show that
those are “distribution-free”, i.e. do not depend on the wage offer distribution F or the
wage paid distribution G.
6. Estimate the monthly average J2J, J2U, and U2J rates from the sample of 2,263
workers.Show that x, λe and λu are identied from those three moments alone.
For students of EF5411, you can instead choose to write a referee report for one of
four papers: Pissarides (1985), Shimer (2005), Lucas and Prescott (1974) or Alvarez
and Shimer (2011); those who do the data analysis will be rewarded with better grade
though.
See https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/apassalacqua/files/refguidelines_tepe.pdf for guide-
lines to write a referee report.
For students of EF8078, also answer the following question.
7. Explain how one can obtain a non-parametric estimate of the wage sampling distri-
bution F from the data in BM_data.dta. Construct this non-parametric estimate, and
plot it on the same graph as G. Is this consistent with the theory? What else can you
say about this estimate of F?

 

 

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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