The Special Population's Consultation Service, SPCS, at the University of California, Los Angeles, Ucla, Clinical and Translational Science Institute, CTSI, has been successful in providing consultation services for researchers working on projects involving special populations such as children, older adults, and or minorities. Since its launch in 2016, the SPCS has received positive feedback from users who have found it helpful in advancing their research careers. Additionally, the SPCS has seen a high rate of success in securing funding for projects related to special populations. This article was authored by Natalie Visuetta, Katherine Asakijan, and Peter G. Shaloghi.


Hello then, many thanks for keeping us company. We are beginning with a program quite differently. I'm having two amazing ladies who are doing amazing thing out here, Bridget and Anne. We want to talk about the club food society. They are helping us to know what is this condition that is out here and how can we help people going through the same problem. Good morning. Good morning. Good to have you here. Thank you. I want you Bridget to tell me about club society and what it is all about. Okay. Club food society we really formed last year and we launched the first year in Kenya on 3rd June 2019 worldwide. Okay. I personally I have club food. It's called pylite roll. It has affected my legs. So we met with Anne Oyo in social media and we had the same problem and we sat together and we started like we need to start a society to assist people living with club food. Yeah. When you when you when you met Bridget I'm supposing you people you met because of this one particular item. How has the relationship been for the last say one year and what has been the challenges in in this society? We haven't had quite a challenge because now is when we are trying to realize what's it why is it this way what's how is the best food forward. But the reason as to why we met was basically because of pain. This condition especially during the cold season there is a lot of pain. We experienced muscle cramps, foot pain, foot stiffness. So in point in time when I met her I was looking for medication for my feet because one morning I woke up and my feet were so stiff and I was like am I the only one living with this thing because on the streets you walk you know you wouldn't identify that this person has this condition or because it's generally lumped up as a physical disability. There is no distinction that this is club food or this is food. Yeah so basically we met because of pain. So far so good the journey has been good we have met a number of people through that we have met a number of adults and more especially the adults because the children you find it's correctable. But the adults once you have like the bones have matured and you just have to give the day to day cope. Then that brings me to the question how does does it come about is this something that you're born with or you may develop a late in life? No you are born with yeah okay mostly like we haven't known the course of it but people say maybe due to less amniotic fluid in irritants but we don't have the really what the course of it yeah. So it has still remains to be a mystery to many so in this case if it is not known how it occurs then how do you go about it is there a particular treatment? Yes like and say that from one to five years it can be corrected yes when it is early identified yeah. I didn't get quite the name of the condition quite well and we'll be seeing some of the pictures to see how the condition is and maybe now from then you can tell how big the problem is now and when someone has this condition you talked about the cold when it's cold you feel a lot of pain do is it the medicines you go for or there's some therapy you undergo? Basically stipulated you're supposed to have physiotherapy as an adult with this condition but as you know physio is very expensive in our country so then you try to manage it's either a painkiller or a heat rub so during the cold season it's like a tug of war you don't know what to do because it's like everything is collapsing down there so at point in time we are doing club food we want to share each one's experience and know how you managing as an adult what are you doing to manage the pain what's your experience with pain how can we do it better is there a way we need to sit down and lobby for some of this thing like the medication of painkillers or maybe lobby for low physio costs yes because you find the adults we are quite a number and we do not know now how to deal with this condition because we are adults with grown up right so because of maybe a stigma shame or you just keep some of these things to yourself so for like me and Brigid we just want people to open up like for me it's mine isn't quite so severe because I can't wear normal shoes but you see when I go to a shoe shop to buy a shoe the shoe attendant will look at me very mysteriously because you know I walk like a duck I'll show my walking I walk like a duck so then you know when you're going to a shoe shop to like fit in a shoe they're busy looking at your leg and they're trying to wonder hey you wear my shoe and then it will fold because already what you're wearing is already folded yeah so then for us we want to reduce that stigma we want people to come out and then we also want to lobby for government to lower the cost of boots boots are quite expensive the one Brigid is wearing a pair goes for seven thousand wow my own are already spoiled so then I have to deal with wearing just the normal shoes yes it seems to be quite a problem especially with the stigma now I saw when she was trying to say I don't know because your friends you are smiling so I don't know someone out there if I get the same story and then I smile how would you feel about it and how has been how have you dealt with the with the stigma from the people socially how do you how do people handle you and how do you take it okay personally okay before I used to like when I'm walking on the street and then people stare at me I used to feel that like oh they're really staring at me it's like I'm a less human so it's reached a point where I had to accept to myself you know you need to talk to yourself you are created this way you can't change your legs so when we met with Anu she's this she has that spirit like mine so even we make fun of ourselves and some people they can't so I gave the way I was brought up like my family they've shown me love so I feel like I'm okay I am a human being I cannot change the situation yes and I need my future is I need to search forward yeah and what would be your message to some people out there who have a certain disability and they can't accept it they are just holding back they can't come out here clearly and say this is me they accept themselves how do someone now get to this point of saying this is me I accept it and doesn't matter what you say or what you see I think you know it's not easy someone must talk to them like someone like me who have overcome the situation I need to talk to them to tell them this is how we are created we can't change the situation accept yourself and move on yeah so if you have that fitness on you you can go on yes so and tell me about the club food society the funds you're looking for and how it has been working and by the way how much people have you how many people have you reached out to or so far and how has been the reception in terms of how you tell them do you have special programs do you have ways of interacting with them or we just meet at a certain day and then it's over we will meet again okay so far we have reached at least we have in the society we have 300 members registered so for our outreach programs we go specifically to counties so we've done kabsabit so far so good now we want to move to another county most probably kaka mega so our outreach basically is we try to find these people where they are and more especially the adults not the children because the children there is a way that this condition can be corrected if detected early so these adults we try to reach out to them find out what they're doing see the kind of shoes they're wearing and then try to like get them to have the correct shoes so for our kabsabit outreach we had about 30 members whom we are going to fit in with shoes this year before we proceed to kaka mega okay so your next count is kaka mega yes our next count is kaka mega so basically it's just to fit them with shoes the proper shoes about the psychological or the psychosocial basically Brigitte said it's you to work on it yes okay there is the way society defines us and then there's the way you define yourself so it's just a matter of self-acceptance talking to yourself every other day every other day every other day people should not see it like it's a punishment from god yeah you know there is always that idea that god cannot give you everything but god has given you everything but it's good or bad it's you know whether it's good or bad you have to make the best out of it so it's just you to talk yourself talk yourself talk yourself yes we do have those up and downs those down moments but it's just a matter of speaking to yourself engaging yourself because if you're not there for yourself then you'll be nobody there for you perfect yes and then you fall into depression so when you when you're going to this count is especially not that you have mentioned uh kabsabit now how do you create awareness how do you make these people now come together we use the national council for personal disability we use church we use the media new community around yeah so in life for kabsabit church assisted national council with personal disability and the community around together these people so that we identify them yeah so then once we found them then we like registered them we saw the problems they have but you see it's not only about a shoe it's not only about a psychosocial issue it's a whole general issue but for us we want to ask you with the comfort that at least you have something for mobility you know like someone who's running on a track they can't run without so it's the same for us without those shoes you're not comfortable yes so Brigitte Award and so much talk about the the children are can be corrected now allow me to ask this if i if at childhood someone would have been corrected then how do you find ourselves here is it our our parents who didn't notice or it's something that just came up okay like i've come to realize that most people with club food you can identify your child at early age but after that maybe uh some parents are their kids so they can't get the information or people are like um like thinking that club food is a polio of which it is not yeah so at that age after maybe after five years their child need to have a surgical boot it's called surgical boots yes and oh okay so maybe we can say maybe because of fear and shame or lack of funds would be a contributor to why someone now would get to all right so what information are you sending out there to mothers who are hiding their children or if anything happens what um mitigation missions now do you have okay i'm talking to a parent who was a child living with disability that don't i try children just let them do their own duties they are we are talented bring them out and don't be ashamed of your child the society can assist you yes don't be ashamed because i believe that people living with disability there are blessings to our to their families yeah true true now um and you have a fundraising coming soon to help uh find some persons with shoes now that you're going to use it kakamega yes so is it uh that you want to take uh shoes there or you have some persons you have identified so far you want to okay so kakamega we have about 50 which is quite uh larger number seven so we started a 100 pop challenge campaign in november to actually boost whatever funds we have because currently we are not funded by anyone we do most of the things from our own pockets even as we go to give the shoes for for kapsabit that is like we did our own self funding self fundraising a monster yes so the dinner we are having a barefoot dinner we rarely take photos of our feet when was the last time you took a photo of your feet bare feet as a man i don't remember we're doing such yes but for ladies i know i've seen several because of the it's very in we yeah we don't yes we rarely do photos of our own feet so this year we decided we'd have a barefoot dinner and we'd have a barefoot walk or a marathon so we're starting with the barefoot dinner so for the barefoot dinner we want people to come barefeeted for valentines so valentines is the time that people show their love to the other person right at this time round as we want you to show your love to the feet because the feet are the ones that enable you to move around true feet are the ones that make you drive yes yes so their feet generally controls let's say 95% functionality of the body yeah for their mobility yes and more especially their mobility how thoughtful i love their analogy so then this dinner will be a barefoot dinner we want everybody to come to the fun that will raise will go to enabling adults with clubfoot to get boots kaka mega and then the other two three counties that we have identified which we're still receiving numbers so yes we want people to come barefooted on valentine then have their photos taken of their feet wow that must be amazing to see people walking barefoot come up to the house and some of us grew up in the villages you know i love it come to think like me i can like people living with clubfoot if you remove my shoes i can't walk yeah i'm done i didn't know that yeah you should know so what so the analogy will it be then the analogy is they able to come barefooted yes so those who have disability like clubfoot who come in shoes so the essence now it's not time to see yeah time now to see you without shoes okay because as we've always not had the proper shoes so now it's your turn walk without shoes and feel how i feel minus the proper shoes yes so what will we be the dinner is at my motel in south sea yes so the details so we'll be sharing these posters i see parkapu is 7500 yes and then the other one is single is 4000 yes manageable to a number of canyons yes here too is because we see you there it's on 14 yes all right let me not promise when i promise i keep my word so let me not commit myself here but anyway i i appreciate what you people are doing and it's quite encouraging and now that you have mentioned of kapsabit kakamega do you have a certain region that has we can say we have big number and would you know why it is what you can attribute it to okay we don't have like you know statistics like the way we have statistics for malaria statistics for it's here again now so for us we started clubfoot so that we have this statistics that even when we go to government and not before them to reduce the cost of the boot then we will have statistics so this year next year and maybe let's say for the next three years we'll be doing that data collection then once we have that data it's sound enough then we can now lobby government and tell them hey you guys look here we are one million so we need this cost to go down we need you to put for us a factory where this work is especially dedicated because you find even that would for me to get it to take a month yeah so that means i'm immobile for a whole month it's not even a month it takes even three months yes together next issues i almost ask that question because if you you have mentioned the government the government i thought we can have a local fund and how much would they go for if we have a specific person who can and how do they design you know these shoes cannot be made by a local fund when you see they are on the road it needs a specialist yes some like they need to take even a cast like the shape of my feet so yes like they need orthopedic it's an orthopedic technician would ask this yes so there is a cast that is done and then with that cast they should be able to make me a good yes but then you find the cast leaves some space so now we are trying a woodlust yeah there's the photo of a woodlust i was hoping we could have that i don't know that my director will know we want a woodlust yes that's the measurement for the woodlust that we were doing for the gentleman so that woodlust is actually now produce one side of my foot and then the other one so you find both our feet it's my feet and half it cannot be the same yes yeah so then it has to be done separate separate separate for each and every other person then you find also my left leg is not the same as my right leg yes so the here is where now you you would like the government to come into aid and seriously to enable a number of people at least i think the society is i need to know this and i'm happy you creating awareness to such issues because i know of a people who don't like kata wengine when you're making a wheelchair they would not want to be associated with to create awareness i don't know why people fear are you people you're doing amazing thank you so much for coming bridge it and and i wish you the very best and all right otherwise thank you so much for coming and we appreciate the good work you're doing to the society and keep those smiles no one would know what is going on yeah until they inquire you're doing amazing job thank you so much back home thank you so much for keeping us company keep it right 254 my name is a deliver hillary see you in a bit


This lecture is part of an online graduate course on Galois Theory and will be about separable extensions of fields, so k contained in L. So let's just stop by explaining what a separable extension is. So a polynomial with coefficients in k is called separable if it has no multiple roots, not in k but in some algebraic closure of k. Now this doesn't depend on any sort of choice of algebraic closure or anything like that because if the polynomial is f, this is equivalent to saying that f and its derivative are co-prime in the ring k of x. This is very easy to check for example if f is equal to x minus alpha squared times something or other then you can see the derivative is equal to x minus alpha times something and therefore f and its derivative are not co-prime over the algebraic closure and therefore they're not co-prime in k of x. You can also show the converse very easily. So in an extension k contained in L, an element alpha in L is called separable over k if it's the root of a separable polynomial which we may as well assume is irreducible. This is a separable polynomial in k of x. And finally the extension k of L is called separable if all alpha in L are separable over k. So separability is just a way of making sure that the polynomials you're interested in don't have multiple roots. So in the previous lecture we discussed normal extensions and in the next lecture we're going to discuss Galois extensions and Galois extensions turn out to be the same as extensions that are both separable and normal. So this is the motivation for separable extensions, we're going to need them next lecture. We can sort of contrast separable extensions and normal extensions. They're sort of not quite complementary conditions but so k over L, let's say when it's separable or normal. Suppose f is the irreducible polynomial of some alpha in L. Then L being normal implies all roots of f are in L. And L separable implies all roots of f are distinct. So if L is normal plus separable this implies f has n distinct roots in L where n is equal to the degree of f. And so this will be very useful when we're doing Galois theory to know that polynomials have n distinct roots. So let's see some examples of extensions that are separable and some examples that aren't. It actually takes a bit of work to produce extensions that are not separable because all the obvious ones even think of in fact are separable. So first of all we notice that if k is an extension and the characteristic of k is equal to zero then L is separable over k. And that follows because if f is irreducible and the characteristic is equal to naught then the degree of the derivative of f is equal to the degree of f minus one. Assuming f is not constant of course. And in particular this means that f prime and f are co-prime. Because if f is irreducible and then it can't have a common factor with something that's of degree one less than it because it's only factors have degree or constants or the whole of f. So this means every element is separable because irreducible polynomials never have distinct roots. Well what goes wrong in characteristic p? This fails in characteristic p greater than naught because the point is the degree of f prime can be less than the degree of f minus one. You know if f is an x to the n and so on then f prime is n a n x to the n minus one which will normally have degree one less than n except something funny might happen. n might be zero if the characteristic is greater than naught that's because p might divide n. In particular we see that we might have f f prime is not one for f irreducible and the only way this can happen is if f prime is actually equal to zero and this can indeed happen for non constant polynomials f if we take f is equal to a n x to the n p plus a n minus one x to the n minus one p and so on plus a naught. So if all exponents are divisible by p then f might be irreducible and yet still have multiple roots. So let's see an example where this actually happens. Here we're not going to start with the field k. We're actually going to start with the field l which we're going to take to be the set of all rational functions over some field little k where the characteristic of little k is greater than zero and now we're going to take our field big k contained in l to be equal to k of t to the p and it's not difficult to check that this is an extension of degree p. In fact, t satisfies an irreducible polynomial. t is a root of the polynomial x to the p minus t to the p and this is in the field of polynomials whose coefficients are in the field generated by t to the p. Now you can see this polynomial is irreducible over k of t to the p but over k of t it factorizes x to the p minus t to the p is equal to x minus t to the p. So you see all roots are the same and you can also see its derivative is in fact zero and so on. So this is an example of an extension that is not separable and non separable extensions didn't actually occur in the early days of Galois theory because all the extensions they looked at at first were separable. So first of all they looked at extensions of the rational numbers and as we've just seen those are all separable and the other thing they looked at was finite fields. So all extensions of finite fields are separable and this is quite easy to see because if you've got a field f p to the m contained in the finite field of order p to the n then all elements of this as we saw earlier are roots of the magic polynomial x to the p to the n minus x. And now we notice that this polynomial is separable. You can see that either by noticing that it's got p to the n roots that are the p to the n distinct elements of this field or you can just look at its derivative so f prime of x is just equal to minus one so the highest common factor of f prime and f prime is obviously f prime and f is obviously the ideal one so these are co prime. So all extensions you come across tend to be separable unless you're looking quite hard for inseparable extensions. There's a sort of opposite of separable extensions. These are called purely inseparable extensions. So what's a purely inseparable extension? Well a purely inseparable extension is one such that any alpha in L is a root of x to the p to the n equals a for some a in k and n greater than or equal to one. Here p is of course the characteristic of the fields you're working over. And over an algebraic closure this factors as x minus the p to the nth root of a to the power of p to the n. So these polynomials only have one distinct root over an algebraic closure so there's far as possible you can possibly get from being separable. So what do you do if you've got an arbitrary algebraic extension? Well you can sort of break it up into a separable extension. Let's call this separable and a purely inseparable extension. So this is going to be a separable and this is purely inseparable. And it's quite easy to construct this. The separable extension just consists of all elements of L that are separable over k. And you can check that these form a field and that's separable and you can also check that L is then a purely inseparable extension over k. So all algebraic extensions can be divided into separable extensions and inseparable extensions. Galois theory mostly only looks at separable extensions. Point is separable extensions you can deal with by using Galois groups whereas purely inseparable extensions the Galois group always turns out to be trivial. Actually there is a non-trivial notion of Galois group for non-separable extensions. However there's a complication because the group is no longer a finite group but something called an algebraic group scheme. So if you've got a normal extension that need not be separable it actually has a sort of Galois group scheme and you can push through a sort of analogue of Galois theory for it but we won't worry about that. In this course we'll only be looking at separable extensions and only looking at discrete Galois groups. Okay so the next lecture we'll be putting together the normal extensions we talked about from the separable extensions we talked about in order to define Galois extensions which is what Galois theory is mostly about.


Thanks, I want to thank the organizers for inviting me and thank Alon and Karen for covering so much ground before I start so that I can focus on a couple of narrower issues. I want to start with just a picture, which is not going to be a surprise to anybody here, but which shows non-agricultural employment labor force of the active labor force at the country level where the vertical axis is the share who are own account workers and the horizontal axis is the share who are employers and the square boxes are sub-Saharan Africa and the diamonds are Europe. Basically the point is half of the labor force in sub-Saharan Africa is an own account worker, very large numbers of self-employed, at least in the cross-section and we can ask whether this is true in longitudinally as well, but at least in the cross-section development is a process of moving from the upper left towards the lower right, that is firm sizes grow, the large firms become larger as incomes rise, at least in the cross-section. So what do we know about moving downward and to the right on the graph? I would argue not very much, at least yet anyway. And what I want to talk about today is some of the small progress that we've made and why progress is so difficult using the techniques and methods that have been popular in the last ten years, particularly field experiments and what's out there and what's going on now and what I see as a very new and exciting area. Let me step back and say I think if I look back thirty years and ask about development research, my view is that firms have been tremendously understudied and have been sort of marginalized in the research agenda. This reflects I think Santiago's point this morning that productivity matters even for things if we think about inequality and so forth, we have to think about what's going on with firms, what's going on with the private sector. So we can ask a series of questions, where do large employers come from? Are large firms born? Can they be built? Are exports necessary to produce large firms, to generate large firms and so forth? I want to focus on one and this is far from an exhaustive list. I want to focus on one, do the micro ever become medium or even small, what do we know about that? Well, we can think about just a standard AKL production function. Firmers take capital and labor, they combine it with technology, ability, other kinds of other ways that they become more productive and we ask what are the constraints to growth? Well, it's likely all three of these. It's likely labor, capital and skills or technology. I'm going to focus first on capital constraints given that I have limited time and also for a point that I'll make later, I'll say something about the A part, the technology or ability part of the production function. So this is a place, Alon said that the micro has disconnected from the macro. I think in firms research, this is a place where the macro has sort of driven in the last three or four or five years especially a renewed interest in firms and especially in large firms. So at the macro level, there's evidence of serious misallocation of resources across firms and across sectors and across individuals. Banerjee and the Flo's handbook chapter pointed this out, Cenk Deshe and Pete Cleanel pick up on it looking at firms in India and India, China and comparing them with the U.S. in a 2008 QJAE paper. That paper's probably done more to generate research and development on firms than anything that's been done in the last 10 or 15 years. We've known for a long time or we've thought for a long time that there are constraints on access to credit, constraints on capital, particularly among the poor, but until recently I'd argue that convincing evidence on this has been lacking. So what does the more recent evidence say? So I want to say I think there's something of a puzzle from several field experiments and I've listed self-servingly three that I've been involved in here in Sri Lanka, Ghana and Mexico, but there are others as well. We have evidence of quite high marginal returns to capital in small enterprises. So these are all projects which were field experiments in which capital was given to micro-enterprise owners, existing micro-enterprise owners, and we look at what happens to profitability sales, other measures of outcomes for these firms. The Sri Lanka work was the first, this is all work that I've done with David McKenzie and others, the Sri Lanka work with Suresh Damell as well. The Sri Lanka work was the earliest, we've done a six-year follow-up, we find continued higher returns among the people that got a small grant six years earlier, we're just about to go to the field with a ten-year follow-up on these same firms. But we find returns of around 6% per month much higher than microfinance costs, or microfinance interest rates. Similarly in Ghana, similarly in Mexico, we find marginal returns which are far in excess of standard interest rates. And yet, we now also have several field experiments on microfinance itself. There was a special issue of the AEJ applied in January 2015 that reported on six of these, D-Mexico, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Mongolia, maybe they're only five, I think they're worth, maybe either I've missed one or they're only five. But in any case, reported on several of these. And I think the takeaway from that is that the effect of microfinance on businesses and on firms is fairly modest, it's underwhelming. And so there's a puzzle. If firms have really high returns to capital, why is microfinance not having a larger effect? Why don't we see a larger effect? So puzzle is a good result. And I think it's an example of how the research gets pushed forward when we have evidence that people find credible and that they're able to move back and forth on. The puzzle stimulates thinking about why the differences are there. And I think there are a couple of interesting experiments, one that's underway now, but one that's by Erica Field and others that was published in the AER last year, where they said, look, maybe what's going on here is that the need to start repaying immediately on these microfinance loans is a constraint to risk taking. I can't make an investment that has any kind of long-term return because long-term, even two months or three months, return because I have to start paying right away. So they offered a subset of the borrowers a two-month grace period. They show up for the loan, unannounced, they're offered a two-month grace period. They don't have to start making payments for a period of two months. And what do they find? The good news is it works. Borrowers who have the grace period invest very differently. They invest more in the business. They take riskier investments, and those riskier investments have much higher returns. They estimate the returns of around 9% a month from the investments that are made by the people who are given the grace period. But the bad news is that default rates also go up from about 2% to about 9%. And when they sort of put the number to it and look at the numbers and develop a sort of very simple structural model to ask, does it make sense for microfinance institutions to offer this kind of a contract, they say no. So obviously if they offered it, they'd have to raise interest rates. If they raise interest rates, they're adverse selection, moral hazard problems, and so forth. And they sort of take that through a model and they say, by the time they get to where the equilibrium interest rate would have to be given the selection process as we go, no one would be left to take loans at that interest rate. But I think this does at least say maybe there's something, and this is far from the final word, but I think it's a way of saying that... This is an area where I see there's been some progress with the methodologies that have been quite common in recent years with the experimental techniques. It's an area where the experimental techniques have taken us forward. But capital is the easy one, because if I believe that the only constraint to the enterprise is capital, there's only one form of capital that matters. I just give them cash. Before I go and ask them what do they want to buy, and I buy it for them. So if I believe that's the only constraint, then there's just one thing to design the intervention route. We still talk about external validity, we can do this in different places with different samples, that's still going to matter. But it's a potentially solvable problem. The dimensionality is not too big because there's only one relevant intervention. If I think about the A in AKL production functions, with respect to micro-enterprises, typically we think of this as training for the entrepreneur. David and I have a review of 16 experiments, this is from a few years ago. So at the time, 16 randomized experiments on micro-enterprise training. And the punchline that we take from that is we really haven't learned anything at all from these experiments. And what's the problem? The problem is that there is no single A, it's not like A, you can't give the same training to every populate. Some of these 16 experiments are on university graduates, some are on people who are illiterate, some are women, some are in specific sectors. The obviously some are rural, some are urban. There's so many different contexts. What's relevant as training varies in so many different dimensions that I guess I wonder if we're ever going to make really substantial progress on figuring out what works for training through sort of standardized randomized experiments. I think this is a place where we've reached the limits. Now that's not to say that there aren't some good experiments that we can't learn something and that we can't learn something about specific policies and specific contexts. But are we going to learn something general? It's going to be a whole lot harder because the dimensionality is so much greater when it comes to these. And micro-enterprises are the easy one as well. It's not clear that moving from the upper left to the lower right is about getting small businesses to grow. There is some evidence. John Sutton has done some very interesting work on sort of looking at the histories of large enterprises in several African countries that suggest that most of them started not as micro-enterprises in manufacturing, say, but as traders in some other sector. And then when they started the actual firm that's large, it was large from the beginning. There are a lot fewer large firms, so it's a lot harder to do a large randomized experiment with large firms. They're more challenging to work with. Suresh and Trilanka would occasionally get a call from one of our micro-enterprise panel people who said, who would say, nobody came to visit me last month. Aren't you going to come? I'm doing some work now with large firms in Bangladesh and let me tell you none of them ever call us and say anything like that. In fact, usually what they call and say is you were supposed to come today, don't. It's much more difficult. It's much more challenging to work with large firms in this kind of way. But I think there are other opportunities out there and there's a lot of work that I think is very exciting that's going on now. There's now, I run a very large grant, organized a very large grants program for DFID on private enterprise development in low-income countries. We funded a lot of projects. The International Growth Centers funded a lot of projects. There's now an increasing amount of funding going into this area. And I think there are opportunities in a couplers. There are opportunities in administrative data. Alon mentioned this as well. A lot of firms have very good administrative records. IT costs have fallen a lot faster than analysis costs. There's an opportunity in a sense for us to say you have all these data. You have some people who are able to analyze them, but those people are even busier than we are. If you share the data with us, we'll give you some reports back and we'll help you understand what the data is saying. And we found that some firms at least are willing to open their administrative data under those kinds of terms. Government data also exists in a lot of countries. Unfortunately, at this point, access still tends to be pretty personalized. The program I run is funded by DFID and they want us to fund only things in the 35, now it's 31 low-income countries. We fund things in Brazil because Brazil has very good matched employer-employee data, something that exists in some of the low-income countries but is currently unavailable. So I think there's an opportunity there if we can figure out how to get secure access to those data. But I want to say I think we're beginning to see progress on large firms from a variety of methods. Some of it is experimental. I'm doing some work in Bangladesh and other places in garments that's experimental, but a lot of it is not. I've mentioned John Sutton's enterprise maps. Nick Bloom and co-authors have done a lot of work. Nick and John VanRenen have done work mapping management practices across countries. There's Nick and some others have an experiment on management practices in India. And then I think we're beginning to see a return. When I was in graduate school, industry studies was sort of a pejorative word. It was something that you didn't want to be doing. I think we're beginning to see a return to industry studies. And again, this goes back to something Alan said where I think it's people diving into an industry really trying to understand the institutional structure of the industry, the microanalytics of the industry. And several examples, David Atkin and several others have projects on soccer balls in Pakistan and rug exporting in India. Dan Keniston is doing some work on the brick sector in India, Raka Makavello and Amit Maurya doing work on coffee and so forth, and I'm working with several others on garments and places. And I think we'll begin to see some interesting work coming out of these projects. They're not quick projects. Dan Keniston's been doing survey work for three or four years. I don't think he has a paper yet because the survey work is all set up to kind of thinking about how do I design experiments? How do I think about getting variation? How do I think about using the data? So I think in common with other topics in economics generally, we've had an evolution or at least with development, but we've had an evolution in research methodology shown from theory intensive work and big kind of thinking to more observational data driven work and experimental work. And I think now we're sort of pushing back towards theory. I think the best work that I see is work that's combining experimental work and theory. And so let me just sort of give a couple of thoughts and concluding thoughts on the bigger picture. So when I was in graduate school, I remember somebody one time mentioning Ronald McKinnon, and that person was sort of ridiculed because the idea that capital markets could explain under development was just seen as something that was just crazy.  That couldn't be part of the, that couldn't be part of it. I think we've moved a long way from that. But for the first half of the last 30 years, at least the formal domestic private sector has hardly been on the development agenda. There's been a lot of work on informality since from the 70s. There's been a lot of work on informal firms. There's been work on trade policy and trade. But if we think about the domestic formal private sector, there's been much less. So I expect when we have the 50th anniversary of UNU Wider that we'll see the private sector playing a much bigger role, I think the work that's going on there now finally is catching up with the rest of development. And it's using a mixture of the methods that have been prominent in the last 10 years, experiments and so forth, and new administrative data from various sources. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebrakes.com. 2023, Hip Rape Football Autograph Limited Edition, Series 19 just sold out. This is a dual case break, Ranon Team's number two, so we did number one yesterday, here's number two, and it is a wax party promo break, so at the end, we'll re-Ranomize the customer names that bought in, and number one gets a wax party promo spot. So here's the dice roll, here's the customer names, and the teams, let's roll it, and it is a one and a three, four times, good luck. One, two, three, four, four times, one and a two, one, three, four, four, Carl at the top, or sorry, not Carl, that is Carlos at the top, Carl at the bottom, then we got one and three, four, four, one, two, three, four, four, four, bears and other chiefs. All right, so Carlos Aguirre, you have the bears, Adam with the cowboys, Denise with the Titans, we have Ryan with the Browns, Chad with the Bengals, Joseph with the Packer Seahawks, Ed with the 49ers, Scott with the Jets, Adam Cumberland with the Bills, Chris with the Lions, Ryan with the Vikings, Karen with the Dolphins, John with the Texans, Nessa with the Giants, Adam with the Ravens, Ryan with the Panthers, Greg with the Colts, Joseph with the Bucks, Chad with the Jaguars, Peter with the Raiders, Joseph with the Cardinals, Carl with the Broncos, Joseph with the Rams, Ryan with the Chargers, Will with the Patriots, Chris with the Steelers, Martin with the Falcons, Mark with the Eagles, Willing with the Saints, Nicole with the Commanders, and then Carl with the Chiefs. So if anybody wants to trade, I'll give you guys a quick minute. And yeah, it's probably gonna be an expensive weekend, right? I figure most people are traveling, you know, like I used to, I used to go camping a lot, you know, go to certain places with family for the weekend, or, and then there's people obviously that are probably getting together at home, barbecuing, right? I'm sure the grocery stores will be packed this weekend. Good time to buy cars, right? Isn't like Memorial weekend a good time to buy cars, beds, basically anything. There's always Memorial Day weekend deals, I'd assume. Alrighty guys, no trades then. I'm on a YouTube sticker on there, so no one took them. Yeah, what is the weather gonna be like over there? My mom and a couple of my family members are in Vegas. My niece has a big volleyball tournament at the Rio this weekend, so my mom went to Vegas. I'm like, man, we're a lucky person, right? So she's in Vegas, and right now it's beautiful in Vegas too, it's only like 89, 90 degrees, so it's like perfect. I think here this weekend, I mean, for me in downtown Long Beach, I think it'll be like mid-70s, which would be perfect. Yeah, good weather all around right now, I think. Oh, nice Monday, 84. That is pretty nice. Yeah. Oh no. Starting to do it again. Hopefully it's just, hopefully I can finish this video before it continues to do it again. We have a, we have a Barista Hall, 37 out of 99. Maybe we have to do an update or something, I don't know. It's weird that it's, and how about a Devante Smith? That's a nice green scope rookie autograph. Fly goes fly, it's seven out of 75. It's like a little moth flying around here. Mosquito. All right, so Fly goes fly, Mark Russo with that one.  All right, we have Tony Pollard for the Cowboys. That's a rookie autograph there. And Dallas Cowboys, Adam Liva, or Levy, sir. Cubs lost 9-0, Brewers lost 16-1. Well, either way, I don't think you're happy for either one of those. But Brewers got one run. I don't know. I wasn't keeping up with baseball today. This is that part of the year where like, basketball is about to wind down, hockey is about to wind down, and then it's just really only baseball, up until football season starts, and then you're gonna have basketball and hockey and all of them back in October. Ooh, look at that. What an adjusting field, 75 out of 75. And that is a sell sheet hit. Three-color patch, Chicago Bears going to Carlos. I think if the Celtics somehow win tomorrow, they're winning game seven. It's gonna happen. And look, if any one of those four teams was gonna do a reverse sweep and come back, it's gonna be the Celtics, because they were the higher seed. They were the better team most of the year for the Eastern Conference. So it is not as surprising for me. You know, people will say it's rigged and this and that, but obviously Celtics just remembered that they are the Celtics and they are a better team, technically. So I'm kind of rooting for them to do it, actually. Jameson Williams for the Detroit Lions, out of 175. Lions, that's going to Chris, but yeah, we'll find out tomorrow. Yeah, they would become the 16. Last team to do it was my Kings in 2014. Freshman Fabrics, Devonte Adams, 91 out of 699. There's been four in hockey. There's been one in baseball and then never in basketball. Pretty sure, Rex, I would assume so, but never winning it is, I didn't ever talk about that though, right? Kirk Cousins, I'm not sure, Rex, you want to look it up? 18 out of 20, Minnesota Vikings, Ryan H. But I'm pretty sure across all leagues there's been plenty of teams that have come back down, but it's just they didn't end up winning it, which is sad, like all that work and then you just lose. I think at that point I'd rather just get swept. And we got a book, Debo Samuel, National Chargers Gamecocks to 87, so that's a collegiate booklet and it's not really a real seal, so let's open up the hip parade once you guys can see it. And of course this is going to go to the San Francisco 49ers. It's a nice little Debo 49ers that's going to add. We have a Washington Commanders, or Redskins at the time, of course. Chase Young, 61 out of 99. Washington, put in a call. All right, last box and then we have one more case, guys. And we're going to end it off with a little Desmond Ritter, two-color patch on the top. Autograph there to 125 for the Atlanta Falcons, going to Martin. All right guys, so there you go. Nice solid flow of first case, but wait, there's more guys, another case. All right, first box, George Pickens. Little patch autograph from Limited, numbered to 49. Steelers, that is Chris. We have the Packers, Christian Watson. 34 out of 175. Green Bay Packers is going to Joseph. The 51 Royals, the 1994 Nuggets and the 2013 MAPs, so those three teams were down 3-0, come back to tie it 3-3, but then lose on game seven. Ooh, that's a nice patch autograph, man. Seven out of 10, Malik Wallace, from Impeccable. Titans, going to Denise. What up, Chad? How you doing, buddy? Ooh, you know what this means. I'll show the code a little bit, but send you a $20 gift code. And how about that? My boy, Flygo birds, Jalen Hertz. One, two, three, color patch and autograph, numbered to 99. And go birds, Mark. There you go, man. Got a Devante Smith in the first case, and then he got a Jalen Hertz in the second. So we'll give you this code as well. Why have you gone for the weekend? Ooh! Well, Wild Stuff, what are you doing today, Chad? Are you trying not to come home tonight? What are you doing, huh? What's the plan's like? Stay home, actually watch breaks, buy into breaks, not have to hear her. Telling you to stop, you can't do that. Chad's trying to have a little hangover movie. Trying to make the hangover a real movie. Or your life a real movie, like a hangover. You're watching the Mariners getting rocked right now. You know, I was thinking of, I was talking to the guys because they recently went to an angels game this past weekend, a couple of the guys here. And I've never been to an angels game and I feel like I kind of want to go because it's so cheap and just might as well experience it. Three out of five Jalen Taylor patch autograph. They play the Mariners in a few weeks, probably go on Sunday. I was like, might as well go see someone decent. Tickets are like as cheap as 10 bucks, dude. It's ridiculous. That would like never be Dodger games. Like there are tickets probably that cheap but like you have to sit like super, super far. And here I think you can sit like literally like behind home play view, a little top deck but at least behind home play view. It's wild. And then we have a Alvin Kamara. 35 out of 99. Oh, is that the Yankee game already? Chad? What are you told me about? Maybe I'll go to that game too. That's next weekend though, right? I remember you told me about a Yankee game. Interesting. I'll see if I can get tickets. I have a buddy that sells tickets all the time but I don't know if he's gonna sell the Yankee ones and I assume those tickets would be super expensive. Who are talking about love for the Dolphins? So St. Alvin Kamara was William and then Dolphins is Karen. All right, three more boxes to go. Oh no, the video's messing up again. And I'm almost done too. Please just finish off these last couple boxes and then I don't care about the video. Jamar Gibbs. Nice and Jamar Gibbs I believe was drafted by the Detroit Lions. So that's the Detroit Lions at Chris. Oh yeah, what day is that? Monday? Monday night? Train rides I hear are very, very nice man. It's smooth too. Oh is it fine for you guys? It like just glitches on this side but maybe it's just me. We got Breeze Hall, three color patch in autographs to 29. That looks like a first off the line edition. Jets, Gwyneth Scott. That's good to know Rex, good to know. Last box here. Oh it played Tuesday. So take the drive on Monday, explore and then go to the game on Tuesday, nice. What day are you getting here to LA? And last take guys is a triple threads patch autograph of Tyler Lockett, that's a rookie Tyler Lockett. Seattle Seahawks Joseph. No, I just feel like there must be an update with our OBS software man.  So it's definitely not a potato and the camera is like $2,000. So it's definitely not a bad camera. It's just the, I just think the software is kind of messing up.  And then of course, like I said, let's do the wax party giveaway now. So of course, Dice Roller, there's Scott, Donna Ryan, Roll. It is a five and a one, six times, good luck. And amen number one gets a wax party invites. Six times, one, two, three, four, five, six. Six times, six, six. So 31 sad people, one happy person. And Joseph, congratulations man. You are now invited to the wax party. Well you're guaranteed something and it could be a whole case of NT football, you never know. So appreciate it folks. Again, other wax party promo breaks are on the website here. Take a look. And like I said, a lot of stuff we can still do guys. Appreciate it. Jaspyscasebreaks.com


Rhaid i'n meddwl i'r amser i gyd ar hyn o'r gyfyrdol yn gyfyrdol yn y cyd-ynghoru'r gyfyrdol. Felly, yn fawr i'n mynd eu cyfyrdol o'r gyfyrdol o'r cyfyrdol yn Lleon i'r ymwneud, ac mae'n gydag i'n meddwl i'ch gyrdol o'i gynhyrchu o'r gyfyrdol, o'r gyfyrdol yn gynhyrchol, o'r cyfrifodol yn ysgolio'r gyfyrdol. ac ychwanegol yn gwneud y ffordd o'r amser y bydd y mor hwn o bobl hwn. Mae'r bwysig iawn iddynt yn fawr i'r ffath o'r ffordd, ac mae'n ddadfyniaeth yn gweithio ar y ffordd y bwysig iawn. Felly, rwy'n gweithio i'r rôl o'r parlymydd a'r llwyddon oherwydd byddol i'r ffordd o rhan o'r cyfleu llwyddon. Mae hwn ymlaen i'r parlymydd yn gweithio i'r parlymydd o'r bwysig iawn i'r plwyno. favorites, so esentily, we deal with the consequences of family breakdown in cross border relationships. In our more mobile world, there are many more cross border relationships and families. my office deals with adults, but our focus is on children, their rights, the need to protect them, sometimes from the actions of one or indeed both parents. We try to help find solutions when things go wrong, but we can only deal with people yn ei wneud i gael i gael ethael, ac yn mynd i gael'r gwahod o'r fforiad yma, ych yn ddweud am eu gweithio i'w gwahod o'i gael, ond mae'r gwaith yn ddod. Fyddwn ni'n gweithio i'n credu, ac mae'n ddweud o'r gweithio i gael'r gweithio. Felly, mae'n gweithio i gael arddangos y gael, a'n ddweud â'r gweithio i gael ac yn ddweud o'ch cyfleoedd o'r llwyaf yn ddwy'r gweithio. Sometimes we do actually find a solution to problems involving children and when this happens it's hugely rewarding for the parties involved. Our focus is on making sure that the best interests of the child are to the fore. And I'm glad to say that my office has very good cooperation with Interpol. It goes without saying that when we're informed of a missing child or missing children, we contact Interpol so that no time is lost in alerting the relevant authorities and I very much value the links we have with Interpol in raising the alarm where there is a suspected case of child abduction. Now as you know parental child abduction is a complex area of work with no two cases presenting the same problems or indeed requiring the same solution. The issue of parental child abduction requires a holistic proportion involving the social services, judicial and police engagement. I know that today your focus is on international child abduction so it is a much wider remit than my office where we focus on parental child abduction. That said, the European Parliament is of course concerned about missing children, child trafficking, child abuse and protecting children in a globalised world. A European Parliament study on cross-border parental child abduction points to a constant increase in child abduction legal disputes within the European Union. Now that study calls for the creation of a European public database because some countries already collect data on the reasons behind child abduction and the Parliament study calls on the EU to build a specific database to better acknowledge the number of high conflict separations with a cross-border element. According to an EU Commission study, Belgium and Slovakia are the highest proportion of outgoing return applications for international parental abductions and that's from 2011. Now these are cases where a parent has applied to have their abducted child returned from another jurisdiction. In other research quoted in the study produced by the Parliament, it's interesting to look at the increase in return requests received by central authorities across the European Union. So between the years 2003 and 2008, the number of return requests received by member states rose by 56%. In Germany and France, there was an increase in return requests by 44% and 81% respectively. And in many of the new EU member states, particularly those in central and eastern Europe, the increase in return requests was even greater. For example, the central authority in Poland reported a 372% increase in return requests. Bulgaria moved from having no return requests in 2003 to having 21 in 2008 and Romania had seven times more return requests in 2008 than in 2003. The United Kingdom received significantly more return requests than any other EU member state. We know from missing children Europe that over half of the cases reported to its hotline are children running away from home or care institutions another 37% of children abducted by a parent making parental child abduction a very serious issue. And the key point is how do we ensure that all actors at national and indeed transnational level can work better together to find speedier solutions when a child is abducted. High conflict separation and relationship breakdowns are a key risk factor for parental child abduction. And very often the courts are involved in one or perhaps two countries. In some countries, including member states of the European Union, mediation is part of the process. And in my experience, mediation is an important tool for resolving family disputes with a view to preventing child abduction in the first place. And prevention is better than cure. Mediation can prevent or minimize the personal distress for those involved in very difficult family circumstances. Mediation can also play a role where a child is abducted by a parent, even though it can be difficult to get the parties to the point of sitting down and reaching an agreement about their child or children. Where it works, mediation can help separated parents to maintain their parenting role after a family breakdown has occurred. The cases that come to my office are distressing and difficult. At their core are parents who disagree, often very sharply on many issues with the child caught in the middle of this adult battleground. And when a parent comes to my office, it is usually in desperation. The parent has probably been separated from their child or children and is desperate to restore contact. My job is to help find mutually acceptable solutions in the child's best interest. Mediation is beneficial from two perspectives. Firstly, it gives an alternative path and non-judicial approach to some family conflicts which otherwise get caught up in the complexity of cross-border justice. And secondly, mediation allows us to move away from the very heated emotions which follow when relationships break down. In this highly sensitive area, we need further work on definitions, including how to better define and serve the best interest of the child, because it's not always clear what this means. Here, too, countries differ on whether the voice of the child is actually heard in court proceedings, even though there is widespread agreement that the child's voice should be heard. In cross-border disputes, it's not easy always to ensure that the best interests of the child are respected. If it were, we would not have so many complex, sad and unresolved cases. In my role, I'm acutely conscious of the different legal systems in member states of the European Union, so I know that respecting national law is important. But so, too, is finding solutions where there is a cross-border issue involving two countries and their respective legal systems. We cannot harmonise different national laws rooted in different cultural traditions, but we are required to build bridges between them and to make those bridges really strong. As you will know, a review of the Brussels 2A regulation is underway, and we can expect to see the Commission's proposals shortly. My hope is that the review will address the inherent shortcomings in both interpretation and implementation of the regulation. These include conflicts in court jurisdiction, a lack of definition of habitual residence of the child, frustration or complication of the return of the child due to delays in court proceedings and appeal practices, a lack of enforcement of decisions, and then there are many administrative delays at several levels from competent authorities, police and judicial systems. Improvements are needed in these areas. For example, we need a clear definition of habitual residence. We need timely and clear enforcement of judgements, and specific timeframes for compliance with judgements would be a welcome addition to the regulation. We also need to address how we can get better cooperation between central authorities. Given my role and interest in mediation, you will not be surprised to know that I want to see the role of mediation strengthened in the Brussels 2A regulation. Mediation works best when it is introduced early in the process of resolving conflicts over children, preferably before the parents' relationships over their children breaks down completely. A European Parliament study on cross-border parental child abduction recommends several things, including strengthening the use of mediation in child abduction cases by establishing preventative and remedial mediation schemes. It recommends establishing central specialized courts in EU member states to deal with child abduction cases coupled with better cooperation between the courts from the early stages of proceedings. It also wants specific training for judges and lawyers working on cross-border cases, as is the ability to cooperate with recognized mediation centres also recommended. There are limitations to the mediation procedure. The voluntary nature of mediation implies that both parents must be willing and open to compromise, and sometimes they need to be guided or coaxed to see mediation as a solution for them. I am conscious that while mediation can help, it is not always an option for many different reasons and parties will seek a legal solution. Where this involves courts in different member states, we know that problems can arise and it is really important that at EU level we work towards strengthening judicial networks. Time is of the essence where a child is abducted and separated from a parent. Unfortunately we know that the deadlines set out for the return of a child are not always met. So there are many issues we need to deal with and I want to thank you once again for allowing me to share my work in the European Parliament with you. Anything that can assist families where relationships have broken down to work towards an agreed solution in the interests of their children is well worth pursuing. So I wish you well with your conference today and your ongoing work in this important area of child abduction. Thank you.