Research Archive

Natural Language Processing

These pages document some of the natural language processing tools that we are using to develop a digital representation of the Sicilian language at Napizia. Recent research in the field has focused on making neural machine translation work for low-resource languages (i.e. languages for which little parallel text is available).

Sicilian is a good case study for several reasons. First, the language has been continuously recorded since the Sicilian School of Poets joined the imperial court of Frederick II in the 13th century. And in our times, Arba Sicula has spent the past 40 years translating Sicilian literature into English (among its numerous activities to promote the Sicilian language).

Arba Sicula and Arthur Dieli kindly contributed their translations to the project. And the "Standard Sicilian" that Arba Sicula developed is what made it possible to develop high-quality corpus of Sicilian-English parallel text.

We're making good progress, so check out our Tradutturi Sicilianu.

Sicilian Language

To bring the beauty of the Sicilian language to the world, we're developing a Sicilian Translator and we're annotating the Dieli Dictionary with poems, proverbs and prose.

Arba Sicula and Arthur Dieli have kindly supplied the translations necessary to assemble the dataset of parallel text necessary to develop a machine translator. And they have provided a lot of support and encouragement.

So come to Napizia and try our Tradutturi Sicilianu. And discover the beauty of the Sicilian language by reading the poetry, proverbs and prose in Chiù dâ Palora.

in Sicilianu

• "All Is Well" by Isaac Leib Peretz   (2024, AS v.45)
• "With Disrespect, you Respect the Law"   (2021, AS v.42)
• "The "Gift of Frederick" is in Learn Sicilian II"   (2021, AS v.42)
• "What Is to Be Done: In Memory of Arthur Dieli"   (2019, AS v.40)

Working with Arba Sicula has given me the opportunity to write in Sicilian. It has been a pleasure.

Labor Law

After the 2008 Financial Crisis triggered a global recession, policymakers in many countries have attempted to increase employment by making their labor market "more flexible." The specific proposals differ by country, but they share the common theme of reducing worker protections.

In France, reforms that would allow companies to lay off workers more easily, loosen restrictions on working hours, reduce overtime payments and reduce severance payments sparked the Nuit debout protests in the spring of 2016.

Italy's experience with labor market liberalization (following passage of the "Biagi Law" in 2003) suggests that such reforms will not increase employment rates, because macroeconomic growth affects employment rates far more than labor market regulation does.

In the United States, states with higher minimum wage rates tend to have higher employment rates. They also tend to have higher average annual pay.

More broadly, OECD countries with stronger protection against dismissal tend to have higher employment rates. And OECD countries with tighter regulation on temporary forms of employment tend to have higher male employment rates, but lower female employment rates.

AnX11 Phone Project

• AnX11 Phone Project   (17 Oct 2016)
• Debian on Android

This documentation project explains how to install and configure Debian on a rooted Android phone. Installing desktop software onto a phone provides a nice "on the go" solution and it's a relaxing way to work.

As an economist with Debian installed on my Android phone, I can run R scripts and Perl scripts directly on the phone itself. And, if I'm teaching class, I can project X11 applications like wxMaxima and Gretl from my phone onto the screen behind me. Students may follow my lead on their laptop computers. Or -- if students also have Debian installed on their phones -- they can follow my lead on their phones.

Mortgage Default

• Focus on New York City   (Fall 2014,   NYER)
• Who Defaults on their Home Mortgage?   (Fall 2012,   NYER)
• Who Enters the Foreclosure Process?   (01 Oct 2011)
• presentation   (10 Mar 2012)
• 90-Day Pre-Foreclosure Notice Report   (07 Oct 2010,   NYSBD)
• project page
• co-author:   S. MacDonald

In 2010, the NYS Banking Dept. (NYSBD) began collecting data on every home mortgage default and foreclosure in the New York State for the purpose of transmitting it to non-profit mortgage counselors. We paired the NYSBD's data with data on originations from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) enables us to compare borrowers who defaulted to those who did not.

Like many previous studies, we found strong racial and ethnic disparities in lending practices and our analysis shows that the same disparities reappear in the pre-foreclosure filing data. This finding suggests that lending disparities contributed to the higher default rates that we observe among black and Latino borrowers.

Employment growth appears to have the strongest effect on the home mortgage default rate. In the absence of employment growth, even large principal balance reductions would only have a minimal effect on the rate of mortgage default.

Forecasting

• Forecasting the New York State Economy ...   (Fall 2010,   NYER)
• presentation (28 Feb 2010)
• co-author:   S. MacDonald

While working at the NYSBD, Sean MacDonald and I developed coincident indices and used those indices to forecast the state of the NYS labor market and the financial health of NYS banks.

Income Inequality

• A Contribution to the Theory of Income Inequality   (21 Jun 2009)

In the economic development literature, much work is devoted to the question of whether income inequality will widen or narrow as an economy grows over time. Most models assume inequality, but in this paper I developed a model that is both grounded in growth theory and capable of generating all degrees of income inequality (from complete equality to complete inequality).

Health Outcomes

• Evaluation of the Pilot Partnership ...   (10 Oct 2006,   HASA and HHC)
• co-authors:   S. Adams, T. Hamilton and A. Gabor

This is a feasibility report on case management partnerships between New York City's HIV-AIDS Services Administration and the Health and Hospitals Corporation. The two organizations collaborated to help mutual clients persist in medical and behavioral health care and to meet the long-term housing needs of mutual clients.

By creating a formal working relationship between HASA and HHC-COBRA programs, the pilot eliminated duplication of effort, kept clients connected to medical and behavioral health care and helped clients who needed to relocate avoid emergency housing.