Alex Armand, researcher of the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID) of the University of Navarra, has been awarded the award Young Labour Economist 2014 award from the European Association of Labour Economists for a research on conditional cash transfers in Macedonia. NCID is one of eight projects of Institute for Culture and Society, the research center at Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Navarra.

The study, graduate 'Who Wears the Trousers in the Family? Intra-Household Resource Control, Subjective Expectations and Human Capital', analyzes the effect on households of the implementation of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), government programs of social attendance conditional on the actions of the recipients.

Specifically, NCID's researcher evaluated such an initiative in Macedonia, which aims to increase children's participation in secondary Education . 

Gender and expectations

Two aspects were taken into account: the gender of the parent to whom the resources were allocated (father or mother) and the expectations of the returns to schooling. "We found that when the recipient of the financial aid was the mother, the school attendance increased. We also saw that the financial aid was used in Education in households that had high expectations before implementing the program", explains researcher of the ICS.

Alex Armand participated in the annual meeting of the European Association of Labour Economics (EALE), where he presented this work. "This is a good recognition of this research, to which I have dedicated six years", he emphasizes.

Armand, an economist specializing in development and Microeconomics, received his Ph. University College London and spent a period at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (United Kingdom).