Alex Armand, Research Fellow at the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID), University of Navarra, received the 2014 Young Labour Economist Award from the European Association of Labour Economists for research on Conditional Cash Transfer in Macedonia. NCID is one of eight projects at the Institute for Culture and Society, the University of Navarra's Humanities and Social Sciences research center.

The study, entitled ‘Who Wears the Trousers in the Family? Intra-Household Resource Control, Subjective Expectations and Human Capital', analyzes the household effects of implementing Conditional Cash Transfers, which correspond to government welfare programs that are conditional based on the receivers' actions.

The NCID researcher specifically evaluated an initiative of this kind in Macedonia, which aims to increase the participation of children in secondary education.

Gender and expectations

Two aspects were considered, including the gender of the parent to which the resources were assigned (mother or father) and the schooling returns expectations. As Armand explained, "We found that when mothers received the aid, school attendance increased. Moreover, we found that the aid was spent on education in homes that had high expectations before carrying out the program."

Alex Armand presented this study at the European Association of Labour Economics (EALE)'s annual meeting. Reacting to this award, he said, "This is a wonderful recognition of the research on which I have spent six years."

Armand is an economist with a focus on Development Microeconomics. He received his Ph.D. from University College London and conducted a research stay at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (United Kingdom).