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Through the case of Blanca Sinchi, the following analysis presents valuation criteria that have resulted in the invisibility of social actors and cultural patrimony (cultural heritage) elements, and some contradictions in their acknowledgment process. In addition, the paper explains how architecture, among other historic assets, has made women and their contributions invisible.

Bibliographic analysis and semi-structured interviews were carried out to theorize about the thermodynamic system of lime to propose a matri-lineal system category and expand the understanding of the participation of women in the receipt, management and transmission of what is called patrimony.

In heritage places, such as Cuenca (Ecuador), cultural richness extends from the Historic Center to the rest of the territory and its actors. However, there are intrinsic elements, such as unknown, but fundamental, oral or family traditions associated with the role of women. The case of Blanca Sinchi and lime is evidence of this, as it shows the typical scenario affected by gender and by disparate power dynamics that do not consider desirable attributes (authenticity, integrity, identity, bequest, option, existence, among others) in the conservation of architectural patrimony. A deep redefinition process, or even a change in the valuation system, is needed. Also, the history behind built heritage items must be explored to find the contributions made by women.

Proposing a matri-lineal system category to expand the understanding of the participation of women in the receipt, management and transmission of what is called patrimony, allows redefining and rewriting local and global history, acknowledging the role of women. In this way, the proposal questions not only the hegemony of the term “cultural patrimony” pigeonholed in paternal legacy but also the term “cultural heritage” as a synonym and framework that, while expanding material values, it does not effectively include, at least for Ibero-Romance language territories, the broad set of tangible and intangible values, as well as the know-how and skills of artisans.

The paper investigates the determinants of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) bias of the wage return to graduate education for high-school workers in Portugal.

The study uses matched employer-employee data for Portugal, over the 2002–2012 period, to estimate a wage-schooling model that controls not only for individual observed characteristics, firm observed characteristics and year fixed effects, but also for three high-dimensional vectors of fixed effects – one for employees, one for employers and one for job titles.

The main results are the following. First, disregarding individual fixed effects is highly problematic, accounting for 48.5% of the OLS bias. Second, disregarding firm fixed effects is also problematic, accounting for 12.3% of the OLS bias.

The implication for the studies in the labor-supply literature that estimate, by means of instrumental variables, the wage returns to in-school work or to on-the-job schooling is that an instrument dealing with employee’s unobserved ability only may fail to meet the exclusion restriction.

Take the typical instrument based on a policy reform that changes the compulsory schooling level in the population. This instrument may well be argued to be correlated with the education of the employee and uncorrelated with the unobserved ability of the employee, but unfortunately it cannot be seen as orthogonal to the unobserved ability of the employer because of its correlation with the (unobserved) education of the manager. This is a simple corollary of the fact that the employee and the manager belong, in general, to the same population.

Individuals invest a considerable amount of resources in education, which is seen to have positive effects on several dimensions of individual life. Yet, the estimation of these effects is still surrounded by technical difficulties.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that uses the Gelbach decomposition to investigate the determinants of the OLS bias of the wage return to graduate education for high-school workers.

The common language behind vernacular architecture only seems to be maintained in societies that preserve a traditional way of life. Changes in these societies can threaten their cultural heritage, while research may be a tool for its conservation and enhancement. In this paper, the habitat of a Mossi community is therefore studied as a first stage in analysing the possibilities of its maintenance.

After a previous study, data collection from a stay in Baasneere (Burkina Faso) and the analysis of 32 traditional residential units were completed. The research showed some common features which, when compared against the bibliography reviewed, could be defined as characteristic of the traditional architecture of this culture.

The home for a family unit consisted in an enclosure formed by the grouping of adobe constructions around a courtyard. As the family grew so did the compound, in a relationship directly linking the scales of architecture and the levels of kinship. The main daily activities took place in the courtyards while the individual interior spaces were understood as private shelters. Other typologies such as granaries, kitchens, warehouses and sheds were also analysed.

Some features of Mossi architecture already described in the existing bibliography were verified in the Baasneere case studies, showing that this tradition is still preserved. With a multidisciplinary approach, the house was examined not so much from the perspective of construction, but of its cultural configuration.