Wage Differentials, Fairness, and Social Comparison: An experimental study of the Co-Employment of Permanent and Temporary Agency Workers†

Recent experimental literature in labor economics shows that fairness concerns make a substantial difference for working decisions. Our study systematically explores how the existence of multiple fairness foci influences wage setting and acceptance thresholds. Particularly, we focus on the effect of horizontal fairness concerns, i.e., the wage comparison among employees. For our experiment, we use an institutional design of wage negotiations among employers, employees and temporary agency workers. Working agencies hire these workers and rent them out to firms. Thereby, we create a heterogeneous background of the labour force. Although temporary agency workers do the same work, typically, they receive lower wages due to the intermediate agency. The results of our laboratory experiments indicate that the availability of information concerning co-employee’s wage offers strongly influences the wage set and participants’ acceptance of contracts. Whereas the relation of average wages is not influenced by the order of the decisions, the absolute level of wages is dependent on the decisions. We find that temporary agency workers who decide on a wage offer after permanent employees receive a premium in addition to their wages, while permanent employees take a cut in wages if they get their wage offer after temporary workers have decided on their offers. These results are more influenced by self-regarding social comparison preferences than by other-regarding horizontal fairness concerns.Experimental economics, horizontal fairness norms, labour economics, social preferences, vertical fairness norms

Testing the stability of fundamental constants with the 199Hg+ single-ion optical clock

Over a two-year duration, we have compared the frequency of the 199Hg+ 5d106s 2S 1/2 (F=0) 5d9 6s2 2D 5/2 (F=2) electric-quadrupole transition at 282 nm with the frequency of the ground-state hyperfine splitting in neutral 133Cs. These measurements show that any fractional time variation of the ratio nu(Cs)/nu(Hg) between the two frequencies is smaller than +/- 7 10^-15 / yr (1 sigma uncertainty). According to recent atomic structure calculations, this sets an upper limit to a possible fractional time variation of g(Cs) m_e / m_p alpha^6.0 at the same level.Comment: 4 pages with 3 figures. RevTeX 4, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

The validity of using ICD-9 codes and pharmacy records to identify patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background: Administrative data is often used to identify patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), yet the validity of this approach is unclear. We sought to develop a predictive model utilizing administrative data to accurately identify patients with COPD. Methods: Sequential logistic regression models were constructed using 9573 patients with postbronchodilator spirometry at two Veterans Affairs medical centers (2003-2007). COPD was defined as: 1) FEV1/FVC <0.70, and 2) FEV1/FVC < lower limits of normal. Model inputs included age, outpatient or inpatient COPD-related ICD-9 codes, and the number of metered does inhalers (MDI) prescribed over the one year prior to and one year post spirometry. Model performance was assessed using standard criteria. Results: 4564 of 9573 patients (47.7%) had an FEV1/FVC < 0.70. The presence of ≥1 outpatient COPD visit had a sensitivity of 76% and specificity of 67%; the AUC was 0.75 (95% CI 0.74-0.76). Adding the use of albuterol MDI increased the AUC of this model to 0.76 (95% CI 0.75-0.77) while the addition of ipratropium bromide MDI increased the AUC to 0.77 (95% CI 0.76-0.78). The best performing model included: ≥6 albuterol MDI, ≥3 ipratropium MDI, ≥1 outpatient ICD-9 code, ≥1 inpatient ICD-9 code, and age, achieving an AUC of 0.79 (95% CI 0.78-0.80). Conclusion: Commonly used definitions of COPD in observational studies misclassify the majority of patients as having COPD. Using multiple diagnostic codes in combination with pharmacy data improves the ability to accurately identify patients with COPD.Department of Veterans Affairs, Health Services Research and Development (DHA), American Lung Association (CI- 51755-N) awarded to DHA, the American Thoracic Society Fellow Career Development AwardPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84155/1/Cooke - ICD9 validity in COPD.pd

Fitting heavy tailed distributions: the poweRlaw package

Over the last few years, the power law distribution has been used as the data generating mechanism in many disparate fields. However, at times the techniques used to fit the power law distribution have been inappropriate. This paper describes the poweRlaw R package, which makes fitting power laws and other heavy-tailed distributions straightforward. This package contains R functions for fitting, comparing and visualising heavy tailed distributions. Overall, it provides a principled approach to power law fitting.Comment: The code for this paper can be found at https://github.com/csgillespie/poweRla

Reliability demonstration for safety-critical systems

This paper suggests a new model for reliability demonstration of safety-critical systems, based on the TRW Software Reliability Theory. The paper describes the model; the test equipment required and test strategies based on the various constraints occurring during software development. The paper also compares a new testing method, Single Risk Sequential Testing (SRST), with the standard Probability Ratio Sequential Testing method (PRST), and concludes that: • SRST provides higher chances of success than PRST • SRST takes less time to complete than PRST • SRST satisfies the consumer risk criterion, whereas PRST provides a much smaller consumer risk than the requirement