748,646 research outputs found
Do Women and Non-economists Add Diversity to Research in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics?
We examine whether interdisciplinary collaboration and the gender diversity of a profession affect scholarly research practices. Our analysis of four industrial relations and labor economics journals shows that decisions to exclude women and minorities, and to use gender or race as explanatory variables, are influenced by authors' gender and disciplinary training. Woman authors are less likely to exclude women from their sample, and non-economists are less likely to exclude women and minorities. While noneconomists are generally less likely to model gender and race explicitly in their empirical work, their statistical methods become more elaborate when they collaborate with economists.Economics Journals; Economics; Economists; Gender; Journals; Labor Economics; Minorities; Women
Transgendered in Alaska: Navigating the Changing Legal Landscape for Change in Gender Petitions
Background: Detecting intracellular bacterial symbionts can be challenging when they persist at very low densities. Wolbachia, a widespread bacterial endosymbiont of invertebrates, is particularly challenging. Although it persists at high titers in many species, in others its densities are far below the detection limit of classic end-point Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). These low-titer infections can be reliably detected by combining PCR with DNA hybridization, but less elaborate strategies based on end-point PCR alone have proven less sensitive or less general. Results: We introduce a multicopy PCR target that allows fast and reliable detection of A-supergroup Wolbachia -even at low infection titers -with standard end-point PCR. The target is a multicopy motif (designated ARM: A-supergroup repeat motif) discovered in the genome of wMel (the Wolbachia in Drosophila melanogaster). ARM is found in at least seven other Wolbachia A-supergroup strains infecting various Drosophila, the wasp Muscidifurax and the tsetse fly Glossina. We demonstrate that end-point PCR targeting ARM can reliably detect both high-and low-titer Wolbachia infections in Drosophila, Glossina and interspecific hybrids. Conclusions: Simple end-point PCR of ARM facilitates detection of low-titer Wolbachia A-supergroup infections. Detecting these infections previously required more elaborate procedures. Our ARM target seems to be a general feature of Wolbachia A-supergroup genomes, unlike other multicopy markers such as insertion sequences (IS)
Model-independent Limits from Spin-dependent WIMP Dark Matter Experiments
Spin-dependent WIMP searches have traditionally presented results within an
odd group approximation and by suppressing one of the spin-dependent
interaction cross sections. We here elaborate on a model-independent analysis
in which spin-dependent interactions with both protons and neutrons are
simultaneously considered. Within this approach, equivalent current limits on
the WIMP-nucleon interaction at WIMP mass of 50 GeV/c are either
pb, pb or ,
depending on the choice of cross section or coupling strength
representation. These limits become less restrictive for either larger or
smaller masses; they are less restrictive than those from the traditional odd
group approximation regardless of WIMP mass. Combination of experimental
results are seen to produce significantly more restrictive limits than those
obtained from any single experiment. Experiments traditionally considered
spin-independent are moreover found to severely limit the spin-dependent phase
space. The extension of this analysis to the case of positive signal
experiments is explored.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Bigger, Better, Faster, More at the LHC
Multijet plus missing energy searches provide universal coverage for theories
that have new colored particles that decay into a dark matter candidate and
jets. These signals appear at the LHC further out on the missing energy tail
than two-to-two scattering indicates. The simplicity of the searches at the LHC
contrasts sharply with the Tevatron where more elaborate searches are necessary
to separate signal from background. The searches presented in this article
effectively distinguish signal from background for any theory where the LSP is
a daughter or granddaughter of the pair-produced colored parent particle
without ever having to consider missing energies less than 400 GeV.Comment: 26 pages, 8 Figures. Minor textual changes, typos fixed and
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MODELLING THE ROMANIAN ECONOMY: SOME DATA PROBLEMS
The version 2005 of the Romanian macromodel (Dobrescu 2005, 2006) was built using data for the period 1990 (sometimes 1989) - 2004. This paper insists on three (probably the most complicated) problems: the evaluation of export, import, foreign capital inflows and exchange rate in euros, since the available information was expressed mainly in USD; the computation of more or less credible series regarding the tangible fixed assets, without which any attempt to elaborate an acceptable production function would inherently fail; the estimation of the alpha coefficient, taking into consideration different sources of labor income of households.model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships
New European tricksters: Polish jokes in the context of European Union labour migration
In the context of contemporary European labour migration, where the most publicised pattern of labour migration sees Eastern European migrants move West, the dominant scholarly interpretation of Polish jokes is not applicable for the analysis of much of the joking by or about the Poles. Humour scholars frequently categorise jokes about ethnic groups into stupid or canny categories, and the Poles have been the butt of stupidity (‘Polack’) jokes in Europe and the United States. Today, in the European Union, Polish stupidity stereotyping in humour is less active and the Polish immigrant is hard working and a threat to indigenous labour, yet joking does not depict this threat in a canny Pole. The article applies the liminal concept of the trickster – an ambiguous border crosser or traveller – to elaborate some of the characteristics of jokes told by and about Polish migrants in the EU, mainly in the British context. A more robust explanatory framework is thus offered than is currently available in humour studies
On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse : An ERP investigation
When reading a text describing an everyday activity, comprehenders build a model of the situation described that includes prior knowledge of the entities, locations, and sequences of actions that typically occur within the event. Previous work has demonstrated that such knowledge guides the processing of incoming information by making event boundaries more or less expected. In the present ERP study, we investigated whether comprehenders’ expectations about event boundaries are influenced by how elaborately common events are described in the context. Participants read short stories in which a common activity (e.g., washing the dishes) was described either in brief or in an elaborate manner. The final sentence contained a target word referring to a more predictable action marking a fine event boundary (e.g., drying) or a less predictable action, marking a coarse event boundary (e.g., jogging). The results revealed a larger N400 effect for coarse event boundaries compared to fine event boundaries, but no interaction with description length. Between 600 and 1000 ms, however, elaborate contexts elicited a larger frontal positivity compared to brief contexts. This effect was largely driven by less predictable targets, marking coarse event boundaries. We interpret the P600 effect as indexing the updating of the situation model at event boundaries, consistent with Event Segmentation Theory (EST). The updating process is more demanding with coarse event boundaries, which presumably require the construction of a new situation model
Estimating Default Probabilities Using Stock Prices: The Swedish Banking Sector During the 1990s Banking Crisis
The growing interest in management of credit risk and estimation of default probabilities has given rise to a range of more or less elaborate credit risk models. Hall and Miles (1990) suggests an approach of estimating failure probabilities based solely on stock market prices. The approach has the advantage of simplicity but relies on market efficiency to hold. In this paper we suggest an extension to the Hall and Miles (1990) model using extreme value theory and apply the extended model to the Swedish financial sector and to individual Swedish banks. The 15 year long sample in our study covers the period of the Swedish banking crisis of the early 1990s. We find a close correspondence between changes in the estimated probabilities of failure and the actual credit events occuring. Credit ratings from major credit rating agencies, on the other hand, are shown to react much less and much slower to credit quality changes.banking crisis; default; credit risk; extreme value theory
How Burdensome are Capital Gains Taxes?
Several recent and provocative studies have described portfolio trading strategies which permit investors to avoid all taxes on capital gains and to shelter a substantial part of their ordinary income as well. Other studies adopt the more traditional view that the capital gains tax raises the effective tax burden on capital income. This paper uses capital gain realization data from the 1982 IRS Individual Tax Model in an effort to distinguish between these views. It shows that for about one-fifth of the investors who realize gains or losses, the ordinary income loss-offset limitations are binding constraints. Since additional gain realizations do not affect these investors' current tax liability, they may be effectively untaxed on capital gains. Another significant group escapes taxation by not reporting realized gains. However, the largest group of investors trades in a less elaborate and more honest manner, realizing and reporting gains without offsetting losses. The capital gains tax may reduce the after-tax return earned by these investors.
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