To Bind or Not to Bind Collectively? Decomposition of Bargained Wage Differences Using Counterfactual Distributions

Collective bargaining agreements still play an important role in the German wage setting system. Both existing theoretical and empirical studies find that collective bargaining leads to higher wages compared to individually agreed ones. However, the impact of collective bargaining on the wage level may be very different along the wage distribution. As unions aim at compressing the wage distribution, one might expect that for covered workers' wages in the lower part of the distribution workers' individual characteristics may be less important than the coverage by a collective contract. In contrast, the relative importance of workers' individual characteristics may rise in the upper part of the wage distribution, whereas the overall wage difference might decline. Using the newly available German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES) 1995 and 2001, a cross-sectional linked employer-employee-dataset from German official statistics, this study analyses the difference between collectively and individually agreed wages using a Machado/Mata (2005) decomposition type technique.collective bargaining; wage structure; wage decomposition; quantile regression

Welfare Enhancing Mergers under Product Differentiation

We follow the duopoly framework with differentiated products as in Singh and Vives (1984) and Zanchettin (2006) and examine the welfare effects of a merger between two asymmetric firms. We find that for quantity competition, the merger increases total welfare if the cost asymmetry falls into a specific range. Furthermore, this parameter range widens if the products are closer substitutes. On the other hand, mergers are never welfare enhancing in this setting when firms compete in prices

Financial Literacy In Developing Countries

This paper includes two parts: a guide to implementing a financial literacy program as well as a survey to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The guide was developed through a literature review on financial literacy interventions in developing countries. Best practices on enrollment, training, and support post training are included. Generally, there is heterogeneity in the results of trainings but those which were the most successful were targeted to the specific needs of different socioeconomic groups. The survey is intended for use by Tostan, a nonprofit in Senegal, and other nonprofits who want to evaluate their financial literacy programs. The survey uses best practices in development economics to try and measure how financial literacy levels, behavior, and wellbeing change depending on involvement in an intervention

Zygotic Expression of the caudal Homolog pal-1 Is Required for Posterior Patterning in Caenorhabditis elegans Embryogenesis

AbstractPrevious work has shown that the Caenorhabditis elegans gene pal-1, a homolog of Drosophila caudal, is required maternally for blastomere specification in the early embryo and postembryonically for tail development in males. We show here that embryonic (zygotic) transcription of pal-1 is also required for posterior patterning during later embryogenesis. Embryos homozygous for strong loss-of-function mutations arrest as nonviable L1 larvae with gross posterior defects. PAL-1 protein produced from zygotic transcripts is expressed dynamically during gastrulation and morphogenesis in specific cells of all major lineages except the germ line. Most expressing cells are undergoing cell movements or forming midline structures or both. Mutant embryos exhibit defects involving most of the expressing cells. Aberrant early cell positions are observed in posterior hypodermis, both in the C-lineage cells that express pal-1 and in the neighboring hypodermal seam cell precursors, which do not, as well as in posterior muscle derived from the C and D lineages. Defects in late gastrulation, ventral hypodermal enclosure, and formation of the rectum result from failures of cell movements of ABp and MS descendants. Limited mosaic analysis supports the view that most of the required pal-1 functions are cell autonomous

Reference Question Data Mining

This exploratory study investigated the feasibility of using reference questions as an important tool in the construction of study guides, instructional outreach, and collection development at a small, four-year university in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The premise for the study was based on the assumption that the content of the reference question and class from which the question came provide more valuable information than the metadata normally captured within reference classification systems (e.g., directional, research). Reference question subjects received at the reference desk were recorded over six months by the reference staff. The authors then analyzed and classified the data to discover patterns in collection use. The resulting report was then disseminated to the reference, collection development, and instructional outreach departments. The findings reveal that this method of reference data classification and timely reporting provides an excellent reference for planning in these library departments

EBSCO Library of Congress Classification Report 2012

This report lists all periodicals subscribed to in 2012 through EBSCO Subscription Services by the University Libraries, University of Rhode Island. Information provided includes title, ISSN, Library of Congress Classification number and name, and account number (for URI, Pell, or CCE). The list is sorted by LC Classification to better show the journals that support each discipline/subject area. Not included here are titles available through online journal packages and reference databases, which now comprise the majority of the Libraries\u27 subscriptions. The journals listed here are those to which the Libraries subscribe to individually, title-by-title, through EBSCO

Targeting Acidic Diseased Tissues by pH-Triggered Membrane-Associated Peptide Folding

The advantages of targeted therapy have motivated many efforts to find distinguishing features between the molecular cell surface landscapes of diseased and normal cells. Typically, the features have been proteins, lipids or carbohydrates, but other approaches are emerging. In this discussion, we examine the use of cell surface acidity as a feature that can be exploited by using pH-sensitive peptide folding to target agents to diseased cell surfaces or cytoplasms