1,083 research outputs found
Lags, Convexity and the Investment-Uncertainty Relationship
The effect that investment lags has on the uncertainty-investment relationship is studied by modifying the Bar-Ilan and Strange (1996) model in a manner that enables analytical solution. It turns out that: (i) If the time lag is sufficiently small, uncertainty affects investment negatively; (ii) A sufficiently large time lag engenders an inverse u-shape relationship between the degree of uncertainty and the profit level that triggers investment; (iii) When such an inverse u- shape exists, the higher is the length of the time lag (or the degree of profit convexity) the wider is the range of a positive uncertainty- investment relationship.Investment, Uncertainty, Time to build
The Baby Boom and World War II: The Role of Labor Market Experience
The past century has witnessed major changes in the economic choices of American women. Over the long term, there has been a marked trend towards lower fertility and higher female labor force participation. However, change did not occur in a uniform fashion: during the post-war Baby Boom, fertility rates increased substantially, until the long-term downward trend reestablished itself in the 1960s. Similarly, the labor market participation of younger women declined for a while during the same period. What can explain these reversals? In this paper, we propose a joint explanation for these changes through a single shock: the demand for female labor during World War II. Many of the women of the war generation continued to work after the war. We argue that this crowded out younger women from the labor market, who chose to have more children instead.
Entry and exit under uncertainty in the presence of drift
ing the results of Kongsted (1996) in the analysis in Dixit (1989) shows that the negative effect of uncertainty on entry and exit is maximal in the absence of drift.
The delay-time distribution of type-Ia supernovae from Sloan II
We derive the delay-time distribution (DTD) of type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia)
using a sample of 132 SNe Ia, discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II
(SDSS2) among 66,000 galaxies with spectral-based star-formation histories
(SFHs). To recover the best-fit DTD, the SFH of every individual galaxy is
compared, using Poisson statistics, to the number of SNe that it hosted (zero
or one), based on the method introduced in Maoz et al. (2011). This SN sample
differs from the SDSS2 SN Ia sample analyzed by Brandt et al. (2010), using a
related, but different, DTD recovery method. Furthermore, we use a
simulation-based SN detection-efficiency function, and we apply a number of
important corrections to the galaxy SFHs and SN Ia visibility times. The DTD
that we find has 4-sigma detections in all three of its time bins: prompt (t <
420 Myr), intermediate (0.4 2.4 Gyr),
indicating a continuous DTD, and it is among the most accurate and precise
among recent DTD reconstructions. The best-fit power-law form to the recovered
DTD is t^(-1.12+/-0.08), consistent with generic ~t^-1 predictions of SN Ia
progenitor models based on the gravitational-wave induced mergers of binary
white dwarfs. The time integrated number of SNe Ia per formed stellar mass is
N_SN/M = 0.00130 +/- 0.00015 Msun^-1, or about 4% of the stars formed with
initial masses in the 3-8 Msun range. This is lower than, but largely
consistent with, several recent DTD estimates based on SN rates in galaxy
clusters and in local-volume galaxies, and is higher than, but consistent with
N_SN/M estimated by comparing volumetric SN Ia rates to cosmic SFH.Comment: MNRAS, in pres
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