Does Centralised Wage Setting Lead into Higher Taxation

This paper studies implications of centralised wage setting for the level of taxation and public expenditure in an analytical model with unionised labour markets. We extend the previous studies by allowing for both demand and supply effects of labour. Also, in addition to the standard social planner approach, we consider a political economy set up, where the tax rate is chosen to maximise the welfare of a median voter. Our results suggest that when working hours are endogenous, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the labour tax rate is ambiguous. In particular, if the marginal utility from public provision is sufficiently low, centralised wage setting implies lower optimal tax rate on labour. This is due to a 'budgetary discipline effect', which reduces the optimal tax rate preferred by the median voter under centralised wage setting.Taxation, wage setting, public expenditure, median voter

Computable General Equilibrium Models in Economics: A Survey on Theoretical Foundations and Applications

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have become an increasingly popular tool in macroeconomic analysis. The model tradition has proved particularly suitable for the study of structural changes in economy and long-run impacts of policy measures. The main fields of application include trade policy, fiscal policy, development strategies and environmental and energy policies. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the modeling tradition, its theoretical foundation, characteristic features and main applications. Because the paper serves as a preliminary report to the Government Institute for Economic Research particular attention is paid to the possibilities CGE-modelling offers to research in public economics

On the l^2 decoupling theorem

The purpose of this thesis is to act as a guide for the 2017 article A study guide for the l^2 decoupling theorem by J. Bourgain and C. Demeter. However, this thesis is self-sufficient. The aim has been to give a detailed presentation and handle the weight exponent E especially carefully in the arguments. We begin by presenting the decoupling inequality of the l^2 decoupling theorem and the associated Fourier transform -like operator. The theorem concerns finding a satisfactory upper bound for the decoupling constant related to the inequality. We also list some general results that a graduate student might not be very familiar with; among them are a few consequences of Hölder's inequality. We move on to study the properties of the weight functions that we use in the L^p-norms in the decoupling. We present two operator lemmas to which we can reduce many of our arguments. The other lemma gives us the opportunity to use certain Schwartz functions in our proofs. We then move on to prove the l^2 decoupling theorem in the lower range 2<= p <= (2n)/(n-1). This includes the definition of multilinear decoupling constants and an iterative process

Perceptions of Safety Within the Bridgewater State University Community

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to examine administration, faculty, staff, and student’s perceptions of safety within a large university community in the American Northeast. Previous research has been done at other educational institutions primarily in the American South and West, but research such as this has been limited in the Northeastern area of the United States. An online survey was sent using a combination of convenient and snowball sampling. Participants in this survey include administration, faculty, staff, and students from the campus community. Results suggest that individuals who took this survey felt moderately safe while on campus. Possible applications that may increase a feeling of safety may include increased environmental elements (i.e. concrete barriers), additional mechanisms (i.e. badging systems), and campus-wide training (i.e. evacuation drills

Response to intervention: concerns of teacher fidelity

The present study set out to fill a gap in the current body of research addressing the concern of teacher fidelity within the Response to Intervention model. It examined the effect of the formal recording of interventions by teachers for students in RTI Tier I of reading in an attempt to control for teacher fidelity. The sample was drawn from the kindergarten and first grade of eight elementary schools in a large suburban public school district in southern New Jersey. The students\u27 reading achievement was assessed through the use of pre and post scores of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy kindergarten and first grade measures. It was hypothesized the students of teachers who formally recorded interventions implemented would achieve greater gains as reflected in post DIBELS scores, than those students of teachers who were not asked to formally document interventions implemented. Contrary to the hypothesis, the control group made statistically significant gains on the kindergarten DIBELS measure

JT90 thermal barrier coated vanes

The technology of plasma sprayed thermal barrier coatings applied to turbine vane platforms in modern high temperature commercial engines was advanced to the point of demonstrated feasibility for application to commercial aircraft engines. The three thermal barrier coatings refined under this program are zirconia stabilized with twenty-one percent magnesia (21% MSZ), six percent yttria (6% YSZ), and twenty percent yttria (20% YSZ). Improvement in thermal cyclic endurance by a factor of 40 times was demonstrated in rig tests. A cooling system evolved during the program which featured air impingement cooling for the vane platforms rather than film cooling. The impingement cooling system, in combination with the thermal barrier coatings, reduced platform cooling air requirements by 44% relative to the current film cooling system. Improved durability and reduced cooling air requirements were demonstrated in rig and engine endurance tests. Two engine tests were conducted, one of 1000 cycles and the other of 1500 cycles. All three coatings applied to vanes fabricated with the final cooling system configuration completed the final 1500 cycle engine endurance test. Results of this test clearly demonstrated the durability of the 6% YSZ coating which was in very good condition after the test. The 21% MSZ and 20% YSZ coatings had numerous occurrences of significant spalling in the test

Atomistic simulation and modeling of the interface between -cellulose nanocrystal elementary fibrils

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are ubiquitous in some of nature’s toughest biological nanocomposites such as wood and bacterial cell walls [1] and exhibit outstanding mechanical properties rivaling those of synthetic materials such as Kevlar [2]. Although the impressive elastic properties of CNCs and mechanical properties of macroscale cellulosic materials have been well characterized, a molecular level understanding of how cellulose-based materials achieve high fracture toughness with relatively weak secondary interactions remains to be explained. Earlier study [3] focused on understanding the molecular interactions within individual CNCs and revealed key information on the types of molecular mechanisms at work in these systems, as well as size effects that govern the optimal size of CNCs from a fracture perspective. To further understand this molecular level of how CNCs develop high resistance to failure, here we present new analyses based on atomistic, steered molecular dynamics (SMD) simulations and theoretical considerations to calculate the fracture energy of interfaces between CNCs. In this work, CNCs of “elementary size” (36 individual cellulose chains arranged hexagonally [4]) are considered as they are commonly found and extracted from biological systems. This study focuses on understanding the (200)–(200) and (110)–(110) interfaces between elementary fibrils as the (200) and (110) surfaces are exposed in this particular arrangement of cellulose chains. In order to better understand the interfaces between CNC elementary fibrils, simulations were performed using SMD techniques to forcibly separate the crystals both perpendicular (i.e., pulling apart) and parallel (i.e., shearing) to the interfaces. Pull-apart simulations show that the (110)–(110) interface has a higher fracture energy than the (200)–(200) interface, which is attributed to different molecular interactions dominating at the interface; hydrogen bonding for (110)–(110) and van der Waals for (200)–(200). Shearing simulations show a common mechanism and common shape of the shear energy landscape for both the (110)–(110) and (200)–(200) interfaces. During shearing, fibrils move between local energy minima along the interface due to the geometry of the surfaces, while also exhibiting an underlying increase in energy. The distance between these energy minimums is observed to be a function of the surface geometry, whereas the magnitude of the energy -barrier that must be overcome to reach the next minimum is a function of the dominant molecular interaction mechanism. Based on the results of SMD simulations, analytical models are proposed to describe the energy landscape of interactions between CNC elementary fibrils. These analytical models will allow us to develop a coarse-grained description of CNC elementary fibrils that is capable of modeling the potential energy landscape of both separation and shearing of adjacent fibrils. This will be useful in future work that will focus on an examination of macroscale cellulosic materials, such as CNC neat films and CNC-polymer composites, which would be impractical to explore with fully atomistic simulations. REFERENCES [1] Fratzl, P., Weinkamer, R. Prog. Mater. Sci. 2007, 52(8), 1263−1334. [2] Moon, R.J., Martini, A., Nairn, J., Simonsen, J., Youngblood, J. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2011, 40(7), 3941−3994. [3] Sinko, R., Mishra, S., Ruiz, L., Brandis, N., Keten, S. ACS Macro Letters. 2014, 3(1), 64–69. [4] Habibi, Y., Lucia, L.A., Rojas, O.J. Chem. Rev. 2010, 110(6), 3479−3500

Fractional Bloom boundedness and compactness of commutators

Let $T$ be a non-degenerate Calder\'on-Zygmund operator and let $b:\mathbb{R}^d\to\mathbb{C}$ be locally integrable. Let $1<p\leq q<\infty$ and let $\mu^p\in A_p$ and $\lambda^q\in A_q,$ where $A_{p}$ denotes the usual class of Muckenhoupt weights. We show that \begin{align*} \|[b,T]\|_{L^p_{\mu}\to L^q_{\lambda}}\sim \|b\|_{\operatorname{BMO}_{\nu}^{\alpha}},\qquad [b,T]\in \mathcal{K}(L^p_{\mu}, L^q_{\lambda})\quad\mbox{iff}\quad b\in \operatorname{VMO}_{\nu}^{\alpha}, \end{align*} where $L^p_\mu=L^p(\mu^p)$ and $\alpha/d = 1/p-1/q,$ , the symbol $\mathcal{K}$ stands for the class of compact operators between the given spaces, and the fractional weighted $\operatorname{BMO}_{\nu}^{\alpha}$ and $\operatorname{VMO}_{\nu}^{\alpha}$ spaces are defined through the following fractional oscillation and Bloom weight \begin{align*} \mathcal{O}_{\nu}^{\alpha}(b;Q) = \nu^{-\alpha/d}(Q)\Big(\frac{1}{\nu(Q)}\int_Q |b-\langle b\rangle_Q|\Big),\qquad \nu = \big(\frac{\mu}{\lambda}\big)^{\beta},\quad \beta = (1+\alpha/d)^{-1}. \end{align*} The key novelty is dealing with the off-diagonal range $p<q$, whereas the case $p=q$ was previously studied by Lacey and Li. However, another novelty in both cases is that our approach allows complex-valued functions $b$, while other arguments based on the median of $b$ on a set are inherently real-valued.Comment: V2: 26 pages, minor revision according to referee comments, accepted for publication in Forum Mathematicum. V1:26 page