Altruism and Relational Incentives in the Workplace

This paper studies how altruism between managers and employees affects relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The con- tract may contain two types of incentives for the agent to work hard: a bonus and a threat of dismissal. We find that altruism undermines the credibility of a threat of dis- missal but strengthens the credibility of a bonus. Among others, these two mechanisms imply that higher altruism sometimes leads to higher bonuses, while lower altruism may increase productivity and players utility in equilibrium

The desire for impact

This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make firms in a competitive labor market act as monopsonists, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the hold-up problem in firm-specific investment, can make it profitable for an employer to give workers autonomy in effort or task choice, and can propagate shocks to unemployment

Education and Efficient Redistribution

Should education be subsidized for the purpose of redistribution? The usual argument against subsidies to education above the primary level is that the rich take up most education, so a subsidy would increase inequality. We show that there is a counteracting effect: an increase in the stock of human capital reduces the return to human capital and, therefore, pre-tax income inequality decreases. We consider a Walrasian world with perfect capital and insurance markets. Hence, in the absence of a strive for redistribution, the market generates the efficient level of investment in human capital. When there is a demand for redistribution, the general equilibrium effects on relative wages might make a subsidy to education an ingredient of a second-best optimal redistribution policy. Stimulating human capital formation results in a compression of the wage distribution, and hence reduces the need for distortionary redistributive taxation. We also study the political viability of education subsidies

Realization of the Optimal Universal Quantum Entangler

We present the first experimental demonstration of the ''optimal'' and ''universal'' quantum entangling process involving qubits encoded in the polarization of single photons. The structure of the ''quantum entangling machine'' consists of the quantum injected optical parametric amplifier by which the contextual realization of the 1->2 universal quantum cloning and of the universal NOT (U-NOT) gate has also been achieved.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review

A note on bound entanglement and local realism

We show using a numerical approach that gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of local realism, that the bound entangled state presented in Bennett et. al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 5385 (1999) admits a local and realistic description. We also find the lowest possible amount of some appropriate entangled state that must be ad-mixed to the bound entangled state so that the resulting density operator has no local and realistic description and as such can be useful in quantum communication and quantum computation.Comment: 5 page

Preserving entanglement under decoherence and sandwiching all separable states

Every entangled state can be perturbed, for instance by decoherence, and stay entangled. For a large class of pure entangled states, we show how large the perturbation can be. Our class includes all pure bipartite and all maximally entangled states. For an entangled state, E, the constucted neighborhood of entangled states is the region outside two parallel hyperplanes, which sandwich the set of all separable states. The states for which these neighborhoods are largest are the maximally entangled ones. As the number of particles, or the dimensions of the Hilbert spaces for two of the particles increases, the distance between two of the hyperplanes which sandwich the separable states goes to zero. It is easy to decide if a state Q is in the neighborhood of entangled states we construct for an entangled state E. One merely has to check if the trace of EQ is greater than a constant which depends upon E and which we determine.Comment: Corrected first author's e-mail address. All the rest remains unchange

Impact of extreme weather events frequency and intensity in shaping phytoplankton communities

Lake habitats and communities can often be correlated with general morphometric and geographic characteristics such as depth, latitude, altitude, or watershed area. Further, communities are typically correlated with average environmental conditions such as seasonal temperature and nutrient levels. The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (rain and wind) are typically not encompassed by average environmental descriptors, yet, can modify the physical habitats of lakes, significantly influencing phytoplankton growth and survival. We tested the hypothesis that lakes with a higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have a functionally different phytoplankton assemblage from lakes with a lower frequency of extreme weather events. We compiled long-term (mean = 20±13 years, range 0.6-44 years) phytoplankton datasets for 22 lakes across a wide gradient of altitude, latitude, depth, and trophic state. We classified the phytoplankton genera into morpho-functional groups and C-S-R strategists, and compared among lake phytoplankton assemblages’ characteristics across the gradient of wind and rain conditions experienced by the lakes. We discuss how the frequency of extreme weather events can affect phytoplankton functional groups, the dominance of differing life history strategies and ultimately community structure. The frequency and intensity of extreme events is expected to increase with climate change, with the potential to drive shifts in phytoplankton composition

\u201cSe\uf1oras y Se\uf1ores diputados/ \u2018Onorevoli deputati\u2019. An\ue1lisis y traducci\uf3n al italiano del Diario de Sesiones: I. Situaci\uf3n de comunicaci\uf3n, l\ue9xico, colocaciones y marcadores del discurso\u201d

Sommario. Di questo libro, scritto in collaborazione con colleghi spagnoli ed italiani, oltre che curatori siamo autori del II capitolo. Seguendo la chiave interpretativa di Marina Fern\ue1ndez Lagunilla, la quale considera il linguaggio politico come un \u2018fatto linguistico\u2019 dipendente dalla situazione di comunicazione, l\u2019analisi proposta esplora quegli ambiti dove l\u2019enunciazione politica suppone un interscambio verbale, una comunicazione diretta simile al dialogo, ossia, il dibattito parlamentare. \uc9 un\u2019analisi, dunque, principalmente di tipo linguistico, infatti questo lavoro si occupa pi\uf9 delle caratteristiche formali del linguaggio politico che delle sue finalit\ue0. L\u2019obiettivo del I capitolo \ue8 quello di spiegare il funzionamento del Sistema parlamentare spagnolo, ossia, la \u2018situazione di comunicazione\u2019 che include i principali protagonisti, i meccanismi interni e la relazione tra Governo ed opposizione. Nel secondo capitolo, impiegando le risorse della linguistica contrastiva, si cerca di evidenziare e tradurre in italiano i falsi amici, le parole chiave e testimone, le parole composte ed anche i nomi alterati che presenta il linguaggio politico spagnolo. Nel terzo capitolo, viene analizzato un nutrito numero di \u2018collocazioni\u2019 presenti nel \u2018Diario\u2019 alle quali seguono le collocazioni equivalenti italiane. Il quarto capitolo, infine, \ue8 uno studio dei \u2018marcatori\u2019 del discorso che caratterizzano sia il linguaggio colloquiale sia il parlamentare, sebbene, per ragioni stilistiche proprie di ciascun registro linguistico, la frequenza d\u2019uso e le preferenze non siano le stesse. Resumen. Siguiendo la clave interpretativa de Marina Fern\ue1ndez Lagunilla, que considera el lenguaje pol\uedtico como un hecho ling\ufc\uedstico dependiente de la situaci\uf3n de comunicaci\uf3n en que se realiza, el an\ue1lisis aqu\ued propuesto explora los \ue1mbitos donde la enunciaci\uf3n pol\uedtica supone un intercambio verbal, una comunicaci\uf3n directa semejante al di\ue1logo, o sea, el debate parlamentario (cuyo texto escrito es el Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados) y, en algunos casos, se completa con ejemplos extra\ueddos de los diarios m\ue1s populares de Espa\uf1a. Un an\ue1lisis que es, pues, principalmente de tipo ling\ufc\uedstico ya que este libro se ocupa m\ue1s de las caracter\uedsticas formales del lenguaje pol\uedtico que de sus finalidades. El objeto del primer cap\uedtulo es explicar la organizaci\uf3n y el funcionamiento del Sistema parlamentario espa\uf1ol, o sea, la \u2018situaci\uf3n de comunicaci\uf3n\u2019 que incluye los principales protagonistas, los mecanismos internos y la relaci\uf3n entre Gobierno y oposici\uf3n. En el segundo cap\uedtulo, empleando los recursos de la ling\ufc\uedstica contrastiva, se intenta poner de relieve y traducir al italiano los falsos amigos, las palabras-clave y testigo, las palabras compuestas y, finalmente, los nombres alterados que se encuentran en el lenguaje pol\uedtico espa\uf1ol. En el tercer cap\uedtulo se estudia un nutrido n\ufamero de \u2018colocaciones\u2019 presentes en el \u2018Diario\u2019 a las que siguen sus correspondientes equivalencias en italiano. Por \ufaltimo, el cuarto cap\uedtulo, es un estudio de los marcadores del discurso que caracterizan tanto el lenguaje coloquial como el parlamentario, si bien, por razones estil\uedsticas propias de cada uno de los registros, la frecuencia de uso y las preferencias no son las mismas. Abstract: In this study, mainly a linguistic one, the formal characteristics of the political Spanish language are considered instead of its objectives. In fact, the results of the contrastive lexicology of Robert Lado are applied to the study of the Spanis political language. The terms proposed, followed by the translation in Italian, are mainly drawn by the \u2018Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados\u2019. Thus, this study is directed to Italian students of Political Sciences with the aim of offering the instruments necessary to recognise false friends, collocation and discourse markers in the Spanish political language

Quantum central limit theorem for continuous-time quantum walks on odd graphs in quantum probability theory

The method of the quantum probability theory only requires simple structural data of graph and allows us to avoid a heavy combinational argument often necessary to obtain full description of spectrum of the adjacency matrix. In the present paper, by using the idea of calculation of the probability amplitudes for continuous-time quantum walk in terms of the quantum probability theory, we investigate quantum central limit theorem for continuous-time quantum walks on odd graphs.Comment: 19 page, 1 figure