Employment, Wages, and the Economic Cycle: Differences between Immigrants and Natives

In this paper, we analyse differences in the cyclical pattern of employment and wages of immigrants and natives for two large immigrant receiving countries, Germany and the UK. We show that, despite large differences in their immigrant populations, there are similar and significant differences in cyclical responses between immigrants and natives in both countries, even conditional on education, age, and location. We decompose changes in outcomes into a secular trend and a business cycle component. We find significantly larger unemployment responses to economic shocks for low-skilled workers relative to high-skilled workers and for immigrants relative to natives within the same skill group. There is little evidence for differential wage responses to economic shocks. We offer three explanations for these findings: an equilibrium search model, where immigrants experience higher job separation rates, a model of dual labour markets, and differences in the complementarity of immigrants and natives to capital.immigration, unemployment, business cycle

Rentenversicheung vs. Fondsentnahmepläne, oder: Wie groß ist die Gefahr, den Verzehr des eigenen Vermögens zu überleben?

Private Altersversorgung, Investmentfond

Rentenversicherung versus Fondsentnahmepläne, oder: Wie groß ist die Gefahr, den Verzehr des eigenen Vermögens zu überleben?

The present paper considers a retiree of a certain age (60 years, 70 years) facing the following alternative investment opportunities. One possibility is to buy a single premium immediate (constant) annuity-contract. This contract guarantees a life long pension payment of a certain amount, depending e.g. on the age of the retiree, the costs of the insurance company and the yield the company is able to realize from its capital investments. The alternative possibility is to invest the single premium into a mixture of stock and bond investment funds and to withdraw a certain (constant) amount periodically. The risk of the second opportunity is to outlive the income stream generated by this investment. The risk in this sense is specified by considering the probability of outliving one`s wealth. The determination of this probability is the central objective of the paper. It is assumed in the analysis that the amount of withdrawal from the fund is equivalent to the constant annuity of the insurance contract.

Unter der Wortdusche: Massiertes Repetition Priming von Wörtern und Pseudowörtern

Does the presentation of a "word shower" of more than 200 words rushing by with a speed of 80 ms per item have any impact on later processing of these words despite the long time span between presentation and test, and the high amount of distractors present in the word stream? If so, does massive repetition of words cause effects to cumulate? I presented streams in which words and pseudowords were repeated one, five or ten times. Immediately after the word stream participants performed a series of lexical decisions on words and pseudowords, which had either been presented in the preceding stream or not. In Experiments 1a and 1b massive repetition priming in word streams was assessed with single presentation durations of 150 ms and 54 ms, respectively. The relation of conscious perception and later recollection of single items and priming was assessed in Experiments 2 and 3. The impact of the delay between presentation and test was investigated with indirect (Experiments 1a, 1b) and direct measures (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5 the paradigm was extended to cross-priming of pseudowords on words and vice versa. The last chapter focussed on a refinement of the method by shortening the word streams and including only one critical item per word stream. Long-lag priming over one day was compared for response relevant primes and non-relevant primes (Experiment 6a), highlighting the importance of response learning. In Experiment 6b recognition and priming was assessed in the same trial. The experiments demonstrated small but reliable cumulative repetition priming that was positive for words, but negative for pseudowords indicating a growing familiarity or "word-likeness" of pseudowords. Priming was still visible after several minutes and one day. Crucially, recognition performance seemed not to be causal for priming to occur. Thus, the "word shower" proved to be a promising paradigm to investigate the temporal dynamics of word processing.Hat die Darbietung einer "Wortdusche" von mehr als 200 Wörtern, die mit einer Geschwindigkeit von 80 ms pro Item vorbeirauscht einen anhaltenden Effekt auf die Verarbeitung dieser Wörter in einer nachfolgenden Aufgabe? Führt die massive Wiederholung einzelner Wörter zu kumulierten Effekten? Ich präsentierte Wortströme bestehend aus Wörtern und Pseudowörter, die in unterschiedlichen Häufigkeiten vorkamen. Anschließend wurden die gleichen Wörter und Pseudowörter in einer lexikalischen Entscheidung dargeboten. In Experiment 1a und 1b wurden klare Wiederholungseffekte für Darbietungsdauern von 150 ms bzw. 54 ms gezeigt. Der Zusammenhang von bewusster Wahrnehmung und Erinnerung auf der einen und Bahnung auf der anderen Seite wurde in den Experimenten 2 und 3 untersucht. Der Einfluss des zeitlichen Abtsandes zwischen Präsentation und Test wurde in den Experimenten 1a, 1b und 4 thematisiert. In Experiment 5 wurde die Bahnung von Pseudowörtern auf Wörter und umgekehrt untersucht. In den abschließenden Experimente wurden verkürzte Wortströme mit nur einem kritischen Item verwendet. Unterschiedliche Langzeiteffekte über 1 Tag von antwortrelevanten und antwortirrelevanten Items verdeutlichen den Einfluss des Antwortlernens (Experiment 6a). Experiment 6b stellt einen Ansatz dar zur Messung von Wiedererkennung und Bahnung innerhalb eines Trials. Die Experimente zeigten eine geringe aber stabile kumulative Bahnung mit unterschiedlichen Richtungen: Gebahnte Wörter wurden schneller erkannt als ungebahnte, gebahnte Pseudowörter wurden langsamer erkannt. Dies wird als zunehmende Wortähnlichkeit der wiederholten Pseudowörter interpretiert. Die Bahnung war auch nach 7 Minuten und sogar 1 Tag noch sichtbar. Zu betonen ist, dass bewusste Wiedererkennung scheinbar nicht kausal für die Bahnung ist. Insgesamt stellt die "Wortdusche" sich als Instrument dar, das es ermöglicht zeitliche Dynamiken von Wortverarbeitung genauer zu untersuchen

Employment, Wages, and the Economic Cycle: Differences between Immigrants and Natives

In this paper, we analyse differences in the cyclical pattern of employment and wages of immigrants and natives for two large immigrant receiving countries, Germany and the UK. We show that, despite large differences in their immigrant populations, there are similar and significant differences in cyclical responses between immigrants and natives in both countries, even conditional on education, age, and location. We decompose changes in outcomes into a secular trend and a business cycle component. We find significantly larger unemployment responses to economic shocks for low-skilled workers relative to high-skilled workers and for immigrants relative to natives within the same skill group. There is little evidence for differential wage responses to economic shocks. We offer three explanations for these findings: an equilibrium search model, where immigrants experience higher job separation rates, a model of dual labour markets, and differences in the complementarity of immigrants and natives to capital.Immigration, Unemployment, Business Cycle

Visual search without central vision – no single pseudofovea location is best

We typically fixate targets such that they are projected onto the fovea for best spatial resolution. Macular degeneration patients often develop fixation strategies such that targets are projected to an intact eccentric part of the retina, called pseudofovea. A longstanding debate concerns which pseudofovea-location is optimal for non-foveal vision. We examined how pseudofovea position and eccentricity affect performance in visual search, when vision is restricted to an off-foveal retinal region by a gaze-contingent display that dynamically blurs the stimulus except within a small viewing window (forced field location). Trained normally sighted participants were more accurate when forced field location was congruent with the required scan path direction; this contradicts the view that a single pseudofovea location is generally best. Rather, performance depends on the congruence between pseudofovea location and scan path direction

Topological Strings on Non-Commutative Resolutions

In this paper we propose a definition of torsion refined Gopakumar-Vafa (GV) invariants for Calabi-Yau threefolds with terminal nodal singularities that do not admit K\"ahler crepant resolutions. Physically, the refinement takes into account the charge of five-dimensional BPS states under a discrete gauge symmetry in M-theory. We propose a mathematical definition of the invariants in terms of the geometry of all non-K\"ahler crepant resolutions taken together. The invariants are encoded in the A-model topological string partition functions associated to non-commutative (nc) resolutions of the Calabi-Yau. Our main example will be a singular degeneration of the generic Calabi-Yau double cover of $\mathbb{P}^3$ and leads to an enumerative interpretation of the topological string partition function of a hybrid Landau-Ginzburg model. Our results generalize a recent physical proposal made in the context of torus fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds by one of the authors and clarify the associated enumerative geometry.Comment: 78+30 pages. Fixed acknowledgements and minor typo