Time-Series Evidence of the Effect of the Minimum Wage on Youth Employment and Unemployment

While previous time series studies have quite consistently found that the minimum wage reduces teenage employment, the extent of this reduction is much less certain. Moreover, because few previous studies report results of more than one specification, the causes of differences in estimated impacts are not well understood. Less consensus is evident on the effect of the minimum wage on teenage unemployment, or its relative impact on black and white teenagers. The purpose of this paper is both to update earlier work and to analyze the sensitivity of estimated minimum wage effects to alternative specification choices. In addition to providing estimates of the effect of minimum wage increases on aggregate employment and unemployment rates of teenagers, we explore several related issues: the relative importance of changing the level and coverage of the minimum wage; the timing of responses to a change in the minimum; effects on part-time and full-time work; effects on young adults (age 20-24).

The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment: A Survey

In this paper, we survey theoretical models of the effect of the minimum wage and, in somewhat greater detail, evidence of its effect on employment and unemployment. Our discussion of the theory emphasizes recent work using two-sector and heterogeneous-worker models. We then summarize and evaluate the large literature on employment and unemployment effects of the minimum on teenagers. Finally, we survey the evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on adult employment, and on employment in low-wage industries and areas.

What is a Belief State?

What we believe depends on more than the purely intrinsic facts about us: facts about our environment or context also help determine the contents of our beliefs.1 The observation has led several writers to hope that beliefs can be divided, as it were, into two components: a core that depends only on the individual\u27s intrinsic properties; and a periphery that depends on the individual\u27s context, including his or her history, environment, and linguistic community

Believing the Impossible

This article offers an interpretation of Ruth Barcan Marcus\u27s view that just as we cannot know what is false, we cannot believe what is impossible, followed by an argument that if this defense succeeded, it would justify rejecting many of out ordinary belief ascriptions. Although, this defense does not succeed there is something correct and important in Marcus\u27s argument

Direct and Indirect Belief

This paper discusses that one\u27s being in a particular belief state is nevertheless best characterized by a set of propositions, namely those one would believe in any situation in which one were in that belief state. The main purpose in this paper is to develop and defend the distinction between direct and indirect belief

The Poetic Development of Panamanian Nationalism

I explored the relationship between poetry and politics in Panama. Panama is a Western Hemisphere anomaly in that no other nation in the Americas has been so dominated by another as has Panama by the United States. As a result of this hegemonous relationship, Panamanians have developed an intense mistrust and hatred for the United States. This is clearly seen in their poetry. Ant-Americanism is such a pervasive element in Latin America that we can go so far as to say that it is the defining factor of their national identity. Seeing a clear link between poetry and politics in this isthmian nation, I traced the growth of Panamanian national identity through their poetry since 1821. I found that, indeed, anti-Americanism is an inseparable part of Panamanian life and that Panama\u27s national conscious continues to be reflected in the poetry produced by this nation

Internal Realism: Transcendental Idealism?

Idealism is an ontological view, a view about what sorts of things there are in the universe. Idealism holds that what there is depends on out own mental structure and activity. Berkeley of course held that everything was mental; Kant held the more complex view that there was an important distinction between the mental and the physical, but that the structure of the empirical world depended on the activities of the mind

Implementation and Indeterminacy

David Chalmers has defended an account of what it is for a physical system to implement a computation. The account appeals to the idea of a “combinatorial-state automaton” or CSA. It is unclear whether Chalmers intends the CSA to be a computational model in the usual sense, or merely a convenient formalism into which instances of other models can be translated. I argue that the CSA is not a computational model in the usual sense because CSAs do not perspicuously represent algorithms, are too powerful both in that they can perform any computation in a single step and in that without so far unspecified restrictions they can “compute” the uncomputable, and are too loosely related to physical implementations

Functionalism

The term functionalism has been used in at least three different senses in the social sciences. In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is a view about the nature of mental states. In sociology and anthropology, functionalism is an approach to understanding social processes in terms of their contribution to the operation of a social system. In psychology, functionalism was an approach to mental phenomena which emphasized mental processes as opposed to static mental structures

Combinatorial-State Automata and Models of Computation

David Chalmers has defended an account of what it is for a physical system to implement a computation. The account appeals to the idea of a “combinatorial-state automaton” or CSA. It is not entirely clear whether Chalmers intends the CSA to be a full-blown computational model, or merely a convenient formalism into which instances of other models can be translated. I argue that the CSA is not a computational model in the usual sense because CSAs do not perspicuously represent algorithms, and because they are too powerful both in that they can perform any computation in a single step and in that without so far unspecified restrictions they can “compute” the uncomputable. In addition, I suggest that finite, inputless CSAs have trivial implementations very similar to those they were introduced to avoid