Do We Know Why Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?

After being displaced from their jobs, workers experience reduced earnings for many years and are at greater risks of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the unemployment insurance system, and have spurred calls for wage insurance that would provide longer-run earnings replacement. However, while the average size and the individual characteristics associated with the losses are relatively clear, the theory of displacement-induced earnings loss is scattered. Much of the policy discussion appears to interpret displacement-induced losses through the lens of specific human capital theory, in which skills are specific to jobs, locations, industries, or occupations, and that model has considerable empirical support. Assistance for displaced workers may improve well-being in that model since it insures workers against the risk that their consumption of goods and services might fall for idiosyncratic reasons and, as a consequence, allows workers to make more productive but higher-risk career choices. But there are other credible theories of costly job displacement that have different causal mechanisms, different interpretations and different policy implications. This paper reviews theories of costly job displacement and discusses their consistency with the available empirical evidence. We find that while specific human capital is important, we cannot rule out important roles for other theories

Do We Know Why Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?

After being displaced from their jobs, workers experience reduced earnings for many years and are at greater risks of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the unemployment insurance system, and have spurred calls for wage insurance that would provide longer-run earnings replacement. However, while the average size and the individual characteristics associated with the losses are relatively clear, the theory of displacement-induced earnings loss is scattered. Much of the policy discussion appears to interpret displacement-induced losses through the lens of specific human capital theory, in which skills are specific to jobs, locations, industries, or occupations, and that model has considerable empirical support. Assistance for displaced workers may improve well-being in that model since it insures workers against the risk that their consumption of goods and services might fall for idiosyncratic reasons and, as a consequence, allows workers to make more productive but higher-risk career choices. But there are other credible theories of costly job displacement that have different causal mechanisms, different interpretations and different policy implications. This paper reviews theories of costly job displacement and discusses their consistency with the available empirical evidence. We find that while specific human capital is important, we cannot rule out important roles for other theories

Stable isotope geochemistry of the Ulldemolins Pb-Zn-Cu deposit (SW Catalonian Coastal Ranges, Spain)

The Pb-Zn-Cu deposit of Ulldemolins occurs within the Carboniferous sedimentary series of the southernmost Catalonian Coastal Ranges. It consists of sulphide-bearing calc-silicate assemblages, with epidote, Ca-amphiboles and Ca-garnet, which develop selectively along a dolomicrite bed near the contact with a granite porphyry. Two mineralisation styles can be differentiated: a) banded and b) irregular. Fluid inclusions and stable isotope compositions of sulphur in sulphides (sphalerite, galena and chalcopyrite) and carbon and oxygen in carbonates (calcite and dolomite) were studied in order to constrain the genesis and the source of mineralizing fluids. Fluid inclusions in sphalerite and calcite are aqueous, liquid+vapour and have a salinity between 1.2 and 7.2 wt% NaCl eq. and homogenization temperatures in the range of 273º to 368ºC. The δ34S(V-CDT) values in the banded mineralisation are mostly between –1.5 and +2.1‰, and those from the irregular mineralisation are between –1.1 and +20.5‰. These δ34S values of the banded mineralisation are in agreement with a magmatic origin of sulphur. In addition, the δ18O(SMOW) values of hydrothermal calcite, from +6.9 to +12.5‰, are consistent with a magmatic origin of the fluids that formed the banded ore deposit. Later, a new input of fluids interacted with the previously formed mineral assemblages and modified part of the deposit, leading locally to an irregular skarn mineralisation

Long term geological record of a global deep subsurface microbial habitat in sand injection complexes

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Persistent influence of obliquity on ice age terminations since the Middle Pleistocene transition.

Radiometric dating of glacial terminations over the past 640,000 years suggests pacing by Earth's climatic precession, with each glacial-interglacial period spanning four or five cycles of ~20,000 years. However, the lack of firm age estimates for older Pleistocene terminations confounds attempts to test the persistence of precession forcing. We combine an Italian speleothem record anchored by a uranium-lead chronology with North Atlantic ocean data to show that the first two deglaciations of the so-called 100,000-year world are separated by two obliquity cycles, with each termination starting at the same high phase of obliquity, but at opposing phases of precession. An assessment of 11 radiometrically dated terminations spanning the past million years suggests that obliquity exerted a persistent influence on not only their initiation but also their duration

Heterogeneous Agglomeration

Many prior treatments of agglomeration explicitly or implicitly assume that all industries agglomerate for the same reasons. This paper uses U.K. establishment-level coagglomeration data to document substantial heterogeneity across industries in the microfoundations of agglomeration economies. It finds robust evidence of organizational and adaptive agglomeration forces as discussed by Chinitz (1961), Vernon (1960), and Jacobs (1969). These forces interact with the traditional Marshallian (1890) factors of input sharing, labor pooling, and knowledge spillovers, establishing a previously unrecognized complementarity between the approaches of Marshall and Jacobs, as well as others, to the analysis of agglomeration

Enhanced climate instability in the North Atlantic and southern Europe during the Last Interglacial

Considerable ambiguity remains over the extent and nature of millennial/centennial-scale climate instability during the Last Interglacial (LIG). Here we analyse marine and terrestrial proxies from a deep-sea sediment sequence on the Portuguese Margin and combine results with an intensively dated Italian speleothem record and climate-model experiments. The strongest expression of climate variability occurred during the transitions into and out of the LIG. Our records also document a series of multi-centennial intra-interglacial arid events in southern Europe, coherent with cold water-mass expansions in the North Atlantic. The spatial and temporal fingerprints of these changes indicate a reorganization of ocean surface circulation, consistent with low-intensity disruptions of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The amplitude of this LIG variability is greater than that observed in Holocene records. Episodic Greenland ice melt and runoff as a result of excess warmth may have contributed to AMOC weakening and increased climate instability throughout the LIG