Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Examining the Gender Pay Gap across the Wage Distribution in Urban China, 1987-2004

Using 1987, 1996, and 2004 data, we show that the gender pay gap in the Chinese urban labor market has increased across the wage distribution, and the increase was greater at the lower quantiles. We interpret this as evidence of the “sticky floor” effect.We use the reweighting and recentered influence function projection method proposed by Firpo, Fortin, Lemieux (2005) to decompose gender pay differentials across the wage distribution. We find that the gender differences in the return to labor market characteristics, also known as the “discrimination effect” or “unexplained gender pay gap”, contribute most to the increase in the overall gender pay gap. The Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux method allows us to further decompose the gender pay gap into the contribution of each individual variable. We find that the “sticky floor” effect may be associated with a particularly low paid group of female production workers with relatively less education working in non-state owned enterprises.glass ceiling; sticky floor; gender pay gap; wage distribution; Influence Function

Immigrants and the Receipt of Unemployment Insurance Benefits

Using data from the Current Population Survey's Displaced Workers Supplements, this paper explores whether immigrants are more or less likely to file claims for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits than natives. We find that among those eligible for UI benefits, recent immigrants are less likely to file a UI claim than natives. There is also evidence that the impact of unions on UI take-up is larger for immigrants than natives, especially non-recent immigrants.

Bribe-Taking by Bureaucrats: Personal and Circumstantial Determinants

We argue that personal (e.g., age, gender and education) and circumstantial (e.g., bureaucratic rank and sector of employment) factors affect the cost and the benefit of bribe-taking by the bureaucrats. The bureaucrat’s bribe-taking decision is modeled. A unique data set is used to test the predictions of the model. The empirical findings include that education reduces, but power (measured by rank and sector of work) increases, the magnitude of bribe-taking. Age affects bribe-taking in a more subtle way. Gender does not affect it in a statistically significant way. Our study of corruption at the individual level complements the literature studying corruption at country and industry levels.corruption, bureaucrats, determinants, bribe-taking

Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment Durations and Re-employment Wages

We develop an empirical model to estimate the impact of UI on unemployment duration and reemployment wages. The model estimates the UI receipt, unemployment duration and re-employment wage equations simultaneously and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity variables in each equation and allows them to be correlated. The NLSY79 data is used to estimate the model. Some results are found support of the positive effect of UI on re-employment wages.

The role of education in regional innovation activities and economic growth: spatial evidence from China

This study examines one of the channels through which education may contribute to economic growth, specifically, innovation. Endogenous growth theory has long suggested that human capital lead to greater innovation and, through technology innovation and diffusion, contribute to economic growth. However, there is little evidence on the role of human capital in innovation. Using the Chinese provincial data from 1997 to 2006, we show that workers’ tertiary education is significantly and positively related to provincial innovative activities measured by invention patent applications per capita. This result does not vary when spatial dependence is allowed in the estimation. Thus, we find strong and robust evidence for the prediction of endogenous growth theory regarding the effect of human capital on innovation. However, we do not find the consistently significant effect of innovation on growth. This finding may, however, relate to the growth pattern in China.Education; Human Capital; Innovation; Paten; Economic Growth; Spatial Analysis

Friction and heat transfer in a compressible turbulent boundary layer on a smooth flat plate

Imperial Users onl

Unified Picture for Magnetic Correlations in Iron-Based Superconductors

The varying metallic antiferromagnetic correlations observed in iron-based superconductors are unified in a model consisting of both itinerant electrons and localized spins. The decisive factor is found to be the sensitive competition between the superexchange antiferromagnetism and the orbital-degenerate double-exchange ferromagnetism. Our results reveal the crucial role of Hund's rule coupling for the strongly correlated nature of the system and suggest that the iron-based superconductors are closer kin to manganites than cuprates in terms of their diverse magnetism and incoherent normal-state electron transport. This unified picture would be instrumental for exploring other exotic properties and the mechanism of superconductivity in this new class of superconductors.Comment: Revised for publication. 3 figure

Unfolding first-principles band structures

A general method is presented to unfold band structures of first-principles super-cell calculations with proper spectral weight, allowing easier visualization of the electronic structure and the degree of broken translational symmetry. The resulting unfolded band structures contain additional rich information from the Kohn-Sham orbitals, and absorb the structure factor that makes them ideal for a direct comparison with angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments. With negligible computational expense via the use of Wannier functions, this simple method has great practical value in the studies of a wide range of materials containing impurities, vacancies, lattice distortions, or spontaneous long-range orders.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Structural change in the forward discount: a Bayesian analysis of forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis

Using Bayesian methods, we reexamine the empirical evidence from Sakoulis et al. (2010) regarding structural breaks in the forward discount for G-7 countries. Our Bayesian framework allows the number and pattern of structural changes in level and variance to be endogenously determined. We find different locations of breakpoints for each currency; mostly, fewer breaks are present. We find little evidence of moving toward stationarity in the forward discount after accounting for structural change. Our findings suggest that the existence of structural change is not a viable justification for the forward discount anomaly.Bayesian method, structural change, forward discount anomaly, Gibbs-sampling