Essays on Macroeconomics and Labor Markets: Understanding Idiosyncratic and Aggregate Shocks

This dissertation studies the importance of shocks in understanding economic outcomes, both at the aggregate and at the individual levels. The research in this document is separated into chapters that deal with somewhat dissimilar questions which are linked by the necessity to acknowledge and understand how unforeseeable shocks determine how agents make economic decisions. These shocks or innovations are a potential explanation for why, often similar economic actors face very different paths. In Chapter 2, the interest lays in the determinants of different life-cycle fertility outcomes across educational groups. The chapter presents a model where individuals deal with idiosyncratic shocks in the form of innovations to their market wages and to the efficacy with which they can control fertility outcomes. The model is estimated using data for the US and tested to see how it fares replicating facts of aggregate fertility under different counterfactual scenarios. Chapter 3 (co-authored with Jose-Victor Rios-Rull), studies the cyclical behavior of the aggregate labor\u27s share in total income, taking as a starting point models of business cycles driven by economy-wide technological shocks. The chapter looks at the co-movement of labor share and technological innovations in post war US history and assesses how well existing models can explain the facts

Experimental and Analytical Investigation Based on 1/2 Scale Model for a Cleanroom Unit Module Consisting of Steel Section and Reinforced Concrete

The rapid advances in high tech industries and the increased demand for high precision and reliability of their production environments call for larger structures and higher vertical vibration performance for high technology facilities. Therefore, there is an urgent demand for structural design and vertical vibration evaluation technologies for high tech facility structures. For estimating the microvibration performance for a cleanroom unit module in high technology facilities, this study performs the scale modeling experiment and analytical validation. First, the 1/2 scale model (width 7500 mm, depth 7500 mm, and height 7250 mm) for a cleanroom unit module is manufactured based on a mass-based similitude law which does not require additional mass. The dynamic test using an impact hammer is conducted to obtain the transfer function of 1/2 scale model. The transfer function derived from the test is compared with the analytical results to calibrate the analytical model. It is found that, unlike for static analyses, the stiffness of embedded reinforcement must be considered for estimating microvibration responses. Finally, the similitude law used in this study is validated by comparing the full-scale analytical model and 1/2 scale analytical model for a cleanroom unit module

Emergence of robust 2D skyrmions in SrRuO3 ultrathin film without the capping layer

Magnetic skyrmions have fast evolved from a novelty, as a realization of topologically protected structure with particle-like character, into a promising platform for new types of magnetic storage. Significant engineering progress was achieved with the synthesis of compounds hosting room-temperature skyrmions in magnetic heterostructures, with the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) conducive to the skyrmion formation. Here we report findings of ultrathin skyrmion formation in a few layers of SrRuO3 grown on SrTiO3 substrate without the heavy-metal capping layer. Measurement of the topological Hall effect (THE) reveals a robust stability of skyrmions in this platform, judging from the high value of the critical field 1.57 Tesla (T) at low temperature. THE survives as the field is tilted by as much as 85 degrees at 10 Kelvin, with the in-plane magnetic field reaching up to 6.5 T. Coherent Bragg Rod Analysis, or COBRA for short, on the same film proves the rumpling of the Ru-O plane to be the source of inversion symmetry breaking and DMI. First-principles calculations based on the structure obtained from COBRA find significant magnetic anisotropy in the SrRuO3 film to be the main source of skyrmion robustness. These features promise a few-layer SRO to be an important new platform for skyrmionics, without the necessity of introducing the capping layer to boost the spin-orbit coupling strength artificially.Comment: Supplementary Information available upon reques

Dark rearing alters the development of GABAergic transmission in visual cortex

We studied the role of sensory experience in the maturation of GABAergic circuits in the rat visual cortex. Between the time at which the eyes first open and the end of the critical period for experience-dependent plasticity, the total GABAergic input converging into layer II/III pyramidal cells increases threefold. We propose that this increase reflects changes in the number of quanta released by presynaptic axons. Here, we show that the developmental increase in GABAergic input is prevented in animals deprived of light since birth but not in animals deprived of light after a period of normal experience. Thus, sensory experience appears to play a permissive role in the maturation of intracortical GABAergic circuits. Key words: synaptic inhibition; critical period; IPSC; EPSC; plasticity; sensory experience Sensory experience during the postnatal critical period is essentia

Emergence of robust 2D skyrmions in SrRuO3 ultrathin film without the capping layer

Magnetic skyrmions have fast evolved from a novelty, as a realization of topologically protected structure with particle-like character, into a promising platform for new types of magnetic storage. Significant engineering progress was achieved with the synthesis of compounds hosting room-temperature skyrmions in magnetic heterostructures, with the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) conducive to the skyrmion formation. Here we report findings of ultrathin skyrmion formation in a few layers of SrRuO3 grown on SrTiO3 substrate without the heavy-metal capping layer. Measurement of the topological Hall effect (THE) reveals a robust stability of skyrmions in this platform, judging from the high value of the critical field 1.57 Tesla (T) at low temperature. THE survives as the field is tilted by as much as 85 degrees at 10 Kelvin, with the in-plane magnetic field reaching up to 6.5 T. Coherent Bragg Rod Analysis, or COBRA for short, on the same film proves the rumpling of the Ru-O plane to be the source of inversion symmetry breaking and DMI. First-principles calculations based on the structure obtained from COBRA find significant magnetic anisotropy in the SrRuO3 film to be the main source of skyrmion robustness. These features promise a few-layer SRO to be an important new platform for skyrmionics, without the necessity of introducing the capping layer to boost the spin-orbit coupling strength artificially.Comment: Supplementary Information available upon reques

PHP12 THE PUBLIC'S PREFERENCE ON THE PRIORITIES IN HEALTH CARE

No abstract available