How to Earn and Lose Your Constituency: A Case Study of New Jersey\u27s Fifth Congressional District

In 2016, Donald Trump inspired a red wave of voting that granted the Republicans control of the House and Senate for the first time since 2006. This seemingly should be a great time to be a Republican incumbent, especially in a Republican district. However, Scott Garrett, a long term conservative incumbent in New Jersey\u27s fifth congressional district, fell to Josh Gottheimer, a Clinton-backed Democrat. So what happened? I conclude that Garrett fails to capture a new base that comes into his district after redistricting, loses his original base after failing to correctly achieve a Dual Constituency approach, and is hindered by bad public perception following regrettable comments

Energy Consumption of VLSI Decoders

Thompson's model of VLSI computation relates the energy of a computation to the product of the circuit area and the number of clock cycles needed to carry out the computation. It is shown that for any family of circuits implemented according to this model, using any algorithm that performs decoding of a codeword passed through a binary erasure channel, as the block length approaches infinity either (a) the probability of block error is asymptotically lower bounded by 1/2 or (b) the energy of the computation scales at least as Omega(n(log n)^(1/2)), and so the energy of successful decoding, per decoded bit, must scale at least as Omega((log n)^(1/2)). This implies that the average energy per decoded bit must approach infinity for any sequence of codes that approaches capacity. The analysis techniques used are then extended to the case of serial computation, showing that if a circuit is restricted to serial computation, then as block length approaches infinity, either the block error probability is lower bounded by 1/2 or the energy scales at least as fast as Omega(n log(n)). In a very general case that allows for the number of output pins to vary with block length, it is shown that the average energy per decoded bit must scale as Omega(n(log n)^(1/5)). A simple example is provided of a class of circuits performing low-density parity-check decoding whose energy complexity scales as O(n^2 log log n).Comment: Submitte

The Orbit of the L dwarf + T dwarf Spectral Binary SDSS J080531.84+481233.0

[abridged] We report four years of radial velocity monitoring observations of SDSS J080531.84+481233.0 that reveal significant and periodic variability, confirming the binary nature of the source. We infer an orbital period of 2.02$\pm$0.03 yr, a semi-major axis of 0.76$^{+0.05}_{-0.06}$ AU, and an eccentricity of 0.46$\pm$0.05, consistent with the amplitude of astrometric variability and prior attempts to resolve the system. Folding in constraints based on the spectral types of the components (L4$\pm$0.7 and T5.5$\pm$1.1), corresponding effective temperatures, and brown dwarf evolutionary models, we further constrain the orbital inclination of this system to be nearly edge-on (90$^o\pm$19$^o$), and deduce a large system mass ratio (M$_2$/M$_1$ = 0.86$^{+0.10}_{-0.12}$), substellar components (M$_1$ = 0.057$^{+0.016}_{-0.014}$ M$_{\odot}$, M$_2$ = 0.048$^{+0.008}_{-0.010}$ M$_{\odot}$), and a relatively old system age (minimum age = 4.0$^{+1.9}_{-1.2}$ Gyr). The measured projected rotational velocity of the primary ($v\sin{i}$ = 34.1$\pm$0.7 km/s) implies that this inactive source is a rapid rotator (period $\lesssim$ 3 hr) and a viable system for testing spin-orbit alignment in very-low-mass multiples. The combination of well-determined component atmospheric properties and masses near and/or below the hydrogen minimum mass make SDSS J0805+4812AB an important system for future tests of brown dwarf evolutionary models.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication to Ap

The Adequacy of Investment Choices Offered By 401K Plans

Defined-contribution plans represent a major organizational form for investors’ retirement savings. Today more than one third of all workers are enrolled in 401K plans. In a 401K plan, participants select assets from a set of choices designated by an employer. For over half of 401K-plan participants, retirement savings represent their sole financial asset. Yet to date there has been no study of the adequacy of the choices offered by 401K plans. This paper analyzes the adequacy and characteristics of the choices offered to 401K-plan participants for over 400 plans. We find that, for 62% of the plans, the types of choices offered are inadequate, and that over a 20-year period this makes a difference in terminal wealth of over 300%. We find that funds included in the plans are riskier than the general population of funds in the same categories. We study the characteristics of plans that are associated with adequate investment choices, including an analysis of the use of company stock, plan size, and the use of outside consultants. When we examine one category of investment choices, S&P 500 index funds, we find that the index funds chosen by 401K-plan administrators are on average inferior to the S&P 500 index funds selected by the aggregate of all investors

Marginal Stockholder Tax Effects and Ex-Dividend Day Behavior-Thirty-Two Years Later

In 1970 Elton and Gruber (hereafter E&G) started an industry by studying the impact of taxes on investor decisions using the behavior of share prices around the ex-dividend date. E&G showed that if taxes enter investors’ decisions, then the fall in price on the ex-dividend day should reflect the post-tax value of the dividend relative to the post-tax value of capital gains on that day. Because dividends in most time periods are taxed more heavily than capital gains, the theory suggests that if taxes affect investor’s choices, the fall in stock price should in general be less than the dividend