Reasons To Filter

This article intends to give reasons that, in the mind of this author, justify Internet filtering in the author\u27s library on the campus of Liberty University. These are given in a very brief format, and are not intended to be inclusive, but rather to fos ter ideas, debate, and discussion

The municipal archives of the City of New York

Ith some 100,000 cubic feet of civic documents, vital and building records, libers, films and photographs, New York City's Municipal Archives is a magnet for researchers. Among those who benefit from centralized access to the wealth of material deposited in the Archives by city government agencies are genealogists, urban scholars and architectural historians

Emigration and the age profile of retirement among immigrants

This paper analyzes the relationship between immigrants’ retirement status and the prevalence of return migration from the host country to their country of origin. We develop a simple theoretical model to illustrate that under reasonable conditions the probability of return migration is maximized at retirement. Reduced-form models of retirement status which control for the rate of return migration are then estimated using unique data on emigration rates matched to individual-level data for Australia. We find that immigrants, particularly immigrant women, are more likely to be retired than are native-born men and women with the same demographic, human capital, and family characteristics. Moreover, within the immigrant population, there is a negative relationship between the propensity to be retired and the return migration rate of one’s fellow countrymen, particularly amongst men. This link is strongest for those individuals who are at (or near) retirement age and among those with the highest cost of return migration. These results suggest that the fiscal pressures associated with aging immigrant populations vary substantially across origin countries

Connecting GRBs and galaxies: the probability of chance coincidence

Studies of GRB host galaxies are crucial to understanding GRBs. However, since they are identified by the superposition in the plane of the sky of a GRB afterglow and a galaxy there is always a possibility that an association represents a chance alignment, rather than a physical connection. We examine a uniform sample of 72 GRB fields to explore the probability of chance superpositions. There is typically a ~1% chance that an optical afterglow will coincide with a galaxy by chance. While spurious host galaxy detections will, therefore, be rare, the possibility must be considered when examining individual GRB/host galaxy examples. It is also tempting to use the large and uniform collection of X-ray afterglow positions to search for GRB-associated galaxies. However, we find that approximately half of the 14 superpositions in our sample are likely to occur by chance, so in the case of GRBs localized only by an X-ray afterglow, even statistical studies are suspect.Comment: edited, accepted by Ap

Leaving Home: What Economics Has to Say about the Living Arrangements of Young Australians

Like their counterparts elsewhere, more young Australians than ever are delaying the move to establish residential independence from their parents. This paper reviews the developing economics literature surrounding young people’s decisions to continue living in their parents’ homes in order to begin to assess the causes and consequences of this decision. In particular, co-residence with parents appears to be an important form of intergenerational support for young adults. It is important to understand the extent to which young people rely on this form of support as they complete their education, enter the labour market, and establish themselves as independent adults. Specific attention is paid to the ways in which Australian income-support, education, and housing policies may influence these patterns.Economics of the family, Household decision-making

Microeconomic Evidence of Nominal Wage Rigidity in Chile

This paper presents micro evidence on the degree of downward nominal wage rigidity in Chile and also explores its consequences in terms of employment. The data used corresponds to a new panel based on 440 thousand wage histories for the period 2001.12-2007.12. The results indicate a low degree of wage flexibility, the estimated length of wage adjustment for the whole economy being around nine quarters. In terms of the determinants of wage rigidity, the degree of flexibility depends negatively on the size of the firm, the percentage of female workers, the age of workers and white-collar participation at firm level. The econometric estimations indicate that the direct consequence of wage rigidity is a higher fluctuation of employment through the business cycle.

The Mississippian fin de siècle in the middle Cumberland region of Tennessee

Bayesian chronological modeling is used to investigate the chronology for a large-scale human depopulation event during the Mississippian period (AD 1000–1600) known as the Vacant Quarter phenomenon. The Middle Cumberland region (MCR) of Tennessee is within the Vacant Quarter area, and six villages from the final phase of Mississippian activity in the MCR have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Complete radiocarbon datasets from these sites are presented within an interpretative Bayesian statistical framework. The results provide a unique history of each settlement and demonstrate that Mississippian occupations at each site likely terminated in the mid- to late fifteenth and possibly early sixteenth centuries AD, which is 50 to 100 years later than the most recent estimate for the timing of the Vacant Quarter. Mississippian abandonment in the MCR was relatively quick, likely occurring over less than a century. The exact reasons for abandonment are not entirely clear but appear to be linked to climate change. A radiocarbon simulation experiment indicates that future robust radiocarbon dating with well-selected samples could greatly improve the chronological precision for this late Mississippian activity. More broadly, this example demonstrates that model building with radiocarbon simulations can be used to address regional-scale chronological issues within the American Southeast and beyond

Noncognitive Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages

This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.noncognitive skills, personality, occupation, gender wage gap, decomposition

Two Economists' Musings on the Stability of Locus of Control

Empirical studies of the role of non-cognitive skills in driving economic behavior often rely heavily on the assumption that these skills are stable over the relevant time frame. We analyze the change in a specific non-cognitive skill, i.e. locus of control, in order to directly assess the validity of this assumption. We find that short- and medium-run changes in locus of control are rather modest on average, are concentrated among the young or very old, do not appear to be related to the demographic, labor market, and health events that individuals experience, and are unlikely to be economically meaningful. Still, there is no evidence that locus of control is truly time-invariant implying that the use of lagged measures results in an errors-in-variables problem that could downward bias the estimated wage return to locus of control by as much as 50 percent. Those researchers wishing to analyze the economic consequences of non-cognitive skills should consider (i) restricting their analysis to the working-age population for whom there is little evidence of systematic change in skill levels and (ii) accounting for error in the skill measures they employ.Non-cognitive skills, locus of control, stability, measurement error, endogeneity, life events