Skill loss, ranking of job applicants, and the dynamics of unemployment

This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital. It is shown that if some fundamental factor in the economy changes, this will result in a lengthy adjustment process with substantial long run unemployment effects. Moreover, the model is capable of generating persistence but the amount depends on the duration of the shock itselfEfficiency wage; Turnover; On-the-job search; Skill loss; Persistence; Short- and long term unemployment

SimInf: An R package for Data-driven Stochastic Disease Spread Simulations

We present the R package SimInf which provides an efficient and very flexible framework to conduct data-driven epidemiological modeling in realistic large scale disease spread simulations. The framework integrates infection dynamics in subpopulations as continuous-time Markov chains using the Gillespie stochastic simulation algorithm and incorporates available data such as births, deaths and movements as scheduled events at predefined time-points. Using C code for the numerical solvers and OpenMP to divide work over multiple processors ensures high performance when simulating a sample outcome. One of our design goal was to make SimInf extendable and enable usage of the numerical solvers from other R extension packages in order to facilitate complex epidemiological research. In this paper, we provide a technical description of the framework and demonstrate its use on some basic examples. We also discuss how to specify and extend the framework with user-defined models.Comment: The manual has been updated to the latest version of SimInf (v6.0.0). 41 pages, 16 figure

Competition between employed and unemployed job applicants: Swedish evidence

We use the Swedish Job Applicant Database to empirically investigate whether being unemployed per se reduces the probability to get contacted by a firm. This database contains personal characteristics and preferences over the type of job the applicant wants to find. The data is submitted both by employed and unemployed workers over the Internet by the applicants themselves. This means that we have access to exactly the same information as firms have when they choose whom to contact. Our results show that an unemployed applicant faces a lower probability to get contacted by a firm than an otherwise identical employed applicant, thus supporting the claim that firms view employment status as an important signal for productivity.Employed and unemployed job seekers; discrimination

Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: evidence from an Internet-based search channel

This paper uses data from an Internet-based CV database to investigate how factors which may be used as a basis for discrimination, such as the searchers’ ethnicity, gender, age and employment status, affect the number of contacts they receive from firms. Since we have access to essentially the same information as the firms, we can handle the problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity better than most existing studies of discrimination. We find that, even when we control for all other differences, searchers who have non-Nordic names, are old or unemployed receive significantly fewer contacts. Moreover, we find that this matters for the hiring outcome: Searchers who receive more contacts have a higher probability of actually getting hired.Job search; Unobserved heterogeneity; Discrimination

Do Employers Use Unemployment as a Sorting Criterion When Hiring? Evidence from a Field Experiment

In this paper, we use unique data from a field experiment in the Swedish labor market to investigate how past and contemporary unemployment affect a young worker's probability of being invited to a job interview. In contrast to studies using registry/survey data, we have complete control over the information available to the employers and there is no scope for unobserved heterogeneity. We find no evidence that recruiting employers use information about past unemployment to sort workers, but some evidence that they use contemporary unemployment to sort workers. The fact that employers do not seem to use past unemployment as a sorting criterion suggests that the scarring effects of unemployment may not be as severe as has been indicated by previous studies.scarring, unemployment, field experiment

Precision measurements on trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA experiment

Both the 1S–2S transition and the ground state hyperfine spectrum have been observed in trapped antihydrogen. The former constitutes the first observation of resonant interaction of light with an anti-atom, and the latter is the first detailed measurement of a spectral feature in antihydrogen. Owing to the narrow intrinsic linewidth of the 1S–2S transition and use of two-photon laser excitation, the transition energy can be precisely determined in both hydrogen and antihydrogen, allowing a direct comparison as a test of fundamental symmetry. The result is consistent with CPT invariance at a relative precision of around 2×10−10. This constitutes the most precise measurement of a property of antihydrogen. The hyperfine spectrum of antihydrogen is determined to a relative uncertainty of 4×10−4. The excited state and the hyperfine spectroscopy techniques currently both show sensitivity at the few 100 kHz level on the absolute scale. Here, the most recent work of the ALPHA collaboration on precision spectroscopy of antihydrogen is presented together with an outlook on improving the precision of measurements involving lasers and microwave radiation. Prospects of measuring the Lamb shift and determining the antiproton charge radius in trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA apparatus are presented. Future perspectives of precision measurements of trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA apparatus when the ELENA facility becomes available to experiments at CERN are discussed.Both the 1S-2S transition and the ground state hyperfine spectrum have been observed in trapped antihydrogen. The former constitutes the first observation of resonant interaction of light with an anti-atom, and the latter is the first detailed measurement of a spectral feature in antihydrogen. Due to the narrow intrinsic linewidth of the 1S-2S transition and use of two-photon laser excitation, the transition energy can be precisely determined in both hydrogen and antihydrogen, allowing a direct comparison as a test of fundamental symmetry. The result is consistent with CPT invariance at a relative precision of around \num{2e-10}. This constitutes the most precise measurement of a property of antihydrogen. The hyperfine spectrum of antihydrogen is determined to a relative uncertainty of \num{4e-4}. The excited state and the hyperfine spectroscopy techniques currently both show sensitivity at the few \SI{100}{\kilo\hertz} level on the absolute scale. Here, the most recent work of the ALPHA collaboration on precision spectroscopy of antihydrogen is presented together with an outlook on improving the precision of measurements involving lasers and microwave radiation. Prospects of measuring the Lamb-shift and determining the antiproton charge radius in trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA-apparatus are presented. Future perspectives of precision measurements of trapped antihydrogen in the ALPHA apparatus when the ELENA facility becomes available to experiments at CERN are discussed

Testing Theories of Job Creation: Does Supply Create Its Own Demand?

Although search-matching theory has come to dominate labor economics in recent years, few attempts have been made to compare the empirical relevance of search-matching theory to efficiency wage and bargaining theories, where employment is determined by labor demand. In this paper we formulate an empirical equation for net job creation, which encompasses search-matching theory and a standard labor demand model. Estimation on firm-level data yields support for the labor demand model, wages and product demand affect job creation, but we find no evidence that unemployed workers contribute to job creation, as predicted by search-matching theory.job creation, involuntary unemployment, search-matching, labor demand, competitiveness

La participación de la sociedad civil en la gestión del bien común: un caso en la ética de los centros de recursos biológicos

The management of commons is now at the centre of researchers’ attention in many branches of science, particularly those related to the human or social sciences. This paper seeks to demonstrate how civil society participation in common goods or resources is not only possible but is also desirable for society because of the medium and long-term benefits it offers involved and/or affected parties. To this end, we examine the falsity of the discourse underlying the supposed incompetence of civil society to cooperate interpersonally in the pursuit of common objectives, and also analyse a specific example of the necessary and possible participation of civil society in managing common goods through biobanks.The management of commons is now at the centre of researchers’ attention in many branches of science, particularly those related to the human or social sciences. This paper seeks to demonstrate how civil society participation in common goods or resources is not only possible but is also desirable for society because of the medium and long-term benefits it offers involved and/or affected parties.To this end, we examine the falsity of the discourse underlying the supposed incompetence of civil society to cooperate interpersonally in the pursuit of common objectives, and also analyse a specific example of the necessary and pos- sible participation of civil society in managing common goods through biobanks.La gestión del bien común se ha convertido actualmente en centro de atención para diferentes ramas de la ciencia, especialmente aquellas vinculadas con lo humano y lo social. El presente estudio busca mostrar cómo la participación de la sociedad civil en la gestión de este tipo de bienes o recursos no sólo es posible, sino deseable para la sociedad por los beneficios que reporta a las partes implicadas y/o afectadas a medio y largo plazo. Para ello, se atenderá la falsedad del discurso sobre el cual se asienta la supuesta incompetencia de la sociedad civil para poder cooperar interpersonalmente en busca de objetivos comunes, así como se analizará un ejemplo concreto de la necesaria y posible participación de la sociedad civil en la gestión del bien común a través de los centros de recursos biológicos (BRCs)