The effect of wage proposals on efficiency and income distribution

Pre-play non-binding communication in organizations is prevalent. We study the implications of pre-play wage proposals and information revelation in a labour relationship in a laboratory experiment. In the baseline, that depicts a typical labour market interaction, the employer makes a wage offer to the worker who may then accept or reject it. In a subsequent treatment, workers, moving first, make private, non-binding, wage proposals to the employer. Our findings suggest that wage proposals promote higher wages, efficiency, and income equality. We run an additional experiment as a robustness check where we make the wage proposals public. We find that most of the results hold. Similar wage proposals are observed in the Public and Private information treatments, while accepted wages in the public treatment are higher than the baseline and significantly lower than under private information. It seems that workers conform to the available information on the wage of their co-worker from the last period when proposals are public. Interestingly, while both benefit over the baseline, public information on wage proposals benefits firms more than workers. We also develop a theoretical model to rationalize our results. The experimental results provide broad support for our hypotheses

Relaxation dynamics and cold crystallization of poly(pentamethylene terephthalate) as revealed by dielectric spectroscopy

The relaxation dynamics of poly(pentamethylene terephthalate) has been investigated by means of dielectric spectroscopy. The sub-glass dynamics is characterized by the existence of a bimodal β process whose faster and slower components have been assigned to the relaxation of the bond between the ester oxygen and the aliphatic carbon and to the link between the aromatic ring carbon and the ester carbon, respectively. By comparison with other closely related aromatic polyesters it is shown that the faster component strongly depends on the amount of methylene groups while the slower one is not considerably affected by the nature of the glycol subunit. The changes in the α process associated to the segmental relaxation during cold crystallization reveal the formation of a rigid amorphous phase fraction. Combination of dielectric experiments with X-ray scattering ones suggests that during cold crystallization PPT crystal lamellae tend to fill the space homogeneously

Relaxation dynamics and cold crystallization of poly(pentamethylene terephthalate) as revealed by dielectric spectroscopy

The relaxation dynamics of poly(pentamethylene terephthalate) has been investigated by means of dielectric spectroscopy. The sub-glass dynamics is characterized by the existence of a bimodal β process whose faster and slower components have been assigned to the relaxation of the bond between the ester oxygen and the aliphatic carbon and to the link between the aromatic ring carbon and the ester carbon, respectively. By comparison with other closely related aromatic polyesters it is shown that the faster component strongly depends on the amount of methylene groups while the slower one is not considerably affected by the nature of the glycol subunit. The changes in the α process associated to the segmental relaxation during cold crystallization reveal the formation of a rigid amorphous phase fraction. Combination of dielectric experiments with X-ray scattering ones suggests that during cold crystallization PPT crystal lamellae tend to fill the space homogeneously

Altered expression of the immunoregulatory ligand-receptor pair CD200-CD200R1 in the brain of Parkinson's disease patients

Neuroinflammation, in which activated microglia are involved, appears to contribute to the development of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the role of microglial activation and the mechanisms governing this process remain uncertain. We focused on one inhibitory mechanism involved in the control of microglial activation, the microglia inhibitory receptor CD200R1, and its ligand CD200, mainly expressed by neurons. The human CD200R1 gene encodes two membrane-associated and two soluble protein isoforms and the human CD200 gene encodes full-length proteins (CD200full) but also truncated (CD200tr) proteins which act as CD200R1 antagonists. Little is known about their expression in the human brain under pathological conditions. We used human peripheral blood monocytes and monocyte-derived microglia-like cells from control subjects to characterize the expression of the CD200R1 mRNA variants, which showed stimulus-specific responses. We provide evidence of increased CD200R1 (mRNA variants and protein isoforms) and CD200 expression (CD200tr mRNA) in brain tissue of PD patients, mainly in the hippocampus, as well as increased CD200 expression (CD200full and CD200tr mRNAs) in iPSCs-derived dopaminergic neurons generated from skin fibroblasts of PD patients. Our results suggest that CD200-CD200R1 signalling is altered in PD, which may affect the microglial function and constitute a potential target in therapeutic strategies for PD.© 2022. The Author(s)

Confined dynamics in poly(ethylene terephthalate): A coherent and incoherent neutron scattering study

We show that the combination of dielectric relaxation with neutron spin echo and incoherent neutron backscattering measurements performed in deuterated and protonated poly(ethylene terephthalate) suggests that the intrinsic dynamics of semicrystalline polymers occurs in an homogeneous scenario, similar to that valid to describe the dynamics of totally amorphous polymers. The quasielastic neutron scattering data are satisfactorily described by a theoretical model that considers that the proton mobility follows a random jump-diffusion in a restricted environment

Spinodal-assisted crystallization in polymer melts

Recent experiments in some polymer melts quenched below the melting temperature have reported spinodal kinetics in small-angle x-ray scattering before the emergence of a crystalline structure. To explain these observations we propose that the coupling between density and chain conformation induces a liquid-liquid binodal within the equilibrium liquid-crystalline solid coexistence region. A simple phenomenological theory is developed to illustrate this idea, and several experimentally testable consequences are discussed. Shear is shown to enhance the kinetic role of the hidden binodal

Gender equality, austerity, vulnerabilities and resistance in the Spanish neo-liberal life cycle

We examine how austerity measures have affected gender equality in the context of women workers in Spain. We adopt a feminist perspective to explore the multiple nature of the impact of the recession, emerging policy scenarios and forms of gender action that have developed. One of the unforeseen outcomes of the economic crisis in Spain is the opening up of new forms of collective action that have emerged in two political movements: ‘Podemos’ and ‘Barcelona en Comú’ and two examples of feminist activism: ‘La Vaga de Totes’ and ‘Igualdad de género frente a la crisis económica’—initiatives which point to alternative ways of engaging with work and working lives, in the hope of redressing the inequalities that have increased over recent years. New forms of organization have been successful in mobilizing people by developing the struggle against austerity from a progressive perspective and radical democratic forms of action have come to the fore

On the assessment by grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering of replica quality in polymer gratings fabricated by nanoimprint lithography

Grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) can be used to characterize the replica quality of polymer gratings prepared by thermal nanoimprint lithography (NIL). Here it is shown using GISAXS experiments that a series of NIL polymer gratings with different line quality present characteristic features that can be associated with the level of defects per line. Both stamps and NIL polymer gratings exhibit characteristic semicircle-like GISAXS patterns. However NIL polymer gratings with defective lines exhibit GISAXS patterns with an excess of diffuse scattering as compared to those of the corresponding stamps. In a first approach, this effect is attributed to a reduction of the effective length of the lines diffracting coherently as the number of defects per line increases