Groundhog Day: Finding an Invincible Summer in the Deepest Punxsutawney Winter

Groundhog Day appears on its surface to be somewhat of a typical example of a 1990s romantic comedy: the lead male and the lead female “clash humorously before the collapse of the conflict so that the movie fulfils the ‘guy gets girl’ convention.”3 As a consequence of closer and closer readings, however, thoughts have evolved to the point where it is now considered to be at least far more of a cerebral film than it was on its release, and at most as an allegory for many of the teachings in religion and philosophy. The film tells the story of Phil Connors, a misanthropic weather reporter who becomes stuck in a time loop during a visit to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the groundhog festival. Having covered the 2 February event, which takes place at ‘Gobbler’s Knob’ in the centre of Punxsutawney, and the main feature of which involves a groundhog predicting whether or not there will be an early spring, he wakes up at 6am the following morning to discover it is still 2 February. 2 February appears again the following morning, the morning after that, and so on and so forth. Only Phil is aware this is happening, however; each repetition of 2 February is still the ‘first’ instance of that day for everyone else. Having been through enough successive 2 Februarys to conclude he is not dreaming or imagining it all, Phil accepts his fate. The degree to which he accepts it varies, however, and this can be seen through what are primarily three distinct stages: SEE FULL TEX

Earnings and Employment Dynamics for Africans in Post-apartheid South Africa: A Panel Study of KwaZulu-Natal

[Excerpt] The labour market is central in determining individual and household well-being in South Africa. Therefore, an understanding of earnings and employment dynamics is a key policy issue. However, the absence of panel data has constrained empirical work addressing these issues. This paper makes use of a regional panel data set for KwaZulu-Natal to begin the study of earnings and employment dynamics. The authors find that, on average, working-aged Africans in KwaZulu-Natal experienced large gains in earnings during the period 1993–8. These gains were progressive in nature, with the highest quintile of 1993 earners and those originally employed in the formal sector actually experiencing zero or negative growth in their average earnings. The average gain in earnings varied substantially depending on the employment transitions experienced by labour force participants. Obtaining formal sector employment is found to be an important pathway to growth in earnings, yet not exclusively so. The majority of those who get ahead do so by retaining employment in a given sector or moving into the informal sector. The dynamism of the informal sector over this period is shown to be an important contributor to the progressive growth in earnings. Government policies that seek to increase employment and earnings in the informal as well as formal sectors are recommended. Understanding the constraints preventing the vast number of unemployed from engaging in informal employment is shown to be a key issue for future work

For Richer or For Poorer? Evidence from Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela

We analyze household income dynamics using longitudinal data from Indonesia, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Spain and Venezuela. In all four countries, households with the lowest reported base-year income experienced the largest absolute income gains. This result is robust to reasonable amounts of measurement error in two of the countries. In three of the four countries, households with the lowest predicted base-year income experienced gains at least as large as their wealthier counterparts. Thus, with one exception, the empirical importance of cumulative advantage, poverty traps, and skill-biased technical change was no greater than structural or macroeconomic changes that favored initially poor households in these four countries

Sources of Income Variation in Colombia: Personal and Regional Effects

A sample of 860,000 individuals from the 1973 Colombia Census Population is used to study income determinants and income inequality. Men and women are analyzed separately, as are employees and employer. Within these groups, education, age, region, and rural/urban differences in income are distinguished using a variety of procedures including simple cross tabulations and decompositions of the log variance of income by analysis of variance and by regression techniques. By standard statistical conventions, the four way classification by educational attainment is much the most important determinant of the logarithm of monthly income, while the seven age categories are generally somewhat more significant than the six regions. The fourteen parameters used to model these main effects account for a third of the log variance in income of employees and a quarter of that of employers. Each year of schooling is on the average associated with about 20 percent more income for male employees and employers. The restricted specification of a conventional earnings function increases the standard error of estimate by only .1 percent. Within education and age classes relative dispersions of incomes across regions are larger for the less educated, and for the very young and old.Fields224_Sources_of_income_variation.pdf: 432 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Antidiscrimination Ordinances in Northwest Indiana: An Event-History Analysis of Municipal Policies Since 1992

In recent years, municipalities throughout Indiana have passed antidiscrimination ordinances that protect the rights of individuals who belong to racial, ethnic, or sexual minorities. Political scientists have proposed competing theories of policy-adoption processes that suggest a number of internal factors (such as socioeconomic characteristics, governmental capacity, or issue salience) or external factors (such as mandates/incentives from higher-level governments or influence from neighboring communities) as predictors of policy adoption; however, most existing studies focus on state-level processes, and those that focus on municipalities consider only large cities in different states. To more clearly distinguish between state-level effects and local effects, this study focuses on municipalities of all sizes within one particular region (Northwest Indiana) since 1992 and considers various theories of municipal policy processes in order to develop a model that explains the intraregional variation in whether municipalities adopted antidiscrimination ordinances and when they did so. An event-history analysis (Cox proportional hazards regression) finds the strongest empirical support for a model of antidiscrimination-policy adoption that uses municipality size and the extent of local mediareporting on biasmotivated incidents as predictors

Regional Inequality and Other Sources of Income Variation in Colombia

[Excerpt] Regional inequality is of interest for a variety of reasons: planning development policies aimed at alleviating poverty and reducing personal inequality, gauging the degree of a country\u27s labor market integration, understanding patterns of population movement in general and labor force migration in particular, predicting future urbanization, and characterizing the poor. Policymakers often aim development programs at particular target groups such as those living in certain regions of a country. In this paper we analyze the determinants of incomes and income inequality in one less developed country, Colombia, examining both personal and regional aspects. The results help clarify the potential of a development strategy emphasizing the poorest regions of the country. Our specific objectives are to measure the relative importance of personal and regional effects on income variation in Colombia and to determine within relatively homogeneous segments of the labor force how place of residence is associated with personal income levels and dispersion. In Section II we explore income differences across a number of dimensions (education, sex, age, type of employment, and region) with particular reference to regional inequality. We then turn, in Section III, to more formal procedures (analysis of variance and regression) for systematically analyzing the relationship between income and age, education, type of employment, and region, and for quantifying these effects. The paper concludes with some implications of the empirical findings

Some Research on the Lift and Stability of Wing-Body Combinations

The present paper summarizes and correlates broadly some of the research results applicable to fin-stabilized ammunition. The discussion and correlation are intended to be comprehensive, rather than detailed, in order to show general trends over the Mach number range up to 7.0. Some discussion of wings, bodies, and wing-body interference is presented, and a list of 179 papers containing further information is included. The present paper is intended to serve more as a bibliography and source of reference material than as a direct source of design information

Exploring Massachusetts Health Care Reform Impact on Fee-For-Service Funded Substance Use Disorder Treatment Providers

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is forecast to increase the demand for and utilization of substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. Massachusetts implemented health reforms similar to the ACA in 2006 -2007 that included expanding coverage for SUD treatment. This study explored the impact of Massachusetts health reforms from 2007 to 2010 on SUD treatment providers in Massachusetts, who relied on fee-for-service billings for more than 50% of their revenue. The changes across treatment facilities located in Massachusetts were compared to changes in other similar fee-for- service funded SUD treatment providers in Northeast states bordering Massachusetts and in all other states across the US. From 2007-2010, the percentage changes for Massachusetts based providers were significantly different from the changes among providers located in the rest of the US for admissions, outpatient census, average weeks of outpatient treatment, residential/in-patient census, detoxification census, length of average inpatient and outpatient stays, and provision of medication assisted treatment. Contrary to previous studies of publicly funded treatment providers, the results of this exploratory study of providers dependent on fee-for-service revenues were consistent with some predictions for the overall effects of the AC