Men of Color: A Role for Policymakers in Improving the Status of Black Male Students in U.S. Higher Education

This report calls for greater involvement by federal and state policymakers and others to improve black male college readiness and completion. It presents policy-relevant trends concerning black male college students, highlights promising practices on campuses across the country, and proposes suggestions for policymakers and other stakeholders

How Do Firms Exercise Unilateral Market Power? Evidence from a Bid-Based Wholesale Electricity Market

This paper uses the framework in Wolak (2003a,b and 2007) and data on half-hourly offer curves and market-clearing prices and quantities from the New Zealand wholesale electricity market over the period January 1, 2001 to June 30, 2007 to characterize how the four large suppliers in this imperfectly competitive industry exercise market power. To accomplish this we introduce half-hourly measures of the firm-level ability and incentive of an individual supplier to exercise unilateral market power that are derived from a simplified model of expected profit-maximizing offer behaviour in a multi-unit auction market. We then show that half-hourly market-clearing prices are highly correlated with the half-hourly values of the firm-level and firm-average measures of both the ability and incentive of the four large suppliers in New Zealand to exercise market power. We then present evidence consistent with the view that this increasing relationship between the ability or incentive of individual suppliers to exercise market power and higher market-clearing prices is caused by the four large suppliers submitting higher offer prices when they have a greater ability or incentive to exercise unilateral market power. We show that after controlling for changes in input fossil fuel prices and other factors that impact the opportunity cost of producing electricity during that half hour, each of the four suppliers submits a higher offer price into the wholesale market when it has a greater ability or incentive to exercise unilateral market power. To strengthen the case that this increasing relationship between market prices and the ability and incentive of each of the suppliers to exercise unilateral market power is actually caused by the four large suppliers exercising unilateral market power by changing their offer prices in response to their ability and incentive to exercise market power, we also perform a test of the implications of the null hypothesis that the four large suppliers behave as if they had no ability to exercise market power. We find strong evidence against this null hypothesis and instead find that these hypothesis testing results are consistent with the perspective that these suppliers are exercising all available unilateral market power.Classification-JEL:Unilateral Market power analysis,New Zealand,Electricity Market,multi-unit auction

COPERNICUS - Lunar Surface Mapper

The Utah State University (USU) 1991-92 Space Systems Design Team has designed a Lunar Surface Mapper (LSM) to parallel the development of the NASA Office of Exploration lunar initiatives. USU students named the LSM Copernicus after the 16th Century Polish astronomer, for whom the large lunar crater on the face of the moon was also named. The top level requirements for the Copernicus LSM are to produce a digital map of the lunar surface with an overall resolution of 12 meters (39.4 ft). It will also identify specified local surface features/areas to be mapped at higher resolutions by follow-on missions. The mapping operation will be conducted from a 300 km (186 mi) lunarpolar orbit. Although the entire surface should be mapped within six months, the spacecraft design lifetime will exceed one year with sufficient propellant planned for orbit maintenance in the anomalous lunar gravity field. The Copernicus LSM is a small satellite capable of reaching lunar orbit following launch on a Conestoga launch vehicle which is capable of placing 410 kg (900 lb) into translunar orbit. Upon orbital insertion, the spacecraft will weigh approximately 233 kg (513 lb). This rather severe mass constraint has insured attention to component! subsystem size and mass, and prevented requirements creep\u27. Transmission of data will be via line-of-sight to an earthbased receiving system

Encumbered Shares

The fundamental assumptions in the law and economics literature about shareholder voting and the one-share/one-vote rule are flawed. The classic view is that share ownership is necessary and sufficient to create voting rights and that such rights should be directly proportional to share ownership. We demonstrate that this assumption is unfounded, both for shares that are “economically encumbered” (held by shareholders who are not pure residual claimants; e.g., a shareholder who owns one share and is also short one or more shares) as well as shares that are “legally encumbered” (held or associated with more than one shareholder; e.g., shares that are loaned to a short, who sells that share to another buyer). The one-share/one-vote rule is not only economically suboptimal, but results in substantial deleterious consequences. Quorum and regulatory requirements are distorted; mergers and acquisitions are too easily approved; securities class actions are undervalued and simultaneously under- and over-compensate; bankruptcy distributions are over- and under-inclusive; and fixed-ratio stock offers are preferred over economically superior alternatives. These results all derive from an unfounded reliance upon the one-share/one-vote principle and the belief that even economically or legally encumbered shares are entitled to vote

Popular presidents can influence Congress with the State of the Union, but an unpopular president will simply be ignored

Next year, President Obama will face both a Republican House and Senate, potentially reducing significantly his power over the legislature. Could the increasingly unpopular Obama still exercise some degree of influence through his State of the Union address? Using more than 60 years of data on Congressional policy agendas and the State of the Union John Lovett, Shaun Bevan, and Frank Baumgartner find that the president is more able to influence congressional committees soon after the State of the Union, when they share the same party, and when the president is popular. They also find that this influence is greater over the House than the Senate

A Theoretical Model to Explain the Overrepresentation of College Men among Campus Judicial Offenders: Implications for Campus Administrators

As is the case in most K-12 schools, male students, in comparison to their female counterparts, disproportionately violate policies and are sanctioned more often for violence and disruptive behaviors on college and university campuses across the country. A theoretical model to explain this phenomenon is proposed in this article. Specifically, a synthesis of existing literature and theories from sociology, psychology, men’s studies, and education resulted in the identification of six acute variables that explain male overrepresentation among campus judicial offenders. While each component of the model is thoroughly explained, insight into interactions among the six variables is also offered. Practical implications for campus administrators who are interested in minimizing violence and disruptive behaviors among college men conclude the article

The HI gas content of galaxies around Abell 370, a galaxy cluster at z = 0.37

We used observations from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of 324 galaxies around the galaxy cluster Abell 370 at a redshift of z = 0.37 (a look-back time of ~4 billion years). The HI 21-cm emission from these galaxies was measured by coadding their signals using precise optical redshifts obtained with the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The average HI mass measured for all 324 galaxies is (6.6 +- 3.5)x10^9 solar masses, while the average HI mass measured for the 105 optically blue galaxies is (19.0 +- 6.5)x10^9 solar masses. The significant quantities of gas found around Abell 370, suggest that there has been substantial evolution in the gas content of galaxy clusters since redshift z = 0.37. The total amount of HI gas found around Abell 370 is up to ~8 times more than that seen around the Coma cluster, a nearby galaxy cluster of similar size. Despite this higher gas content, Abell 370 shows the same trend as nearby clusters, that galaxies close to the cluster core have lower HI gas content than galaxies further away. The Abell 370 galaxies have HI mass to optical light ratios similar to local galaxy samples and have the same correlation between their star formation rate and HI mass as found in nearby galaxies. The average star formation rate derived from [OII] emission and from de-redshifted 1.4 GHz radio continuum for the Abell 370 galaxies also follows the correlation found in the local universe. The large amounts of HI gas found around the cluster can easily be consumed by the observed star formation rate in the galaxies over the ~4 billion years (from z = 0.37) to the present day.Comment: accepted by MNRA