The public-private pay gap: a robust quantile approach

This paper investigates whether a public sector premium exists after controlling for observable characteristics and for additional motivations, other than monetary, that may induce workers to prefer employment in the public sector. We study the entire conditional wage distribution on Italian micro data, covering the period 1998-2008. The evidence under random sampling shows the existence of a wage differential averaging at about 14% for women and 4% for men, generally lower at the high tail of the wage distribution and in the Northern regions. The premium significantly increases when possible sorting is considered; the correction is particularly large above the median of the wage distribution, therefore suggesting that the additional motivations may play an important role above all at higher wage levels. When we restrict our comparison to large private firms, a differential is confirmed for women but not for men.public employment, wage differentials, wage determination

Electrical Characteristics of Pantograph Arcs in DC Railways: Infrastructure Influence

Electric arcs are an unavoidable by-product of current collection by sliding contact in electrified transportation systems. Electric arcs are transient phenomena with implications for PQ measurements and wearing estimation and prevention of the sliding contact and catenary. Besides being heavily influenced by mechanical characteristics and material properties, their electrical characterization encompasses spectral properties and the influence of train and traction line circuits and relative position of infrastructure elements. This paper identifies the influence of such electrical and system characteristics onto the spectral signature of electric arcs for DC railways

Maximal-entropy driven determination of weights in least-square approximation

We exploit the idea to use the maximal-entropy method, successfully tested in information theory and statistical thermodynamics, to determine approximating function's coefficients and squared errors' weights simultaneously as output of one single problem in least-square approximation. We provide evidence of the method's capabilities and performance through its application to representative test cases by working with polynomials as a first step. We conclude by formulating suggestions for future work to improve the version of the method we present in this paper.Comment: 15 pages, 1 table, 10 figures. Accepted in Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences. Changes: fixed typo in Eq. (27

Considerations about the incompleteness of the Ehrenfest's theorem in quantum mechanics

We describe a study motivated by our interest to examine the incompleteness of the Ehrenfest's theorem in quantum mechanics and to resolve a doubt regarding whether or not the hermiticity of the hamiltonian operator is sufficient to justify a simplification of the expression of the macroscopic-observable time derivative that promotes the one usually found in quantum-mechanics textbooks. The study develops by considering the simple quantum system "particle in one-dimensional box". We propose theoretical arguments to support the incompleteness of the Ehrenfest's theorem in the formulation he gave, in agreement with similar findings already published by a few authors, and corroborate them with the numerical example of an electric charge in an electrostatic field.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. To be submitted to European Journal of Physics (https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0143-0807