The Determinants of Municipal Minimum Wage Ordinances: An Analysis of 100 Large Cities from 2012-2017

The city of Seattle, Washington made headlines in 2014 when its city council enacted the highest minimum wage in the history of the United States. The ruling appeared to begin a trend as similar policies began diffusing in cities across the country. In reality, however, municipal minimum wage ordinances have existed since the early 1990’s. Yet, despite over two decade’s worth of data on the subject, little research has been conducted to understand the characteristics that influence cities to enact minimum wages in the first place. This study contributes to our understanding of the predictors of minimum wage ordinances by retesting prior variables of significance over a more recent time period, while also introducing a new set of variables to the literature. I find that cities with an increased percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees face an increased likelihood for future policy adoption. Additionally, I find that some age demographics may be significant predictors in future studies of minimum wage

Political Ecology

Environmental legislation is commonly accepted as an altruistic approach to land management. A closer examination however, reveals that political incentives and flawed arguments consistently shape U.S. environmental policy at high public costs. As student fellows at the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University, we have had the opportunity to research this subject under the direction of Professor Randy Simmons. Political Ecology is his upcoming book that explores a variety of environmental policies, the incentives that created them, and their effects on both public lands and taxpayers. Our research contributions to this overall project specifically explore three separate case studies: the Federal Land Management Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Altogether, it is our hope that the analysis and case studies presented will provide policy makers and the general public with needed information in regards to current and future U.S. environmental policy

Weak-lensing Mass Calibration of ACTPol Sunyaev–Zel’dovich Clusters with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

We present weak-lensing measurements using the first-year data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Strategic Survey Program on the Subaru telescope for eight galaxy clusters selected through their thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) signal measured at 148 GHz with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter experiment. The overlap between the two surveys in this work is 33.8 square degrees, before masking bright stars. The signal-to-noise ratio of individual cluster lensing measurements ranges from 2.2 to 8.7, with a total of 11.1 for the stacked cluster weak-lensing signal. We fit for an average weak-lensing mass distribution using three different profiles, a Navarro–Frenk–White profile, a dark-matter-only emulated profile, and a full cosmological hydrodynamic emulated profile. We interpret the differences among the masses inferred by these models as a systematic error of 10%, which is currently smaller than the statistical error. We obtain the ratio of the SZ-estimated mass to the lensing-estimated mass (the so-called hydrostatic mass bias 1−b) of ${0.74}_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$, which is comparable to previous SZ-selected clusters from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and from the Planck Satellite. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for cosmological parameters inferred from cluster abundances compared to cosmic microwave background primary anisotropy measurements.U.S. National Science Foundation [AST-1440226, AST-0965625, AST-0408698, PHY-1214379, PHY-0855887]; Princeton University; University of Pennsylvania; Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) award; Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica de Chile (CONICYT); CFI under Compute Canada; Government of Ontario; Ontario Research Fund Research Excellence; University of Toronto; NASA [NNX13AE56G, NNX14AB58G]; FIRST program from Japanese Cabinet Office; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT); Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS); Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST); Toray Science Foundation; NAOJ; Kavli IPMU; KEK; ASIAA; National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NNX08AR22G]; National Science Foundation [AST-1238877]; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI [JP17H06600, JP18H04350]; Simons Foundation; JSPS KAKENHI [JP16H01089]; STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship [ST/M004856/2]; National Research Foundation of South Africa [93565]; CONICYT FONDECYT grant [3170846]; JSPS KAKENHI grant [JP17K14273, JP15H03654, JP15H05893, JP15K21733, JP15H05892]; Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) CREST [JPMJCR1414]; Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan [MOST 103-2628-M-001-003-MY3]; Academia Sinica Investigator Award; Vincent and Beatrice Tremaine Fellowship; [Anillo ACT-1417]; [QUIMAL-160009]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

MOST Observations of the Flare Star AD Leo

We present continuous, high-precision photometric monitoring data with 1 minute cadence of the dM3e flare star AD Leo with the {\it MOST} satellite. We observed 19 flares in 5.8 days, and find a flare frequency distribution that is similar to previous studies. The light curve reveals a sinusoidal modulation with period of $2.23^{+0.36}_{-0.27}$ days that we attribute to the rotation of a stellar spot rotating into and out of view. We see no correlation between the occurrence of flares and rotational phase, indicating that there may be many spots distributed at different longitudes, or possibly that the modulation is caused by varying surface coverage of a large polar spot that is viewed nearly pole-on. The data show no correlation between flare energy and the time since the previous flare. We use these results to reject a simple model in which all magnetic energy is stored in one active region and released only during flares.Comment: 20 Pages, 8 Figures, PASP Accepte

A Study of Direct Author Subvention for Publishing Humanities Books at Two Universities: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by Indiana University and University of Michigan

This report was produced as the main deliverable from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant 41400692, “A Study of Direct Author Subvention for Publishing Humanities Books at Two Universities.” The Indiana University team led by PI Carolyn Walters, consisted of Jason Baird Jackson, Scott Smart, Nick Fitzgerald, Gary Dunham and Shayna Pekala. The University of Michigan team led by PI James Hilton consisted of Paul Courant, Sidonie Smith, Meredith Kahn, Charles Watkinson, Jim Ottaviani, and Aaron McCollough. Lead authorship of the different sections in this report is indicated in the opening paragraphs. Supplemental data to this report is available at http://hdl.handle.net/2022/20358.This white paper presents recommendations about how a system of monographic publication fully funded by subventions from authors’ parent institutions might function, based on research activities supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at Indiana University and the University of Michigan. While the contributors present a strong argument for implementing such an “author subvention” system, they describe a number of challenges and potential unintended consequences. Particular issues discussed include how to determine which publishers would be eligible for support, how best to support untenured faculty, and how to avoid disenfranchising scholars at less well-funded institutions.Andrew W. Mellon Foundatio