Firms' Main Market, Human Capital and Wages

Recent international trade literature emphasizes two features in characterizing the current patterns of trade: efficiency heterogeneity at the firm level and quality differentiation. This paper explores human capital and wage differences across firms in that context. We build a partial equilibrium model predicting that firms selling in more-remote markets employ higher human capital and pay higher wages to employees within each education group. The channel linking these variables is firms’ endogenous choice of quality. Predictions are tested using Spanish employer-employee matched data that classify firms according to four main destination markets: local, national, European Union, and rest of the World. Employees’ average education is increasing in the remoteness of firm’s main output market. Market–destination wage premia are large, increasing in the remoteness of the market, and increasing in individual education. These results suggest that increasing globalization may play a significant role in raising wage inequality within and across education groups.vertical differentiation, exporters, Alchian-Allen effect, wage inequality, unobservable skills

Accretion, disks, and magnetic activity in the TW Hya association

We present new photometric and spectroscopic data for the M-type members of the TW Hya association with the aim of a comprehensive study of accretion, disks and magnetic activity at the critical age of ~10 Myr where circumstellar matter disappears.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 314, Young Stars & Planets Near the Sun, 201

X-Shooter spectroscopy of FU Tau A

We have analyzed a broad-band optical and near-infrared spectrum of FU Tau A, a presumed young brown dwarf in the Taurus star forming region that has intrigued both theorists and observers by its over-luminosity in the HR diagram with respect to standard pre-main sequence evolutionary models. The new data, obtained with the X-Shooter spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope, include an unprecedented wealth of information on stellar parameters and simultaneously observed accretion and outflow indicators for FU Tau A. We present the first measurements of gravity (log g = 3.5 +- 0.5), radial velocity (RV = 22.5 +- 2.9 km/s), rotational velocity (v sin(i) = 20 +- 5 km/s) and lithium equivalent width (W_Li = 430 +- 20 mAA) for FUTau A. From the rotational velocity and the published period we infer a disk inclination of i ~ 50^deg. The lithium content is much lower than theoretically expected for such a young very low mass object, adding another puzzling feature to this object's properties. We determine the mass accretion rate of FU Tau A from comparison of the luminosities of 24 emission lines to empirical calibrations from the literature and find a mean of log (dM/dt)_acc [M_sun/yr] = -9.9 +- 0.2. The accretion rate determined independently from modeling of the excess emission in the Balmer and Paschen continua is consistent with this value. The corresponding accretion luminosity is too small to make a significant contribution to the bolometric luminosity. The existence of an outflow in FU Tau A is demonstrated through the first detection of forbidden emission lines from which we obtain an estimate for the mass loss rate, log (dM/dt)_out [M_sun/yr] < -10.4. The mass outflow and inflow rates can be combined to yield (dM/dt)_out / (dM/dt)_acc ~ 0.3, a value that is in agreement with jet launching models.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in A&

An extensive VLT/X-Shooter library of photospheric templates of pre-main sequence stars

Studies of the formation and evolution of young stars and their disks rely on the knowledge of the stellar parameters of the young stars. The derivation of these parameters is commonly based on comparison with photospheric template spectra. Furthermore, chromospheric emission in young active stars impacts the measurement of mass accretion rates, a key quantity to study disk evolution. Here we derive stellar properties of low-mass pre-main sequence stars without disks, which represent ideal photospheric templates for studies of young stars. We also use these spectra to constrain the impact of chromospheric emission on the measurements of mass accretion rates. The spectra in reduced, flux-calibrated, and corrected for telluric absorption form are made available to the community. We derive the spectral type for our targets by analyzing the photospheric molecular features present in their VLT/X-Shooter spectra by means of spectral indices and comparison of the relative strength of photospheric absorption features. We also measure effective temperature, gravity, projected rotational velocity, and radial velocity from our spectra by fitting them with synthetic spectra with the ROTFIT tool. The targets have negligible extinction and spectral type from G5 to M8. We perform synthetic photometry on the spectra to derive the typical colors of young stars in different filters. We measure the luminosity of the emission lines present in the spectra and estimate the noise due to chromospheric emission in the measurements of accretion luminosity in accreting stars. We provide a calibration of the photospheric colors of young PMS stars as a function of their spectral type in a set of standard broad-band optical and near-infrared filters. For stars with masses of ~ 1.5Msun and ages of ~1-5 Myr, the chromospheric noise converts to a limit of measurable mass accretion rates of ~ 3x10^-10 Msun/yr.Comment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy & Astrophysics. The spectra of the photospheric templates will be uploaded to Vizier, but are already available on request. Abstract shortened for arxiv constraints. Language edited versio