Recent Trends in the Earnings of New Immigrants to the United States

This paper studies long-term trends in the labor market performance of immigrants in the United States, using the 1960-2000 PUMS and 1994-2009 CPS. While there was a continuous decline in the earnings of new immigrants 1960-1990, the trend reversed in the 1990s, with newcomers doing as well in 2000, relative to natives, as they had 20 years earlier. This improvement in immigrant performance is not explained by changes in origin-country composition, educational attainment or state of residence. Changes in labor market conditions, including changes in the wage structure which could differentially impact recent arrivals, can account for only a small portion of it. The upturn appears to have been caused in part by a shift in immigration policy toward high-skill workers matched with jobs, an increase in the earnings of immigrants from Mexico, and a decline in the earnings of native high school dropouts. However, most of the increase remains a puzzle. Results from the CPS suggest that, while average entry wages fell again after 2000, correcting for simple changes in the composition of new immigrants, the unexplained rise in entry wages has persisted.

Nuclear and Particle Physics applications of the Bohm Picture of Quantum Mechanics

Approximation methods for calculating individual particle/ field motions in spacetime at the quantum level of accuracy (a key feature of the Bohm Picture of Quantum Mechanics (BP)), are studied. Modern textbook presentations of Quantum Theory are used throughout, but only to provide the necessary, already existing, tested formalisms and calculational techniques. New coherent insights, reinterpretations of old solutions and results, and new (in principle testable) quantitative and qualitative predictions, can be obtained on the basis of the BP that complete the standard type of postdictions and predictions.Comment: 41 page

Breakdown of Landau Fermi liquid properties in the 2D2D Boson-Fermion model

We study the normal state spectral properties of the fermionic excitations in the Boson-Fermion model. The fermionic single particle excitations show a flattening of the dispersion as the Fermi vector ${\bf k}_{_F}$ is approached from below, forshadowing a Bogoliubov spectrum of a superconducting ground state. The width of the quasiparticle excitations near ${\bf k}_{_F}$ increases monotonically as the temperature is lowered. In the fermionic distribution function this temperature dependence is manifest in a strong modification of $n({\bf k})$ in a small region below ${\bf k}_{_F}$, but a nearly $T$ independant $n({\bf k}_{_F})$.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX 3.

Ambiguity, Sovereignty, and Identity in Ireland: Peace and Transition

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

States and Laws, Jews and Palestinians: Yadgar\u27s Traditionalist Alternative. A Reflection on Yadgar, \u3cem\u3eIsrael\u27s Jewish Identity Crisis\u3c/em\u3e (Cambridge, 2020)

This essay reflects on issues raised by Yaacov Yadgar concerning a devil’s bargain made decades ago between secular Zionist Israeli governments and the country’s Orthodox religious establishment, in defining who is a Jew and, therefore, entitled to the most comprehensive benefits of citizenship. It seems that that very tensions inherent in this somewhat illogical, somewhat cynical bargain are quite relevant to an us-them mentality that makes peace with the Palestinians more difficult

Brexit, the Misrepresentation of Democracy, and the Rock of Gibraltar

This short essay makes three points regarding Brexit that have not been widely considered in public or academic debate. First, Brexit advocates (Leavers) successfully misrepresented the referendum of June 2016 as a definitive expression of democratic will. (“The people have spoken.”) The slim majority result was less than such an expression, particularly because it ignored intercommunal and intergenerational democratic values—most profoundly, overriding clear majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland which had voted to remain in the EU. Second, even though within a year of that referendum, a majority of Britons (Remainers) had come to oppose Brexit, political leadership among the Remainers was woefully ineffective. Some, like Prime Minister Theresa May, simply changed sides, wrongheadedly accepting the people-have-spoken rhetoric. Other Remainers continued to make their case, but did not effectively argue that people had not spoken. Perhaps, most crucially, the British “first past the post” electoral system provided no viable remain option in the December 2019 Parliamentary elections. Put simply, in the December 2019 Parliamentary elections, Remainers had no one to vote for. Third, hopes that the UK could easily rejoin the European Union (encouraged in part by remarks of EU leaders) are false. Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) requires that a state which has left the EU should go through a rigorous admission process. Since Article 49 requires unanimity among EU member states, any member with an objection to Britain rejoining could block readmission. Most troubling for Britain could be Spain’s long-standing claim for the return of Gibraltar to which the UK would be loathe to accede and from which Spain would be loathe to retreat