The Cyclical Behavior of Industrial Labor Markets: A Comparison of the Pre-War and Post-War Eras

This paper studies the cyclical behavior of a number of industrial labor markets of the pre-war (1923-1939) and post-war (1954-1982) eras. In the spirit of Burns and Mitchell we do not test a specific structural model of the labor market but instead concentrate on describing the qualitative features of the (monthly, industry-level) data.The two principal questions we ask are: First, how is labor input (as measured by the number of workers, the hours of work, and the intensity of utilization) varied over the cycle ? Second, what is the cyclical behaviorof labor compensation (as measured by real wages, product wages, and real weekly earnings) ? We study these questions in both the frequency domain and the time domain. Many of our findings simply reinforce, or perhaps refine, existing perceptions of cyclical labor market behavior. However, we do find some interesting differences between the pre-war and the post-war periods in ther elative use of layoffs and short hours in downturns, and in the cyclical behavior of the real wage.

Quantile Regression Under Random Censoring

No abstract.

Urban Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Validation of Emission Inventories

There exists a pressing need for high resolution emissions inventories for cities. For greenhouse gases, cities and regions need a careful analysis of their carbon footprint to design effective policies to control and mitigate emissions. High resolution emissions inventories can be used in conjunction with meteorology models and atmospheric measurements to place top-down constraints on emissions. High resolution emissions inventories for criteria pollutants like NOx, CO, and O3 enable urban-scale air pollution modeling down to the neighborhood level. For example, the Vulcan project estimates CO2 using county-scale vehicle miles traveled (VMT) from the National Mobile Inventory Model (NMIM) County Database (NCD). The Hestia Project similarly allocates CO2 from Vulcan’s county-level inventory down to the building scale using eQUEST and building footprints. On-road transport is the most important sector for anthropogenic CO2, 38% in Portland, 32% nationally. Here we show a new model of CO2 emissions for the Portland, OR metropolitan region. The backbone is traffic counter recordings made by the Portland Bureau of Transportation at 9,352 sites over 21 years (1986-2006), augmented with PORTAL (The Portland Regional Transportation Archive Listing) freeway data. We constructed a regression model to fill in traffic network gaps using GIS data such as road class and population density. EPA MOVES was used to estimate transportation CO2 emissions. Our transportation emissions served as input into WRF meteorological modeling to simulate atmospheric CO2 at sites where frequent CO2 measurements are made. We show preliminary model results

Determining the structure of the United States marine instrumentation industry and its position in the world industry

This report is a general, but comprehensive, description and analysis of industrial organization in the field of marine electronic instrumentation (MEl), a broadly defined "industry," which until now has received little systematic, scholarly attention. The report reviews the current literature on international trade and competitiveness, as well as trade and scientific journals relevant to the industry. The resul ts of a series of interviews with representatives of the industry and responsible government agencies are presented and industry and government data on R&D and output have been collected and analyzed together with other indicators of industrial performance. On the basis of these sources, the structure of the industry and its markets is characterized and the importance of marine electronic instrumenation in international high technology trade is established. Over 350 firms in the U.S. industry are identified, which annually earn total estimated gross revenues of approximately $5 billion. These firms fall into three largely distinct industry groups: (1) defense systems contractors; (2) commercial marine electronics; and (3) scientific instrumentation. The first group is by far the largest in sales volume and is oligopolistic in structure, consisting of a few large rivals for infrequent and complex defense systems contracts. The other groups are more purely competitive. Four major customer groups are distinguished: (1) military; (2) commercial and recreational shipping and boating; (3) offshore oil and gas; and (4) oceanographic/environmental. Most of the firms in the industry face international competititon. The importance of marine electronic instrumentation to technological advance and economic activity in the world's oceans is strongly apparent. Parameters affecting the international competitiveness of firms in this industry, including those relating to industry structure and behavior and governmental practices and institutions such as sponsored research, procurement, intellectual property rights, tax allowances, antitrust enforcement, small business encouragements, export controls, import restrictions, exchange rates, and technology transfer are summarized. A number of issues relating to international competititon, economic analysis, and government policy that are fruitful areas for further research also are identified.Funding was provided by the Department of Commerce, NOAA, National Ocean Service, Office of Marine Operations through a grant to the Massachusetts Centers of Excellence Corporation, grant Number NA87-AA-D-M0037