Galaxy Formation: Was There A Big Bang Shell?

The tight correlation of galactic velocity distribution to both luminosity and its black hole mass and the relation of halo parameters to luminous mass distribution, can not be due to collapse dynamics. A big bang shell can solve galaxy formation problems by forming the supermassive black holes necessary to capture the initial blast wave in a coordinated pattern.Comment: 7 pages late

The Most Metal-Poor Stars. V. The CEMP-no Stars in 3D and Non-LTE

We explore the nature of carbon-rich ([C/Fe]_{1D,LTE} > +0.7), metal-poor ([Fe/H_{1D,LTE}] < -2.0) stars in the light of post 1D,LTE literature analyses, which provide 3D-1D and NLTE-LTE corrections for iron, and 3D-1D corrections for carbon (from the CH G-band, the only indicator at lowest [Fe/H]). High-excitation C~I lines are used to constrain 3D,NLTE corrections of G-band analyses. Corrections to the 1D,LTE compilations of Yoon et al. and Yong et al. yield 3D,LTE and 3D,NLTE Fe and C abundances. The number of CEMP-no stars in the Yoon et al. compilation (plus eight others) decreases from 130 (1D,LTE) to 68 (3D,LTE) and 35 (3D,NLTE). For stars with -4.5 < [Fe/H] < -3.0 in the compilation of Yong et al., the corresponding CEMP-no fractions change from 0.30 to 0.15 and 0.12, respectively. We present a toy model of the coalescence of pre-stellar clouds of the two populations that followed chemical enrichment by the first zero-heavy-element stars: the C-rich, hyper-metal-poor and the C-normal, very-metal-poor populations. The model provides a reasonable first-order explanation of the distribution of the 1D,LTE abundances of CEMP-no stars in the A(C) and [C/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] planes, in the range -4.0 < [Fe/H] < -2.0. The Yoon et al. CEMP Group I contains a subset of 19 CEMP-no stars (14% of the group), 4/9 of which are binary, and which have large [Sr/Ba]_{1D,LTE} values. The data support the conjectures of Hansen et al. (2016b, 2019) and Arentsen et al. (2018) that these stars may have experienced enrichment from AGB stars and/or "spinstars".Comment: ApJ in pres

The Outcome of Impasse Procedures in New York Schools Under the Taylor Law

The effectiveness of New York’s Taylor Law, and of the Public Employment Relations Board established under it, may be measured in a number of ways. One is to see whether it does, in fact, eliminate strikes of public employees. Another is to compare the results of mediation and fact-finding under the Board’s auspices with settlements arrived at without intervention of PERB. The authors, who are engaged in a broad study of the latter kind, present some of their findings as they relate to the public school system during 1969 and 1970

The Effectiveness of Reinstatement as a Public Policy Remedy: The Kohler Case

This article is concerned with two aspects of the NLRB reinstatement remedy as applied in the famous Kohler case: (1) how effective the remedy was, particularly in terms of the number of employees who returned to Kohler under its protection, and (2) what factors, in order of significance, affected a worker\u27s decision to return. The authors find the remedy was effective, since about 40 percent of those workers who received reinstatement offers accepted them. Regression and discriminant analyses of the variables affecting the decision to return confirm the thinking of labor market economists that the most disadvantaged worker (lower paid, older, less educated, less skilled, married, with children and with a nonworking wife) was most likely to return to a Kohler job. Recommendations are offered for improving the efficacy of the reinstatement remedy, with emphasis on adding a penalty cost to its back-pay feature

(WP 2007-02) Valuing Environmental Quality: A Space-based Strategy

This paper develops and applies a space-based strategy for overcoming the general problem of getting at the demand for non-market goods. It focuses specifically on evaluating one form of environmental quality, distance from EPA designated environmental hazards, via the single-family housing market in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. A spatial two stage hedonic price analysis is used to: (1) estimate the marginal implicit price of distance from air release sites, hazardous waste generators, hazardous waste handlers, superfund sites, and toxic release sites; and (2) estimate a series of demand functions describing the relationship between the price of distance and the quantity consumed. The analysis, which represents a major step forward in the valuation of environmental quality, reveals that the information needed to identify second-stage demand functions is hidden right in plain site — hanging in the aether of the regional housing market

The Influence of Collective Bargaining on Teachers’ Salaries in New York State

This study tests a model of teacher salary determination with data describing several aspects of all school districts in New York state, outside of New York City. The authors find that collective bargaining is not significant in explaining variations in 1968 teacher salaries among all school districts, but bargaining did have a significant effect among small districts and on the rate of salary change from 1967 to 1968. On the whole, however, the authors conclude that the results of this and other studies show that bargaining has had a surprisingly minor effect on teacher salaries

Selected Characteristics of Savings and Thrift Plans for Private Industry Workers

[Excerpt] This issue of Beyond the Numbers looks at the growth in the prevalence and at selected characteristics of employer-provided savings and thrift plans in private industry in the United States. The data for this article come from the National Compensation Survey: Health and Retirement Plan Provisions in Private Industry in the United States, 2012. In some instances, comparisons of 2012 data are made to 2009 data, which came from National Compensation Survey: Health and Retirement Plan Provisions in Private Industry in the United States, 2009

Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles

The rise in wage inequality in the U.S. labor market during the 1980s is usually attributed to skill-biased technical change (SBTC), associated with the development of personal computers and related information technologies. We review the evidence in favor of this hypothesis, focusing on the implications of SBTC for economy-wide trends in wage inequality, and for the evolution of wage differentials between various groups. A fundamental problem for the SBTC hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s, despite continuing advances in computer technology. SBTC also fails to explain the closing of the gender gap, the stability of the racial wage gap, and the dramatic rise in education-related wage gaps for younger versus older workers. We conclude that the SBTC hypothesis is not very helpful in understanding the myriad shifts in the structure of wages that have occurred over the past three decades.

Measuring the Impacts of Wolves on the 'Market' for Elk Hunting: Hunter Adjustment and Game Agency Response

The reintroduction of the gray wolf to Montana and other western states has to date largely pitted ranchers against environmental groups, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as the central agency for this reintroduction. There is also another group affected by wolves that to date have had little influence on this reintroduction. Hunters have diverse views on wolves, and accordingly have not spoken with one voice concerning their reintroduction. This lack of a common view is mirrored by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's (one of the largest hunting groups in North America) evolving policy statements in 1995 and 2003 that specifically addresses that their membership will take different sides to wolf reintroduction, and that the group supports state control of wolves, 'ultimately achieving an appropriate balance between wildlife, habitat, and people' (Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, 2005). Part of the ambivalence of hunters towards wolves stems from the general lack of published knowledge regarding the actual impacts of wolves on game populations, game behavior, and ultimately hunters- satisfaction. This lack of knowledge arises due to the complex nature of the predator/prey relationships, the extensive movements of wolves and their prey, and the difficulty of obtaining good population estimates of both wolves and particularly their prey. Additionally from an economic perspective, hunters- property rights to game are ill-defined, with the political strength of hunting "rights" and their values quite difficult to determine. This paper provides estimates of the effects of wolves on hunter opportunities, where these opportunities are influenced by actions taken by both the game agency and hunters in response to the spread of wolves. We utilize observed measures for these effects -permit availability, hunter success, and measures of hunter - to assess the impacts of wolves on hunters. We focus on elk − a game species that are both vulnerable to wolves and that is in high demand in Montana. Our estimation approach draws from a hedonic model in which hunters compete for a rivalrous good (elk hunting opportunities) that is not allocated through a price mechanism. Hunters in most western states compete for hunting rights by entering a special permit lottery in some cases, while they compete in other cases by undertaking costly activities to obtain a right under open access. Hunters compete for these rights under open access by racing to reach hunting areas early, establishing expertise and customary areas, and in other ways consistent with Barzel (1997). Both types of competition are observable using different instruments as in Nickerson (1990), by Buschena, Anderson, and Leonard (2001), and by Scroggin, Berrens, and Bohara (2000). Hunters are empirically modeled in such a way that allows them to benefit from elk and also from experience value of wolves. The paper provides not only a study of agency decisions in response to impacts of a threatened species, but also applies a relatively little-studied method of determining factors affecting demand and agency decision for goods distributed via a non-price mechanism. Our application (1) uses observable measures of hunter competition that reflect good valuation, (2) statistically accounts for the endogeneity of hunter and agency decision, and (3) models the simultaneous equilibria across numerous and diverse hunting districts (the "goods" being competed for in this case). Our statistical estimation shows that as wolf populations in a particularly high profile region outside Yellowstone National Park become established in a hunting district, (1) the state game agency reduces the supply of special hunting permits, (2) there are fewer hunters hunting in that district under open access licenses, and (3) hunter success rates for both special permits and open access decline with increased wolf pressure in areas with the heaviest wolf pressure. We find that the game agency and hunters respond to reduced hunting opportunities, and that their responses are larger in magnitude for high-profile (political profile) wolf populations. We believe that this paper is quite relevant to numerous parties involved in resource allocation, endangered species policy, state and federal agencies, and recreational users of public and private lands. The paper should be of interest to resource economists as it provides an application of an observable "market" for desirable resources as a complement to elicitation-based valuation methods. We expect the paper to generate a good deal of interest and discussion regarding the methodology and policy implications. Barzel, Yoram. Economic Analysis of Property Rights: Second Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Buschena, D.E., T. Anderson, and J Leonard. "Valuing Non-Market Goods: The Case of Elk Hunting in Colorado and Montana." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 41 (2001): 33-43. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "FWP Takes Lead in Wolf Management in Montana." http://fwp.state.mt.us/news/article_3700.aspx. June 24, 2005. Nickerson, Peter H. (1990) "Demand for the Regulation of Recreation: The Case of Elk and Deer Hunting in Washington State." Land Economics, 66, 437-447. Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. "Our Positions" (official position statements on wolves). Bugle, the Journal of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. July/August, 2005. pp 78. Scroggin, David, Robert P. Berrens, and Alok. K. Bohara. (2000). "Policy Changes and the Demand for Lottery-Rationed Big Game Hunting Licenses." Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 25(2): 501-519.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Do Immigrant Inflows Lead to Native Outflows?

We use 1980 and 1990 Census data for 119 larger Metropolitan Statistical Areas to examine the effect of skill-group specific immigrant inflows on the location decisions of natives in the same skill group, and on the overall distribution of human capital. To control for unobserved skill-group specific demand factors, our models include lagged mobility flows of natives over the 1970-80 period. We also estimate instrumental variables models that use the fraction of Mexican immigrants in 1970 to predict skill-group specific relative immigrant inflows over the 1980s. Despite wide variation across cities in the size and relative skill composition of immigrant population changes we find no evidence of selective out-migration by natives. We conclude that immigrant inflows exert a direct effect on the relative skill composition of cities: cities that have received relatively unskilled immigrant flows have experienced proportional rises in the size of their unskilled populations.