Taxes, Health Insurance and Women's Self-Employment

I examine whether the availability of health coverage through the spouse's health plan influences a married woman's decision to become self-employed. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) introduced a tax subsidy for the self-employed to purchase their own health insurance. I test whether this `natural' experiment induced more women without spousal health insurance coverage to select into self-employment. The difference-in-difference estimates based on an analysis of employed women indicate that the incidence of self-employment among women who did not enjoy spousal health bene�ts rose signi�cantly - between 14% and 25% - in the post-TRA86 period, while a multinomial speci�cation based on a sample of both employed and non-employed women suggests that the increase was around 9%

Taxes, Health Insurance and Women’s Self-Employment

I examine whether the availability of health coverage through the spouse’s health plan influences a married woman’s decision to become self-employed. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) introduced a tax subsidy for the self-employed to purchase their own health insurance. I test whether this ‘natural’ experiment induced more women without spousal health insurance cov-erage to select into self-employment. The difference-in-difference estimates based on an analysis of employed women indicate that the incidence of self-employment among women who did not enjoy spousal health benefits rose significantly - between 14% and 25% - in the post-TRA86 pe- riod, while a multinomial specification based on a sample of both employed and non-employed women suggests that the increase was around 9%.Health Insurance; Self-Employment

Optimization of fuzzy analogy in software cost estimation using linguistic variables

One of the most important objectives of software engineering community has been the increase of useful models that beneficially explain the development of life cycle and precisely calculate the effort of software cost estimation. In analogy concept, there is deficiency in handling the datasets containing categorical variables though there are innumerable methods to estimate the cost. Due to the nature of software engineering domain, generally project attributes are often measured in terms of linguistic values such as very low, low, high and very high. The imprecise nature of such value represents the uncertainty and vagueness in their elucidation. However, there is no efficient method that can directly deal with the categorical variables and tolerate such imprecision and uncertainty without taking the classical intervals and numeric value approaches. In this paper, a new approach for optimization based on fuzzy logic, linguistic quantifiers and analogy based reasoning is proposed to improve the performance of the effort in software project when they are described in either numerical or categorical data. The performance of this proposed method exemplifies a pragmatic validation based on the historical NASA dataset. The results were analyzed using the prediction criterion and indicates that the proposed method can produce more explainable results than other machine learning methods.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures; Journal of Systems and Software, 2011. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1112.3877 by other author

A Note On Jump Symmetric n-Sigraph

For standard terminology and notion in graph theory we refer the reader to West; the nonstandard will be given in this paper as and when required. We treat only finite simple graphs without self loops and isolates

Misspecification and Heterogeneity in Single-Index, Binary Choice Models

We propose a nonparametric approach for estimating single-index, binary-choice models when parametric models such as Probit and Logit are potentially misspecified. The new approach involves two steps: first, we estimate index coefficients using sliced inverse regression without specifying a parametric probability function a priori; second, we estimate the unknown probability function using kernel regression of the binary choice variable on the single index estimated in the first step. The estimated probability functions for different demographic groups indicate that the conventional dummy variable approach cannot fully capture heterogeneous effects across groups. Using both simulated and labor market data, we demonstrate the merits of this new approach in solving model misspecification and heterogeneity problems.Probit; Logit; Sliced Inverse Regression; categorical variables; treatment heterogeneity

Decrease in gyrase A protein expression in _E. coli_ cells inhibited by antisense ribozymes

RNase P complexed with external guide sequence (EGS) represents a novel nucleic-acid-based gene interference approach to modulate gene expression. Nucleic acid-based gene interference technologies represent promising strategies for specific inhibition of mRNA sequences of choice. Recently, small interfering RNAs have been implicated in inducing endogenous RNase of the RNA-induced silencing complex in the RNA interference pathway to inhibit gene expression and growth of several human viruses. We report down regulation of protein expression of _E. coli_ gyrase A, an essential gene for DNA supercoiling and antibiotic susceptibility in BL21 (DE3) strain of _E. coli_, using Ribonuclease P based external guide sequence (EGS) technique. EGS directed against gyrase A gene that was cloned into pUC vector, which contains the ampicillin (Amp) resistance gene. The recombinant plasmid pT7EGyrA was transformed into BL21 (DE3) and inductions were performed using IPTG. Western blot was done to investigate the downregulation of gyrase A protein. The results showed a significant decrease of gyrase A suggesting the utility of EGS RNAs in gene therapy applications, by inhibiting the expression of essential proteins

The Long-Run Impact of New Zealand's Structural Reform on Local Communities

New Zealand underwent a period of comprehensive market-oriented economic reforms from 1984-93. In this paper, we use data from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Censuses to examine the long-run impact that these reforms had on local communities. We analyse the adjustment process in 140 local labour market areas (LMAs) by creating three measures of the impact of structural reform on local communities - an employment-based measure, a population measure and a housing price measure - and examine the persistence of these shocks over time. We find that communities which experienced smaller employment shocks have higher employment rates, higher average incomes and a more skilled workforce in the medium and long-term. Population shocks also have positive, sizeable and persistent effect on average incomes and population in the future. Overall, the initial impacts of the reforms undertaken in New Zealand on local communities appear to still endure more than a decade later.Structural Reform, New Zealand, Communities, Local Labour Markets