Reservation wages in Estonia

This paper analyses the factors determining reservation wages in Estonia, and estimates the influence of the reservation wage on unemployment duration. According to estimations there is no statistically significant effect of unemployment benefit and social assistance on the reservation wage in Estonia. While evidence was found, that the higher the reservation wage, the lower the probability of finding a job, if all other things are equal. It was also found that the eligibility of unemployment benefit or social assistance increases the duration of the unemployment period, which indicates the lower offer arrival rate in the case of unemployed receiving assistance, which might be caused by a lower search intensity.reservation wage, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, transition economy

Reservation wages in Estonia

This paper analyses the factors determining reservation wages in Estonia, and estimates the influence of the reservation wage on unemployment duration. According to estimations there is no statistically significant effect of unemployment benefit and social assistance on the reservation wage in Estonia. While evidence was found, that the higher the reservation wage, the lower the probability of finding a job, if all other things are equal. It was also found that the eligibility of unemployment benefit or social assistance increases the duration of the unemployment period, which indicates the lower offer arrival rate in the case of unemployed receiving assistance, which might be caused by a lower search intensity.

Fertility and Public Policies - Evidence from Norway and Finland

The relatively high and rising fertility rates of Nordic countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s sparked a renewed research interest in the possible pronatalistic effects of generous family policy programs. Several studies have addressed this issue, but few have tried to model policy effects explicitly. The existing evidence so far is mainly from Sweden, where policy indicators have been incorporated in economic fertility models that also control for female wages. This paper complements previous Swedish analyses with evidence from Norway and Finland. The results corroborate earlier findings of a negative effect of female wages. There are also indications of a positive policy impact, as maternity leave extensions are estimated to raise birth rates, although mainly higher parity births and mainly in Finland.female wages, fertility dynamics, multistate duration model, multistate models, public policy

Corpuscular Consideration of Eternal Inflation

We review the paradigm of eternal inflation in the light of the recently proposed corpuscular picture of space-time. Comparing the strength of the average fluctuation of the field up its potential with that of quantum depletion, we show that the latter can be dominant. We then study the full respective distributions in order to show that the fraction of the space-time which has an increasing potential is always below the eternal-inflation threshold. We prove that for monomial potentials eternal inflaton is excluded. This is likely to hold for other models as well.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; revised version to match submitted versio

Unforeseen Events

Britton collaborated with Norwegian artist Marit Tingleff in this duo, to extend the dialogue between their ceramic works, continuing an international rapport. In 2007 Tingleff and Britton were part of a much larger exhibition END, which had ben coordinated over some years between 7 British and Scandinavian artists. It was shown first in Copenhagen at the Kunstindustrimuseet and then at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, Arendal,Norway. For Unforeseen Events, working out of sight of each other’s researches (hence the title) both were engaged with material risks in making fresh discoveries in form and surface, and an investigation of the breadth of expression achievable with a limited palette of pigment and glaze. Allusions to tableware were common to both, beyond the context of function. Tingleff’s six huge rectangular plates, e.g.170 x 92 cm, painted with slips and glaze, were wall mounted on shelves. Britton’s fifteen pieces were smaller in scale and greater in formal variety, occupying two expansive tables/plinths .The significance and innovation of this series of pots in the commitment she shows to stretching the idea of the container, was rooted in the following: Ongoing glaze experiments, fluidity, transparency, altering slips underneath. Green and yellow key colours, also a new manganese brown used with yellow, and kinds of white. New variations of formal types: jug, jar,plate, also a channeling double pot form, changed by a cone-section base. Jugs flaring and tapering, forms made by a newly defined curving slab process Plates as platforms, straight-sided ovals, deep hollows; oblong plates with oval centre fields, and exaggerated relief ornaments eg Squirl Scaling up as skill grows with new means of glazing initiated in 2007. A gallery essay by Edmund de Waal was also available online. Reviewed in Ceramic Review, issue 241,Jan/Feb 2010, later published in Norwegian. Pieces from both Britton and Tingleff from Unforeseen Events were illustrated in De Waal’s The Pot Book, Phaidon , 2011

Uncertainties in primordial black-hole constraints on the primordial power spectrum

The existence (and abundance) of primordial black holes (PBHs) is governed by the power spectrum of primordial perturbations generated during inflation. So far no PBHs have been observed, and instead, increasingly stringent bounds on their existence at different scales have been obtained. Up until recently, this has been exploited in attempts to constrain parts of the inflationary power spectrum that are unconstrained by cosmological observations. We first point out that the simple translation of the PBH non-observation bounds into constraints on the primordial power spectrum is inaccurate as it fails to include realistic aspects of PBH formation and evolution. We then demonstrate, by studying two examples of uncertainties from the effects of critical and non-spherical collapse, that even though they may seem small, they have important implications for the usefulness of the constraints. In particular, we point out that the uncertainty induced by non-spherical collapse may be much larger than the difference between particular bounds from PBH non-observations and the general maximum cap stemming from the condition $\Omega \leq 1$ on the dark-matter density in the form of PBHs. We therefore make the cautious suggestion of applying only the overall maximum dark-matter constraint to models of early Universe, as this requirement seems to currently provide a more reliable constraint, which better reflects our current lack of detailed knowledge of PBH formation. These, and other effects, such as merging, clustering and accretion, may also loosen constraints from non-observations of other primordial compact objects such as ultra-compact minihalos of dark matter.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; v4: revised version to match published versio