Labor Supply Effects of Social Insurance

This chapter examines the labor supply effects of social insurance programs. We argue that this topic deserves separate treatment from the rest of the labor supply literature because individuals may be imperfectly informed as to the rules of the programs and because key parameters are likely to differ for those who are eligible for social insurance programs, such as the disabled. Furthermore, differences in social insurance programs often provide natural experiments with exogenous changes in wages or incomes that can be used to estimate labor supply responses. Finally, social insurance often affects different margins of labor supply. For example, the labor supply literature deals mostly with adjustments in the number of hours worked, whereas the incentives of social insurance programs frequently affect the decision of whether to work at all. The empirical work on unemployment insurance (UI) and workers' compensation (WC) insurance finds that the programs tend to increase the length of time employees spend out of work. Most of the estimates of the elasticities of lost work time that incorporate both the incidence and duration of claims are close to 1.0 for unemployment insurance and between 0.5 and 1.0 for workers' compensation. These elasticities are substantially larger than the labor supply elasticities typically found for men in studies of the effects of wages or taxes on hours of work. The evidence on disability insurance and (especially) social security retirement suggests much smaller and less conclusively established labor supply effects. Part of the explanation for this difference probably lies in the fact that UI and WC lead to short-run variation in wages with mostly a substitution effect. Our review suggest that it would be misleading to apply a universal set of labor supply elasticities to these diverse problems and populations.

Maintaining places of social inclusion : Ebola and the emergency department

We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a community with material resources, meaning, and values at geographic sites where citizens can access services for specific needs—as taken-for-granted, essential, and inherently precarious. Based on our study of an emergency department that was disrupted by the threat of the Ebola virus in 2014, we develop a process model to explain how a place of social inclusion can be maintained by custodians. We show how these custodians—in our fieldsite, doctors and nurses—experience and engage in institutional work to manage different levels of tension between the value of inclusion and the reality of finite resources, as well as tension between inclusion and the desire for safety. We also demonstrate how the interplay of custodians’ emotions is integral to maintaining the place of social inclusion. The primary contribution of our study is to shine light on places of social inclusion as important institutions in democratic society. We also reveal the theoretical and practical importance of places as institutions, deepen understanding of custodians and custodianship as a form of institutional work, and offer new insight into the dynamic processes that connect emotions and institutional work

’A Rare Bird….’: Race, Masculinity, and the Community of Pilots in Postwar America

In the summer of 1969, one year after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked race riots across the United States, Flying magazine published an article titled: “Can a Black Man Fly?” Despite the potentially provocative title, the author clearly had no doubts whether African Americans could master the complex technology of flight; that issue had been decisively settled during World War II by the famously successful Tuskegee Airmen. Instead, he wondered whether or not they were welcomed – or even allowed to enter – into the informal yet closely knit “community of pilots” that dominated aviation in postwar America. His question reflected a stark demographic reality: most civilian aviators at the time were white. Although the federal government did not track the race of pilots, anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. During the decades following World War II, non-white pilots were almost entirely absent from the pages of mainstream aviation publications. And in an interview conducted years after Flying published this article, Jesse Lee Brown, an African American who earned his private pilot’s license shortly after returning home from the Vietnam War, joked that he was considered “a rare bird” wherever he landed during flights around Alabama and neighboring states in the early 1970s. Even today, some estimates suggest that fewer than five percent of civilian pilots are non-white minorities. The scarcity of non-white pilots is easy to explain in the immediate postwar era when racial segregation was legal in much of the country. Economics played a role, too. Private flying is expensive, and many minorities – who historically had lower incomes than their white counterparts – could not afford to become pilots even if they wanted to. However, formal barriers fell in the 1960s, informal attitudes regarding race began to change, and the economic prospects for minorities improved, yet private flying remained a mostly white activity. Why? In addition to being mostly white, the community of pilots was also overwhelmingly male. In a book-length project nearing completion, I argue that postwar private fliers consciously created a culture that celebrated the mastery of technology as a hallmark of American masculinity. This, in turn, created an atmosphere in the cockpit and around the airport that, at the very least, made those who did not conform to these norms feel like unwelcome outsiders. This conference paper represents the genesis of my next research project, in which I will examine the experiences of non-white pilots, especially African Americans. R.W. Connell’s path-breaking book Masculinities (1995) argues that different versions of masculinity, embraced by various subgroups of society, coexist side-by-side. This suggests that the masculine culture of postwar private aviation I describe in my first project was actually a form of white masculinity, created and defined by white males. Informed by Connell’s conclusions, as well as more recent work in the history of technology described in Amy Sue Bix’s bibliographic essay and other chapters in Bruce Sinclair, ed., Technology and the African-American Experience (2004), I argue that differing definitions of masculinity, as well as deep-rooted social and cultural expectations regarding who is (and is not) a pilot, help explain the longstanding dearth of non-white participants in private flying. This in turn helps shed light on the complex relationship amongst technical expertise, gender, and race. Sources include the postwar experiences of former Tuskegee Airmen, records and oral history interviews related to the three largest organizations for African-American fliers in the U.S., articles from aviation magazines with a mostly white audience of licensed fliers, and popular publications aimed at minority, non-pilot audiences such as Ebony, Jet, and Black Enterprise

Development of a plasma source ion implantation facility for the modification of materials' surfaces

Bibliography: p. 197-203.In Plasma Source Ion Implantation high energy [10-50 keV] plasma ions are implanted into materials to modify surface properties, achieving surface hardening, increased wear and corrosion resistance. Plasma Source Ion Implantation is alos used for doping semiconductors and could form an essential step in the manufacture of multilayered wafers. This thesis describes the development and construction of the plasma implantation facility at the Materials Research Group of the Naitonal Accelerator Centre; in particular, the development of the Plasma Assisted Materials Modification Laboratory, the analytical tools available at the Materials Research Group and surrounding universities, basic research into the implantation of steels, the x-rays emitted as a side-effect of plasma source ion implantation and the development of an analytical technique of interest to silicon wafer-cutting technologies

Applying Machine Learning to Determine Documents Related to Email

Machine learning algorithms may determine a document or file that a user intends to attach to an email. Words in the body of the email may indicate an intent to attach a document or file to the email. Based on determining that the user intends to attach a document or file to the email, candidate documents may be found in a remote storage, such as cloud storage, based on the recipient, subject or title, and/or body of the email. The candidate documents may then be ranked and a confidence level determined. Based on the raking and/or confidence level, one or more files or documents may be suggested to the user for attachment

Neka ekološka i etološka opažanja troglobita koji vidi, Hendea myersi cavernicola (Chelicerata: Arachnida: Opiliones)

Data on the visual behaviour of Hendea myersi cavernicola (Forster) are provided which demonstrate that this harvestman can see. Since no specimens could be trapped outside the cave and the integument of this species displays a reduction in pigmentation, we have to conclude that we are dealing with a troglobite which not only possesses eyes, but actually uses them.U radu se daju podaci o vizualnom ponašanju Hendea myersi cavernicola (Forster), a koji pokazuju da ovaj kosac vidi. Nije bilo moguće uloviti nijedan primjerak izvan špilje, a integument ove vrste pokazuje redukciju pigmentacije, pa moramo zaključiti da se radi o troglobitu koji ne samo da ima oči, nego ih i koristi

Electronic Intervention and Platforms and Their Impacts on Crowdfunding Behavior

Crowdfunding is a method of raising funds for projects, creative pursuits, peer-to-peer lending, and charitable causes. The idea of crowdfunding stems from the more encompassing concept of crowdsourcing, which refers not only to the gathering of funds, but to group participation in the convergence of ideas and content creation. Thus, crowdfunding can be considered to be one type of crowdsourcing. The following study examines the crowdfunding behavior of a sample of business professionals located in the service sector of metropolitan Pittsburgh, PA. In general, the empirical findings suggested that smaller goals tend to have better success ratios, while getting the targets achieved tends to attract more donors, especially when a goal is nearly met. Contrary to findings in some previous literature, there appears to be a weak link between respondents’ social networking use and familiarity with crowdfunding. Furthermore, respondents’ charitable giving habits did not closely link with crowdfunding solicitation behavior. Finally, there was a weak connection between crowdfunding behavior and income, but age did reveal a significant connection. Interest in the project can be limiting. Some sites only focus on creative and fun projects. If the creator’s project does not catch the attention and interest of donors, then it may receive little to no support. This can be made worse by similar projects competing for the same donors. The pool of donors may be limiting. Depending on the type and scope of the project, the amount and class of people a project will interest will be limited. Some sites only allow each donor to make a donation up to a certain amount so the number of donors would be very important. Other sites may require a minimum donation amount, so the class of donors targeted could be very important

Quantitative measurement of binary liquid distributions using multiple-tracer x-ray fluorescence and radiography

The complex geometry and large index-of-refraction gradients that occur near the point of impingement of binary liquid jets present a challenging environment for optical interrogation. A simultaneous quadruple-tracer x-ray fluorescence and line-of-sight radiography technique is proposed as a means of distinguishing and quantifying individual liquid component distributions prior to, during, and after jet impact. Two different pairs of fluorescence tracers are seeded into each liquid stream to maximize their attenuation ratio for reabsorption correction and differentiation of the two fluids during mixing. This approach for instantaneous correction of xray fluorescence reabsorption is compared with a more time-intensive approach of using stereographic reconstruction of x-ray attenuation along multiple lines of sight. The proposed methodology addresses the need for a quantitative measurement technique capable of interrogating optically complex, near-field liquid distributions in many mixing systems of practical interest involving two or more liquid streams