AN ANALYSIS OF OKLAHOMA POPULATION MIGRATION FROM 1970 TO 1974

Labor and Human Capital,

Business cycle detrending of macroeconomic data via a latent business cycle index

We use Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to augment a vector autoregressive system with a latent business cycle index that is negative during recessions and positive during expansions. We then sample counterfactual values of the macroeconomic variables in the case where the latent business cycle index is held constant at its median value. These counterfactual values represent posterior beliefs about how the economy would have evolved absent business cycle fluctuations. One advantage is that a VAR framework provides model-consistent counterfactual values in the same way that VARs provide model-consistent forecasts, so data series are not detrended in isolation from each other. We apply these methods to estimate the business cycle components of industrial production growth, consumer price inflation, the federal funds rate and the spread between long-term and short-term interest rates. These decompositions provide an explicitly counterfactual approach to deriving empirical business cycle facts that complements other approaches.Business cycles ; Time-series analysis

A genome-wide survey of segmental duplications that mediate common human genetic variation of chromosomal architecture.

Recent studies have identified a small number of genomic rearrangements that occur frequently in the general population. Bioinformatics tools are now available for systematic genome-wide surveys of higher-order structures predisposing to such common variations in genomic architecture. Segmental duplications (SDs) constitute up to 5 per cent of the genome and play an important role in generating additional rearrangements and in disease aetiology. We conducted a genome-wide database search for a form of SD, palindromic segmental duplications (PSDs), which consist of paired, inverted duplications, and which predispose to inversions, duplications and deletions. The survey was complemented by a search for SDs in tandem orientation (TSDs) that can mediate duplications and deletions but not inversions. We found more than 230 distinct loci with higher-order genomic structure that can mediate genomic variation, of these about 180 contained a PSD. A number of these sites were previously identified as harbouring common inversions or as being associated with specific genomic diseases characterised by duplication, deletions or inversions. Most of the regions, however, were previously unidentified; their characterisation should identify further common rearrangements and may indicate localisations for additional genomic disorders. The widespread distribution of complex chromosomal architecture suggests a potentially high degree of plasticity of the human genome and could uncover another level of genetic variation within human populations

CoachMotivation: Leveraging Motivational Interviewing Methodology to Increase Emotion Regulation Ability in the Workplace

Emotions are complex, powerful states that both positively and negatively impact personal and professional human experiences. One’s ability to regulate their emotions has been related to desirable organizational outcomes such as (a) decreased counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), stress, and negative emotions and (b) increased well-being, coping abilities, and job satisfaction. However, appropriate workplace interventions that increase perceived emotion regulation (PER) abilities continue to be limited. Stemming from Motivational Interviewing (MI), CoachMotivation (CM) is a modified form of organizational coaching that translates core practices of clinical MI interventions (i.e., OARS: open questions, affirmations, reflections, summary statements) into coaching conversations in the workplace. The current study examined if CM increased PER abilities and how Extraversion and Neuroticism (personality) traits affected baseline PER abilities. Results indicated the following: (a) CM training increased perceived abilities on a partial total emotion regulation (ER) scale (N = 148; t[147] = 8.98, p \u3c.001, d = .66) as well as subscales of positive reappraisal (t[147] = 10.32, p \u3c.001, d = .76) and refocus on planning (t[147] = 5.17, p \u3c.001, d = .42), (b) both Extraversion (b = -.17; p \u3c.001; R2 = .08) and Neuroticism (b = .15; p \u3c.05; R2 = .04) predicted partial total ER at baseline, and (c) after controlling for personality, the CM training accounted for changes in partial total ER (b = .57; p \u3c.001; R2 = .35), positive reappraisal (b = .50; p \u3c.001; R2 = .37), and refocus on planning (b = .50; p \u3c.001; R2 = .26) scales. Overall, this study supports future research on CM as a workplace intervention for increasing PER abilities

COMMUNITY ECONOMICS: A SIMULATION MODEL FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNERS

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE U.S. MEAT AND POULTRY INDUSTRIES

Market structure, concentration, meat industry, poultry industry, Industrial Organization,

CONSOLIDATION IN U.S. MEATPACKING

Meatpacking consolidated rapidly in the last two decades: slaughter plants became much larger, and concentration increased as smaller firms left the industry. We use establishment-based data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe consolidation and to identify the roles of scale economies and technological change in driving consolidation. Through the 1970's, larger plants paid higher wages, generating a pecuniary scale diseconomy that largely offset the cost advantages that technological scale economies offered large plants. The larger plants' wage premium disappeared in the 1980's, and technological change created larger and more extensive technological scale economies. As a result, large plants realized growing cost advantages over smaller plants, and production shifted to larger plants.Concentration, consolidation, meatpacking, scale economies, structural change, Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Free Energies of Isolated 5- and 7-fold Disclinations in Hexatic Membranes

We examine the shapes and energies of 5- and 7-fold disclinations in low-temperature hexatic membranes. These defects buckle at different values of the ratio of the bending rigidity, $\kappa$, to the hexatic stiffness constant, $K_A$, suggesting {\em two} distinct Kosterlitz-Thouless defect proliferation temperatures. Seven-fold disclinations are studied in detail numerically for arbitrary $\kappa/K_A$. We argue that thermal fluctuations always drive $\kappa/K_A$ into an ``unbuckled'' regime at long wavelengths, so that disclinations should, in fact, proliferate at the {\em same} critical temperature. We show analytically that both types of defects have power law shapes with continuously variable exponents in the ``unbuckled'' regime. Thermal fluctuations then lock in specific power laws at long wavelengths, which we calculate for 5- and 7-fold defects at low temperatures.Comment: LaTeX format. 17 pages. To appear in Phys. Rev.