4,489 research outputs found
AN EXAMINATION OF THE LABOUR MARKET TRANSITIONS OF MINIMUM WAGE WORKERS IN IRELAND. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 75 October 2018
A national minimum wage (NMW) was first introduced in Ireland in 2000, with an
initial rate of €5.58 per hour.1 The rate was increased in subsequent years, so that
by July 2007 the minimum wage stood at €8.65 per hour. However, from 2007 to
2015 there were no further increases in the NMW. Following recommendations
from the Irish Low Pay Commission, which was established in 2015, the NMW was
increased in January 2016 from €8.65 to €9.15 per hour, the first increase in nine
years. It was further increased to €9.25 per hour in January 2017 and to €9.55 per
hour in January 2018, the figure at which it currently stands. In 2016 a question
was added to the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) which directly asks
employees whether their hourly wage is equal to, above or below the NMW.
According to this new measure, the incidence of minimum wage employment was
10.1 per cent in 2016 and 8.2 per cent in 2017.2 Previous work by Maître et al.
(2017), investigating the characteristics of minimum wage workers in Ireland,
found that women, non-Irish nationals, younger persons, people with lower levels
of education and part-time workers were more likely to be on the minimum wage.
In this study, we use this new measure of minimum wage employment in Ireland
to assess the degree to which individuals in receipt of the NMW transition in and
out of NMW employment over a period of three quarters in 2016 and 2017. The
objective of the analysis is as follows: (a) to identify the labour market status and
key characteristics of individuals moving out of NMW employment to higher pay;
(b) to assess the extent to which NMW status is transitory and to identify the rate
at which NMW employees transition to higher paid jobs; (c) to examine whether
minimum wage employees are more likely to transition to unemployment or
inactivity relative to higher paid workers
Switching to a Poor Business Activity: Optimal Capital Structure, Agency Costs and Convenant Rules
Thermo-mechanical stress of bonded wires used in high power modules with alternating and direct current modes
Today, power electronic reliability is a main subject of interest for many companies and laboratories. The main process leading to the IGBT failure is the cycling thermal stress. Indeed the current flow induce local heating and then mechanical stress. This paper deals with electro thermal stress under steady and transient current states. The main objective is to test bonded wires with active current cycle. Consequently, the thermo mechanical stress is obtained. A numerical 3D finite element model is presented and some experimental results are given. Indeed an infrared system monitors the temperature dispatching from an experimental test bench under active current cycle. The overall study is a first step before a global simulation (electrical thermal-mechanical) in order to optimize some geometric parameters of the packaging
Efficient Frontier for Robust Higher-order Moment Portfolio Selection
This article proposes a non-parametric portfolio selection criterion for the static asset allocation problem in a robust higher-moment framework. Adopting the Shortage Function approach, we generalize the multi-objective optimization technique in a four-dimensional space using L-moments, and focus on various illustrations of a four-dimensional set of the first four L-moment primal efficient portfolios. our empirical findings, using a large European stock database, mainly rediscover the earlier works by Jean (1973) and Ingersoll (1975), regarding the shape of the extended higher-order moment efficient frontier, and confirm the seminal prediction by Levy and Markowitz (1979) about the accuracy of the mean-variance criterion.Efficient frontier, portfolio selection, robust higher L-moments, shortage function, goal attainment application.
Rural firms, farms and the local economy - a focus on small and medium-sized towns
Small and medium-sized towns have traditionally formed an integral part of the agricultural sector and wider rural economy, acting as a source of farm inputs, a first destination of farm outputs and as a source of consumer goods and services to farm households. In recent years, this relationship has been substantially eroded through processes socio-economic restructuring, including the transformation of agriculture and a decline in other primary industries. Further, a number of endogenous and exogenous drivers have resulted in the uneven development of rural economies throughout Europe, leading not only to disparities but also to decline of small and medium sized towns as thriving economic and service centres. As a result, these settlements have received increasing attention from policy makers aiming to both maintain the traditional socio-economic fabric of rural areas, and to stimulate rural development through territorial, as opposed to sectoral – and namely agricultural – approaches. This paper considers these two issues through an analysis of local economic linkages in and around small and medium-sized towns. Using primary data collected in a study of thirty towns across five European countries, the paper examines the degree to which local firms and farms are integrated into the local economies of such towns relative to other sectors, and identifies the organisational characteristics associated with strong and weak local integration. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of evolving European rural development policy.
Investigation by laser doppler velocimetry of the effects of liquid flow rates and feed positions on the flow patterns induced in a stirred tank by an axial-flow impeller
The (ow patterns established in a continuously-fed stirred tank, equipped with a Mixel TT axial-(ow impeller, have been investigated
bylaser Doppler velocimetry, for a high and a low value of mean residence time—mixing time ratio. The pseudo-two-dimensional axial–
radial-velocityvector plots, as well as the spatial distributions of the tangential velocitycomponent and the velocitypro;les around the
impeller, show that the interaction between the incoming liquid and the liquid entrained bythe agitator rotation cause the (ow pattern
in the vessel to become stronglythree-dimensional, especiallyin the region between the plane, where the feeding tube lies, and the
180◦-downstream plane. The increase in the liquid (ow rate and the location of the feed entryboth aect. The overall process, in this mode of operation, depends upon the appropriate con;guration and choice
of parameters: for conditions corresponding to high liquid (ow rates, the (ow patterns indicate the possibilityof short-circuiting, when
the liquid is fed into the stream being drawn bythe agitator and when the outlet is located at the bottom of the vessel
Hypernovae as possible sources of Galactic positrons
INTEGRAL/SPI has recently observed a strong and extended emission resulting
from electron-positron annihilation located in the Galactic center region,
consistent with the Galactic bulge geometry, without any counterpart at high
gamma-ray energies, nor in the 1809 keV Al decay line. In order to
explain the rate of positron injection in the Galactic bulge, estimated to more
than 10 s, the most commonly considered positron injection
sources are type Ia supernovae. However, SN Ia rate estimations show that those
sources fall short to explain the observed positron production rate, raising a
challenging question about the nature of the Galactic positron source. In this
context, a possible source of Galactic positrons could be supernova events of a
new type, as the recently observed SN2003dh/GRB030329, an exploding Wolf-Rayet
star (type Ic supernova) associated with a hypernova/gamma-ray burst; the
question about the rate of this kind of events remains open, but could be
problematically low.
In this paper, we explore the possibility of positron production and escape
by such an event in the framework of an asymmetric model, in which a huge
amount of Ni is ejected in a cone with a very high velocity; the ejected
material becomes quickly transparent to positrons, which spread out in the
interstellar medium.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 5th INTEGRAL
Workshop: "The INTEGRAL Universe", February 16-20, 2004, Munich, German
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