Rent-seeking with scarce talent: a model of preemptive hiring

In the standard model of a rent-seeking contest, firms optimally employ resources in an attempt to win the contest and obtain the rent. Typically, it is assumed that these resources may be hired at any desired level at some fixed, exogenous per-unit cost. In many real-world rent-seeking contests, however, these resources consist of scarce, talented individuals. We model a rentseeking contest in which the talent available for employment is scarce and in which the rent obtained from winning the contest may also differ from participant to participant. Talent scarcity leads to preemptive hiring by the player receiving the larger rent. In the traditional analysis, as the size of the rents converges, the levels of effort and the probability of winning also converge. By contrast, when talent is scarce, the player receiving the larger rent hires it all and wins the contest with probability 1. This is true even if the difference in rents is small. Interestingly, this outcome may be Pareto-inferior to the outcome associated with the interior Nash equilibrium. We also characterize the condition under which talent ceases to be scarce. For a simple rentseeking game, this requires at least 50% more talent than is employed at the interior Nash equilibrium.rent-seeking, scarce talent, labor market, lobbying, preemptive hiring

The Secret Science of Synchronicity Paper

Several metaphysical/philosophical concepts are developed as tools by which we may further understand the essence, structure, and events/symbols of “Complex” Synchronicity, and how these differ from “Chain of Events” Synchronicity. The first tool is the concept of Astronomical vs Cultural time. This tool is to be the basis of distinguishing Simple from Complex Synchronicity as Complex Synchronicities are chunks of time that have several coincidences in common with each other. We will also look at the nature of the perspective of the time being quantized. The next tool is a particular case study of two movies, The Matrix and Black Swan, that may be viewed as an example of a Complex Synchronicity in the collective conscious of popular culture (as opposed to Simple Synchronicity or a single coincidence). And the final tool is the concept of “Chain of Events” synchronicity as a separate concept from Simple or Complex synchronicities. This 3rd tool is developed using a mathematical metaphor of foreshadowing (an element of storytelling) in the seemingly random pattern of prime numbers. The purpose of this paper is to distinguish and develop these concepts and to lay a foundation for the further study of the concept of Synchronicity first illuminated by Carl Jung as an acausal connecting principle between coincidences

Scholarly Publishing & Open Access within CUNY: One Faculty Looks at Changing the Paradigm

The author reports on what brought him as a CUNY faculty member to the position that he holds on Open Access as a new paradigm for scholarly publication and dissemination of information, knowledge and creations. He relates his experiences in bringing this topic to the attention of his CUNY colleagues and his understanding of what may happen in the future at CUNY as a response to the open access model. He will also relate his current efforts related to the archiving of the academic creations of faculty and of governance materials. He presents his views on tenure and promotion review related to open access and how this has been discussed by CUNY administrators and faculty and briefly touch on intellectual property issues related to open access

Why Should I Care About SOTL? The Professional Responsibilities of Post-Secondary Educators

Over the last decade, there has been tremendous growth in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in post-secondary education. Yet, apart from a few significant exceptions, there has been very little discussion of the role this scholarship is to play in the professional activities of post-secondary educators. This essay defends the claim that as professional educators, all college professors have an ethical obligation to participate in SOTL. This participation entails both active research and scholarly review. On these grounds, SOTL is not an isolated slice of scholarly research; it is a necessary condition of post-secondary education

Research and Experimentation in Teaching Effectiveness: The Ethical Review Process and the IRB

Research and experimentation in teaching effectiveness, which makes research subjects of students in regular classroom settings, should be subject to an ethical review process that is separate from, and in addition to, the mandated review of human subjects research that is conducted by Institutional Review Boards. Furthermore, despite the moral dilemmas that often characterize ethical decisions in the review of teaching effectiveness, we should not shy away from developing and applying a basic set of normative principles for ethical decision making

Litigation with Negative Expected Value Suits: An Experimental Analysis

The existence of lawsuits providing plaintiffs a negative expected value (NEV) at trial has important theoretical implications for signaling models of litigation. The signaling equilibrium possible absent NEV suits breaks down with NEV suits because plaintiffs do not have a credible threat to proceed to trial undermining the ability to signal type. Using a laboratory experiment, we analyze behavior with and without the possibility of NEV suits. Absent NEV suits, behavior largely follows predicted patterns. However, the possibility of NEV suits does not cause the signaling equilibrium to unravel and does not cause the dispute rate to increase. Plaintiffs only drop NEV lawsuits three-fourths of the time, the rejection rate by defendants for revealing demands rises less than predicted and, contra theory, the rejection rate on demands in the semi-pooling range remains unchanged

Party polarization, political alignment, and federal grant spending at the state level

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president’s party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is relatively low

Il coaching nella pratica didattica

Il presente lavoro ha come obiettivo uno studio semi – sperimentale sul coaching. Nello specifico, il presente studio si pone l’obiettivo di applicare il coaching alla pratica didattica al fine di verificare in che modo un corso di coaching possa migliorare la capacità dei docenti di interessare i propri studenti e di gestire le risorse a loro disposizione. Gli obiettivi generali sono: • Accendere l’interesse dei docenti nei confronti del coaching attraverso la frequenza di un corso con un coach professionista • Verificare se il coaching può migliorare la pratica didattica dei docenti. Gli obiettivi specifici sono: • Ricevere dei feedback positivi da parte dei docenti rispetto al coaching • Riscontrare un miglioramento nella capacità dei docenti di coinvolgere i propri studenti • Riscontrare un miglioramento nella capacità dei docenti di utilizzare strumenti alternativi al libro di testo • Riscontrare un miglioramento nella capacità dei docenti di interessare i propri studenti verso la disciplina insegnata. Gli obiettivi specifici saranno verificati attraverso due strumenti: • Il gruppo di ascolto che permetterà ai docenti di dare un feedback rispetto al corso di coaching che hanno frequentato; • Il questionario che verrà somministrato agli studenti in forma anonima al fine di valutare i propri docenti prima della frequenza del corso di coaching e dopo. All’interno del marco teorico vengono analizzati gli studi condotti sul tema nel contesto scolastico americano e inglese. Non sono state utilizzate ricerche condotte in Italia in quanto al momento della stesura non ve ne erano a disposizione. A differenza degli studi americani il presente lavoro ha interessato un piccolo gruppo di docenti di un liceo scientifico del capoluogo siciliano che avevano diversi anni di insegnamento alle spalle e quindi un background piuttosto robusto. Questo elemento ha fatto sì che durante il corso di coaching somministrato ai docenti, questi ultimi non sempre hanno risposto in modo positivo a quanto loro richiesto. Nonostante le suddette difficoltà, la somministrazione dei questionari agli studenti, sia prima della partecipazione del corso di coaching che successivamente, ha permesso di rilevare notevoli miglioramenti nella pratica didattica dei docenti. In altre parole, i docenti che hanno frequentato il corso di coaching sono riusciti a coinvolgere maggiormente i loro studenti e a utilizzare in modo proficuo le risorse a loro disposizione migliorando il clima all’interno della classe.The aim of this paper is a semi-experimental study on coaching. Specifically, this study aims to apply coaching to teaching practice in order to investigate how a coaching course can improve teachers' ability to interest their students and manage the resources available to them. The general objectives are: - To ignite teachers' interest in coaching by attending a course with a professional coach - To test whether coaching can improve teachers' teaching practice. The specific objectives are: - To receive positive feedback from teachers regarding coaching - To see an improvement in the ability of teachers to engage their students - To notice an improvement in teachers' ability to use alternative tools to the textbook - To notice an improvement in the teachers' ability to interest their students in the discipline taught. The specific objectives will be verified through two instruments: - The listening group that will allow teachers to give feedback with respect to the coaching course they attended; - The questionnaire that will be given to the students anonymously in order to evaluate their teachers before and after the coaching course. Within the theoretical framework, studies conducted on the subject in the American and British school context are analysed. Research conducted in Italy was not used as there was no research available at the time of writing. In contrast to the American studies, the present work involved a small group of teachers in a scientific high school in the Sicilian capital, who had several years of teaching experience behind them and therefore a rather robust background. This element meant that during the coaching course administered to the teachers, they did not always respond positively to what was asked of them. In spite of the above-mentioned difficulties, the administration of the questionnaires to the students, both prior to their participation in the coaching course and afterwards, revealed considerable improvements in the teachers' teaching practice. In other words, the teachers who attended the coaching course managed to involve their students more and to use the resources at their disposal in a profitable way, thus improving the climate within the classroom

Upper and Lower Bounds to the Information Rate Transferred Through First-Order Markov Channels With Free-Running Continuous State

partially_open4noStarting from the definition of mutual information, one promptly realizes that the probabilities inferred by Bayesian tracking can be used to compute the Shannon information between the state and the measurement of a dynamic system. In the Gaussian and linear case, the information rate can be evaluated from the probabilities computed by the Kalman filter. When the probability distributions inferred by Bayesian tracking are nontractable, one is forced to resort to approximated inference, which gives only an approximation to the wanted probabilities. We propose upper and lower bounds to the information rate between the hidden state and the measurement based on approximated inference. Application of these bounds to multiplicative communication channels is discussed, and experimental results for the discrete-time phase noise channel and for the Gauss-Markov fading channel are presented.openBarletta, L.; Magarini, M.; Pecorino, S.; Spalvieri, A.Barletta, Luca; Magarini, Maurizio; Pecorino, Simone; Spalvieri, Arnald