2,543 research outputs found
The Rationale for Wage Rigidity: Survey Evidence from German and US Firms
The study provides evidence for the rationale of wage rigidity in Germany compared to the United States. Based on a survey of 801 firms, we extend the study of Campbell and Kanlani (1997, this journal) by using more thorough econometric methods, for example, and find strong support for explanations based on labor union contracts and implicit wages for Germany. Furthermore, survey respondents indicated that labor union contracts and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidity for the (less) skilled. Specific human capital and negative signals for new hires are important reasons for the highly skilled. In contrast to the US experience for German firms insider-outsider behavior, labor union contracts and specific human capital seem to be more important explanations of wage rigidity
Tarifbindung und die ökonomische RationalitÀt von LohnrigiditÀten
Eine trĂ€ge Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit der Löhne zu einem marktrĂ€umenden Gleichgewicht bildet nicht nur ein konstitutives Element einer Klasse von makrotheoretischen AnsĂ€tzen ("Ungleichgewichtsmodelle"), sondern ist auch durch eine Reihe von empirischen Studien gut belegt. Solche LohnrigiditĂ€ten werden in zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten und in der Ăffentlichkeit als einer der HauptgrĂŒnde dafĂŒr angesehen, dass sich die Arbeitslosigkeit in (West-)Deutschland nicht stĂ€rker als bisher zurĂŒckgebildet hat, verbunden mit der Empfehlung, den FlĂ€chentarifvertrag zugunsten einer betrieblichen Lohnbildung aufzugeben oder sogar zu verbieten. Unbeschadet der Frage, in welchem AusmaĂ nominale oder reale LohnrigiditĂ€ten nun tatsĂ€chlich fĂŒr den Anstieg und die Persistenz der Arbeitslosigkeit verantwortlich sind und ob die Verlagerung der Lohnverhandlungen rein auf die betriebliche Ebene die erhofften FlexibilitĂ€ten und BeschĂ€ftigungsgewinne erbringt, stellt sich die Frage, warum sich eine Gesellschaft den Luxus von Lohnstarrheiten leistet, wenn dies mit so hohen Kosten in Form von BeschĂ€ftigungslosigkeit verbunden ist. Die ökonomische Theorie hat in Beantwortung dieser Frage eine Reihe von Argumenten vorgetragen, die zeigen, dass es ökonomisch durchaus rational sein kann, die Löhne nicht stĂ€ndig der sich Ă€ndernden Arbeitsmarktsituation anzupassen, sei dies aus der Sicht der Arbeitnehmer oder Gewerkschaften (wie beispielsweise die "Insider-Outsider"-Theorie), sei dies aus dem Blickwinkel der Unternehmen (wie beispielsweise die Effizienztheorie). Die Brisanz dieses theoretischen Nachweises liegt auf der Hand: Wie sollen dann rational handelnde Arbeitnehmer, Gewerkschaften und Unternehmer dazu gebracht werden, entgegen ihrer RationalitĂ€t flexiblere Löhne (und Lohnstrukturen) zu vereinbaren
Entanglement entropy of ground states of the three-dimensional ideal Fermi gas in a magnetic field
We study the asymptotic growth of the entanglement entropy of ground states
of non-interacting (spinless) fermions in subject to a non-zero,
constant magnetic field perpendicular to a plane. As for the case with no
magnetic field we find, to leading order , a logarithmically
enhanced area law of this entropy for a bounded, piecewise Lipschitz region
as the scaling parameter tends to infinity.
This is in contrast to the two-dimensional case since particles can now move
freely in the direction of the magnetic field, which causes the extra
factor. The explicit expression for the coefficient of the leading order
contains a surface integral similar to the Widom formula in the non-magnetic
case. It differs however in the sense that the dependence on the boundary is
not solely on its area but on the "area perpendicular to the direction of the
magnetic field". On the way we prove an improved two-term asymptotic expansion
(up to an error term of order one) of certain traces of one-dimensional
Wiener--Hopf operators with a discontinuous symbol. This is of independent
interest and leads to an improved error term of the order of the relevant
trace for piecewise smooth surfaces
Logarithmically enhanced area-laws for fermions in vanishing magnetic fields in dimension two
We consider fermionic ground states of the Landau Hamiltonian, , in a
constant magnetic field of strength in at some fixed Fermi
energy , described by the Fermi projection . For
some fixed bounded domain with boundary set
and an we restrict these ground states spatially to the
scaled domain and denote the corresponding localised Fermi
projection by . Then we study the scaling of the Hilbert-space
trace, , for polynomials with
of these localised ground states in the joint limit and .
We obtain to leading order logarithmically enhanced area-laws depending on the
size of . Roughly speaking, if tends to infinity faster than ,
then we obtain the known enhanced area-law (by the Widom--Sobolev formula) of
the form as for the
(two-dimensional) Laplacian with Fermi projection . On the other
hand, if tends to infinity faster than , then we get an area law with
an asymptotic expansion as .
The numerical coefficient in both cases is the same and depends
solely on the function and on . The asymptotic result in the latter
case is based upon the recent joint work of Leschke, Sobolev and the second
named author for fixed , a proof of the sine-kernel asymptotics on a global
scale, and on the enhanced area-law in dimension one by Landau and Widom. In
the special but important case of a quadratic function we are able to cover
the full range of parameters and . In general, we have a smaller region
of parameters where we can prove the two-scale asymptotic expansion
as and .Comment: 49 pages, 2 figure
Tarifbindung und die ökonomische RationalitÀt von LohnrigiditÀten
This study provides empirical evidence for the economic rationality of wage rigidities. Theoretically wage rigidities can result from contracts, implicit contracts, from efficiency wages and from insider-outsider behaviour. Based on a survey of 801 firms strong support has been found for explanations based on collective wage agreements and on efficency wages as well. Collective wage agreements and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidities for the low skilled. Furthermore survey respondents indicate that the reduction of turnover costs, adverse selection and specific human capital in quits are important reasons for wage rigidities for high skilled labour. Compared to findings from the USA, in Germany collective wage agreements and firm specific human capital seem to be more important explanations. --LohnrigiditÀten,Arbeitsrecht,TarifvertrÀge,Effizienzlohntheorien,?Insider-Outsider?-Theorien,BeschÀftigung
The MoCA Workbench: Support for Creativity in Movie Content Analysis
Semantic access to the content of a video is highly desirable for multimedia content retrieval. Automatic extraction of semantics requires content analysis algorithms. Our MoCA (Movie Content Analysis) project provides an interactive workbench supporting the researcher in the development of new movie content analysis algorithms. The workbench offers data management facilities for large amounts of video/audio data and derived parameters. It also provides an easy-to-use interface for a free combination of basic operators into more sophisticated operators. We can combine results from video track and audio track analysis. The MoCA Workbench shields the researcher from technical details and provides advanced visualization capabilities, allowing attention to focus on the development of new algorithms. The paper presents the design and implementation of the MoCA Workbench and reports practical experience
Scene Determination based on Video and Audio Features
Determination of scenes from a video is a challenging task. When asking humans for it, results will be inconsistent since the term scene is not precisely defined. It leaves it up to each human to set shared attributes which integrate shots to scenes. However, consistent results can be found for certain basic attributes like dialogs, same settings and continuing sounds. We have therefore developed a scene determination scheme which clusters shots based on detected dialogs, same settings and similar audio. Our experimental results show that automatic deter mination of these types of scenes can be performed reliably
Automatic Audio Content Analysis
This paper describes the theoretic framework and applications of automatic audio content analysis. Research in multimedia content analysis has so far concentrated on the video domain. We demonstrate the strength of automatic audio content analysis. We explain the algorithms we use, including analysis of amplitude, frequency and pitch, and simulations of human audio perception. These algorithms serve us as tools for further audio content analysis. We use these tools in applications like the segmentation of audio data streams into logical units for further processing, the analysis of music, as well as the recognition of sounds indicative of violence like shots, explosions and cries
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