Printing Quality as Determined by the I.G.T. Tester

Investigation of this method for the determination of printability indicates that it can be used to predict the printability of paper. However, since it lacks numerical rating, the visual evaluation depends finally upon the personal judgment of the investigator

Time-Bound Labor Access to the United States: A Four-Way Win for the Middle Class, Low-Skill Workers, Border Security, and Migrants

The US economy needs low-skill workers now more than ever, and that requires a legal channel for the large-scale, employment-based entry of low-skill workers. The alternative is what the country has now: a giant black market in unauthorized labor that hinders job creation and harms border security. A legal time-bound labor-access program could benefit the American middle class and low-skill workers, improve US border security, and create opportunities for foreign workers

The place premium : wage differences for identical workers across the US border

This paper compares the wages of workers inside the United States to the wages of observably identical workers outside the United States-controlling for country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and rural-urban residence. This is made possible by new and uniquely rich microdata on the wages of over two million individual formal-sector wage-earners in 43 countries. The paper then uses five independent methods to correct these estimates for unobserved differences and introduces a selection model to estimate how migrants'wage gains depend on their position in the distribution of unobserved wage determinants. Following all adjustments for selectivity and compensating differentials, the authors estimate that the wages of a Bolivian worker of equal intrinsic productivity, willing to move, would be higher by a factor of 2.7 solely by working in the United States. While this is the median, this ratio is as high as 8.4 (for Nigeria). The paper documents that (1) for many countries, the wage gaps caused by barriers to movement across international borders are among the largest known forms of wage discrimination; (2) these gaps represent one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; and (3) these gaps imply that simply allowing labor mobility can reduce a given household's poverty to a much greater degree than most known in situ antipoverty interventions.,Population Policies,Income,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Markets

The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the US Border

We estimate the “place premium”—the wage gain that accrues to foreign workers who arrive to work in the United States. First, we estimate the predicted, purchasing-power adjusted wages of people inside and outside the United States who are otherwise observably identical—with the same country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and rural or urban residence. We use new and uniquely rich micro-data on the wages and characteristics of over two million individual formal-sector wage-earners in 43 countries (including the US). Second, we examine the extent to which these wage ratios for observably equivalent workers may overstate the gains to a marginal mover because movers may be positively selected on unobservable productivity in their home country. New evidence for nine of the countries, combined with a range of existing evidence, suggests that this overstatement can be significant, but is typically modest in magnitude. Third, we estimate the degree to which policy barriers to labor movement in and of themselves sustain the place premium, by bounding the premia observed under self-selected migration alone. Finally, we show that the policy induced portion of the place premium in wages represents one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; is much larger than wage discrimination in spatially integrated markets; and makes labor mobility capable of reducing households’ poverty at the margin by much more than any known in situ intervention.migration, wage discrimination, price distortions, policy barriers, place premium, poverty.

Periodic Bursts of Coherent Radio Emission from an Ultracool Dwarf

We report the detection of periodic (p = 1.96 hours) bursts of extremely bright, 100% circularly polarized, coherent radio emission from the M9 dwarf TVLM 513-46546. Simultaneous photometric monitoring observations have established this periodicity to be the rotation period of the dwarf. These bursts, which were not present in previous observations of this target, confirm that ultracool dwarfs can generate persistent levels of broadband, coherent radio emission, associated with the presence of kG magnetic fields in a large-scale, stable configuration. Compact sources located at the magnetic polar regions produce highly beamed emission generated by the electron cyclotron maser instability, the same mechanism known to generate planetary coherent radio emission in our solar system. The narrow beams of radiation pass our line of sight as the dwarf rotates, producing the associated periodic bursts. The resulting radio light curves are analogous to the periodic light curves associated with pulsar radio emission highlighting TVLM 513-46546 as the prototype of a new class of transient radio source.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Quantum logic with weakly coupled qubits

There are well-known protocols for performing CNOT quantum logic with qubits coupled by particular high-symmetry (Ising or Heisenberg) interactions. However, many architectures being considered for quantum computation involve qubits or qubits and resonators coupled by more complicated and less symmetric interactions. Here we consider a widely applicable model of weakly but otherwise arbitrarily coupled two-level systems, and use quantum gate design techniques to derive a simple and intuitive CNOT construction. Useful variations and extensions of the solution are given for common special cases.Comment: 4 pages, Revte

The Evolution of Poverty During the Crisis in Indonesia

The economic crisis caused a clear deterioration in the welfare of the Indonesian people. in this paper, we examine the appropriate method to compare the change in poverty rates over time. we then piece together a consistent series of estimates of poverty rates during the crisis from various sources, covering a period from february 1996 to february 2002. the reconciliation of these various estimates paints a very reasonable picture and neatly tracks events. the poverty rate increased from the lowest point of around 15 percent at the onset of the crisis in the mid of 1997 to the highest point of around 33 percent nearing the end of 1998. this maximum increase in poverty rate during the crisis of 18 percentage points implies that around 36 million additional people were pushed into absolute poverty due to the crisis. after the peak point, the poverty rate started to decline again and reached the pre-crisis level of around 15 percents at the end of 1999, implying the lost time in poverty reduction due to the crisis was around two and a half years. however, the poverty rate after this point appears to have fluctuated. during 2001 until early 2002, poverty was on the rise again. keywords: poverty, crisis, welfare, measurement, Indonesi

Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers

Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally-representative microdata on both U.S. immigrant workers and workers in their 42 home countries. The average price equivalent of migration barriers in this setting, for low-skill males, is greater than $13,700 per worker per year. Natural and policy barriers may each create annual global losses of trillions of dollars