Working for a Good Cause

A rich literature in public administration has shown that public sector employees have stronger altruistic motivations than private sector employees. Recent economic theories stress the importance of mission preferences, and predict that altruistic people sort into the public sector when they subscribe to its mission. This paper uses data from a representative survey among more than 30.000 employees from 50 countries to test this prediction. Our results show that only those individuals who are willing to contribute to the welfare of others and, in addition, feel that by working in the public sector they contribute to a good cause are significantly more likely to work in the public sector. Our results are most pronounced for highly educated employees

The Association between Urban Form and Ischemic Heart Disease: Evidence from Brisbane, Australia

We measured the association between urban form and hospitalisation rates for Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD), stratified by age and sex, and controlling for ethnicity, socio economic status, proximity to hospital and neighbourhood walk ability. This was a retrospective cohort study of the proportion of people within the Brisbane area of Australia who were hospitalised between 2006 to 2011 with a primary diagnosis of IHD. There were strong spatial patterns in the incidence of IHD. The importance of predictor variables differed by sex and age. Urban form was generally not a strong predictor. This study suggests no strong relationship was identified between urban form factors and ischemic heart disease using this research approach

Socially Useless Jobs.

Hervorming Sociale Regelgevin

Socially Useless Jobs

Hervorming Sociale Regelgevin

Robust creation of atomic W state in a cavity by adiabatic passage

We propose two robust schemes to generate controllable (deterministic) atomic W-states of three three-level atoms interacting with an optical cavity and a laser beam. Losses due to atomic spontaneous emissions and to cavity decay are efficiently suppressed by employing adiabatic passage technique and appropriately designed atom-field couplings. In these schemes the three atoms traverse the cavity-mode and the laser beam and become entangled in the free space outside the cavity.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Optics Communication

Investigation of continuous-time quantum walk by using Krylov subspace-Lanczos algorithm

In papers\cite{js,jsa}, the amplitudes of continuous-time quantum walk on graphs possessing quantum decomposition (QD graphs) have been calculated by a new method based on spectral distribution associated to their adjacency matrix. Here in this paper, it is shown that the continuous-time quantum walk on any arbitrary graph can be investigated by spectral distribution method, simply by using Krylov subspace-Lanczos algorithm to generate orthonormal bases of Hilbert space of quantum walk isomorphic to orthogonal polynomials. Also new type of graphs possessing generalized quantum decomposition have been introduced, where this is achieved simply by relaxing some of the constrains imposed on QD graphs and it is shown that both in QD and GQD graphs, the unit vectors of strata are identical with the orthonormal basis produced by Lanczos algorithm. Moreover, it is shown that probability amplitude of observing walk at a given vertex is proportional to its coefficient in the corresponding unit vector of its stratum, and it can be written in terms of the amplitude of its stratum. Finally the capability of Lanczos-based algorithm for evaluation of walk on arbitrary graphs (GQD or non-QD types), has been tested by calculating the probability amplitudes of quantum walk on some interesting finite (infinite) graph of GQD type and finite (infinite) path graph of non-GQD type, where the asymptotic behavior of the probability amplitudes at infinite limit of number of vertices, are in agreement with those of central limit theorem of Ref.\cite{nko}.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figure

Employee recognition and performance: A field experiment

This paper reports the results from a controlled field experiment designed to investigate the causal effect of public recognition on employee performance. We hired more than 300 employees to work on a three-hour data-entry task. In a random sample of work groups, workers unexpectedly received recognition after two hours of work. We find that recognition increases subsequent performance substantially, and particularly so when recognition is exclusively provided to the best performers. Remarkably, workers who did not receive recognition are mainly responsible for this performance increase. This result is consistent with workers having a preference for conformity