Regional wage convergence and divergence: adjusting wages for cost-of- living differences

An examination of the divergence of U.S. regional fortunes in the early 1980s, showing that once regional prices are factored in, relative wage rates continue to converge across regions. The trend in regional wage variation is also shown to be attributable to declining differences in labor market valuations of worker attributes, rather than to shifts in the regional composition of the workforce.Wages ; Regional economics

Singular Values, Nematic Disclinations, and Emergent Biaxiality

Both uniaxial and biaxial nematic liquid crystals are defined by orientational ordering of their building blocks. While uniaxial nematics only orient the long molecular axis, biaxial order implies local order along three axes. As the natural degree of biaxiality and the associated frame, that can be extracted from the tensorial description of the nematic order, vanishes in the uniaxial phase, we extend the nematic director to a full biaxial frame by making use of a singular value decomposition of the gradient of the director field instead. New defects and degrees of freedom are unveiled and the similarities and differences between the uniaxial and biaxial phase are analyzed by applying the algebraic rules of the quaternion group to the uniaxial phase.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, submitted to PR

General Equilibrium Analysis Of The Effects Of Multilateral And Canadian Trade Liberalization: I Multilateral Trade Liberalization Ii Canadian Trade Liberalization Iii Systematic Sensitivity Analysis Of Model Results

The thesis is comprised of three essays which analyze trade liberalization on a multilateral basis and in the Canadian context. Essay I concerns multilateral liberalization, Essay II concerns Canadian liberalization, and Essay III presents extensive systematic sensitivity analysis of the results of Essays I and II.;The extension of short-run wage rigidities is found to markedly reduce the welfare gains from multilateral liberalization under some circumstances, while extending sector-specificity of capital has a much smaller impact on welfare and adjustment effects of multilateral liberalization.;In Essay II, Whalley\u27s (1985) model of global trade is revised with the incorporation of economies-of-scale features, in a way similar to Harris and Cox (1984). It is found that both unilateral liberalization or bilateral liberalization with the U.S. cause Canada to suffer small welfare losses. Liberalization may still be in the interest of Canada if compensation by the U.S. is possible. The contrast of these results, with those of Harris and Cox is investigated, but only part of the discrepancy is resolved. The indirect calibration procedure adopted by Harris and Cox is identified as a potential source of the discrepancy.;Extensive conditional and unconditional systematic sensitivity analysis conducted in Essay II yields the following results with regard to systematic sensitivity analysis of NGE model results: (i) Unconditional procedures on selected elasticities yield more diffuse distributions of the results than conditional procedures on all of the elasticities. (ii) Pagan-Shannon approximations of unconditional results are often very accurate, resource saving substitutes for the unconditional analysis.;The results of all three essays suggest a simple relationship between the elasticity configuration of the model, and the resulting welfare effects of multilateral or bilateral trade liberalization