Who gains when workers train? Training and corporate productivity in a panel of British industries

There is a vast empirical literature of the effects of training on wages that are taken as an indirect measure of productivity. This paper is part of a smaller literature on the effects of training on direct measures of industrial productivity. We analyse a panel of British industries between 1983 and 1996. Training information (and other individual productivity indicators such as education and experience) is derived from a question that has been asked consistently over time in the Labour Force Survey. This is combined with complementary industry-level data sources on value added, wages, labour and capital. We use a variety of panel data techniques (including system GMM) to argue that training significantly boosts productivity. The existing literature has underestimated the full effects of training for two reasons. First, it has tended to treat training as exogenous whereas in reality firms may choose to re-allocate workers to training when demand (and therefore productivity) is low. Secondly, our estimates of the effects of training on wages are about half the size of the effects on industrial productivity. It is misleading to ignore the pay-off firms take in higher profits from training. The effects are economically large. For example, raising the proportion of workers trained in an industry by 5 percentage points (say from the average of 10% to 15%) is associated with a 4 per cent increase in value added per worker and a 1.6 per cent increase in wages

Zero energy resonance and the logarithmically slow decay of unstable multilevel systems

The long time behavior of the reduced time evolution operator for unstable multilevel systems is studied based on the N-level Friedrichs model in the presence of a zero energy resonance.The latter means the divergence of the resolvent at zero energy. Resorting to the technique developed by Jensen and Kato [Duke Math. J. 46, 583 (1979)], the zero energy resonance of this model is characterized by the zero energy eigenstate that does not belong to the Hilbert space. It is then shown that for some kinds of the rational form factors the logarithmically slow decay of the reduced time evolution operator can be realized.Comment: 31 pages, no figure

Surface tension induced convection in encapsulated liquid metals in microgravity: Apollo-Soyuz test project experiment no. MA-041

This experiment was designed to determine the extent of surface tension induced convection caused by a steplike compositional variation in a liquid metal. Preliminary results are presented

Computer mapping of turbidity and circulation patterns in Saginaw Bay, Michigan from LANDSAT data

The author has identified the following significant results. LANDSAT was used as a basis for producing geometrically-corrected, color-coded imagery of turbidity and circulation patterns in Saginaw Bay, Michigan (Lake Huron). This imagery shows nine discrete categories of turbidity, as indicated by nine Secchi depths between 0.3 and 3.3 meters. The categorized imagery provided an economical basis for extrapolating water quality parameters from point samples to unsample areas. LANDSAT furnished a synoptic view of water mass boundaries that no amount of ground sampling or monitoring could provide

Long-Time Dynamics of Variable Coefficient mKdV Solitary Waves

We study the Korteweg-de Vries-type equation dt u=-dx(dx^2 u+f(u)-B(t,x)u), where B is a small and bounded, slowly varying function and f is a nonlinearity. Many variable coefficient KdV-type equations can be rescaled into this equation. We study the long time behaviour of solutions with initial conditions close to a stable, B=0 solitary wave. We prove that for long time intervals, such solutions have the form of the solitary wave, whose centre and scale evolve according to a certain dynamical law involving the function B(t,x), plus an H^1-small fluctuation.Comment: 19 page

Automated land-use mapping from spacecraft data

The author has identified the following significant results. In response to the need for a faster, more economical means of producing land use maps, this study evaluated the suitability of using ERTS-1 computer compatible tape (CCT) data as a basis for automatic mapping. Significant findings are: (1) automatic classification accuracy greater than 90% is achieved on categories of deep and shallow water, tended grass, rangeland, extractive (bare earth), urban, forest land, and nonforested wet lands; (2) computer-generated printouts by target class provide a quantitative measure of land use; and (3) the generation of map overlays showing land use from ERTS-1 CCTs offers a significant breakthrough in the rate at which land use maps are generated. Rather than uncorrected classified imagery or computer line printer outputs, the processing results in geometrically-corrected computer-driven pen drawing of land categories, drawn on a transparent material at a scale specified by the operator. These map overlays are economically produced and provide an efficient means of rapidly updating maps showing land use

On the VLSI design of a pipeline Reed-Solomon decoder using systolic arrays

A new very large scale integration (VLSI) design of a pipeline Reed-Solomon decoder is presented. The transform decoding technique used in a previous article is replaced by a time domain algorithm through a detailed comparison of their VLSI implementations. A new architecture that implements the time domain algorithm permits efficient pipeline processing with reduced circuitry. Erasure correction capability is also incorporated with little additional complexity. By using a multiplexing technique, a new implementation of Euclid's algorithm maintains the throughput rate with less circuitry. Such improvements result in both enhanced capability and significant reduction in silicon area

Automatic mapping of strip mine operations from spacecraft data

The author has identified the following significant results. Computer techniques were applied to process ERTS tapes acquired over coal mining operations in southeastern Ohio on 21 August 1972 and 3 September 1973. ERTS products obtained included geometrically-correct map overlays, at scales from 1:24,000 to 1:250,000, showing stripped earth, partially reclaimed earth, water, and natural vegetation. Computer-generated tables listing the area covered by each land-water category in square kilometers were also produced. By comparing these mapping products, the study demonstrates the capability of ERTS to monitor changes in the extent of stripping and reclamation. NASA C-130 photography acquired on 7 September 1973 when compared with the ERTS products generated from the 3 September 1973 tape established the categorization accuracy to be better than 90%. It is estimated that the stripping and reclamation maps and data were produced from the ERTS CCTs at a tenth of the cost of conventional techniques

Automated strip-mine and reclamation mapping from ERTS

The author has identified the following significant results. Computer processing techniques were applied to ERTS-1 computer-compatible tape (CCT) data acquired in August 1972 on the Ohio Power Company's coal mining operation in Muskingum County, Ohio. Processing results succeeded in automatically classifying, with an accuracy greater than 90%: (1) stripped earth and major sources of erosion; (2) partially reclaimed areas and minor sources of erosion; (3) water with sedimentation; (4) water without sedimentation; and (5) vegetation. Computer-generated tables listing the area in acres and square kilometers were produced for each target category. Processing results also included geometrically corrected map overlays, one for each target category, drawn on a transparent material by a pen under computer control. Each target category is assigned a distinctive color on the overlay to facilitate interpretation. The overlays, drawn at a scale of 1:250,000 when placed over an AMS map of the same area, immediately provided map locations for each target. These mapping products were generated at a tenth of the cost of conventional mapping techniques

On the master equation approach to kinetic theory: linear and nonlinear Fokker--Planck equations

We discuss the relationship between kinetic equations of the Fokker-Planck type (two linear and one non-linear) and the Kolmogorov (a.k.a. master) equations of certain N-body diffusion processes, in the context of Kac's "propagation of chaos" limit. The linear Fokker-Planck equations are well-known, but here they are derived as a limit N->infty of a simple linear diffusion equation on (3N-C)-dimensional N-velocity spheres of radius sqrt(N) (with C=1 or 4 depending on whether the system conserves energy only or energy and momentum). In this case, a spectral gap separating the zero eigenvalue from the positive spectrum of the Laplacian remains as N->infty,so that the exponential approach to equilibrium of the master evolution is passed on to the limiting Fokker-Planck evolution in R^3. The non-linear Fokker-Planck equation is known as Landau's equation in the plasma physics literature. Its N-particle master equation, originally introduced (in the 1950s) by Balescu and Prigogine (BP), is studied here on the (3N-4)-dimensional N-velocity sphere. It is shown that the BP master equation represents a superposition of diffusion processes on certain two-dimensional sub-manifolds of R^{3N} determined by the conservation laws for two-particle collisions. The initial value problem for the BP master equation is proved to be well-posed and its solutions are shown to decay exponentially fast to equilibrium. However, the first non-zero eigenvalue of the BP operator is shown to vanish in the limit N->infty. This indicates that the exponentially fast approach to equilibrium may not be passed from the finite-N master equation on to Landau's nonlinear kinetic equation.Comment: 20 pages; based on talk at the 18th ICTT Conference. Some typos and a few minor technical fixes. Modified title slightl