Career Mobility, Job Match, and Overeducation

Many workers are mismatched with their jobs. While many factors contribute to mismatch, overeducation is attracting increased attention. Several reasons have been put forth to explain why overeducation exists in the labor market. Sicherman [1991] hypothesizes that overeducation may be part of a career mobility process. Workers temporarily accept jobs for which they are overqualified in exchange for training. This paper reports on alternative tests examining the career mobility hypothesis. Overeducated workers appear more likely to move to better jobs over time. However, contrary to the career mobility hypothesis, they are less likely than adequately educated workers to feel that the skills they are acquiring will help them on future jobs.

A protocol for the aerial survey of penguin colonies using UAVs

Penguins, and many other seabirds, often nest in the open in large colonies, and so are amenable to aerial survey. UAVs offer a flexible and inexpensive method of achieving this but, to date, few published examples are available. We present a protocol for acquiring aerial images of penguin colonies using UAVs and describe simple, open-source tools for processing these into counts. Our approach is demonstrated using a case study for a penguin colony in the Falkland Islands. We discuss the advantages and limitations of UAVs for penguin surveys and make recommendations for their wider application

Does Athletic Success Influence Persistence at Higher Education Institutions? New Evidence Using Panel Data

This study examines the relationship between athletic success and student persistence toward a degree. We build an updated panel of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I institutions and utilize within-institution variation to identify the effects of athletic success. Using a ranking of all institutions, we find that having more successful men\u27s basketball and football teams has a significant positive effect on first-year retention rates. We also find some evidence that improved basketball rankings increase graduation rates, and that success in the NCAA tournament may have a sizable impact on retention. Although the estimated effects are generally modest in scale, we find rather limited evidence of other institutional factors affecting persistence, suggesting that athletics can be one avenue for institutions of higher education to engage and retain students

Increasing accuracy: a new design and algorithm for automatically measuring weights, travel direction and radio frequency identification (RFID) of penguins.

A fully automated weighbridge using a new algorithm and mechanics integrated with a Radio Frequency Identification System is described. It is currently in use collecting data on Macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus) at Bird Island, South Georgia. The technology allows researchers to collect very large, highly accurate datasets of both penguin weight and direction of their travel into or out of a breeding colony, providing important contributory information to help understand penguin breeding success, reproductive output and availability of prey. Reliable discrimination between single and multiple penguin crossings is demonstrated. Passive radio frequency tags implanted into penguins allow researchers to match weight and trip direction to individual birds. Low unit and operation costs, low maintenance needs, simple operator requirements and accurate time stamping of every record are all important features of this type of weighbridge, as is its proven ability to operate 24 hours a day throughout a breeding season, regardless of temperature or weather conditions. Users are able to define required levels of accuracy by adjusting filters and raw data are automatically recorded and stored allowing for a range of processing options. This paper presents the underlying principles, design specification and system description, provides evidence of the weighbridge’s accurate performance and demonstrates how its design is a significant improvement on existing system

Robust wavebuoys for the marginal ice zone: Experiences from a large persistent array in the Beaufort Sea

An array of novel directional wavebuoys was designed and deployed into the Beaufort Sea ice cover in March 2014, as part of the Office of Naval Research Marginal Ice Zone experiment. The buoys were designed to drift with the ice throughout the year and monitor the expected breakup and retreat of the ice cover, forced by waves travelling into the ice from open water. Buoys were deployed from fast-and-light air-supported ice camps, based out of Sachs Harbour on Canada’s Banks Island, and drifted westwards with the sea ice over the course of spring, summer and autumn, as the ice melted, broke up and finally re-froze. The buoys transmitted heave, roll and pitch timeseries at 1 Hz sample frequency over the course of up to eight months, surviving both convergent ice dynamics and significant waves-in-ice events. Twelve of the 19 buoys survived until their batteries were finally exhausted during freeze-up in late October/November. Ice impact was found to have contaminated a significant proportion of the Kalman-filter-derived heave records, and these bad records were removed with reference to raw x/y/z accelerations. The quality of magnetometer-derived buoy headings at the very high magnetic field inclinations close to the magnetic pole was found to be generally acceptable, except in the case of four buoys which had probably suffered rough handling during transport to the ice. In general, these new buoys performed as expected, though vigilance as to the veracity of the output is required

Vertical, Horizontal and Residual Skills Mismatch in the Australian Graduate Labour Market

Studies of the Australian graduate labour market have found a substantial incidence of, and significant earnings effects from, vertical mismatch. This study extends the literature by examining horizontal mismatch, an important dimension of mismatch in its own right and which has been less studied. Over a quarter of Australian graduates are found to be mismatched, although the incidence is reduced in the longer term. Graduates from fields of study which are more occupation‐specific were found to be less likely to be mismatched. Earnings penalties were found for all forms of mismatch, and affected both general and specific fields of study

Is treatment "intensity" associated with healthier lifestyle choices?:An application of the dose response function

Healthy lifestyle choices and doctor consultations can be substitutes or complements in the health production function. In this paper we consider the relation between the number of doctor consultations and the frequency of patient physical activity. We use a novel application of the Dose-Response Function model proposed by Hirano and Imbens (2004) to deal with treatment endogeneity under the no unmeasured confounding assumption. Our application takes account of unobserved heterogeneity and uses dynamic non-linear models for the treatment and outcome variables of interest. Using seven waves of the British Household Panel Survey, we find that higher treatment intensity and frequency of physical activity are inversely related. We show that accounting for both treatment selection and unobserved heterogeneity halves the size of this relationship. An additional doctor consultation is associated with a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the probability of undertaking vigorous physical activity. Our results hold for a sub-sample visiting the doctor for health check-ups, and are shown to be robust using instrumental variables