4,621 research outputs found
Optimal Minimum Wage Policy in Competitive Labor Markets
This paper provides a theoretical analysis of optimal minimum wage policy in a perfectly competitive labor market. We show that a binding minimum wage while leading to unemployment is nevertheless desirable if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers and if unemployment induced by the minimum wage hits the lowest surplus workers first. This result remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes and transfers. In that context, a minimum wage effectively rations the low skilled labor that is subsidized by the optimal tax/transfer system, and improves upon the second-best tax/transfer optimum. When labor supply responses are along the extensive margin, a minimum wage and low skill work subsidies are complementary policies; therefore, the co-existence of a minimum wage with a positive tax rate for low skill work is always (second-best) Pareto inefficient. We derive formulas for the optimal minimum wage (with and without optimal taxes) as a function of labor supply and demand elasticities and the redistributive tastes of the government. We also present some illustrative numerical simulations.minimum wages, tax policy, labor supply, demand elasticity
Is exponential gravity a viable description for the whole cosmological history?
Here we analysed a particular type of gravity, the so-called
exponential gravity which includes an exponential function of the Ricci scalar
in the action. Such term represents a correction to the usual Hilbert-Einstein
action. By using Supernovae Ia, Barionic Acoustic Oscillations, Cosmic
Microwave Background and data, the free parameters of the model are well
constrained. The results show that such corrections to General Relativity
become important at cosmological scales and at late-times, providing an
alternative to the dark energy problem. In addition, the fits do not determine
any significant difference statistically with respect to the CDM
model. Finally, such model is extended to include the inflationary epoch in the
same gravitational Lagrangian. As shown in the paper, the additional terms can
reproduce the inflationary epoch and satisfy the constraints from Planck data.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, analysis extended, version published in EPJ
A paradox in bosonic energy computations via semidefinite programming relaxations
We show that the recent hierarchy of semidefinite programming relaxations
based on non-commutative polynomial optimization and reduced density matrix
variational methods exhibits an interesting paradox when applied to the bosonic
case: even though it can be rigorously proven that the hierarchy collapses
after the first step, numerical implementations of higher order steps generate
a sequence of improving lower bounds that converges to the optimal solution. We
analyze this effect and compare it with similar behavior observed in
implementations of semidefinite programming relaxations for commutative
polynomial minimization. We conclude that the method converges due to the
rounding errors occurring during the execution of the numerical program, and
show that convergence is lost as soon as computer precision is incremented. We
support this conclusion by proving that for any element p of a Weyl algebra
which is non-negative in the Schrodinger representation there exists another
element p' arbitrarily close to p that admits a sum of squares decomposition.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure
Generalized gravity and the late-time cosmic acceleration
High-precision observational data have confirmed with startling evidence that
the Universe is currently undergoing a phase of accelerated expansion. This
phase, one of the most important and challenging current problems in cosmology,
represents a new imbalance in the governing gravitational equations.
Historically, physics has addressed such imbalances by either identifying
sources that were previously unaccounted for, or by altering the gravitational
theory. Several candidates, responsible for this expansion, have been proposed
in the literature, in particular, dark energy models and modified gravity
models, amongst others. Outstanding questions are related to the nature of this
so-called "dark energy" that is driving this acceleration, and whether it is
due to the vacuum energy or a dynamical field. On the other hand, the late-time
cosmic acceleration may be due to modifications of General Relativity. In this
work we explore a generalised modified gravity theory, namely
gravity, where is the Ricci scalar, is a scalar field, and is a
kinetic term. This theory contains a wide range of dark energy and modified
gravity models. We considered specific models and applications to the late-time
cosmic acceleration.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure; slightly revised version, displayed name
corrected. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1412.086
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