Interactions between Local and Migrant Workers at the Workplace

In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in order to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and thereby increase their interaction and production activities. We consider the effect of the relative size (in the firm) of each group and the cost of activities on the migrants’ assimilation process.assimilation, contracts, ethnicity, market structure, networks, harassment

Interactions Between Local and Migrant Workers at the Workplace

In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in order to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and so by increase their interaction and production activities. We consider the effect, the relative size (in the firm) of each group and the cost of activities, has on the assimilation process of the migrants.Assimilation; Contracts; Ethnicity; Market Structure; Networks; Harassment

Interactions between Local and Migrant Workers at the Workplace

In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in or-der to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and so by increase their interaction and production activities. We consider the effect, the relative size (in the firm) of each group and the cost of activities, has on the assimilation process of the migrants.Assimilation; Contracts; Ethnicity; Market Structure; Networks; harassment

Governing Interest Groups and Rent Dissipation

In a contest group - specific public goods we consider the effect that managing an interest group has on the rent dissipation and the total expected payoffs of the contest. While in the first group, there is a central planner determining its members’ expenditure in the contest, in the second group there are two different possibilities: either all the members are governed by a central planner or they aren’t. We consider both types of contests: an all pay auction and a Logit contest success function. We show that while governing an interest group decreases free-riding, it may as well decrease the rent dissipation; at the same time the expected payoffs from the groups may also decrease.

Group Specific Public Goods, Orchestration of Interest Groups and Free Riding

We consider a two group contest over a group specific public good where each member of a group has a different benefit from the good. Our model can be interpreted in two ways: Each of the players has a non-linear investment cost in the contest, or alternatively, the returns to effort are decreasing as reflected in the contest success function. In the first part of the paper we show conditions under which freeriding decreases and consider the different properties of the equilibrium. In the second part of the paper we develop the properties of the optimal formation of the group and its affect on the equilibrium outcome.Contests, rent seeking, public good, heterogeneity, free-riding, orchestration of interest groups

Orbital Evolution of Extreme-Mass-Ratio Black-Hole Binaries with Numerical Relativity

We perform the first fully nonlinear numerical simulations of black-hole binaries with mass ratios 100:1. Our technique for evolving such extreme mass ratios is based on the moving puncture approach with a new gauge condition and an optimal choice of the mesh refinement (plus large computational resources). We achieve a convergent set of results for simulations starting with a small nonspinning black hole just outside the ISCO that then performs over two orbits before plunging into the 100 times more massive black hole. We compute the gravitational energy and momenta radiated as well as the final remnant parameters and compare these quantities with the corresponding perturbative estimates. The results show a close agreement. We briefly discuss the relevance of this simulations for Advanced LIGO, third-generation ground based detectors, and LISA observations, and self-force computations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables. Matching published versio

Political Culture and Discrimination in Contests

Many economic and political decisions are the outcome of strategic contests for a given prize. The nature of such contests can be determined by a designer who is driven by political considerations with a specific political culture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of political culture and of valuation asymmetry on discrimination between the contestants. The weights assigned to the public well being and the contestants' efforts represent the political culture while discrimination is an endogenous variable that characterizes the mechanism allocating the prize. We consider situations under which the optimal bias of the designer is in favor of the contestant with the larger or smaller prize valuation and examine the effect of changes in the political culture and in valuation asymmetry on the designer's preferred discrimination between the contestants. Focusing on the two most widely studied types of contest success functions (deterministic all-pay-auctions and logit CSFs), we show that an all-pay auction is always the preferred CSF from the point of view of the contest designer. This result provides a new political-economic micro foundation to some of the most commonly used models in the contest literature.rent seeking, political culture, discrimination, contests, logit contest success function, All-Pay-Auction

Political Culture and Discrimination in Contests

Many economic and political decisions are the outcome of strategic contests for a given prize. The nature of such contests can be determined by a designer who is driven by political considerations with a specific political culture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of political culture and of valuation asymmetry on discrimination between the contestants. The weights assigned to the public well being and the contestants' efforts represent the political culture while discrimination is an endogenous variable that characterizes the mechanism allocating the prize. We consider situations under which the optimal bias of the designer is in favor of the contestant with the larger or smaller prize valuation and examine the effect of changes in the political culture and in valuation asymmetry on the designer's preferred discrimination between the contestants. Focusing on the two most widely studied types of contest success functions (deterministic all-pay-auctions and logit CSFs), we show that an all-pay auction is always the preferred CSF from the point of view of the contest designer. This result provides a new political-economic micro foundation to some of the most commonly used models in the contest literature.Rent Seeking, Political Culture, Discrimination, Contests, Logit contest success function, All-Pay-Auction

Fluctuation Scaling, Taylor’s Law, and Crime

Fluctuation scaling relationships have been observed in a wide range of processes ranging from internet router traffic to measles cases. Taylor’s law is one such scaling relationship and has been widely applied in ecology to understand communities including trees, birds, human populations, and insects. We show that monthly crime reports in the UK show complex fluctuation scaling which can be approximated by Taylor’s law relationships corresponding to local policing neighborhoods and larger regional and countrywide scales. Regression models applied to local scale data from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire found that different categories of crime exhibited different scaling exponents with no significant difference between the two regions. On this scale, violence reports were close to a Poisson distribution (α = 1.057±0.026) while burglary exhibited a greater exponent (α = 1.292±0.029) indicative of temporal clustering. These two regions exhibited significantly different pre-exponential factors for the categories of anti-social behavior and burglary indicating that local variations in crime reports can be assessed using fluctuation scaling methods. At regional and countrywide scales, all categories exhibited scaling behavior indicative of temporal clustering evidenced by Taylor’s law exponents from 1.43±0.12 (Drugs) to 2.094±0081 (Other Crimes). Investigating crime behavior via fluctuation scaling gives insight beyond that of raw numbers and is unique in reporting on all processes contributing to the observed variance and is either robust to or exhibits signs of many types of data manipulation

A simplified in vitro ligation approach to clone an E1B55k-deleted double-targeted conditionally-replicative adenovirus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Construction of conditionally-replicative Adenovirus (CRAd) is complex and time-consuming. While homologous recombination (HR) using a two-plasmid system in bacteria is commonly used to generate CRAds, alternative methods may be required when HR fails. Previously, <it>in vitro </it>ligation has been suggested to facilitate construction of E1/E3-deleted, replication-incompetent Ad vectors. However, <it>in vitro </it>ligation has only rarely been used to generate CRAds and may be a complex procedure for molecular biologists who are not experts in the field.</p> <p>Methods and Results</p> <p>A modified <it>in vitro </it>ligation approach was developed to construct a double-targeted, E1B55k-deleted CRAd. The method allowed the incorporation of a tumor-specific promoter, e.g. the heat-shock protein 70 (hsp70) promoter, upstream of <it>E1a</it>, deletion of the <it>E1B55k </it>gene, and HR-free cloning of the recombined <it>E1Δ55k </it>gene into the Ad genome. The genetic structure of the CRAd was confirmed using restriction analysis and PCR. The replication rate of the hsp70E1Δ55k CRAd was 1.5–2% of Ad without E1Δ55k deletion.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A 3-step cloning approach can generate a double-targeted, <it>E1B55k</it>-deleted CRAd using a straight-forward, modified <it>in vitro </it>ligation procedure.</p