Effect of Minimum Wages on Human Capital Formation

The hypothesis that minimum wages tend to discourage on the job training is largely supported by our empirical analysis. Direct effects on reported job training and corollary effects on wage growth as estimated in microdata of the National Longitudinal Samples (NLS) and Michigan Income Dynamics (MID) are consistently negative and stronger at lower education levels. Apart from a single exception, no effects are observable among the higher wage group whose education exceeds high school. The effects on job turnover are: a decrease in turnover among young NLS whites, but an increase among young NLS blacks and MID whites. Whether these apparently conflicting findings on turnover reflect a distinction between short and long run adjustments in jobs is a question that requires further testing.

Labor Turnover and Youth Unemployment

The main question of concern in this paper is why youth unemployment is high relative to unemployment of adults. The analysis is based largely on longitudinal micro-data in the NLS and MID panels of men, surveyed in the 1966-1976 decade. Since the duration of unemployment increases with age, incidence that is the probability of experiencing unemployment is the main focus of our analysis. The basic finding is that the at first rapid and then decelerating decline with age in the probability of unemployment stems from a similarly shaped relation between the probability of separation (from a job) and working age. The age patterns are, in turn, mainly due to the decline of probabilities as tenure lengthens. Indeed, at given levels of tenure, unemployment incidence does not at all decline with age, except among blacks and in periods of high unemployment. We conclude that the short tenure level of the young is the main reason for the age differential in unemployment. To check this we compare youth with short-tenured groups which are not adversely selected, migrants who were not unemployed before migration and immigrants. The comparison reveals that youth are in the same situation as others with little accumulated tenure. We do note, however, that unemployment declines more slowly for youth than for others, reflecting the gradually increasing commitment to work in the transition from school to work and from parental to own household. Increases in the duration of unemployment with age are ascribed, within a search model framework, to a decline in the probability of finding job vacancies among older movers. The inference of increasing difficulty in job finding is also consistent with observed increases in the probability of unemployment conditional on separation, declines in the quit/layoff ration, and in wage gains from moves as workers age.

The Rights of Man in the World Community: Constitutional Illusions Versus Rational Action

It is only from a perspective of centuries that the United Nations program for human rights can be accurately observed or rationally appraised. This program, too often thought to be at the periphery of the purposes of the United Nations, represents in fact the main core of rational objectives not only of the United Nations but of all democratic government. It represents the converging and integration on a global scale of many movements, movements hitherto restricted in areal diffusion but centuries-old and rooted deep in universal human nature and civilized culture. It is heir to all the great historic democratic movements—for constitutionalism, freedom, equality, fraternity, humanitarianism, liberalism, enlightenment, peace, opportunity, and so on It is the contemporary culmination of man\u27s long struggle for all his basic human values: for participation in the processes by which he is governed, equality before the law, and that wide sharing of power, both formal and real, which we call democracy; for sanctity of person, for freedom from arbitrary restraints and cruel and inhuman punishments, and for positive opportunity to develop latent talents for the enrichment and well-being of personality; for the enlightenment by which rational decisions can be made and for freedom of inquiry and opinion; for that fundamental respect for human dignity which both precludes discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, political opinion, or other ground irrelevant to capacity and provides positive recognition of common merit as a human being and special merit as an individual; for access to resources to produce the goods and services necessary to maintain rising standards of living and comfort; for acquisition of the skills necessary to express talent and to achieve individual and community values to the fullest; for freedom to explain life, the universe, and values, to fix standards of rectitude, and to worship God or gods as may seem best; for affection, fraternity, and congenial personal relationships in groups freely chosen; for, in sum, a security which includes not only freedom from violence and threats of violence but also full opportunity to preserve and increase all values by peaceful, noncoercive procedures

Avatar: A Time- and Space-Efficient Self-Stabilizing Overlay Network

Overlay networks present an interesting challenge for fault-tolerant computing. Many overlay networks operate in dynamic environments (e.g. the Internet), where faults are frequent and widespread, and the number of processes in a system may be quite large. Recently, self-stabilizing overlay networks have been presented as a method for managing this complexity. \emph{Self-stabilizing overlay networks} promise that, starting from any weakly-connected configuration, a correct overlay network will eventually be built. To date, this guarantee has come at a cost: nodes may either have high degree during the algorithm's execution, or the algorithm may take a long time to reach a legal configuration. In this paper, we present the first self-stabilizing overlay network algorithm that does not incur this penalty. Specifically, we (i) present a new locally-checkable overlay network based upon a binary search tree, and (ii) provide a randomized algorithm for self-stabilization that terminates in an expected polylogarithmic number of rounds \emph{and} increases a node's degree by only a polylogarithmic factor in expectation

Taxation and the Demand for Gambling: New Evidence from the United Kingdom.

In October 2001, the U.K. government implemented a dramatic shift in the taxation of gambling, resulting in a substantial decline in taxes levied on U.K. bookmakers. Using data before and after this event, we present econometric evidence on the demand response to this tax reduction. Our results suggest that the demand for bookmaker gambling is highly sensitive to taxation rates and that the decline in the rate of taxation led to a large increase in the demand for on-shore betting. We also find some evidence of price-induced substitution across different segments of the gambling industry. The U.K. policy initiative may provide useful information for policy makers in other countries who are contemplating changes in gambling taxation.

Productivity Measurement in a Service Industry: Plant-Level Evidence from Gambling Establishments in the United Kingdom

Gambling is one of the fastest growing service industries. Unfortunately, there have been no studies of total factor productivity (TFP) in this sector. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap, based on an analysis of U.K. establishment-level data. These data are derived from the Annual Respondents Database (ARD) file, constructed by the U.K. Office for National Statistics, consisting of individual establishment records from the Annual Census of Production. The ARD file contains detailed data on output, materials, energy, employment, and numerous plant and firm characteristics and is quite similar to the U.S.-based Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). This information can be used to construct measures of TFP. We also construct estimates of labour productivity, since TFP is may be measured with error. We use these data to estimate labour and total factor productivity equations based on a stochastic frontier production function framework. The latter approach enables us to assess whether investment in information technology enhances relative productivity. Our preliminary results suggest that the production function models fit well, generating plausible elasticity estimates and indicating constant returns to scale. While investment in computers per se does not appear to have a productivity enhancing effect, gambling establishments that use Internet-based technology appear to be closer to the frontier.

Anticipating the species jump: surveillance for emerging viral threats.

Zoonotic disease surveillance is typically triggered after animal pathogens have already infected humans. Are there ways to identify high-risk viruses before they emerge in humans? If so, then how and where can identifications be made and by what methods? These were the fundamental questions driving a workshop to examine the future of predictive surveillance for viruses that might jump from animals to infect humans. Virologists, ecologists and computational biologists from academia, federal government and non-governmental organizations discussed opportunities as well as obstacles to the prediction of species jumps using genetic and ecological data from viruses and their hosts, vectors and reservoirs. This workshop marked an important first step towards envisioning both scientific and organizational frameworks for this future capability. Canine parvoviruses as well as seasonal H3N2 and pandemic H1N1 influenza viruses are discussed as exemplars that suggest what to look for in anticipating species jumps. To answer the question of where to look, prospects for discovering emerging viruses among wildlife, bats, rodents, arthropod vectors and occupationally exposed humans are discussed. Finally, opportunities and obstacles are identified and accompanied by suggestions for how to look for species jumps. Taken together, these findings constitute the beginnings of a conceptual framework for achieving a virus surveillance capability that could predict future species jumps