Subjective Beliefs about Contract Enforceability

This article assesses the content, role, and adaptability of subjective beliefs about contract enforceability in the context of postemployment covenants not to compete (“noncompetes”). We show that employees tend to believe that their noncompetes are enforceable, even when they are not. We provide evidence for both supply- and demand-side stories that explain employees’ persistently inaccurate beliefs. Moreover, we show that believing that unenforceable noncompetes are enforceable likely causes employees to forgo better job options and to perceive that their employer is more likely to take legal action against them if they choose to compete. Finally, we use an information experiment to inform employees about the enforceability of their noncompete. While this information matters for employee beliefs and prospective behavior, it does not appear to eliminate an unenforceable noncompete as a factor in the decision to take a new job. We discuss the implications of our results for the policy debate regarding the enforceability of noncompetes

The Behavioral Effects of (Unenforceable) Contracts

Do contracts influence behavior independent of the law governing their enforceability? We explore this question in the context of employment noncompetes using nationally representative data for 11,500 labor force participants. We show that noncompetes are associated with reductions in employee mobility and changes in the direction of that mobility (i.e., toward noncompetitors) in both states that do and do not enforce noncompetes. Decomposing mobility into job offer generation and acceptance, we detect no evidence of differences in job search, recruitment, or offer activity associated with noncompetes. Rather, we find that employees with noncompetes—even in states that do not enforce them—frequently point to their noncompete as an important reason for declining offers from competitors. Our data further show that these employees’ beliefs about the likelihood of a lawsuit or legal enforcement are important predictors of their citing a noncompete as a factor in their decision to decline competitor offers

Three Essays on Covenants Not to Compete.

Covenants not to compete are contracts between an employer and an employee that prohibit the employee from joining a competing firm for a fixed amount of time after separating from the employer. The three articles contained in this thesis examine the incidence of noncompete contracts and the impact of different state-level noncompete enforcement policies, which vary from non-enforcement to enforcement even if the employee is fired. Chapter I examines the impact of noncompete enforcement policies on the willingness of firms to provide training for their employees. Chapter II examines the impact of noncompete enforcement policies on the creation, growth, and survival of new firms, taking into account differential effects for firms categorized as within-industry spinouts. Chapter III presents evidence from a new survey on the incidence of noncompetes across a broad array of employee-level and firm-level variables, including occupation, industry, education, and earnings. Together, these papers demonstrate the ubiquity of noncompetes and the large effects that state-level noncompete enforcement policies have on both workers and firms.PhDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108768/1/starre_1.pd

Disentangling the rhizosphere community through stable isotope informed genome-resolved metagenomics and assembled metatranscriptomes

The functioning, health, and productivity of soil is intimately tied to the complex network of interactions in the rhizosphere. Because of this, the rhizosphere has been rigorously studied for over a century, but due to technical limitations many aspects of soil biology have been overlooked. In order to better understand rhizosphere functioning, my work has focused on the less explored organisms and interactions in microbial communities, this includes unculturable bacteria along with viruses and eukaryotes. Only by considering soil biology more holistically can we better understand the functioning of this enigmatic yet critical ecosystem. Knowledge about these interactions could direct how we think about plant-microbe relationships, soil carbon stabilization and the roles of understudied organisms in biogeochemical cycling.The transformation of plant photosynthate into soil organic carbon and its recycling to CO2 by soil microorganisms is one of the central components of the terrestrial carbon cycle. There are currently large knowledge gaps related to which soil-associated microorganisms take up plant carbon in the rhizosphere and the fate of that carbon. Additionally, understanding about obligate symbionts such as members of the Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR) in soil is severely limited, both from the perspective of their genomic potential and their interactions with the greater soil community. We conducted an experiment in which common wild oats (Avena fatua) were grown in a 13CO2 atmosphere and the rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil was sampled for genomic analyses. Density gradient centrifugation of DNA extracted from soil samples enabled distinction of microbes that did and did not incorporate the 13C into their DNA. A 1.45-Mbp genome of a Saccharibacteria (TM7) was identified and, despite the microbial complexity of rhizosphere soil, curated to completion. The genome lacks many biosynthetic pathways, including genes required to synthesize DNA de novo. Rather, it acquires externally derived nucleic acids for DNA and RNA synthesis. Given this, we conclude that rhizosphere-associated Saccharibacteria recycle DNA from bacteria that live off plant exudates and/or phage that acquired 13C because they preyed upon these bacteria and/or directly from the labeled plant DNA. Isotopic labeling indicates that the population was replicating during the 6-week period of plant growth. Interestingly, the genome is ~ 30% larger than other complete Saccharibacteria genomes from non-soil environments, largely due to more genes for complex carbon utilization and amino acid metabolism. Given the ability to degrade cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, starch, and 1,3-β-glucan, we predict that this Saccharibacteria generates energy by fermentation of soil necromass and plant root exudates to acetate and lactate. The genome also encodes a linear electron transport chain featuring a terminal oxidase, suggesting that this Saccharibacteria may respire aerobically. The genome encodes a hydrolase that could breakdown salicylic acid, a plant defense signaling molecule, and genes to interconvert a variety of isoprenoids, including the plant hormone zeatin. We propose that isotopically labeled CO2 is incorporated into plant-derived carbon and then into the DNA of rhizosphere organisms capable of nucleotide synthesis, and the nucleotides are recycled into Saccharibacterial genomes. We collected paired rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil at six and nine weeks of plant growth and extracted DNA that was separated by density gradient centrifugation. The separate fractions were sequenced, assembled, and binned to generate 55 unique microbial genomes that were >70% complete. Evidence for close interaction between bacteria, micro-eukaryotes and plant roots includes the ability to modulate plant signaling hormones, abundant plant pathogenicity factors and production of cyanide and insecticidal toxins. We reconstructed eukaryotic 18S rRNA sequences and identified micro-eukaryotic bacterivores and fungi in the rhizosphere soil. In addition, we reconstructed two complete genomes for phage that were among the most highly 13C-enriched entities in our study. CRISPR locus targeting connected a phage to a Burkholderiales host predicted to be a plant pathogen and a possible plant growth promoting Catenulispora may serve as the host for another phage. Thus, 13C could be tracked from the atmosphere into plant roots, soil and through the rhizosphere food web. Viruses impact nearly all organisms on Earth, with ripples of influence in agriculture, health and biogeochemical processes. We previously investigated DNA phage, however, very little is known about RNA viruses in an environmental context, and even less is known about their diversity and ecology in the most complex microbial system, soil. Here, we assembled 48 individual metatranscriptomes from four habitats within a soil sampled over a 22-day time series: rhizosphere alone, detritosphere alone, a combination of the two, and unamended soil (four time points and three biological replicates per time point). We resolved the RNA viral community, uncovering a high diversity of viral sequences. We also investigated possible host organisms by analyzing metatranscriptome marker gene content. Based on viral phylogeny, much of the diversity was Narnaviridae that parasitize fungi or Leviviridae that infect Proteobacteria. Both host and viral communities appear to be highly dynamic, and rapidly diverged depending on experimental conditions. The viral communities were structured based on the presence of litter, while putative hosts appeared to be impacted by both the presence of litter and roots. A clear time signature from Leviviridae and their hosts indicated that viruses were replicating. With this time-resolved analysis, we show that RNA viruses are diverse, abundant and active in soil. Their replication causes host cell death, mobilizing carbon in a process that represents a largely overlooked component of carbon cycling in soil.By combining state of the art techniques, stable isotope probing, genome-resolved metagenomics and assembled metatranscriptomics, we advanced knowledge about the interplay between understudied players in the rhizosphere and provided some clues for the fate of plant derived carbon in the soil microbial ecosystem. The use of genome resolved metagenomics is the only current way to determine the lifestyle of uncultured microbes. Complete genomes are still difficult to reconstruct however, they contain extensive of information, both regarding the presence and the absence of capabilities. Stable isotope probing allowed us to follow plant fixed carbon into the microbial community and in several cases across multiple trophic levels. This study demonstrates the power of stable isotope-informed genome-resolved metagenomics to resolve aspects of the complex rhizosphere food web. The approach will find broad application for study of other soils and different ecosystems

pp-adic quotient sets

For $A \subseteq \mathbb{N}$, the question of when $R(A) = \{a/a' : a, a' \in A\}$ is dense in the positive real numbers $\mathbb{R}_+$ has been examined by many authors over the years. In contrast, the $p$-adic setting is largely unexplored. We investigate conditions under which $R(A)$ is dense in the $p$-adic numbers. Techniques from elementary, algebraic, and analytic number theory are employed in this endeavor. We also pose many open questions that should be of general interest.Comment: 24 page

Understanding Noncompetition Agreements: The 2014 Noncompete Survey Project

In recent years, scholars and policymakers have devoted considerable attention to the potential consequences of employment noncompetition agreements and to whether legislatures ought to reform the laws that govern the enforcement of these controversial contractual provisions. Unfortunately, much of this interest—and the content of proposed reforms—derives from anecdotal tales of burdensome noncompetes among low-wage workers and from scholarship that is either limited to slivers of the population (across all studies, less than 1%) or relies on strong assumptions about the incidence of noncompetition agreements. Better understanding of the use of noncompetes and effective noncompetition law reform requires a more complete picture of the frequency and distribution of noncompetes at the individual employee level. Accordingly, in 2014, we administered a nationwide survey of individuals in the labor force to ask them about their employment status, history, and future expectations—including their experience with and understanding of noncompetition agreements. In this Article, we describe the methods we used to carry out this survey and refine the data for analysis in hopes of encouraging other researchers to use survey approaches to fill other, similarly important gaps in our knowledge. To illustrate the value of the survey project, we present a surprising empirical finding from our data, one that raises questions about existing scholarship and theories about why employers use noncompetes: We find little evidence that the incidence of noncompetition agreements in a state (after controlling for potentially confounding factors) has any relationship to the level of enforcement of such agreements in that state. In other words, an employee in California (where noncompetes are prohibited) appears to be just as likely to labor under a noncompete as an employee in Florida (where noncompetes are much more likely to be enforced)

Noncompete Agreements in the U.S. Labor Force

Using nationally representative survey data on 11,505 labor force participants, we examine the use and implementation of noncompete agreements and the employee outcomes associated with these provisions. Approximately 18 percent of labor force participants are bound by noncompetes, with 38 percent having agreed to at least one in the past. Noncompetes are more likely to be found in high-skill, high-paying jobs, but they are also common in low-skill, low-paying jobs and in states where noncompetes are unenforceable. Only 10 percent of employees negotiate over their noncompetes, and about one-third of employees are presented with noncompetes after having already accepted job offers. Early-notice noncompetes are associated with better employee outcomes, while employees who agree to late-notice noncompetes are comparatively worse off. Regardless of noncompete timing, however, wages are relatively lower where noncompetes are easier to enforce. We discuss these findings in light of competing theories of the economic value of noncompetes