Asymmetric Information And Union Strike Behavior In Competitive Industries

When firms have private information a union may use a strike to reveal information about the firm. This thesis has asymmetrically-informed agents in a competitive industry in which union and nonunion firms may exist. This environment makes it possible to derive a wide class of predictions concerning union strike behavior. Many of the new predictions arise from the possibility of less than 100% unionization and the implied demand independence results. Also, multiple firm types may exist at any one time in an industry. This leads to a strong result concerning the joint distribution of wages and strikes within an industry, which is fundamental to the view of strikes as a mechanism for eliciting information on firm types.;Firms differ in the level of a cost parameter which can take on a high or low value. If there is perfect information (that is, all agents know the value of any particular firms\u27s cost parameters), then there will be no strike in equilibrium. In the case of imperfect information, there was two types of equilibria: a pooling in which there will be no strikes, and a separating equilibrium in which strikes will occur. In the separating equilibrium the union makes two offers. One offer consists of a high wage and no strike. The other consists of a lower wage but after a strike of a chosen duration. The offers are designed to be incentive compatible.;Besides the wage rates and the strike length, the union also chooses the number of firms that it organizes. The union\u27s costs of operating increases with the number of firms organized and this may result in the union choosing to organize less than 100% of the firms operating in the industry. A robust prediction is that within a competitive industry, wages rates and strike lengths are inversely related. Also within an industry, the wage rates of firms that settle at the beginning of the contract period should be above those of firms that settle after a strike. A number of comparative static results are also generated. Predictions about strike behavior over the business cycle are presented

Ancient dental calculus reveals oral microbiome shifts associated with lifestyle and disease in Great Britain

We thank C. Stringer and R. Kruszynski of the Natural History Museum, London; S. Schiffels; D. Sayer; Oxford Archaeology East; M. Farrell of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; J. Pearson of the Inverness Museum; and all of the museums for access to samples. We also thank the Museum of London for allowing us to collect and destructively analyse archaeological dental calculus samples from their collections from London, particularly J. Bekvalac and R. Redfern. We would also like to acknowledge J. VanderBerg at EnDev Geographic for producing the map used in Fig. 1. A.C., C.A. and L.W. thank the Australian Research Council for research funding (DP110105038) and Laureate (FL140100260). The work was also supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Award to L.S.W. (FT180100407). This material is also based on work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program awarded to A.S.G. under Grant No. DGE1255832. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprintPostprin

Making sense of science under conditions of complexity and uncertainty

Science advice to today’s policymakers has become more prominent than ever, due primarily to the growing human impact on our world, and the everincreasing complexity of the knowledge needed for coping with economic, social and environmental challenges. These include demographic changes, global trade issues, international market structures, transboundary pollution, digitalisation, urbanisation and many other factors of modern life. Many such policy problems are characterised by a mixture of complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. The issues for which scientific input is most needed by policymakers are the ones for which the science is most often complex, multidisciplinary and incomplete. Scientific expertise supports effective policymaking by providing the best available knowledge, which can then be used to understand a specific problem, generate and evaluate policy options, and provide meaning to the discussion around critical topics within society. Scientific knowledge is crucial to ensuring that systematic evidence is part of the collective decisionmaking process. Systematic knowledge is instrumental to understanding phenomena, providing insights that help to understand and tackle society’s problems. Science therefore represents an essential element in Europe’s future development of policy. The nature of science advice is wide-ranging. The science advisory ecosystem includes a broad set of players, from individual academics to national academies, universities, think tanks and many others. Their roles include knowledge generation, synthesis, brokering, policy evaluation, horizon scanning and more. In the vast majority of policy cases, scientific advice is only one of many inputs but it occupies a unique position, as summarised below and in the report

Provocation of ventricular tachycardia by an automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28495/1/0000292.pd

Salvage radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy: analysis of toxicity by dose-fractionation in the RADICALS-RT trial

ABSTRACT: Emerging data indicate comparable disease control and toxicity of postoperative normo-fractionation and moderate hypofractionation radiotherapy (RT) in prostate cancer. In RADICALS-RT, patients were planned for treatment with either 66Gy in 33 fractions over 6.5 weeks or 52.5Gy in 20 fractions over 4 weeks. In this non-randomized, exploratory analysis, we explore the toxicity of these two schedules in patients who had adjuvant RT. METHODS: Information on RT dose was collected in all patients. Radiation Therapy Oncology Group toxicity score was recorded every 4 months for 2 years, 6-monthly until 5 years, then annually until 15 years. Patient-reported data were collected at baseline, 1, 5, and 10 years with use of standard questionnaires including Vaizey (bowel) and International Continence Society Male Short-Form (urinary incontinence). The highest grade of event was recorded within the first 2 years, and beyond 2 years, and compared between treatment groups using the χ² test. RESULTS: 217/634 (34%) patients were planned for 52.5Gy/20f and 417/634 (66%) for 66Gy/33f. In the first two years, grade 1 - 2 cystitis was reported more frequently among the 66Gy/33f group (52.5Gy/20f: 20% vs 66Gy/33f: 30%, p=0.04). After two years, grade 1-2 cystitis was reported in 16% in the 66Gy group, and 9% in the 52.5Gy group (p=0.08). Other toxicities were similar in the two groups and very few patients had any grade 3 - 4 toxicity. Patients reported slightly higher urinary and faecal incontinence scores at one year than at baseline, but no clinically meaningful differences were reported between 52.5Gy/20f and 66Gy/33f groups. Patient reported health was similar at baseline and at one year, and similar between 52.5Gy/20f and 66Gy/33f groups. CONCLUSION: Severe toxicity is rare after prostate bed radiotherapy with either 52.5Gy/20f or 66Gy/33f. Only modest differences were recorded in toxicity or in patient reported outcomes between these two schedules

Framework engineering to produce dominant T cell receptors with enhanced antigen-specific function

Immunobiology of allogeneic stem cell transplantation and immunotherapy of hematological disease

On the trispectrum as a gaussian test for cosmology

In the standard model for structure formation, bound objects originate from the gravitational collapse of small perturbations arising from quantum fluctuations with random phases. In other scenarios, based on defects, structures are seeded by localized energy density. In principle, it is possible to differentiate between these models on the basis of their statistical properties; only in the former case is the initial density field an almost-perfect random gaussian field. In this paper, we investigate the use of the trispectrum of the galaxy density field, which is the connected four-point function in Fourier space, as a discriminant between gaussian and non-gaussian models. It has the advantage of having only weak non-linear growth. We define a related statistic $\tau$ which, as a test of the gaussian hypothesis, is independent of cosmology, the power spectrum and biasing, in real space, and which is, in principle, a measure of the departure from gaussian statistics. For galaxy redshift surveys, the statistic depends on cosmology and bias only through the potentially observable parameter $\beta$. We compute the expected errors on the estimate of $\tau$, and demonstrate with numerical simulations that it can be a useful discriminant of models, with the important proviso that any bias is linear on large scales. Whether it is the most effective method is uncertain and depends on the nature of the departure from gaussianity.Comment: to appear in ApJ, 28 pages, 5 figure

Cardiac pheochromocytoma involving the left main coronary artery presenting with exertional angina

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26628/1/0000169.pd

The translation research in a dental setting (TRiaDS) programme protocol

Background: It is well documented that the translation of knowledge into clinical practice is a slow and haphazard process. This is no less true for dental healthcare than other types of healthcare. One common policy strategy to help promote knowledge translation is the production of clinical guidance, but it has been demonstrated that the simple publication of guidance is unlikely to optimise practice. Additional knowledge translation interventions have been shown to be effective, but effectiveness varies and much of this variation is unexplained. The need for researchers to move beyond single studies to develop a generalisable, theory based, knowledge translation framework has been identified.For dentistry in Scotland, the production of clinical guidance is the responsibility of the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP). TRiaDS (Translation Research in a Dental Setting) is a multidisciplinary research collaboration, embedded within the SDCEP guidance development process, which aims to establish a practical evaluative framework for the translation of guidance and to conduct and evaluate a programme of integrated, multi-disciplinary research to enhance the science of knowledge translation.Methods: Set in General Dental Practice the TRiaDS programmatic evaluation employs a standardised process using optimal methods and theory. For each SDCEP guidance document a diagnostic analysis is undertaken alongside the guidance development process. Information is gathered about current dental care activities. Key recommendations and their required behaviours are identified and prioritised. Stakeholder questionnaires and interviews are used to identify and elicit salient beliefs regarding potential barriers and enablers towards the key recommendations and behaviours. Where possible routinely collected data are used to measure compliance with the guidance and to inform decisions about whether a knowledge translation intervention is required. Interventions are theory based and informed by evidence gathered during the diagnostic phase and by prior published evidence. They are evaluated using a range of experimental and quasi-experimental study designs, and data collection continues beyond the end of the intervention to investigate the sustainability of an intervention effect.Discussion: The TRiaDS programmatic approach is a significant step forward towards the development of a practical, generalisable framework for knowledge translation research. The multidisciplinary composition of the TRiaDS team enables consideration of the individual, organisational and system determinants of professional behaviour change. In addition the embedding of TRiaDS within a national programme of guidance development offers a unique opportunity to inform and influence the guidance development process, and enables TRiaDS to inform dental services practitioners, policy makers and patients on how best to translate national recommendations into routine clinical activities