The Effect of Early Retirement Incentives on the Training Participation of Older Workers.

Human capital theory predicts that older workers are less likely to participate in on-the-job training than younger workers, due to lower net returns on such investments. Early retirement institutions are likely to affect these returns. Using the European Community Household Panel we show that older workers participate less in training, and that early retirement institutions do indeed matter. Generous early retirement schemes discourage older workers from taking part in training, whereas flexible early retirement schemes encourage this. Finally, the results suggest that in most European countries training can keep older workers longer in the labour market.

Charge profile of surface doped C60

We study the charge profile of a C60-FET (field effect transistor) as used in the experiments of Schoen, Kloc and Batlogg. Using a tight-binding model, we calculate the charge profile treating the Coulomb interaction in a mean-field approximation. The charge profile behaves similarly to the case of a continuous space-charge layer, in particular it is confined to a single interface layer for doping higher than ~0.3 electron (or hole) per C60 molecule. The morahedral disorder of the C60 molecules smoothens the structure in the density of states.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figure

Valence Instability and Superconductivity in Heavy Fermion Systems

Many cerium-based heavy fermion (HF) compounds have pressure-temperature phase diagrams in which a superconducting region extends far from a magnetic quantum critical point. In at least two compounds, CeCu2Si2 and CeCu2Ge2, an enhancement of the superconducting transition temperature was found to coincide with an abrupt valence change, with strong circumstantial evidence for pairing mediated by critical valence, or charge transfer, fluctuations. This pairing mechanism, and the valence instability, is a consequence of a f-c Coulomb repulsion term U_fc in the hamiltonian. While some non-superconducting Ce compounds show a clear first order valence instability, analogous to the Ce alpha-gamma transition, we argue that a weakly first order valence transition may be a general feature of Ce-based HF systems, and both magnetic and critical valence fluctuations may be responsible for the superconductivity in these systems.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figure