Behind the North-South divide: A decomposition analysis

The paper applies modified Oaxaca-type analyses on the eighteen available waves of the British Household Panel Survey to decompose the wage gap among full time employees from either side of the North-South divide and identify its components that can be attributed to measurable worker- and labour market characteristics, and the part due to differences in the returns to these endowments. Further, by applying Juhn, Murphy and Pierce’s (1991) methodology, it is analysed, how changes in these underlying factors could explain the one quarter decline in the wage gap over the 1991 – 2009 period. The paper confirms the existence of a differential treatment effect by showing that only one fifth of the wage gap can be explained by observable differences. The magnitude of the unexplainable coefficient effect is so large, that the remarkable improvements in Northern occupational structure and human capital levels over the period could only translate into an actual decline in the wage gap, because it coincided with a period of increasing inequality among Northern occupational wage premia, which – as a by-product – increased the average Northern wage and this way counterbalanced the effects of the increasing Southern returns to experience, that alone could have increased the initial pay gap by half.England's North-South divide, regional wage gap, Oaxaca decomposition, Juhn, Murphy and Pierce decomposition, Yun's method

A note on tilted Sperner families with patterns

Let $p$ and $q$ be two nonnegative integers with $p+q>0$ and $n>0$. We call $\mathcal{F} \subset \mathcal{P}([n])$ a \textit{(p,q)-tilted Sperner family with patterns on [n]} if there are no distinct $F,G \in \mathcal{F}$ with: $$(i) \ \ p|F \setminus G|=q|G \setminus F|, \ \textrm{and}$$ $$(ii) \ f > g \ \textrm{for all} \ f \in F \setminus G \ \textrm{and} \ g \in G \setminus F.$$ Long (\cite{L}) proved that the cardinality of a (1,2)-tilted Sperner family with patterns on $[n]$ is $$O(e^{120\sqrt{\log n}}\ \frac{2^n}{\sqrt{n}}).$$ We improve and generalize this result, and prove that the cardinality of every ($p,q$)-tilted Sperner family with patterns on [$n$] is $$O(\sqrt{\log n} \ \frac{2^n}{\sqrt{n}}).$$Comment: 8 page

Generalized Tur\'an problems for disjoint copies of graphs

Given two graphs $H$ and $F$, the maximum possible number of copies of $H$ in an $F$-free graph on $n$ vertices is denoted by $ex(n,H,F)$. We investigate the function $ex(n,H,kF)$, where $kF$ denotes $k$ vertex disjoint copies of a fixed graph $F$. Our results include cases when $F$ is a complete graph, cycle or a complete bipartite graph.Comment: 18 pages. There was a wrong statement in the first version, it is corrected no

A discrete isodiametric result: the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem for multisets

There are many generalizations of the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem. We give new results (and problems) concerning families of $t$-intersecting $k$-element multisets of an $n$-set and point out connections to coding theory and classical geometry. We establish the conjecture that for $n \geq t(k-t)+2$ such a family can have at most ${n+k-t-1\choose k-t}$ members

On the size of planarly connected crossing graphs

We prove that if an $n$-vertex graph $G$ can be drawn in the plane such that each pair of crossing edges is independent and there is a crossing-free edge that connects their endpoints, then $G$ has $O(n)$ edges. Graphs that admit such drawings are related to quasi-planar graphs and to maximal $1$-planar and fan-planar graphs.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016

Forbidden subposet problems for traces of set families

In this paper we introduce a problem that bridges forbidden subposet and forbidden subconfiguration problems. The sets $F_1,F_2, \dots,F_{|P|}$ form a copy of a poset $P$, if there exists a bijection $i:P\rightarrow \{F_1,F_2, \dots,F_{|P|}\}$ such that for any $p,p'\in P$ the relation $p<_P p'$ implies $i(p)\subsetneq i(p')$. A family $\mathcal{F}$ of sets is \textit{$P$-free} if it does not contain any copy of $P$. The trace of a family $\mathcal{F}$ on a set $X$ is $\mathcal{F}|_X:=\{F\cap X: F\in \mathcal{F}\}$. We introduce the following notions: $\mathcal{F}\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ is $l$-trace $P$-free if for any $l$-subset $L\subseteq [n]$, the family $\mathcal{F}|_L$ is $P$-free and $\mathcal{F}$ is trace $P$-free if it is $l$-trace $P$-free for all $l\le n$. As the first instances of these problems we determine the maximum size of trace $B$-free families, where $B$ is the butterfly poset on four elements $a,b,c,d$ with $a,b<c,d$ and determine the asymptotics of the maximum size of $(n-i)$-trace $K_{r,s}$-free families for $i=1,2$. We also propose a generalization of the main conjecture of the area of forbidden subposet problems