The Rationale for Wage Rigidity: Survey Evidence from German and US Firms

The study provides evidence for the rationale of wage rigidity in Germany compared to the United States. Based on a survey of 801 firms, we extend the study of Campbell and Kanlani (1997, this journal) by using more thorough econometric methods, for example, and find strong support for explanations based on labor union contracts and implicit wages for Germany. Furthermore, survey respondents indicated that labor union contracts and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidity for the (less) skilled. Specific human capital and negative signals for new hires are important reasons for the highly skilled. In contrast to the US experience for German firms insider-outsider behavior, labor union contracts and specific human capital seem to be more important explanations of wage rigidity

Tarifbindung und die ökonomische Rationalität von Lohnrigiditäten

Eine träge Anpassungsgeschwindigkeit der Löhne zu einem markträumenden Gleichgewicht bildet nicht nur ein konstitutives Element einer Klasse von makrotheoretischen Ansätzen ("Ungleichgewichtsmodelle"), sondern ist auch durch eine Reihe von empirischen Studien gut belegt. Solche Lohnrigiditäten werden in zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten und in der Öffentlichkeit als einer der Hauptgründe dafür angesehen, dass sich die Arbeitslosigkeit in (West-)Deutschland nicht stärker als bisher zurückgebildet hat, verbunden mit der Empfehlung, den Flächentarifvertrag zugunsten einer betrieblichen Lohnbildung aufzugeben oder sogar zu verbieten. Unbeschadet der Frage, in welchem Ausmaß nominale oder reale Lohnrigiditäten nun tatsächlich für den Anstieg und die Persistenz der Arbeitslosigkeit verantwortlich sind und ob die Verlagerung der Lohnverhandlungen rein auf die betriebliche Ebene die erhofften Flexibilitäten und Beschäftigungsgewinne erbringt, stellt sich die Frage, warum sich eine Gesellschaft den Luxus von Lohnstarrheiten leistet, wenn dies mit so hohen Kosten in Form von Beschäftigungslosigkeit verbunden ist. Die ökonomische Theorie hat in Beantwortung dieser Frage eine Reihe von Argumenten vorgetragen, die zeigen, dass es ökonomisch durchaus rational sein kann, die Löhne nicht ständig der sich ändernden Arbeitsmarktsituation anzupassen, sei dies aus der Sicht der Arbeitnehmer oder Gewerkschaften (wie beispielsweise die "Insider-Outsider"-Theorie), sei dies aus dem Blickwinkel der Unternehmen (wie beispielsweise die Effizienztheorie). Die Brisanz dieses theoretischen Nachweises liegt auf der Hand: Wie sollen dann rational handelnde Arbeitnehmer, Gewerkschaften und Unternehmer dazu gebracht werden, entgegen ihrer Rationalität flexiblere Löhne (und Lohnstrukturen) zu vereinbaren

Entanglement entropy of ground states of the three-dimensional ideal Fermi gas in a magnetic field

We study the asymptotic growth of the entanglement entropy of ground states of non-interacting (spinless) fermions in $\mathbb R^3$ subject to a non-zero, constant magnetic field perpendicular to a plane. As for the case with no magnetic field we find, to leading order $L^2\ln(L)$, a logarithmically enhanced area law of this entropy for a bounded, piecewise Lipschitz region $L\Lambda\subset \mathbb R^3$ as the scaling parameter $L$ tends to infinity. This is in contrast to the two-dimensional case since particles can now move freely in the direction of the magnetic field, which causes the extra $\ln(L)$ factor. The explicit expression for the coefficient of the leading order contains a surface integral similar to the Widom formula in the non-magnetic case. It differs however in the sense that the dependence on the boundary is not solely on its area but on the "area perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field". On the way we prove an improved two-term asymptotic expansion (up to an error term of order one) of certain traces of one-dimensional Wiener--Hopf operators with a discontinuous symbol. This is of independent interest and leads to an improved error term of the order $L^2$ of the relevant trace for piecewise $\mathsf{C}^{1,\alpha}$ smooth surfaces $\partial \Lambda$

Logarithmically enhanced area-laws for fermions in vanishing magnetic fields in dimension two

We consider fermionic ground states of the Landau Hamiltonian, $H_B$, in a constant magnetic field of strength $B>0$ in $\mathbb R^2$ at some fixed Fermi energy $\mu>0$, described by the Fermi projection $P_B:= 1(H_B\le \mu)$. For some fixed bounded domain $\Lambda\subset \mathbb{R}^2$ with boundary set $\partial\Lambda$ and an $L>0$ we restrict these ground states spatially to the scaled domain $L \Lambda$ and denote the corresponding localised Fermi projection by $P_B(L\Lambda)$. Then we study the scaling of the Hilbert-space trace, $\mathrm{tr} f(P_B(L\Lambda))$, for polynomials $f$ with $f(0)=f(1)=0$ of these localised ground states in the joint limit $L\to\infty$ and $B\to0$. We obtain to leading order logarithmically enhanced area-laws depending on the size of $LB$. Roughly speaking, if $1/B$ tends to infinity faster than $L$, then we obtain the known enhanced area-law (by the Widom--Sobolev formula) of the form $L \ln(L) a(f,\mu) |\partial\Lambda|$ as $L\to\infty$ for the (two-dimensional) Laplacian with Fermi projection $1(H_0\le \mu)$. On the other hand, if $L$ tends to infinity faster than $1/B$, then we get an area law with an $L \ln(\mu/B) a(f,\mu) |\partial\Lambda|$ asymptotic expansion as $B\to0$. The numerical coefficient $a(f,\mu)$ in both cases is the same and depends solely on the function $f$ and on $\mu$. The asymptotic result in the latter case is based upon the recent joint work of Leschke, Sobolev and the second named author for fixed $B$, a proof of the sine-kernel asymptotics on a global scale, and on the enhanced area-law in dimension one by Landau and Widom. In the special but important case of a quadratic function $f$ we are able to cover the full range of parameters $B$ and $L$. In general, we have a smaller region of parameters $(B,L)$ where we can prove the two-scale asymptotic expansion $\mathrm{tr} f(P_B(L\Lambda))$ as $L\to\infty$ and $B\to0$.Comment: 49 pages, 2 figure

Tarifbindung und die ökonomische Rationalität von Lohnrigiditäten

This study provides empirical evidence for the economic rationality of wage rigidities. Theoretically wage rigidities can result from contracts, implicit contracts, from efficiency wages and from insider-outsider behaviour. Based on a survey of 801 firms strong support has been found for explanations based on collective wage agreements and on efficency wages as well. Collective wage agreements and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidities for the low skilled. Furthermore survey respondents indicate that the reduction of turnover costs, adverse selection and specific human capital in quits are important reasons for wage rigidities for high skilled labour. Compared to findings from the USA, in Germany collective wage agreements and firm specific human capital seem to be more important explanations. --Lohnrigiditäten,Arbeitsrecht,Tarifverträge,Effizienzlohntheorien,?Insider-Outsider?-Theorien,Beschäftigung

The MoCA Workbench: Support for Creativity in Movie Content Analysis

Semantic access to the content of a video is highly desirable for multimedia content retrieval. Automatic extraction of semantics requires content analysis algorithms. Our MoCA (Movie Content Analysis) project provides an interactive workbench supporting the researcher in the development of new movie content analysis algorithms. The workbench offers data management facilities for large amounts of video/audio data and derived parameters. It also provides an easy-to-use interface for a free combination of basic operators into more sophisticated operators. We can combine results from video track and audio track analysis. The MoCA Workbench shields the researcher from technical details and provides advanced visualization capabilities, allowing attention to focus on the development of new algorithms. The paper presents the design and implementation of the MoCA Workbench and reports practical experience

Scene Determination based on Video and Audio Features

Determination of scenes from a video is a challenging task. When asking humans for it, results will be inconsistent since the term scene is not precisely defined. It leaves it up to each human to set shared attributes which integrate shots to scenes. However, consistent results can be found for certain basic attributes like dialogs, same settings and continuing sounds. We have therefore developed a scene determination scheme which clusters shots based on detected dialogs, same settings and similar audio. Our experimental results show that automatic deter mination of these types of scenes can be performed reliably

Automatic Audio Content Analysis

This paper describes the theoretic framework and applications of automatic audio content analysis. Research in multimedia content analysis has so far concentrated on the video domain. We demonstrate the strength of automatic audio content analysis. We explain the algorithms we use, including analysis of amplitude, frequency and pitch, and simulations of human audio perception. These algorithms serve us as tools for further audio content analysis. We use these tools in applications like the segmentation of audio data streams into logical units for further processing, the analysis of music, as well as the recognition of sounds indicative of violence like shots, explosions and cries