Lawmakers as Job Buyers

In 2013, Washington State authorized the largest state tax incentive for private industry in U.S. history. It is not remarkable for a state legislature to use tax benefits to retain a major employer—in this case, the global aerospace manufacturer Boeing. Laws across all states and thousands of cities routinely incentivize companies such as Amazon to relocate or remain in particular areas. Notably, however, Washington did not recover any of the subsidies it authorized despite Boeing’s significant post-incentive workforce reductions. This story leads to several important questions: (1) How effective are state and local legislatures at influencing business-location decisions?; (2) Do such incentive programs actually achieve their goals of increasing and maintaining jobs?; (3) Is the public protected from imprudent spending? This Article looks specifically at the role of state and local governments in encouraging businesses to locate in their jurisdictions. In such cases, state and local lawmakers act as buyers of jobs. This Article argues for a two-step proposal to limit subnational government actions to incentivize business-location decisions. The first step involves a bidding process where companies are awarded incentives based on the lowest subsidy dollar amount required to create or retain a job of a certain quality or pay rate. The second step involves defining job metrics based on certain preconditions and recapturing incentives should a company fail to maintain or achieve a defined number of job and qualities inherent in each job. This two-step proposal has regulatory benefits and it mollifies the political concern for jurisdictions to appear competitive and the need for public financial protection

Rigorous QCD Predictions for Decays of P-Wave Quarkonia

Rigorous QCD predictions for decay rates of the P-wave states of heavy quarkonia are presented. They are based on a new factorization theorem which is valid to leading order in the heavy quark velocity and to all orders in the running coupling constant of QCD. The decay rates for all four P states into light hadronic or electromagnetic final states are expressed in terms of two phenomenological parameters, whose coefficients are perturbatively calculable. Logarithms of the binding energy encountered in previous perturbative calculations of P-wave decays are factored into a phenomenological parameter that is related to the probability for the heavy quark-antiquark pair to be in a color-octet S-wave state. Applying these predictions to charmonium, we use measured decay rates for the \chione and \chitwo to predict the decay rates of the \chizero and $h_c$.Comment: 13 page

Generation of polarization entangled photon pairs by a single crystal interferometric source pumped by femtosecond laser pulses

Photon pairs, highly entangled in polarization have been generated under femtosecond laser pulse excitation by a type I crystal source, operating in a single arm interferometric scheme. The relevant effects of temporal walk-off existing in these conditions between the ordinary and extraordinary photons were experimentally investigated. By introducing a suitable temporal compensation between the two orthogonal polarization components highly entangled pulsed states were obtained

Investment Equations and Financial Restrictions at Firm Level: The Case of Uruguay

Three alternative specifications of an investment equation have been tested using panel data of Uruguayan firms: a traditional accelerator model of investment, an error-correction version of the accelerator model and an Euler equation for the capital stock. These models of investment were used to test for the existence of financial constraints in the investment decision process. Our estimates confirm the existence of financial restrictions on investment decisions of Uruguayan firms in the period under consideration (1997-2000). We explored the effect on firms’ ability to finance investment of two attributes: size and foreign ownership. Regarding size, our results suggest that small firms face greater constraints in financing their desired levels of investment. We also explored whether foreign owned firms suffered less from financial restrictions than national firms. Our results leave the issue unresolved. Lastly, our estimates suggest a general increase in the severity of financial restrictions following the 1999-2000 crisis. In particular, smaller firms were most affected.

Relationship-based-care model in pediatria: studio randomizzato controllato per implementare la qualità delle cure

Background: One of the fundamental rules of the ‘Relationship Based Care' (RBC) nursing model is to establish an approach to the patients and their families based on their central role; this is the answer to the need to relate with the patients/caregivers, to understand their needs and expectations in order to apply an advanced nursing personalised care (Koloroutis, 2004; Hebda & Patton, 2012; Hedges, Nichols, & Filoteo, 2012). The implementation of this model led to remarkable results in terms of quality of care, of health and therefore led to a reduction of health assistance costs as well (Hedges et al., 2012). A good relationship and effective communication are linked to a high quality of care and a safer environment for patients (Burt, Berry, & Quackenbush, 2015). The RBC nursing care model has never been implemented in Italy in any field. Aim: To evaluate whether or not the application of the RBC care model to the paediatric field could reduce the anxiety of the caregiver, enhance the quality of the nursing care as perceived by the caregiver, and boost the satisfaction about their performance for nurses. Methods: Study design: Randomized control trial. Participants: All caregivers of the patients that were admitted to the Units 2° and 3° of the Women's and Children's Health Department, Padua University Hospital, fluent in both written and spoken Italian, that declared themselves ready to take part to the study. The study included also all nurses of the Units that carried out the model care. Radomization: Patients belonging to the same group (case or control group) were admitted to the same rooms. Then the rooms - equipped with an equal number of beds - were randomized. In order to ensure a balance, a permutated block randomization was applied. The case group received the “Take 5 Minutes” (T5M) treatment, while the control group received the standard care. Treatment: During the stay of the patients in the Units, nurses applied the T5M treatment, that consisted of dedicating some time to the relationship with the caregiver in order to achieve a more effective collaboration, applying some specific communication strategies. Primary outcome: ‘The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale' (HADS) (Costantini, Musso, Viterbori et al., 1999) for the caregiver treated with the T5M treatment. Secondary outcomes: ‘Caring Behaviors Inventory' (CBI) (Tomietto, Papastavrou, Efstathiou, Palese, 2014), filled in by the caregiver that received the T5M treatment. The questionnaire ‘Fulfillment in the Workplace' (Cortese 2007), given to the nurses at the beginning and at the end of the study. Statistical analysis: the Mann- Whitney test, two-way ANOVA with pairwise comparisons, regression lines and Pearson’s r. Ethical aspects: The research was approved by the Ethical Committee for the Clinical Trials (prot. N 3567/AO/15) of the University Hospital of Padua, Italy. Results: In the experimental group data showed a lower level of anxiety and depression (p 0.001) and highlighted that the effect of the T5M was proportional to the seriousness of caregivers’ anxiety and depression. The quality of nursing care was perceived as better in the experimental group, especially for the items “Presence”, “Respect” and “Attention”. The item “Competence” was perceived at the same level for the baseline, experimental and control groups, highlighting that the professional competence was perceived as good in any case. The nurse job satisfaction before and after the implementation of the RBC model remained at the same level. Discussion: In scientific literature there are no comparable studies on RBC model with these methodological characteristics. The findings of this research are comparable with other studies for the improvement of perceived quality of nursing care (Winsett & Hauck, 2011) and patients’ satisfaction with health care (Carabetta et al., 2013; Faber 2013; Hedges et al., 2012). The nurse job satisfaction didn’t show any changes, not consistent with other studies (Winsett & Hauck, 2011; Faber, 2013; Hedges et al., 2012) Conclusion: The caregivers who received the T5M treatment, consistent with the RBC model, showed a lower level of anxiety and depression, and a better perceived quality of nursing care. In particular, the T5M treatment showed more strength on those caregivers who had a higher level of anxiety and depression at the hospital admission. These findings have important implications for clinical practice: they show that it’s affordable to improve nursing care without raising costs for the health care organizations and that the RBC is compatible with the standard nursing care plan. Further research is needed to develop this model care in other settings