Inventory Fluctuations, Temporary Layoffs and the Business Cycle

Firms respond to fluctuations in demand by changing their inventories and their levels of production. The relative magnitudes of the inventory and production responses have important implications for the overall cyclical behavior of the economy. Government policies that affect the costs of holding inventories and the costs of the temporary layoffs that accompany reductions in the level of output can therefore have significant effects on the magnitude of aggregate fluctuations. The current paper presents new econometric evidence on the nature of inventory adjustments and then examines how changes in inventory behavior affect the overall business cycle. The analysis in this paper was motivated by our discovery that the parameter estimates of the traditional productional adjustment model are not consistent with the observed magnitudes of inventory change and the production. We have shown here that this production adjustment model is a special case of a more general two-speed adjustment process in which both production and inventory targets adjust slowly. Our estimates of the two-speed model clearly reject the production adjustment model in favor of the target adjustment model in which the inventory target adjusts slowly to changes in sales but production adjusts rapidly to changes in the desired inventory. Our analysis of the spectral properties of a simple macroeconomic model show that the production adjustment model and the target adjustment model can imply quite different cyclical behavior of the economy as a whole. Depending on the autocorrelation of the disturbance, government policies that reduce the speed with which production responds to changes in desired inventories and that place greater reliance on inventory adjustment may stabilize national income. Further analysis of these questions with more realistic models would clearly be desirable.

Immigrants and Employer-Provided Training

Much has been written about the labour market outcomes for immigrants in their host countries, particularly with regard to earnings, employment and occupational attainment. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of whether immigrants are as likely to receive employer-provided training relative to comparable natives. As such training should be crucial in determining the labour market success of immigrants in the long run it is a critically important question. Using data from a large scale survey of employees in Ireland, we find that immigrants are less likely to receive training from employers, with immigrants from the New Member States of the EU experiencing a particular disadvantage. The immigrant training disadvantage arises in part from a failure on the part of immigrants to get employed by training-oriented firms. However, they also experience a training disadvantage relative to natives within firms where less training is provided.immigrants, employer-provided training, Ireland

Experimental radio frequency link for Ka-band communications applications

An experimental radio frequency link has been demonstrated to provide two-way communication between a remote user ground terminal and a ground-based Ka-band transponder. Bit-error-rate performance and radio frequency characteristics of the communication link were investigated

Design of a microwave radiometer for monitoring high voltage insulator contamination level

Microwave radiometry is a novel method for monitoring contamination levels on high voltage insulators. The microwave radiometer described measures energy emitted from the contamination layer and could provide a safe, reliable, contactless monitoring method that is effective under dry conditions. The design of the system has focused on optimizing accuracy, stability and sensitivity using a relatively low cost architecture. Experimental results demonstrate that the output from the radiometer is able to clearly distinguish between samples with different contamination levels under dry conditions. This contamination monitoring method could potentially provide advance warning of the future failure of wet insulators in climates where insulators can experience dry conditions for extended periods

16S rRNA gene-based profiling of the human infant gut microbiota is strongly influenced by sample processing and PCR primer choice

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the assistance of Grietje Holtrop (RINH-BioSS) with the statistical analysis of the data and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s 454 pyrosequencing team for generating 16S rRNA gene data. AWW, PS and JP received core funding support from the Wellcome Trust [grant number 098051]. AWW, JCM, HJF and KPS are funded by the Scottish Government (SG-RESAS).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Potential maps, Hardy spaces, and tent spaces on special Lipschitz domains

Suppose that Ω is the open region in ℝn above a Lipschitz graph and let d denote the exterior derivative on ℝn. We construct a convolution operator T which preserves support in Ω is smoothing of order 1 on the homogeneous function spaces, and is a potential map in the sense that dT is the identity on spaces of exact forms with support in Ω. Thus if f is exact and supported in Ω then there is a potential u, given by u = T f, of optimal regularity and supported in Ω, such that du = f. This has implications for the regularity in homogeneous function spaces of the de Rham complex on Ω with or without boundary conditions. The operator T is used to obtain an atomic characterisation of Hardy spaces Hp of exact forms with support in Ω when n/(n + 1) < p ≤ 1. This is done via an atomic decomposition of functions in the tent spaces Tp(ℝn _ ℝ+) with support in a tent T(Ω) as a sum of atoms with support away from the boundary of Ω . This new decomposition of tent spaces is useful, even for scalar valued functions

8- by 6-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel Compressor Inspected

The NASA Glenn Research Center's 8- by 6-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel (8 6 SWT) is NASA's only transonic propulsion wind tunnel. The test section speed range is between Mach 0.25 and 2.0. The 9- by 15-Foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel (9 15 LWST), which has a speed range from 0 to 175 mph, is housed in the return leg of the 8 6 SWT and uses the same compressor. The 8 6 SWT uses a large, seven-stage axial flow compressor to drive the air through the tunnel. The compressor is 17 ft in diameter and is rated at 1600 m3 (56,600 ft3) of air/sec. It is driven by three electric motors with a combined horsepower of 87,000. A close examination of this compressor was performed in 2001, the first time since February of 1966

Distilling a Collection: Creating a Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Special Collection at the James E. Walker Library

This essay recounts the steps we took to launch the new Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection in our Special Collections department. It began with the routine task of weeding our general collection but quickly led to other activities which included a broader collection analysis; consideration of campus, local and state resources; consultation with development and fundraising staff; and research in the anti-quarian trade. Knowing what we had and what we could acquire in the book market, surmising the po-tential for private and industry support, and understanding the multiple scholarly possibilities embed-ded in our collection, we embarked on building a resource that can attract students, faculty, outside re-searchers, and private supporters