The Impact of Demographic and Individual Heterogeneity on Unemployment Duration: A Regional Study

Since 1992, claimant unemployment has fallen by almost 1½ million and on the ILO definition by nearly 1 million. Despite this fall, changes to the headline rate of unemployment masks a far more complex pattern of the UK?s unemployment experience. For many individuals unemployment is a short-lived affair. For others, the risk of repeated or prolonged periods of unemployment is high. Repeated or prolonged unemployment spells may reflect occupational choice or poor employability brought about by poor skills and/or repeated labour market exclusion. They may also reflect a lack of employment opportunities concentrated in specific geographical areas. Both facets amount to a significant detachment from work. They also contribute to recent growth in the level of non-working households and low pay. The differential risk of unemployment across UK regions and population sub-groups is well recognised. However, the extent to which residential location and individual heterogeneity contribute to the duration of unemployment is more difficult to discern. This paper investigates the impact of individual heterogeneity and regional influences on unemployment duration utilising cross-section microeconomic data drawn from a representative random survey of individual job seekers for the English County of Kent. These individual-level data are unique in that they provide information concerning the personal characteristics of job seekers, alongside direct observations of both their reservation wages and job search behaviour. The availability of such data is rare. To our knowledge, there is no existing study utilising such data at the regional level. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by analysing the extent to which individual heterogeneity and intra-regional variation in labour market opportunities impact upon the observed distribution of unemployment duration(s). In particular, the paper analyses the extent to which the duration of unemployment is determined by individual choice. This is an important issue for the formation and evaluation of policy. If individual choice is found to significantly influence the duration of unemployment then the efficacy of current microeconomic supply?side initiatives such as ?The New Deal? and other welfare to work policies is supported. The existence of regional influences, by contrast, advocates a more active role for macroeconomic demand-led management. It also supports a more integrated strategy for the implementation of urban and regional policy such as the recent creation of Frameworks for Regional Employment and Skills Action (FRESAs). Utilising an econometric model tied closely to job search theory, our results reveal that individual characteristics and related ?choice? variables? such as educational attainment, labour market mobility and job search behaviour exercise important impacts on the duration of unemployment. However, after controlling for such factors, there remain significant geographical variations. These results are robust for both males and females. Thus, the results provide new insights into the benefits of current policies aimed at increasing the employability of the unemployed.

Cross-border activity in the Kent - Nord-Pas de Calais - Belgium Euroregion: some comparative evidence on the location and recruitment decisions of internationally mobile firms

Border regions and the implications for their development have become a subject of considerable interest in the ongoing process of European integration. The removal of national barriers and the development of greater economic and political transborder co-operation has led to a reconsideration of spatial identity and the definition of regional economies or markets. Much of the interest has focussed on the implications for labour mobility, especially within the context of the perceived need for greater mobility to provide the necessary adjustment process within the Eurozone. However, not only has international labour migration remained quite low within the EU, so has the level of cross-border commuting. There has, however, been considerable interest in the growth of cross-border capital flows. In this paper we explore the nature of this cross-border movement of firms in the context of the Kent - Nord-Pas de Calais - Belgium Euroregion. This transnational region is a large region of over 15 million people, close to a number of national borders. The original focus was the Transmanche region between Kent and Nord-Pas de Calais, established in relation to the construction of the Channel Tunnel in1987 in order to identify common problems, minimise the competition for the same resources between the regions and emphasise complementarity in their economic structures. The region was later extended to include the three Belgian regions in 1991 when it was renamed the Euroregion, and there have been suggestions that it should extend even more widely to include most or all of the Central Capitals Region of the EU. This paper brings together some findings from a survey of French firms which have located in Kent and a parallel survey of Belgian firms which have located in the Dunkerque employment area of Nord-Pas de Calais (Boutillier et al, 2001). In this analysis we seek to discover whether the same general set of principles govern cross-border movements, or whether there are individual circumstances in each region to which specific types of firm respond. Despite similarities, it is difficult to conclude that there is a consistent pattern of cross-border investment activity. As with all investment activity, cross-border investment seeks to exploit differentials which exist and opportunities which arise; these are different in different cases. Belgian activity in the Dunkerque region is responding to clear advantages which are offered through location in an area where incentives are strong and where there are specific skills which can be used to advantage. French investment in Kent seems to be responding to wider national opportunities available in the UK, but using a location which has certain advantages of proximity. It would seem unwise to rely on either of these factors as being likely to persist indefinitely. By definition firms which have been willing to move in will also find it relatively easy to move on to other locations, possibly to other regions within the host country. In this sense border regions continue to act as staging posts for mobile factors and thus have to recognise the need for continuing activity to attract new firms and retain existing ones.

Lenses for the Unresolved: Probing the Stellar Initial Mass Function of Nearby Massive Early-Type Galaxies

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key component of understanding galaxy formation and evolution, and to interpret observed properties (e.g. estimating stellar masses). In the different star-forming environments of the Milky Way (MW), the IMF is well constrained and approximately invariant. However, stellar populations within massive elliptical galaxies were likely formed by short, intense star formation events at early times, and recent observations suggest their cores deviate from a universal IMF. Studies using spectral analysis, stellar dynamics, and gravitational lensing report that for the most massive galaxies (velocity dispersion sigma > 300 km/s), the measured stellar mass-to-light ratios (M/L) are a factor of two larger than implied by a MW-like IMF. However, a subset of three low-z early-type galaxy (ETG) strong-gravitational lenses (SNL-0, SNL-1, and SNL-2) with sigma ~ 300 km/s appear to contradict these results. The M/L measured from lensing analyses are consistent with a MW-like IMF, i.e. Kroupa with = 1.06 +/- 0.08. The mass-excess parameter, alpha, is relative to the MW, defining 1 as a MW-like IMF, and 1.64 as a Salpeter IMF. These lenses are situated at low-z where, due to the geometry of the lens, the contribution from dark matter within the Einstein radius is lower than for a more distant lens. In this thesis, I investigate the IMF within low-z massive strong-lensing ETGs. The analysis comprises two main parts. First, a re-analysis of two low-z lenses, SNL-1 and SNL-2, using high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope data. For SNL-1, I break the mass-shear degeneracy and measure alpha relative to the MW as alpha = 1.17 +/- 0.09. For SNL-2, the mass of the similar brightness companion galaxy is constrained. The derived alpha is 0.96 +/- 0.10. Both are consistent with a MW-like IMF and inconsistent with Salpeter or ‘heavier’ IMFs. The second part of this thesis is a new lens search, using the ESO/VLT Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE). The search consists of a targeted survey with new observations specific to the search (MNELLS), and an archival search of data observed for other science. The search yielded one new galaxy-scale lens, J0403-0239, three cluster-scale lenses, and nine galaxy-scale systems in which a single background source is detected within 6 arcsec. J0403-0239 lies at z = 0.0665 and has two extremely bright and extended lensed images at z = 0.1965. Although the lens is at a slightly higher redshift than the other low-z lenses, the Einstein radius probes just one-quarter of the effective radius. The measured alpha is consistent with a MW-like IMF, alpha = 1.16 +/- 0.09, with a robustly determined old stellar population. Each galaxy-scale lens or singly imaged system is used to constrain the parameters for the ensemble population of the IMF within ETGs. The population has = 1.06 +/- 0.08 and an upper limit on the intrinsic scatter of nu = 0.24, at 90 per cent confidence. These constraints are consistent with Salpeter only at the 2.4 sigma level

Training and Establishment Survival

We investigate the relationship between training and the likelihood of commercial survival over a 7-year period, using a survey of British establishments. We find that in stablishments of 200 or more employees, increased training of those in Professional, Sales, and Clerical and Secretarial occupations is associated with a greater chance of survival. In smaller establishments of less than 200 employees, increased training for Operatives and Assembly workers, Personal and Protective Service workers, and Craft and Technical workers is associated with better chances of survival. We interpret these findings as suggesting that training for these groups generated above-normal returns and indicates under-investment in training by such firms. There is no evidence to suggest under-investment in management training.training, survival, economic performance

Measurement of the Nodal Precession of WASP-33 b via Doppler Tomography

We have analyzed new and archival time series spectra taken six years apart during transits of the hot Jupiter WASP-33 b, and spectroscopically resolved the line profile perturbation caused by the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. The motion of this line profile perturbation is determined by the path of the planet across the stellar disk, which we show to have changed between the two epochs due to nodal precession of the planetary orbit. We measured rates of change of the impact parameter and the sky-projected spin-orbit misalignment of $db/dt=-0.0228_{-0.0018}^{+0.0050}$ yr$^{-1}$ and $d\lambda/dt=-0.487_{-0.076}^{+0.089}$~$^{\circ}$ yr$^{-1}$, respectively, corresponding to a rate of nodal precession of $d\Omega/dt=0.373_{-0.083}^{+0.031}$~$^{\circ}$ yr$^{-1}$. This is only the second measurement of nodal precession for a confirmed exoplanet transiting a single star. Finally, we used the rate of precession to set limits on the stellar gravitational quadrupole moment of $9.4\times10^{-5}<J_2<6.1\times10^{-4}$.Comment: Published in ApJL. 5 pages, 3 figures. Corrected error in the calculation of J_

TriCheck: Memory Model Verification at the Trisection of Software, Hardware, and ISA

Memory consistency models (MCMs) which govern inter-module interactions in a shared memory system, are a significant, yet often under-appreciated, aspect of system design. MCMs are defined at the various layers of the hardware-software stack, requiring thoroughly verified specifications, compilers, and implementations at the interfaces between layers. Current verification techniques evaluate segments of the system stack in isolation, such as proving compiler mappings from a high-level language (HLL) to an ISA or proving validity of a microarchitectural implementation of an ISA. This paper makes a case for full-stack MCM verification and provides a toolflow, TriCheck, capable of verifying that the HLL, compiler, ISA, and implementation collectively uphold MCM requirements. The work showcases TriCheck's ability to evaluate a proposed ISA MCM in order to ensure that each layer and each mapping is correct and complete. Specifically, we apply TriCheck to the open source RISC-V ISA, seeking to verify accurate, efficient, and legal compilations from C11. We uncover under-specifications and potential inefficiencies in the current RISC-V ISA documentation and identify possible solutions for each. As an example, we find that a RISC-V-compliant microarchitecture allows 144 outcomes forbidden by C11 to be observed out of 1,701 litmus tests examined. Overall, this paper demonstrates the necessity of full-stack verification for detecting MCM-related bugs in the hardware-software stack.Comment: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating System

Gene expression regulation in pneumoviruses

Members of the Pneumoviridae virus family are responsible for severe respiratory tract disease in their hosts. Human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) is responsible for over 200,000 deaths worldwide each year and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (bRSV) causes major economic loss to the cattle industry worldwide. The current model for all nonsegmented negative-sense single stranded RNA virus gene expression, is that mRNA is generated in a polar gradient, with decreasing levels of mRNA transcribed from genes further along the genome from the 3´ end. With the exception of translation of ORF-2 located on the bicistronic M2 mRNA, translation of Pneumoviridae mRNAs is thought to be regulated through the levels of mRNA abundance. Translation of M2 ORF-2 has been characterised as being regulated by the non-canonical mechanism of coupled translation termination/initiation in pneumonia virus of mice (PVM), hRSV and avian metapneumovirus (APV). This mechanism is reliant on a proportion of the elongating ribosome translating the upstream M2 ORF-1, terminating and reinitiating translation of M2 ORF-2. Although the initiation site for M2 ORF-2 is similar in bRSV to other members of this family that use the mechanism of coupled translation, the mechanism has not been characterised. Using the technique of ribosomal profiling to analyse steady state viral mRNA abundance and viral translation in both hRSV and bRSV-infected cells, it was observed that for certain viral mRNAs, levels of mRNA abundance did not follow the standard polar transcription model. This was characterised by an increase in the levels of mRNA abundance between the mRNA’s respective gene and its upstream neighbour. The increase was observed in the same group of mRNAs in both viruses suggesting that factors other than the transcription polar gradient influence levels of viral mRNA abundance. It was also observed that levels of proportional translation did not match the respective proportional levels of mRNA abundance for certain viral mRNAs in both viruses. This would suggest that translation of viral genomes is not primarily controlled by mRNA abundance and instead other translational regulatory factors influence levels of translation. The mechanism of bRSV M2 ORF-2 translation was also characterised using reporter plasmids assays. It was identified that the mechanism of initiation of translation of M2 ORF2 used, was not that of coupled translation termination/initiation used by other members of this family. Instead it was observed that translation of M2 ORF-2 used an internal initiation mechanism located inside M2 ORF-1 to initiate translation. The mechanism of coupled translation termination/initiation used for translation of PVM M2 ORF-2 was also further characterised. It was observed that translation of M2 ORF-2 was reliant on upstream sequence in the M2 ORF-1 sequence. A predicted mRNA secondary structure was identified in this region and when disrupted, inhibited translation of M2 ORF2. This was similar to the mechanism of coupled translation used in hRSV, suggesting that the mechanism used by this family is reliant on a mRNA secondary structure located upstream of the initiation site