Models of Firm Behavior Under Minimum Wage Legislation

This paper sets out three simple models of firm behavior under minimum wage legislation. The key feature of these models is that they account for important aspects of the government's mechanism for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the minimum wage law. The major results of the paper are (1) that minimum wage legislation does not generally lead to upward movements along labor demand curves but rather, that it often leads to movements off, and to the left, of the labor demand curve; (2) that minimum wage legislation is likely to have a positive effect on the distribution of wages paid to workers who would earn less than the minimum in the absence of the legislation, but is not likely to bring all of those workers up to the minimum; and (3) that imposing additional penalties on second offenders promotes compliance by firms with no previous violations. The paper considers the implications of these results for empirical work on the adverse employment effects of minimum wage legislation andfor the design of government compliance mechanisms.

Language, Employment and Earnings in the United States: Spanish-English Differentials from 1970 to 1990

This paper analyzes employment and earnings differentials between Spanish speakers and English speakers in the United States, using data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. censuses. The results show that Spanish speakers, both men and women, do not perform as well in the labor market as English speakers. The results also reveal that Spanish-English earnings and unemployment differentials increased slightly in the 1970s, most likely because of rapid growth in the number of Spanish speakers. By contrast, these differentials increased sharply in the 1980s, also a period of rapidly increasing supply. However, there is no evidence that the widening of differentials in the 1980s reflects an increase in the labor market rewards to English language proficiency. Rather, they appear to be the result of Spanish speakers having relatively little of those labor market characteristics, most notably education, whose market value increased dramatically during the 1980s.

The Changing Labor Market Position of Canadian Immigrants

This paper uses pooled 1971, 1981, and 1986 Canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which (1) the earnings of Canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable Canadian-born individuals, and (2) immigrants' earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the Canadian-born. Variations in the labor market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analyzed. The results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the Canadian labor market than earlier ones, an apparent consequence of recent changes in Canadian immigration policy, labor market discrimination against visible minorities, and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s.

Sectionalism and the Representation Debate, 1787-1792

From 1787 until 1792 the issue of the apportionment of representatives in the House of Representatives was the focus of spirited debate in American politics. The central issue at stake was the size and influence of each of the sections in future Congresses. The representation issue was first debated during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. After a temporary settlement of the representation guestion in the Convention, the First Congress re-opened the apportionment debate. The result was a constitutional amendment that would have significantly increased the size of the House of Representatives. After that amendment failed to pass the states, the Second Congress finally passed in 1792 an apportionment bill that increased the House in size in time for the convening of the Third Congress in March 1793. No historian that I know of has addressed the representation debate after the Constitutional Convention. Therefore, the details of the debate over the apportionment amendment remained unexamined. Additionally, the contest in the Second House to increase the size of the House has been virtually ignored. This paper therefore addresses the representation debate from 1787 to 1792. Starting with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, I have traced the representation question through the First Congress and the failed apportionment amendment to the debate\u27s conclusion in the Second Congress. Both primary and secondary sources were used in the research of this paper. Additionally, legislative roll call analysis was used to determine the degree of sectionalism surrounding the representation debate in the Second Congress. The conclusion of my research is that North-South sectionalism played a significant role in the apportionment debate. The question of slavery\u27s place in the apportionment of representatives was central to the debate in the Constitutional Convention. Although the slavery question was settled by the three-fifths compromise, the North and the South, after the Convention, divided along sectional lines on the question of how large of an increase in the size of the House of Representatives was necessary. By the Second Congress the South had split with the North on that issue. But within the North, two distinct voting blocs emerged. The New England and the Mid-Atlantic states fractured over the details of limiting the increase in the number of representatives in the House. Thus, by 1792, a distinct North-South sectionalism over the size and make-up of the House of Representatives was present in American politics

Liminal Surfaces

The poet Ben Okri wrote: “Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.” (Stibbe) In the early 21st Century we are facing numerous environmental problems that are being caused by human activity. This era is termed the Anthropocene , a time when accumulated pollutants are causing detrimental ecological change. Ocean creatures are threatened by increasing seawater temperature, acidifying pH levels and melting ice. On land we are experiencing droughts, alteration of biomes, extinctions and an atmosphere that contains less oxygen per breath than it used to. I wondered how humanity had allowed this to happen. What tales have we told ourselves that led to this situation, and how might we devise new tales that might lead to a less polluted future? I see our environment as a structure of surfaces. Material surfaces on which we live, existential surfaces that enfold our thoughts, and liminal surfaces that transition awareness of these through experiential learning. I researched non-toxic printmaking techniques to attach images to surfaces, both physical and cognitive, as a way to bring about recognition that we are part of the natural world, and need to reconnect to it. if we are to begin to solve human-caused environmental damage. The textured surfaces and prints I created in my thesis work are intended to be visually compelling, yet unsettling. An audience for my work would need to articulate new language if they are to assimilate the educable moments it offers. The research presented here uses the concept of surface to unify information about language, cognition, biology and art history as they give context to my artwork about the Anthropocene. I present research that indicates humanity\u27s present difficulty is not a sudden occurrence. Rather, it is the continuance of centuries of behavior built on faulty assumptions derived from metaphorical language and imagery that gave rise to generational practices of acquisitiveness and economic expansion at the expense of the environment. I present a real-world consequence of our actions: the invention of plastic, useful in many ways, but like the sorcerer\u27s apprentice with too many water buckets, is now a profound danger to aquatic ecosystems

Rotational velocities of A-type stars II. Measurement of vsini in the northern hemisphere

This work is the second part of the set of measurements of vsini for A-type stars, begun by Royer et al. (2002). Spectra of 249 B8 to F2-type stars brighter than V=7 have been collected at Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP). Fourier transforms of several line profiles in the range 4200--4600 A are used to derive vsini from the frequency of the first zero. Statistical analysis of the sample indicates that measurement error mainly depends on vsini and this relative error of the rotational velocity is found to be about 5% on average. The systematic shift with respect to standard values from Slettebak et al. (1975), previously found in the first paper, is here confirmed. Comparisons with data from the literature agree with our findings: vsini values from Slettebak et al. are underestimated and the relation between both scales follows a linear law: vsini(new) = 1.03 vsini(old) + 7.7. Finally, these data are combined with those from the previous paper (Royer et al. 2002), together with the catalogue of Abt & Morrell (1995). The resulting sample includes some 2150 stars with homogenized rotational velocities.Comment: 16 pages, includes 13 figures, accepted in A&

Cooperative ordering of gapped and gapless spin networks in Cu2_2Fe2_2Ge4_4O13_{13}

The unusual magnetic properties of a novel low-dimensional quantum ferrimagnet Cu$_2$Fe$_2$Ge$_4$O$_{13}$ are studied using bulk methods, neutron diffraction and inelastic neutron scattering. It is shown that this material can be described in terms of two low-dimensional quantum spin subsystems, one gapped and the other gapless, characterized by two distinct energy scales. Long-range magnetic ordering observed at low temperatures is a cooperative phenomenon caused by weak coupling of these two spin networks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure