Paid Sick Leave: Should Investing in the Workforce be Mandatory?

Paid sick leave is a benefit supplied to employees: it means that they are allotted a certain amount of days every year when they can call in sick and the employer still pays them for a full day of work. Roughly 86% of U.S. workers currently receive at least some paid sick leave as a benefit from their employers. While workers at larger businesses have more paid leave than workers at smaller firms, in every sector of the economy the vast majority of workers get paid sick leave. Most policies only cover illnesses of the employee herself. Employees who have families who are sick cannot use their paid time off. Many people are forced to choose between their family’s health and a paycheck. While the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires employers with more than fifty employees to provide up to twelve weeks of time off when a worker, or an immediate family member, has a serious illness or recently gave birth to a child, this time is unpaid. Most employees cannot afford to forgo their paychecks for this length of time

The Renormalization-Group Method Applied to Asymptotic Analysis of Vector Fields

The renormalization group method of Goldenfeld, Oono and their collaborators is applied to asymptotic analysis of vector fields. The method is formulated on the basis of the theory of envelopes, as was done for scalar fields. This formulation actually completes the discussion of the previous work for scalar equations. It is shown in a generic way that the method applied to equations with a bifurcation leads to the Landau-Stuart and the (time-dependent) Ginzburg-Landau equations. It is confirmed that this method is actually a powerful theory for the reduction of the dynamics as the reductive perturbation method is. Some examples for ordinary diferential equations, such as the forced Duffing, the Lotka-Volterra and the Lorenz equations, are worked out in this method: The time evolution of the solution of the Lotka-Volterra equation is explicitly given, while the center manifolds of the Lorenz equation are constructed in a simple way in the RG method.Comment: The revised version of RYUTHP 96/1. Submitted to Prog. Theor. Phys. (Kyoto) in Feb., 1996. 28 pages. LATEX. No figure

Communities of Practice in the Public-Private-Partnership Sector for Neglected Diseases Drug Development: the Importance of Mindset Mapping

This research article explores the mindsets of Public-Private Partnerships and Clinical Trials Organizations (CTOs) and the potential conflicts when working on drug discovery and development in the Third World global infectious diseases sector. A Communities-of-Practice (CoP) approach has been adopted to more fully explore the underlying values, attitudes and practices of these two future partners. This exploratory study suggests that future collaboration will be dependent on the two communities understanding and interpretation of each others‟ sustainability drug development drivers. The authors present secondary research findings that suggest the positive contribution that cognitive mapping of a community‟s sense-making can have in understanding the community‟s likely engagement in any future joint enterprise. Proposed future research will explore the underlying sustainability drivers that may both push and pull CTOs to engage in future global infectious diseases discovery and development projects. The article concludes by discussing the implications for future sustainable drug development projects involving PPPs and potential new strategic partners

Federal Home Loan Bank mortgage purchases: Implications for mortgage markets

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a government-sponsored enterprise created by Congress to support residential housing finance. Historically, the twelve regional wholesale banks that constitute the FHLB System have pursued this goal by making loans to their depository institution members secured by residential mortgage loans. In 1997, however, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago began purchasing pools of conforming mortgages under its Mortgage Partnership Finance Program. Today, nine FHLBs offer this program, and the remaining three offer their own Mortgage Purchase Programs. ; The FHLB mortgage programs represent a small but growing part of the secondary conforming mortgage market, which has traditionally been dominated by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). This article examines the various FHLB mortgage programs offered, analyzes the evolving competitive environment in the secondary conforming mortgage market, and identifies implications for this market. ; Consumers could ultimately benefit from lower mortgage costs because of a lower cost of guaranteeing mortgage credit, the author contends, but the savings per borrower would likely be small. He also notes that increased competition may reduce the franchise value of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in turn possibly increasing risk-taking incentives for these firms. The author concludes that the evolution of this competitive landscape bears close attention as it could have important implications for mortgage markets.Federal home loan banks ; Mortgage loans

The 2008 federal intervention to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that play a central role in U.S. residential mortgage markets. In recent years, policymakers became increasingly concerned about the size and risk-taking incentives of these two institutions. In September 2008, the federal government intervened to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an effort to ensure the reliability of residential mortgage finance in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. This paper describes the sources of financial distress at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, outlines the measures taken by the federal government, and presents some evidence about the effectiveness of these actions. Looking ahead, policymakers will need to consider the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the appropriate scope of public sector activities in primary and secondary mortgage markets.Government-sponsored enterprises ; Mortgage loans

Estimating the effect of mortgage foreclosures on nearby property values: a critical review of the literature

In response to the wave of residential mortgage foreclosures in the past few years, federal, state and local government intervention programs have aimed to reduce the presumed social costs of foreclosures. Before the recent crisis, there was little economic research documenting foreclosure spillover effects. ; This article takes a critical look at the recent literature that seeks to estimate the negative effects of residential mortgage foreclosures. This review suggests that foreclosed properties sell at a discount, likely because such properties are in worse condition than surrounding properties. What's more, very nearby foreclosures appear to depress the sales prices of nondistressed properties, but this effect diminishes rapidly over physical distance and time ; The author suggests that the considerable variation in foreclosure discount and spillover estimates that occurs from study to study may be related to data limitations (specific places and times) and poorly specified empirical models in some studies. He notes that studies using a repeat-sales approach seem to hold greater promise than those using hedonic regressions; the former approach is more likely to hold property and neighborhood characteristics constant and make it easier to examine multiple geographies and longer time periods.

Regional Migration and House Price Appreciation

Despite both empirical and anecdotal evidence suggesting the importance of common systematic factors determining price appreciation in residential real estate markets, the existing literature focuses almost exclusively on the impact of local variables. This paper presents a theoretical model of an urban housing market allowing for explicit consideration of the role of interregional migration in response to changes in economic opportunities within a system of cities. The model identifies the importance of aggregate income and aggregate population growth in house price appreciation and suggests that housing demand and population growth within regions are jointly determined. Empirical tests of these predictions provide strong support for the model. In particular, changes in per-capita aggregate income are negatively related to both returns to housing and local population growth and omitting this systematic component from empirical specifications leads to an underestimation of the impact of local income. Furthermore, there is significant evidence of endogeneity problems in empirical specifications of the model that are similar to those found in the existing literature.Housing; interregional migration; metropolitan growth

Haversian canal structures can be associated with size effects in cortical bone

Prediction of periprosthetic failure may be improved by an improved model of bone elasticity which includes microstructural information. Micropolar theory facilitates such information to be included in a continuum model. We assessed the extent of bone’s micropolar behaviour in bending both numerically and experimentally. The numerical model was consistent with micropolar behaviour, and experimental results exhibited size effects that may have been confounded by surface roughness effects, as predicted numerically