News Brief (September 27th – October 5th, 2012)

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.CLW_2012_Report_China_news_brief.pdf: 53 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Distributed Channel Quantization for Two-User Interference Networks

We introduce conferencing-based distributed channel quantizers for two-user interference networks where interference signals are treated as noise. Compared with the conventional distributed quantizers where each receiver quantizes its own channel independently, the proposed quantizers allow multiple rounds of feedback communication in the form of conferencing between receivers. We take the network outage probabilities of sum rate and minimum rate as performance measures and consider quantizer design in the transmission strategies of time sharing and interference transmission. First, we propose distributed quantizers that achieve the optimal network outage probability of sum rate for both time sharing and interference transmission strategies with an average feedback rate of only two bits per channel state. Then, for the time sharing strategy, we propose a distributed quantizer that achieves the optimal network outage probability of minimum rate with finite average feedback rate; conventional quantizers require infinite rate to achieve the same performance. For the interference transmission strategy, a distributed quantizer that can approach the optimal network outage probability of minimum rate closely is also proposed. Numerical simulations confirm that our distributed quantizers based on conferencing outperform the conventional ones.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure

(Phosphanyl)phosphaketenes as building blocks for novel phosphorus heterocycles.

Although BH3 simply coordinates the endocyclic P of (phospholidino)phosphaketene 1Dipp , the bulkier B(C6F5)3 gives rise to a zwitterionic diphosphirenium, which is a novel type of 2π-electron aromatic system as shown by the calculated NICS values. While the reaction of 1Dipp with Na[PCO(dioxane) x ] is unselective, the same reaction with the sterically bulky (phospholidino)phosphaketene 1Ar** [Ar** = 2,6-bis[di(4-tert-butylphenyl)methyl]-4-methylphenyl selectively affords a sodium bridged dimer containing a hitherto unknown λ3,λ5,λ3-triphosphete core. The latter formally results from "P-" addition to a 1,3-P/C-dipole. Similarly, adamantyl isonitrile adds to 1Dipp giving a 4-membered phosphacycle. In contrast to 1, the phosphaketene derived from the electrophilic diazaphospholidine-4,5-dione is unstable and reacts with a second molecule of Na[PCO(dioxane) x ] to afford a 1,3,4-oxadiphospholonide derivative

Product Variety, Innovation and Growth

This thesis aims to provide new insights on the different mechanisms that facilitate innovation and their relative importance in driving growth. Innovation is an important engine for economic growth and considerable effort has been devoted in understanding how technical change drives aggregate growth. Most literature in the field has focused on counting patents or survey based work of particular industries, for short samples. In this thesis, we open new avenues for research in firm innovation creating firm level measures that are available for long time series and across all industries (manufacturing and service). We propose three different measures that allow for the identification and classification of firm products, process and product innovations, and clean technologies at the firm level for public and private firms. Furthermore, we propose methods of aggregating these measures at the industry and economy level. We use the newly proposed measures in applications ranging from firm value in corporate finance to aggregate economic impact in macroeconomics. The new proposed measures allow for differentiation across innovation mechanisms that are paramount for setting innovation policy \citep{klenow2019, Hall2011, Atkeson2019}

Generalists versus Specialists: The Board’s Revealed Perception of CEO General Skill and CEO Pay

We create a new index of a CEO’s general skills across industries using compensation peer group that reveals the board of directors’ perception of these skills and thus overcome several empirical difficulties faced by existing measures using the CEO’s working experience and education. Consistent with the fact that generalist CEOs can work in multiple industries, we find their compensation is more likely to be driven by their employment options in outside industries, and thus their pay is less affected by industry-specific shocks and less volatile. They also get higher pay in places where their ability to work in multiple industries is in demand. However, in contrast to the current theoretical prediction and empirical finding that generalist CEOs earn a wage premium, we find no evidence that generalist CEOs earn higher pay than specialist CEOs on average. We further show the empirical finding of the pay premium of generalist CEOs based on lifetime working experience is unlikely to be driven by the general skills since it is not explained by the CEO’s employment options across industries. Rather, it could be due to the noises captured in the measure such as CEO’s stronger managerial power. We find generalist CEOs based on lifetime working experience are often the chairman of the board, and they often manipulate their compensation peer group to bias their pay up. We further confirm their higher pays are not due to their ability or talent since they perform worse than specialist CEOs. Overall, we find no support for the theory that generalist CEOs earn a pay premium, and thus it is unlikely to have significant power in explaining the trend in executiv

Spring 2022 Superhydrophobic Materials

Many natural surfaces, such as lotus leaves and a water strider’s leg, have shown striking water repellency so that they remain clean and dry even in “dirty” habitats. Such water repellency is called superhydrophobicity, which has stimulated lots of science and engineering imagination for self-cleaning windows, never dirty clothes, drag-reduction swimming suits, etc. In this workshop, we will use superhydrophobicity as a model to guide an integrative teaching and learning experience through hands-on experiments, critical thinking, basic science, as well as a lecture on state-of-the-art research discoveries. The objectives of this workshop are to (1) stimulate student curiosity and imagination through simple hands-on experiments to reproduce a superhydrophobic surface with simple resources like candles or sandpapers with dishes or glass slides, (2) link diverse daily life phenomena to superhydrophobic science and demonstrate how high-school physics plus critical thinking can be used together to advance fundamental science even today, (3) establish lesson plans for STEM education with a wide range of activities that can be adopted by different education levels (K-12), in different classes, and on different subjects. This superhydrophobic surface model can be easily extended to various bioinspired designs to further the interdisciplinary education on biology, chemistry, mechanics, etc. In general, this workshop will foster a life-learning habit that encourages students to keep their eyes open on daily observations and correlate them to the fundamental concepts they learn in the classroom