ZnO-based spinels grown by electrodeposition

We report on the synthesis of thin films of ZnCo 2O 4 and ZnMn 2O 4 spinels, as well as pure Co 3O 4 and Mn 3O 4 spinels, by means of electrodeposition. Spinel thin films have been analyzed by energy dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. We show that under determined deposition conditions the initial wurtzite structure of Co- and Mn-doped ZnO develops into spinel structures when the Co and Mn concentration in the films is above the solubility limit of these ions in the typical ZnO-wurtzite structure. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work was supported by Spanish Government through MICINN grants MAT2009-14625-C03-03, MAT2010-21270-C04-04 and MALTA CSD2007-0045. Financial support by the European Commission through NanoCIS project (PIRSES-GA-2010-269279) is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, we also want to acknowledge the support of Vicerrectorado de Investigacion y Desarrollo de la Universitat Politecnica de Valencia through projects UPV2011-0914 PAID-05-11 and UPV2011-0966 PAID-06-11.Tortosa Jorques, MD.; Manjón Herrera, FJ.; Mollar García, MA.; Marí Soucase, B. (2012). ZnO-based spinels grown by electrodeposition. Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids. 73(9):1111-1115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpcs.2012.04.002S1111111573

EXPLAINING REGIONAL VARIATION IN GENDER WAGE GAPS IN POLAND

In this paper, the author provides a description and an explanation of regional variation in gender wage gaps in Poland, and shows that the gap is especially large in the Silesian Voivodeship (ca 25.44%). He presents several explanations for this phenomenon. First, gender wage discrimination is likely to be especially strong in Silesia. Second, in this region, men typically work in bigger firms than women. Third, the distribution of women between different occupations and industries in Silesia is especially disadvantageous for their relative wages. Fourth, the structure of occupational wage differentials in Silesia is also unfavourable for women, i.e. predominantly female occupations pay relatively less in Silesia than in other regions

The Oaxaca-Blinder unexplained component as a treatment effects estimator

In this paper I use the National Supported Work (NSW) data to examine the validity of the Oaxaca–Blinder unexplained component as an estimator of the population average treatment effect on the treated (PATT). Precisely, I utilize dataset and variable selections used in previous studies of the NSW data to compare the performance of the Oaxaca–Blinder unexplained component with methods based on the propensity score (Dehejia and Wahba, 1999) and bias-corrected matching estimators (Abadie and Imbens, 2011). I show that in both cases the Oaxaca–Blinder unexplained component performs superior compared to the previously analyzed estimators provided that common support is imposed.decomposition methods, Manpower training, Treatment effects

Abadie's Kappa and Weighting Estimators of the Local Average Treatment Effect

In this paper we study the finite sample and asymptotic properties of various weighting estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE), several of which are based on Abadie's (2003) kappa theorem. Our framework presumes a binary treatment and a binary instrument, which may only be valid after conditioning on additional covariates. We argue that one of the Abadie estimators, which is weight normalized, is preferable in many contexts. Several other estimators, which are unnormalized, do not generally satisfy the properties of scale invariance with respect to the natural logarithm and translation invariance, thereby exhibiting sensitivity to the units of measurement when estimating the LATE in logs and the centering of the outcome variable more generally. On the other hand, when noncompliance is one-sided, certain unnormalized estimators have the advantage of being based on a denominator that is bounded away from zero. To reconcile these findings, we demonstrate that when the instrument propensity score is estimated using an appropriate covariate balancing approach, the resulting normalized estimator also shares this advantage. We use a simulation study and three empirical applications to illustrate our findings. In two cases, the unnormalized estimates are clearly unreasonable, with ``incorrect'' signs, magnitudes, or both