Wage-Tenure Contracts, Experience and Employment Status

The objective of this paper is to study equilibrium in a labour market with search frictions a la Burdett and Mortensen (1998). Identical firms post wage-contracts and ex-ante identical workers search for a job while unemployed and for a better one while employed. Although this situation has been analysed before, Stevens (2004) and Burdett and Coles (2003), the main novelty of this paper is to allow firms to offer contracts according to the worker's initial experience and employment status. We construct an equilibrium in which firms compete in "promotion" contracts and offer unemployed workers longer "probation" periods than to employed workers. An interesting feature of this equilibrium is that outside offers become more generous with experience. This generates workers cohort effects within a firm that depend on the level of experience at which they where hired. The distribution of earnings within the firm is then such that workers who have acquired more "outside" firm experience and more tenure are higher in the earnings scale.

Explaining Currency Crises: A Duration Model Approach

This paper is an empirical investigation into the duration of exchange rate episodes characterized by the absence of speculative attacks. We estimate a duration model for OECD countries during the 1970-1997 period. Specifically, we use semi-parametric methods to estimate model with unrestricted base-line hazards. The use of duration models allows us to account for duration dependence among the determinants of the likelihood of speculative attacks. We can test if the length of the time already spent on the peg is a determinant of the probability of exit into a currency crisis state. The results indicate, first, that increases in export growth, bank deposits growth and openness predict a decrease in the probability of exit into a currency crises state. Whereas, increases in import growth; claims on government and capital inflows in terms of portfolio investment and appreciated REER, contribute positively to the likelihood of an occurrence of a crisis. And second, the existence of a highly significant negative duration dependence. The highest probability of exit into a currency crash state is given at the initial of the peg, decreasing afterwards. This suggests the existence of a political cost of realignment that changes over the duration of the spell;growing credibility surrounding an exchange-rate-based stabilization program reduce the probability that the peg will be abandoned.Currency crises, speculative attacks, exchange rates, hazard functions, duration models

Recruitment Policy When Firms Observe Workers' Employment Status: an Equilibrium Search Approach

This paper considers an equilibrium search model, where firms use information on a worker's labour market status when recruiting new hires, and all workers search for a job. We show that firms segment their workforce in two. Unemployed workers are offered a lower wage than the workers they recruit from employment in a competing firm even when these workers have the same productivity. The unique equilibrium is given by the Diamond outcome in the market for unemployed workers and the Burdett and Mortensen (B-M) outcome in the market for employed workers. We show that the offer and earnings distributions derived in the model are first order stochastically dominated by the ones given in B-M and all workers are worse off. We also show that in this environment information on employment status is sufficient for firms to obtain the same profits as if they had complete information about workers' reservation wages and outside offers.

Anisotropic quantum emitter interactions in two-dimensional photonic-crystal baths

Quantum emitters interacting with two-dimensional photonic-crystal baths experience strong and anisotropic collective dissipation when they are spectrally tuned to 2D Van-Hove singularities. In this work, we show how to turn this dissipation into coherent dipole-dipole interactions with tuneable range by breaking the lattice degeneracy at the Van-Hove point with a superlattice geometry. Using a coupled-mode description, we show that the origin of these interactions stems from the emergence of a qubit-photon bound state which inherits the anisotropic properties of the original dissipation, and whose spatial decay can be tuned via the superlattice parameters or the detuning of the optical transition respect to the band-edges. Within that picture, we also calculate the emitter induced dynamics in an exact manner, bounding the parameter regimes where the dynamics lies within a Markovian description. As an application, we develop a four-qubit entanglement protocol exploiting the shape of the interactions. Finally, we provide a proof-of-principle example of a photonic crystal where such interactions can be obtained.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Wage-Experience Contracts and Employment Status

The objective of this paper is to study equilibrium in a labour market in which identical firms post wage-contracts and ex-ante identical workers search on the job. The main novelty of this paper is to generate dispersion in contract offers by allowing firms to condition their offers on workers' initial experience and employment status although these characteristics do not affect productivity. In this context I show that changes in firms' information set at the moment of recruiting can have strong effects on wage dispersion and turnover without changing the agents' payoffs. I construct an equilibrium in which firms compete in promotion contracts. Employed and more experience workers are offered better contracts with shorter time-to-promotion periods. This implies contract offers are disperse within and between experience levels. The earnings distribution within the firm is then such that workers who have acquired more "outside" firm experience and more tenure are higher in the earnings scale. This generates workers cohort effects within a firm that depend on the level of experience at which they where hired.

The dynamics of durable goods markets: rational expectations and sticky prices

This paper studies price dynamics in a durable good market under the assumption that consumers have rational expectations on future prices. For a wide variety of expectations, optimal consumption plans result in sticky-price demand functions. Market dynamics are characterized by intertemporal price discrimination which provides a possible explanation for the declining path of price observed in many "young" industries. Unexpected shocks on demand result in price overshooting, while unexpected supplyshocks have the opposite effect on price

A Merton Model Approach to Assessing the Default Risk of UK Public Companies

This paper shows how a Merton-model approach can be used to develop measures of the probability of failure of quoted UK companies. Probability estimates are constructed for a group of failed companies and their properties as leading indicators of failure assessed. Probability estimates of failure for a control group of surviving companies are also constructed. These are used in Probit-regressions to evaluate the information content of the Merton-based estimates relative to information available in company accounts. The paper shows that there is much useful information in the Merton-style estimates.Merton models, corporate failure, implied default probabilities

On the spectroscopy of quantum dots in microcavities

At the occasion of the OECS conference in Madrid, we give a succinct account of some recent predictions in the spectroscopy of a quantum dot in a microcavity that remain to be observed experimentally, sometimes within the reach of the current state of the art.Comment: OECS11 Conference proceedings, in editor style. 4 pages, 1 figure. Animations provided separatel

Purely Long-Range Coherent Interactions in Two-Dimensional Structured Baths

In this work we study the quantum dynamics emerging when quantum emitters exchange excitations with a two-dimensional bosonic bath with hexagonal symmetry. We show that a single quantum emitter spectrally tuned to the middle of the band relaxes following a logarithmic law in time due to the existence of a singular point with vanishing density of states, i.e., the Dirac point. Moreover, when several emitters are coupled to the bath at that frequency, long-range coherent interactions between them appear which decay inversely proportional to their distance without exponential attenuation. We analyze both the finite and infinite system situation using both perturbative and non-perturbative methods.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Text restructured. Extended discussion on experimental consideration