Individual vs. Collective Bargaining in the Large Firm Search Model

We analyze the welfare and employment effects of different wage bargaining regimes. Within the large firm search model, we show that collective bargaining affects employment via two channels. Collective bargaining exerts opposing effects on job creation and wage setting. Firms have a stronger incentive for strategic employment, while workers benefit from the threat of a strike. We find that the employment increase due to the strategic motive is dominated by the employment decrease due to the increase in workers' threat point. In aggregate equilibrium, employment is ineciently low under collective bargaining. But it is not always true that equilibrium wages exceed those under individual bargaining. If unemployment benefits are sufficiently low, collectively bargained wages are smaller. The theory sheds new light on policies concerned with strategic employment and the relation between replacement rates and the extent of collective wage bargaining

Smoking Bans in the Presence of Social Interaction

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of a public smoking ban in bars. We construct a model that captures crucial features of bar life: competing bars, social interaction, and heterogenous preferences for a smoking ban. Smokers and non-smokers simultaneously choose a bar given their preferences for meeting other people. Bars anticipate the behavior of individuals and choose the smoking regime strategically. Since the (dis)utility from smoking and social interaction are substitutes, the smoking regime is a stronger coordination device if the disutility from smoking is large. If all bars allow smoking in equilibrium, a public smoking ban enhances welfare

The Strategic Effects of Smoking Bans

We analyse the welfare effects of a publicly imposed smoking ban in privately owned places like bars. In an economy where households have heterogenous (positive and negative) attitudes towards smoking bans, bars can use the smoking regime choice as a strategic variable. In doing so, bars may endogenously implement a product differentiation. Focusing on the possibility to separate markets, we derive the Nash equilibrium of the decentral economy in a setting in which duopoly bars compete in capacity and choose the smoking regime. We show how the smoking regime choice is a function of the heterogeneity of households. Moreover, we show that the social planer implements the smoking regime obtained in the decentral economy. As such, imposing smoking bans is welfare decreasing in an economy in which bar landlords chose to allow smoking.Smoking Ban, Endogenous Product Differentiation

The magnetic and electric transverse spin density of spatially confined light

When a beam of light is laterally confined, its field distribution can exhibit points where the local magnetic and electric field vectors spin in a plane containing the propagation direction of the electromagnetic wave. The phenomenon indicates the presence of a non-zero transverse spin density. Here, we experimentally investigate this transverse spin density of both magnetic and electric fields, occurring in highly-confined structured fields of light. Our scheme relies on the utilization of a high-refractive-index nano-particle as local field probe, exhibiting magnetic and electric dipole resonances in the visible spectral range. Because of the directional emission of dipole moments which spin around an axis parallel to a nearby dielectric interface, such a probe particle is capable of locally sensing the magnetic and electric transverse spin density of a tightly focused beam impinging under normal incidence with respect to said interface. We exploit the achieved experimental results to emphasize the difference between magnetic and electric transverse spin densities.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Brother Sun, Sister Moon: The Lunar Cycle, Sunspots and the Frequency of Births

Based on multivariate linear regression models, we analyze the effect of the lunar cycle and the number of sunspots occurring on a particular day on the number of births using social security data and controlling for a number of other potential confounders. The daily number of births between 1920 and 1989 have been calculated from the full sample of individuals who have been registered at least once in the German social security system. While the lunar cycle does not affect the number of births, the number of sunspots has a positive, albeit small eff ect on the number of births which is decreasing over time. The empirical results may be explained by medical technological progress making natural influences on births less important over time. This interpretation is supported by the results on the intertemporal influence of weekends and holidays on the frequency of daily births.Daily frequency of births; lunar cycle; sunspots

Aerothermal Analysis of Film Cooling Flows

Flow field and thermal film cooling parameters are analysed and compared for different blowing ratios for a 10°-10°-10° laidback fan-shaped film cooling hole geometry with an inclination angle of 35° and a wide spacing of P/D = 8 to ensure the absence of jet interaction. The influence of the coolant ejection on the aerodynamics of the hot gas is investigated and stationary as well as non-stationary vortex structures are identified. The present study uses an existing test rig at the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery (ITS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) designed for generic film cooling studies with high spatial resolution applying stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) as well as infrared thermography (IRT). Operating conditions of hot gas and cooling air inlet and exit are uniquely compliant with scaled engine-realistic conditions, including temperature ratio, turbulence intensity and coolant flow configuration

Multiple Scattering Theory for the Photoproduction of Vector Mesons off Nuclei

The integrated cross section for the incoherent photoproduction of vector mesons on nuclei $\gamma^* A \to VX$, $X\not=A$, is calculated within Glauber theory and as a function of the photon energy. The inverse of the longitudinal momentum transfer is called coherence length $l_c$ and depends on the virtuality and the energy of the photon. Nuclear transmission factors strongly depend on $l_c/R_A$ ($R_A$ is the nuclear radius) and this effect may interfere with the search for color transparency effects.Comment: 9 pages, 1 Postscript figur

Personality Characteristics Determine Health-Related Quality of Life as an Outcome Indicator of Geriatric Inpatient Rehabilitation

Background. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between personality and quality of life during the course of geriatric rehabilitation, against the background of Cloninger's biosocial theory of personality. Methods. All consecutive patients of a geriatric rehabilitation clinic during one year were evaluated at admission and discharge (N = 687) by means of the ‘‘Vienna List’’ (a newly developed questionnaire for the assessment of quality of life in patients with severe dementia), and two variants of the Temperament and Character Inventory. Results. Self-directedness showed the most general and highest impact on quality of life and successful rehabilitation. Conclusions. It is probable in old and very old individuals who are on their highest level of maturity that the character represents the most important regulatory system in the encounter with challenges of daily life, which necessitates rehabilitation