160 research outputs found
How Frequently do Private Businesses Pay Workers?
[Excerpt] This Beyond the Numbers article analyzes pay frequencies, or lengths of pay periods, that private businesses use in the United States, as collected by the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey. Data of this nature are not published in any standard Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the Bureau) source, but are available upon request. The article also explains why the CES program collects such data
The Price of everything The Value of Nothing: A (Truly) External Review Of BERLâs Study Of Harmful Alcohol and Drug Use
In March 2009, Business and Economic Research Limited ("BERL") published âCosts of Harmful Alcohol and Other Drug Use,â a report jointly commissioned by the Ministry of Health and ACC. BERL was asked to measure the costs of drug and alcohol abuse to New Zealand society, but not to evaluate specific interventions. BERL calculated annual social costs of alcohol and illicit drug consumption of 4.8 billion in social costs from alcohol alone. The report was cited by Law Commission President Sir Geoffrey Palmer as evidence in support of greater regulation, gaining considerable media coverage. We find substantial flaws in BERLâs method that together account for well over 90% of BERLâs calculated costs of alcohol use. Corrected external costs of alcohol use amount to 516 million collected in alcohol excise taxes. The BERL report is wholly inadequate for use in assisting policy development.costs and benefits of alcohol usage; alcohol policy; New Zealand; adequacy of consultancy reports
Point-Particle Effective Field Theory I: Classical Renormalization and the Inverse-Square Potential
Singular potentials (the inverse-square potential, for example) arise in many
situations and their quantum treatment leads to well-known ambiguities in
choosing boundary conditions for the wave-function at the position of the
potential's singularity. These ambiguities are usually resolved by developing a
self-adjoint extension of the original problem; a non-unique procedure that
leaves undetermined which extension should apply in specific physical systems.
We take the guesswork out of this picture by using techniques of effective
field theory to derive the required boundary conditions at the origin in terms
of the effective point-particle action describing the physics of the source. In
this picture ambiguities in boundary conditions boil down to the allowed
choices for the source action, but casting them in terms of an action provides
a physical criterion for their determination. The resulting extension is
self-adjoint if the source action is real (and involves no new degrees of
freedom), and not otherwise (as can also happen for reasonable systems). We
show how this effective-field picture provides a simple framework for
understanding well-known renormalization effects that arise in these systems,
including how renormalization-group techniques can resum non-perturbative
interactions that often arise, particularly for non-relativistic applications.
In particular we argue why the low-energy effective theory tends to produce a
universal RG flow of this type and describe how this can lead to the phenomenon
of reaction {\em catalysis}, in which physical quantities (like scattering
cross sections) can sometimes be surprisingly large compared to the underlying
scales of the source in question. We comment in passing on the possible
relevance of these observations to the phenomenon of the catalysis of
baryon-number violation by scattering from magnetic monopoles.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages plus appendi
Employment, Family Union, and Childbearing Decisions in Great Britain
The paper investigates the relationship between work and family life in Britain. Using appropriate statistical techniques we estimate a five-equation model, which includes birth events, union formation, union dissolution, employment and non-employment events. The model allows for unobserved heterogeneity that is correlated across all five equations. We use information from the British Household Panel Survey, including the retrospective histories concerning work, union, and child bearing, to estimate this model. We obtain well-defined parameter estimates, including significant and correlated unobserved heterogeneity. We find that transitions in and out of employment for men are relatively independent of other transitions. In contrast, there are strong links between female employment, having children and union formation. By undertaking a detailed micro simulations analysis, we show that different levels of female labour force participation do not necessarily lead to large changes in fertility levels. Changes in union formation and fertility levels, on the other hand, do have a significant impact on employment rates.demographic transitions, marriage, divorce, birth, employment
Parallel Importation and Service Quality: An Empirical Investigation of Competition between DVDs and Cinemas in New Zealand
Investigations into the causes and effects of parallel importing have concentrated on price discrimination but arbitrage can also occur on non-price dimensions. Using a natural experiment in the New Zealand film distribution industry between May 1998 and November 2001 we examine the effect of parallel importing on quality as it relates to the timing of the availability of film media. We demonstrate that a) cinema revenues were undermined as consumers substituted viewing films on parallel imported DVDs for thecinema format and b) that studios responded to the threat of parallel imported DVDs by bringing forward the release of films into New Zealand cinemas. The reduced delay between US and New Zealand cinematic release dates is shown to be consistent with the introduction of competition when timing is a dimension of quality and choice. We conclude that parallel importation of DVDs almost certainly resulted in a net increase in welfare in New Zealand
Modelling poverty by not modelling poverty: An application of a simultaneous hazards approach to the UK
We pursue an economic approach to analysing poverty. This requires a focus on the variables that individuals can influence, such as forming or dissolving a union or having children. We argue that this indirect approach to modelling poverty is the right way to bring economic tools to bear on the issue. In our implementation of this approach, we focus on endogenous demographic and employment transitions as the driving forces behind changes in poverty. We construct a dataset covering event histories over a long window and estimate five simultaneous hazards with unrestricted correlated heterogeneity. The model fits the demographic and poverty data reasonably well. We investigate the important parameters and processes for differences in individuals' poverty likelihood. Employment, and particularly employment of disadvantaged women with children, is important.poverty dynamics, poverty transitions, simultaneous hazards
Point-Particle Effective Field Theory II: Relativistic Effects and Coulomb/Inverse-Square Competition
We apply point-particle effective field theory (PPEFT) to compute the leading
shifts due to finite-size source effects in the Coulomb bound energy levels of
a relativistic spinless charged particle. This is the analogue for spinless
electrons of the contribution of the charge-radius of the source to these
levels, and we disagree with standard calculations in several ways. Most
notably we find there are two effective interactions with the same dimension
that contribute to leading order in the nuclear size. One is the standard
charge-radius contribution, while the other is a contact interaction whose
leading contribution to arises linearly in the small length scale,
, characterizing the finite-size effects, and is suppressed by
. We argue that standard calculations miss the contributions of
this second operator because they err in their choice of boundary conditions at
the source for the wave-function of the orbiting particle. PPEFT predicts how
this boundary condition depends on the source's charge radius, as well as on
the orbiting particle's mass. Its contribution turns out to be crucial if the
charge radius satisfies , with the
Bohr radius, since then relativistic effects become important. We show how the
problem is equivalent to solving the Schr\"odinger equation with competing
Coulomb, inverse-square and delta-function potentials, which we solve
explicitly. A similar enhancement is not predicted for the hyperfine structure,
due to its spin-dependence. We show how the charge-radius effectively runs due
to classical renormalization effects, and why the resulting RG flow is central
to predicting the size of the energy shifts. We discuss how this flow is
relevant to systems having much larger-than-geometric cross sections, and the
possible relevance to catalysis of reactions through scattering with monopoles.Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages plus appendices, v3: revised appendices, made more
precise and concise discussion about proton radius for mesonic system
Selective Schooling Systems Increase Inequality
We investigate the impact on earnings inequality of a selective education system in which school assignment is based on initial test scores. We use a large, representative household panel survey to compare adult earnings inequality of those growing up under a selective education system with those educated under a comprehensive system. Controlling for a range of background characteristics and the current location, the wage distribution for individuals who grew up in selective schooling areas is quantitatively more unequal, and the difference is statistically significant. The total effect sizes are large: 14% of the raw 90-10 earnings gap and 18% of the conditional 90-10 earnings gap can be explained by differences across schooling systems
Dynamic Electricity Pricing in California: Do Customers Respond?
Matt Burgess presented Dynamic Electricity Pricing in California: Do Customers Respond? at an ISCR seminar May 2006
Dynamic Electricity Pricing in California: Do Customers Respond?
Matt Burgess presented Dynamic Electricity Pricing in California: Do Customers Respond? at an ISCR seminar May 2006
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