4,358 research outputs found
An Anatomy of the French Labour Market
[Excerpt] Over the last decades, many European countries have experienced high and persistent unemployment rates. The bulk of labour market research has tackled this issue by emphasizing the effect of employment protection legislation, hereafter EPL, on labour market performance. As a result, the importance of labour market flexibility has been widely acknowledged. This view can be summarized by the expressed desire of the E.U. council to give member States incentives to âreview and, where appropriate, reform overly restrictive elements in employment legislation that affect labour market dynamics [...] and to undertake other appropriate measures to promote a better balance between work and private life and between flexibility and securityâ. It is however striking that most of the reforms undertaken have contrasted sharply with this latter recommendation by favouring reforms at the margin.
Those reforms have fostered two-tier systems, as the increase in labour market flexibility has taken place mainly through a series of marginal reforms that liberalized the use of fixed-term and/or non-standard employment contracts. Two-tier systems have promoted the emergence of dual employment protection which can be broadly defined as the coexistence of both long-term contracts, which benefit from stringent protection, and short-term contracts with little or no protection. It is often argued that this combination creates labour market segmentation, traps workers in a recurring sequence of frequent unemployment spells, favours unequal repartition of risk between workers and enhances inequalities. In particular, two-tier systems create excess labour turnover as they increase the incentives to create temporary rather than permanent jobs, reduce job destruction for stable jobs, but increase churning for temporary jobs. For instance in countries with stringent legal constraints on the termination of permanent jobs, such as France or Spain, it turns out that about 70 per cent to 90 per cent of entries into employment are in temporary jobs with very short duration (on average less than one month and a half in France). If excess labour turnover and its consequences are a concern for the economy as a whole, the dramatic spread of temporary jobs is even more a concern for young/less experienced workers as they are more likely to be negatively affected by the adverse effects of dual employment protection.
The French labour market is no exception and has faced similar trends during the 1990s. Given the pervasiveness of temporary jobs on the labour market and their consequences on the society and economic outcomes, it is urgent to understand how two-tier systems shape the functioning of the labour market. This is the very purpose of the present report.
After having described in details the salient features of the French dual labour market and having discussed the legislation at the root of French dualism, we review the different mechanisms through which dualism affect labour markets: labour market dynamics, wage inequality, human capital accumulation, job satisfaction, social integration and health. We consider whenever possible both theoretical insights and empirical evaluations. We finally conclude this report by providing possible directions to reform the labour market
Enhancing the area of a Raman atom interferometer using a versatile double-diffraction technique
IIn this paper we demonstrate a new scheme for Raman transitions which
realize a symmetric momentum-space splitting of , deflecting the
atomic wave-packets into the same internal state. Combining the advantages of
Raman and Bragg diffraction, we achieve a three pulse state labelled
interferometer, intrinsically insensitive to the main systematics and
applicable to all kind of atomic sources. This splitting scheme can be extended
to momentum transfer by a multipulse sequence and is implemented
on a interferometer. We demonstrate the area enhancement by
measuring inertial forces
Take-off of small Leidenfrost droplets
We put in evidence the unexpected behaviour of Leidenfrost droplets at the
later stage of their evaporation. We predict and observe that, below a critical
size , the droplets spontaneously take-off due to the breakdown of the
lubrication regime. We establish the theoretical relation between the droplet
radius and its elevation. We predict that the vapour layer thickness increases
when the droplets become smaller. A satisfactory agreement is found between the
model and the experimental results performed on droplets of water and of
ethanol.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2012
Fractional Laplacian matrix on the finite periodic linear chain and its periodic Riesz fractional derivative continuum limit
The 1D discrete fractional Laplacian operator on a cyclically closed
(periodic) linear chain with finitenumber of identical particles is
introduced. We suggest a "fractional elastic harmonic potential", and obtain
the -periodic fractionalLaplacian operator in the form of a power law matrix
function for the finite chain ( arbitrary not necessarily large) in explicit
form.In the limiting case this fractional Laplacian
matrix recovers the fractional Laplacian matrix ofthe infinite chain.The
lattice model contains two free material constants, the particle mass and
a frequency.The "periodic string continuum limit" of the
fractional lattice model is analyzed where lattice constant and
length of the chain ("string") is kept finite: Assuming finiteness of
the total mass and totalelastic energy of the chain in the continuum limit
leads to asymptotic scaling behavior for of thetwo material
constants,namely and . In
this way we obtain the -periodic fractional Laplacian (Riesz fractional
derivative) kernel in explicit form.This -periodic fractional Laplacian
kernel recovers for the well known 1D infinite space
fractional Laplacian (Riesz fractional derivative) kernel. When the scaling
exponentof the Laplacian takesintegers, the fractional Laplacian kernel
recovers, respectively, -periodic and infinite space (localized)
distributionalrepresentations of integer-order Laplacians.The results of this
paper appear to beuseful for the analysis of fractional finite domain problems
for instance in anomalous diffusion (L\'evy flights), fractional Quantum
Mechanics,and the development of fractional discrete calculus on finite
lattices
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