Salary Determinants of Entry-Level Academic Economists and the Characteristics of Those Hired on the Tenure Track

This paper examines the entry-level labor market for academic economists and investigates the determinants of market salaries. The focus is on the effects of tenure and nontenure track jobs and departmental ranking that are based upon faculty research productivity. The results reveal that the market works differently depending upon whether the hiring department is ranked in terms of research productivity. Being hired on the tenure track significantly influences academic salaries in both ranked and unranked departments. The paper also analyzes the impact of observable characteristics of individuals and hiring departments on the probability of being hired into tenure track positions.Economists; Labor Markets; Salaries; Salary

Late-Arriving Votes and Electoral Fraud: A Natural Experiment and Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Bolivia

This paper uses a unique data set and a natural experiment to test if electoral fraud can exist in late-arriving votes. On the night of the 2019 Bolivian elections, the official vote counting system that was expected to publish the results real-time, suddenly stopped. When it resumed, the results had flipped. We estimate several difference-in-differences specifications using a 2016 referendum and the votes of other political parties. We find that the extent of the fraud is 2.51% of the valid votes, sufficient to change the outcome of the election. Our results are robust to polling-station-level shocks common across 2019 and 2016, as well as 2019 specific shocks. This controls for geography, socioeconomic characteristics, unobserved voting preferences, and endogeneity in the arrival of the polling station results. We report evidence of fraud that occurred before the shutdown and document a statistically significant discontinuous jump in the votes during the shutdown. We provide insights on how to apply our different identification strategies to test for fraud in other elections

Evo Morales and Electoral Fraud in Bolivia: A Natural Experiment and Discontinuity Evidence

This paper uses a unique data set and a natural experiment based on the shutdown in the official preliminary vote counting system to identify and estimate the size of electoral fraud in the 2019 Bolivian presidential elections. The 2016 Constitutional Referendum and the participation of other political parties serve as controls to estimate various difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences specifications. The results show evidence of a statistically significant electoral case of fraud that increased the votes of the incumbent Movimiento al Socialismo and decreased the votes of the runner up Comunidad Ciudadana. We estimate that the extent of the fraud is 2.50% of valid votes, sufficient to change the outcome of the election. We report a break in trend and evidence of fraud beyond the shutdown. Our results are robust to polling-station-level shocks common across 2019 and 2016, as well as 2019 specific shocks. This controls for geography (e.g., rural vs. urban), unobserved voting preferences, voter\u27s last names, and endogeneity in the arrival of the polling stations. We document a statistically significant discontinuous jump in the gap between the incumbent and the runner up during the shutdown

Party polarization, political alignment, and federal grant spending at the state level

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president’s party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is relatively low

Induction of Systemic Acquired Resistance in Cotton Foliage Does Not Adversely Affect the Performance of an Entomopathogen

Baculoviral efficacy against lepidopteran larvae is substantially impacted by the host plant. Here, we characterized how baculoviral pathogenicity to cotton-fed Heliothis virescens larvae is affected by induction of systemic acquired resistance (SAR). Numerous studies have shown that SAR induced by the plant elicitor benzo-(1,2,3)-thiadiazole-7- carbothioic acid S-methyl ester (BTH) can protect against plant pathogens, but reports on the impacts of SAR on chewing herbivores or on natural enemies of herbivores are few. We found that BTH application significantly increased foliar peroxidase activity, condensed tannin levels, and total phenolic levels but did not alter dihydroxyphenolic levels. Consumption of BTH-treated foliage did not influence H. virescens pupal weight or larval mortality by the microbial control agent Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus any more than did consumption of untreated foliage. Thus, activation of SAR, although it did not protect the plant against a chewing herbivore, also did not reduce the effect of a natural enemy on a herbivore, indicating that SAR and microbial control agents may be compatible components of integrated pest management

Market Structure and Racial Earnings: Evidence from Job Changers

In his seminal contribution, Gary Becker (1957) suggests that rents in noncompetitive industries provide employers with the latitude to engage in earnings discrimination. Implicit in this theory, is that white workers in noncompet­itive industries would capture a disproportion­ ate share of monopoly rents (excessive wages) relative to their minority counterparts. We utilize wage-change equations to exam­ine earnings shifts for whites and minorities stemming from a job switch to a different mar­ket structure. Additionally for each racial group, wage equations of workers before and after the job change are used to calculate difference­ in-differences estimates of wage change as a result of the job switch. The findings contradict the stated hypothesis: gains in minority wages from joining noncompetitive industries and losses in wages from leaving are larger, suggesting that (for minorities) the higher, less discriminatory wages of union employment in noncompetitive indus­tries outweigh employer discrimination in non­-union, noncompetitive industries

The movement of interfaces through permeable media

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1965 H789Master of Scienc

Denitrifying Bioreactor Woodchip Recharge: Media Properties after Nine Years

There is a lack of information on denitrifying bioreactors treating subsurface drainage water at the end of their initial design life due to the relative newness of the technology and the relatively long estimated life. A denitrifying bioreactor (15 m L x 7.6 m W x 1.1 m D) installed in August 2008 in Greene County, Iowa, was recharged with new woodchips in November 2017 (age 9.25 years), providing the opportunity to evaluate the properties of the wood media at the end of design life. The objective was to pair a battery of physical, chemical, and nitrate-N removal tests on the wood media harvested from the bioreactor with field observations to assess likely reasons why denitrifying bioreactors treating tile drainage may need to be recharged. The two types of wood media harvested from the bioreactor (termed woodchips and mixed shreds) had median particle sizes (D50) of 12.1 and 7.7 mm, respectively, and saturated hydraulic conductivities of 4.2 ±3.0 and 3.1 ±1.0 cm s-1 (mean ± standard deviation), which were within the range of reported values for woodchips, albeit at the low end. The wood media carbon content and quality had degraded (e.g., lignocellulose indices of 0.63 to 0.74, nearing the range of decomposition stabilization), although batch tests suggested the robustness of wood as a carbon source to support nitrate removal (e.g., 65% nitrate concentration reduction in drainage water). Woodchip degradation along with sedimentation from the drainage system likely reduced conductivities over time. Development of preferential flow paths through the bioreactor was indicated by low bioreactor outflow rates (i.e., reduced permeability) and reduced hydraulic efficiency based on conservative tracer testing. These changes in media properties and linked impacts resulted in the need to recharge this bioreactor after nine years

Survival in Nuclear Waste, Extreme Resistance, and Potential Applications Gleaned from the Genome Sequence of Kineococcus radiotolerans SRS30216

Kineococcus radiotolerans SRS30216 was isolated from a high-level radioactive environment at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and exhibits γ-radiation resistance approaching that of Deinococcus radiodurans. The genome was sequenced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute which suggested the existence of three replicons, a 4.76 Mb linear chromosome, a 0.18 Mb linear plasmid, and a 12.92 Kb circular plasmid. Southern hybridization confirmed that the chromosome is linear. The K. radiotolerans genome sequence was examined to learn about the physiology of the organism with regard to ionizing radiation resistance, the potential for bioremediation of nuclear waste, and the dimorphic life cycle. K. radiotolerans may have a unique genetic toolbox for radiation protection as it lacks many of the genes known to confer radiation resistance in D. radiodurans. Additionally, genes involved in the detoxification of reactive oxygen species and the excision repair pathway are overrepresented. K. radiotolerans appears to lack degradation pathways for pervasive soil and groundwater pollutants. However, it can respire on two organic acids found in SRS high-level nuclear waste, formate and oxalate, which promote the survival of cells during prolonged periods of starvation. The dimorphic life cycle involves the production of motile zoospores. The flagellar biosynthesis genes are located on a motility island, though its regulation could not be fully discerned. These results highlight the remarkable ability of K radiotolerans to withstand environmental extremes and suggest that in situ bioremediation of organic complexants from high level radioactive waste may be feasible

Master equation approach to the conjugate pairing rule of Lyapunov spectra for many-particle thermostatted systems

The master equation approach to Lyapunov spectra for many-particle systems is applied to non-equilibrium thermostatted systems to discuss the conjugate pairing rule. We consider iso-kinetic thermostatted systems with a shear flow sustained by an external restriction, in which particle interactions are expressed as a Gaussian white randomness. Positive Lyapunov exponents are calculated by using the Fokker-Planck equation to describe the tangent vector dynamics. We introduce another Fokker-Planck equation to describe the time-reversed tangent vector dynamics, which allows us to calculate the negative Lyapunov exponents. Using the Lyapunov exponents provided by these two Fokker-Planck equations we show the conjugate pairing rule is satisfied for thermostatted systems with a shear flow in the thermodynamic limit. We also give an explicit form to connect the Lyapunov exponents with the time-correlation of the interaction matrix in a thermostatted system with a color field.Comment: 10 page