What Does Affirmative Action Do?

We use data from a survey of employers to investigate how Affirmative Action in recruiting and hiring influences hiring practices, personnel policies, and ultimately employment out- comes. Our results show that Affirmative Action increases the number of recruitment and screening practices used by employers, raises their willingness to hire stigmatized applicants, increases the number of minority and female applicants as well as employees, and increases employers’ tendencies to provide training and to formally evaluate employees. When Affirmative Action is used in recruiting, it does not lead to lower credentials or performance of women and minorities hired. When it is also used in hiring, it yields female and minority employees whose credentials are somewhat weaker, though performance generally is not. Overall, then, the more intensive search, evaluation, and training that accompany Affirmative Action appear to offset any tendencies of the policy to lead to hiring of less-qualified or less-productive women and minorities.

Breast Cancer Survival, Work, and Earnings

Relying on data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine differences between breast cancer survivors and a non-cancer control group in employment, hours worked, wages, and earnings. Overall, breast cancer has a negative impact on the decision to work. However, among survivors who work, hours of work and, correspondingly, annual earnings are higher compared to women in the non-cancer control group. These findings suggest that while breast cancer has a negative effect on women's employment, breast cancer may not be debilitating for those who remain in the work force. We explore numerous possible biases underlying our estimates especially selection based on information in the Health and Retirement Study, and examine related evidence from supplemental data sources.

The Effects of Health Shocks on Employment and Health Insurance: The Role of Employer-Provided Health Insurance

We study how men’s dependence on their own employer for health insurance affects labor supply responses and loss of health insurance coverage when faced with a serious health shock. Men with employment-contingent health insurance (ECHI) are more likely to remain working following some kinds of adverse health shocks, and are more likely to lose insurance. With the passage of health care reform, the tendency of men with ECHI as opposed to other sources of insurance to remain employed following a health shock may be diminished, along with the likelihood of losing health insurance.

Optimum unambiguous discrimination of two mixed quantum states

We investigate generalized measurements, based on positive-operator-valued measures, and von Neumann measurements for the unambiguous discrimination of two mixed quantum states that occur with given prior probabilities. In particular, we derive the conditions under which the failure probability of the measurement can reach its absolute lower bound, proportional to the fidelity of the states. The optimum measurement strategy yielding the fidelity bound of the failure probability is explicitly determined for a number of cases. One example involves two density operators of rank d that jointly span a 2d-dimensional Hilbert space and are related in a special way. We also present an application of the results to the problem of unambiguous quantum state comparison, generalizing the optimum strategy for arbitrary prior probabilities of the states.Comment: final versio

Employment-Contingent Health Insurance, Illness, and Labor Supply of Women: Evidence from Married Women with Breast Cancer

We examine the effects of employment-contingent health insurance on married women's labor supply following a health shock. First, we develop a theoretical model that examines the effects of employment-contingent health insurance on the labor supply response to a health shock, to clarify under what conditions employment-contingent health insurance is likely to dampen the labor supply response. Second, we empirically evaluate this relationship using primary data. The results from our analysis find that -- as the model suggests is likely -- health shocks decrease labor supply to a greater extent among women insured by their spouse's policy than among women with health insurance through their own employer. Employment-contingent health insurance appears to create incentives to remain working and to work at a greater intensity when faced with a serious illness.

Optimum measurement for unambiguously discriminating two mixed states: General considerations and special cases

Based on our previous publication [U. Herzog and J. A. Bergou, Phys.Rev. A 71, 050301(R) (2005)] we investigate the optimum measurement for the unambiguous discrimination of two mixed quantum states that occur with given prior probabilities. Unambiguous discrimination of nonorthogonal states is possible in a probabilistic way, at the expense of a nonzero probability of inconclusive results, where the measurement fails. Along with a discussion of the general problem, we give an example illustrating our method of solution. We also provide general inequalities for the minimum achievable failure probability and discuss in more detail the necessary conditions that must be fulfilled when its absolute lower bound, proportional to the fidelity of the states, can be reached.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Physics:Conference Series (Proceedings of the 12th Central European Workshop on Quantum Optics, Ankara, June 2005

Optimal unambiguous filtering of a quantum state: An instance in mixed state discrimination

Deterministic discrimination of nonorthogonal states is forbidden by quantum measurement theory. However, if we do not want to succeed all the time, i.e. allow for inconclusive outcomes to occur, then unambiguous discrimination becomes possible with a certain probability of success. A variant of the problem is set discrimination: the states are grouped in sets and we want to determine to which particular set a given pure input state belongs. We consider here the simplest case, termed quantum state filtering, when the $N$ given non-orthogonal states, $\{|\psi_{1} >,..., |\psi_{N} > \}$, are divided into two sets and the first set consists of one state only while the second consists of all of the remaining states. We present the derivation of the optimal measurement strategy, in terms of a generalized measurement (POVM), to distinguish $|\psi_1>$ from the set $\{|\psi_2 >,...,|\psi_N > \}$ and the corresponding optimal success and failure probabilities. The results, but not the complete derivation, were presented previously [\prl {\bf 90}, 257901 (2003)] as the emphasis there was on appplication of the results to novel probabilistic quantum algorithms. We also show that the problem is equivalent to the discrimination of a pure state and an arbitrary mixed state.Comment: 8 page

Do labor market networks have an important spatial dimension?

We test for evidence of spatial, residence-based labor market networks. Turnover is lower for workers more connected to their neighbors generally and more connected to neighbors of the same race or ethnic group. Both results are consistent with networks producing better job matches, while the latter could also reflect preferences for working with neighbors of the same race or ethnicity. For earnings, we find a robust positive effect of the overall residence-based network measure, whereas we usually find a negative effect of the same-group measure, suggesting that the overall network measure reflects productivity-enhancing positive network effects, while the same-group measure may capture a non-wage amenity

Programmable quantum state discriminators with simple programs

We describe a class of programmable devices that can discriminate between two quantum states. We consider two cases. In the first, both states are unknown. One copy of each of the unknown states is provided as input, or program, for the two program registers, and the data state, which is guaranteed to be prepared in one of the program states, is fed into the data register of the device. This device will then tell us, in an optimal way, which of the templates stored in the program registers the data state matches. In the second case, we know one of the states while the other is unknown. One copy of the unknown state is fed into the single program register, and the data state which is guaranteed to be prepared in either the program state or the known state, is fed into the data register. The device will then tell us, again optimally, whether the data state matches the template or is the known state. We determine two types of optimal devices. The first performs discrimination with minimum error, the second performs optimal unambiguous discrimination. In all cases we first treat the simpler problem of only one copy of the data state and then generalize the treatment to n copies. In comparison to other works we find that providing n > 1 copies of the data state yields higher success probabilities than providing n > 1 copies of the program states.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Minimal optimal generalized quantum measurements

Optimal and finite positive operator valued measurements on a finite number $N$ of identically prepared systems have been presented recently. With physical realization in mind we propose here optimal and minimal generalized quantum measurements for two-level systems. We explicitly construct them up to N=7 and verify that they are minimal up to N=5. We finally propose an expression which gives the size of the minimal optimal measurements for arbitrary $N$.Comment: 9 pages, Late