The Impact of Monetary Policy on the Distribution and Type of Unemployment

This working paper by William M. Rodgers III employs two widely used approaches to estimate the effects of monetary policy on seven measures of unemployment. Evidence from recursive vector autoregressions and autoregressive distributed lag models that use information on the Federal Reserve's contractionary initiatives indicate that the weeks of unemployment distribution (e.g., less than five weeks) is significantly altered. The number of unemployed increases at all segments of the distribution. However, as a share of total unemployment, the increase is greatest among those with 15 weeks of unemployment or more. The number of job losers on both temporary and permanent layoff rise, with over two-thirds of the increase among permanent job losers. The number of reentrants into the labor force, new entrants, and part-time workers that become unemployed also rises. The share of the unemployed that are job losers rises, while the shares of reentrant, new entrant, and part-time workers that become unemployed falls

Forecasting the Labor Market Prospects of Low-Skilled Americans

This paper forecasts the post-recession labor market experiences of less-skilled men and women. It uses empirical relationships and the Bush Administration's 2004 and 2005 forecasts of the national unemployment rate to predict the employment-population ratios, employment rates, and labor force participation rates of Americans with the least skills. It also describes the econometric models estimated in the paper; presents estimates of the relationship between aggregate demand and the participation, employment, and unemployment of young non-enrolled Americans and 10-year forecasts of their labor market outcomes; and discusses findings and their implications

The Pitfalls of Using a Child Support Schedule Based on Outdated Data

A strong rationale for updating child support guidelines arises from changes over time in the measurement of expenditures on children, as well as changes in the empirical relationship between expenditures on children and the income of parents. Such changes affect the accuracy of the numerics upon which states' child support guidelines are based. This study evaluates an alternative child support guideline that was proposed for Virginia and draws lessons for other states that similarly base their guidelines on older survey data. Regression results show that over time, the child expenditure and household income relationship has changed considerably. Furthermore, the largest increases in expenditures attributable to children have occurred for lower- and middle-income households

New Jersey Public-Private Sector Wage Differentials: 1970 to 2004

This paper, by Heldrich Center Chief Economist William M. Rodgers III, uses Decennial Census and Current Population Survey data to provide a rigorous comparison of New Jersey's public and private sector wages

Accurate Thermodynamics for Short-Ranged Truncations of Coulomb Interactions in Site-Site Molecular Models

Coulomb interactions are present in a wide variety of all-atom force fields. Spherical truncations of these interactions permit fast simulations but are problematic due to their incorrect thermodynamics. Herein we demonstrate that simple analytical corrections for the thermodynamics of uniform truncated systems are possible. In particular results for the SPC/E water model treated with spherically-truncated Coulomb interactions suggested by local molecular field theory [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 105, 19136 (2008)] are presented. We extend results developed by Chandler [J. Chem. Phys. 65, 2925 (1976)] so that we may treat the thermodynamics of mixtures of flexible charged and uncharged molecules simulated with spherical truncations. We show that the energy and pressure of spherically-truncated bulk SPC/E water are easily corrected using exact second-moment-like conditions on long-ranged structure. Furthermore, applying the pressure correction as an external pressure removes the density errors observed by other research groups in NPT simulations of spherically-truncated bulk species

Male White-Black Wage Gaps, 1979-1994: A Distributional Analysis

This paper examines whether the general growth in wage inequality that occurred during the 1980s explains the growth in the white-black wage gap. The paper develops a skill-specific decomposition that measures inequality growth's contribution to the wage gap's growth among white and black men with similar skill levels. The paper shows that if general wage inequality growth is an important contributor to the overall wage gap's growth during the 1980s, its greatest impact is among middle and upper skilled workers. For racial wage gaps among young high school and college graduates, the contribution of general wage inequality growth is greatest among those whites and blacks with the least and greatest skills

Black Workers Need More than an Economic Boom

This paper looks at the reasons the absolute and relative gains that African Americans made during the 1990s economic boom were both less than hoped for and fragile in the period of economic decline that followed. The paper also looks at the public policies that would be necessary to sustain the gains that African Americans are likely to make during the next economic expansion

Prey body size mediates the predation risk associated with being "odd"

Despite selection pressures on prey animals to maintain phenotypically homogeneous groups, variation in phenotype within animal groups is commonly observed. Although many prey animals preferentially associate with size-matched individuals, a lack of preference or a preference for nonmatching group mates is also commonly observed. We suggest that the assortative response to predation risk may be mediated by body size because larger bodied prey may be at greater risk of predation than smaller bodied prey when in a mixed group due to their greater potential profitability. We test this idea by observing attacks by three-spine sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus on mixed groups of large and small Daphnia magna prey. We find that smaller Daphnia are at greatest risk when they form the majority of the group, whereas larger Daphnia are at the greatest predation risk when they form the minority. Thus, we predict that both large and small prey should benefit by association with large prey, generating a potential conflict over group membership that may lead to the mixed phenotype groups we observe in nature

The Impact of 9/11 and the London Bombings on the Employment and Earnings of U.K. Muslims

Using a difference-in-differences framework, this paper estimates the impact that Britain's July 2005 bombings had on the labor market outcomes of UK residents who are either Muslim by religious affiliation or whose nativity profiles are similar to the terrorists. We find a 10 percentage point decrease in the employment of very young Muslim men relative to non-Muslim immigrants after the London bombings. The drop in employment is accompanied by consistent declines in real earnings and hours worked. A weak association between the 9-11 terrorist attacks and a drop in the employment of very young male immigrants from Muslim-majority countries is also found. The terrorist events had little impact on the employment of older men.Muslim, ethnic minority, minorities, 9/11, employment, London bombings