The city of Seattle, Washington made headlines in 2014 when its city council enacted the highest minimum wage in the history of the United States. The ruling appeared to begin a trend as similar policies began diffusing in cities across the country. In reality, however, municipal minimum wage ordinances have existed since the early 1990’s. Yet, despite over two decade’s worth of data on the subject, little research has been conducted to understand the characteristics that influence cities to enact minimum wages in the first place. This study contributes to our understanding of the predictors of minimum wage ordinances by retesting prior variables of significance over a more recent time period, while also introducing a new set of variables to the literature. I find that cities with an increased percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees face an increased likelihood for future policy adoption. Additionally, I find that some age demographics may be significant predictors in future studies of minimum wage.

Yang Wang

最低工資視為勞工政策，藉由政府立法方式且包含集體談判、公約，以確保勞工福利與權益。最低工資制度仍然為重大理論議題與政治辯論，許多國家都設有最低工資且設定標準繁多，有些按照年齡、任職期間、地區、行業別；例如在中國，以地區別方式來設定最低工資之標準。隨著經濟結構變化，投資環境不如以往，中國逐漸失去廉價勞動力的優勢，中國在罷工與勞工短缺情況下，可能導致社會動亂，中央政府已計劃一個新的工資改革，順應世界潮流。改革目的在縮小貧富差距，藉由提高低工資之收入，規模擴大至中產階級，遏止過高薪資分配之不平等，所以在第12個五年計劃已經訂下目標，以調整最低工資，以改革收入分配。 / Minimum wages is a labor policy, whether established by government legislation, comprised of the collective bargaining or convention, are an important feature of labor markets. The minimum wage system is the subject of substantial theoretical as well as political debate. Many countries have set minimum wage standards for various, no country can be exception in the work to establish the minimum wage system, like China, mostly in age but also in some cases by job tenure, region, industry and occupation. With the economic structural changes, the investment environment is quite complex than before and no longer cheap labor in China. China government has no choice but to revise the minimum wage system in accordance with the world trend. Under the intensified discontent such as strike or labor shortage which could lead to the social unrest, Central government has planned to initiate a new wage reform. The reform is aimed to equality and narrowing the wealth gap by raising the incomes of the low-paid, expanding the size of middle classes, wiping out illegitimate incomes and putting a curb on excessively high salaries. The 12th Five Year plan has set the target to adjust the minimum wage in order to reform of income distribution.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-69)

名古屋大学年代測定総合研究センターシンポジウム報告

In the debate on the economic effects of labor market regulation much work has focused on minimum wages. A legal minimum wage remains one of the most controversial policy issues. The controversy arises for two main reasons: first, there is no consensus over the economic impacts of the minimum wage mandate, especially its effect on employment, and, second, there is a disagreement over the empirical methods used to identify the minimum wage effects. Although the standard competitive model predicts that wage floors should have a negative impact on employment, empirical work shows mixed results. This dissertation explores a number of adjustment channels that can explain the paradox of the small and insignificant employment effects uncovered in the MW literature. Specifically, the economic impact of the most recent 2007-2009 Federal minimum wage increase (from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour) is analyzed using a sample of quick-service restaurants in Georgia and Alabama. In contrast to prior studies, store-level bi-weekly payroll records for individual employees are used, allowing greater precision in measuring the relative cost-impact of the MW on establishments. Despite significant variation in the cost-impact of the three-stage MW increase across establishments, regression analysis finds lack of a negative effect on employment and hours following each MW increase. Additional channels of adjustment are explored using unique data from manager surveys. Evidence suggests that higher product prices, lower profit margins, wage compression, reduced turnover and higher performance standards largely account for insignificant employment effects. These results are consistent with a number of alternative theoretical models of labor markets. An expanded version of the perfectly competitive model that incorporates additional margins of adjustment is also compatible with the reported findings.

This thesis evaluates the applicability of forecasting production from low permeability and layered tight gas wells using the Arps hyperbolic equation at earlier times and then switching to the exponential form of the equation at a predetermined minimum decline rate. This methodology is called the minimum terminal decline rate method. Two separate completion types have been analyzed. The first is horizontal completions with multi-stage hydraulic fractures while the second is vertical fractured wells in layered formations, completed with hydraulic fractures. For both completion types both simulated data and real world well performance histories have been evaluated using differing minimum terminal decline rates and the benefit of increasing portions of production history to make predictions. The application of the minimum terminal decline rate method to the simulated data in this study (3 percent minimum decline applied to multiple fractured horizontal wells MFHW- and 7 percent applied to vertical fractured layered wells) gave high errors for some simulations within the first two years. Once additional production data is considered in making predictions, the errors in estimated ultimate recovery and in remaining reserves is significantly reduced. This result provides a note of caution, when using the minimum decline rate method for forecasting using small quantities of production history. The evaluation of real world data using the minimum terminal decline rate method introduces other inaccuracies such as poor data quality, low data frequency, operational changes which affect the production profile and workovers / re-stimulations which require a restart of production forecasting process. Real well data for MFHW comes from the Barnett Shale completions of the type which have been widely utilized since 2004. There is insufficient production history from real wells to determine an appropriate minimum terminal decline rate. In the absence of suitable analogs for the determination of the minimum terminal decline rate it would be impossible to correctly apply this methodology. Real well data for vertical fractured layered wells from the Carthage Cotton Valley field indicate that for wells similar to Conoco operated Panola County wells a feasible decline rate is between 5 percent and 10 percent. Further if a consistent production trend and with more than 2 years of production history are used to forecast, the EUR can be predicted to within plus/minus 10 percent and remaining reserves to within plus/minus 15 percent.

Anycast is a new communication service defined in IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) [6]. An anycast message is the one that should be delivered to the 'nearest' member in a group of designated recipients. The ¡¥nearest¡¦ is not always the ¡¥best¡¦ member. In this paper, we propose a routing protocol for anycast message. It is composed of two subprotocols: the routing table establishment subprotocol and the packet forwarding subprotocol. In the routing table establishment subprotocol, we propose a mininum delay path method (MDP). We get a minimum delay path from router to destination by MDP. In the packet forwarding protocol, we propose a minimum delay and load balancing method (MDLB). We dispatch traffic load to a server with minimum delay and light load by MDLB. The performance has demonstrated the benefits of MDP and MDLB in reducing end-to-end delay and increasing throughput of network.

Taiwan became a member of the WTO in November last year. This helped push Taiwan to the International business circle successfully; also it helped all the Taiwanese businesses to grow positively, but Taiwan would face strong international competition as well. This essay is about how Taiwan¡¦s rice policy will react and adjust to the strong international competition after joining the WTO. Also we will talk about how the rice policy of Taiwan revolves into what it is today since WWII. We will look at the good and the bad from previous policies, so we can create better agricultural policies for now, and better the economy of Taiwan¡¦s rice business for the future. The problem that Taiwan is facing now is the policy of limited quota. We have to follow the rule of ¡¥minimum access¡¦ once we join the WTO. The import number of brown rice in 2002 is 8% of the total amount consumed in Taiwan from 1990 to 1992. According to the statistics from the Food Bureau of Taiwan, The total consumption of brown rice in Taiwan in 1990, 1991, and 1992 are; 1,834 thousand tons, 1,897 thousand tons, and 1,694 tons. If we count the grain it would be approximately 2,260 thousand tons. If we use the minimum access policy, 8% of it would be 180 thousand tons of grain. If we do not have the proper ¡¥Tie-in sales¡¦, the price of local rice sales and the amount the farmers earn would fall drastically. Tie-in sale is actually a short-term solution. In the long term, Taiwan¡¦s rice policy will lead to results with tariff. At this moment, the price of Taiwanese rice would not be under any protection, so the most important thing is to raise the ability to compete internationally for Taiwan¡¦s rice. The result, after a careful examination, is that Taiwan is no competition with the U.S., Thailand, and China on the price aspect. Besides from that, the personnel and the space of land cost much higher than the other countries make Taiwan hard to compete. The only way is to raise the quality above the other competition then we can actually have a place to compete with the rest of them. At the same time, if we can create a large-scale center for tie-in sales, it should help lowering the base cost of grain rice. As for the government, it should change the policies to assist with the rice farmers. Transform the current guaranteed purchasing policy for guaranteed price , to direct payment , which should help Taiwan¡¦s rice market to market suitable diversion and reduction ,would minimize the impact actually. . In the future, the rice farmers will grow rice for consumers, not for the needs of the government. The agriculture of rice will go back to the natural market rule; the rice farmers will work with the government to develop higher quality rice. Joining the WTO brings both good and bad to the grain rice industry, so if we can take chances at the right times and avoid risks, we can be in the business for a long time.

Recently, DNA computing is one of powerful tools that can be designed for solving NP-complete problems. The powers of DNA computing are that it has great ability of massive data storage and it can process those data in parallel. Some of hard problems, such as the traveling salesperson problem and the Hamiltonian cycle problem, have been solved with the brute force method in DNA computing. After DNA computing is performed, all feasible solutions for the problem are stored implicitly in the tubes. However, the correct answer still cannot be extracted or reported absolutely, because that the concentration of the correct solutions might be lower than other bad solutions. In this paper, we will increase the concentration of the correct answer for fault-tolerant ability.