“The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay”

One of the stylized facts from the past 30 years has been the declining rate of first births before age 30 for all women and the increase rate of first births after age 30 among women with four-year college degrees (Steven P. Martin, Demography, 37(4), 523–533, 2000). What are some of the factors behind womens decision to postpone their childbearing? We hypothesize that the wage difference often observed between like-educated mothers and non-mothers (Jane Waldfogel, Journal of Labor Economics, 16, 505–545, 1998a; Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1) 137–156, 1998b) may be affected by the postponement of childbearing until after careers are fully established. Hence, we focus on college-educated women because they are typically more career-oriented than their non-college educated counterparts and also the group most often observed postponing maternity. We use individual-level data on women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in order to control for individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as human capital characteristics, such as actual work experience, in our empirical analysis. We estimate wage equations, first producing base-line results to compare to the existing literature. Then, we expand the basic wage equation model to address fundamental econometric issues and the education/fertility issue at hand. Our empirical findings are two-fold. First, we find that college-educated mothers do not experience a motherhood wage penalty at all. In fact, they enjoy a wage boost when compared to college-educated childless women. Second, fertility delay enhances this wage boost even further. Our results provide an explanation for the observed postponement of maternity for educated women. We argue that the wage boost experienced by college-educated mothers may be the result of their search for family–friendly work environments, which, in turn, yields job matches with more female-friendly firms offering greater opportunities for advancement.JEL Codes: J13 and J3     

论我国未成年人刑罚制度之完善——从原则及刑罚种类角度分析

我国现行有关未成年人的刑罚制度已不适应当前严峻的未成年人犯罪现实。本文从未成年人刑罚制度的指导思想、原则及具体刑罚规定着手,分析了其不足,并在此基础上结合现状提出了完善意见。     

报应主义与刑事政策

只有将刑罚目的奠基于报应主义为基础的功利主义之上,现代刑法才真正有可能不仅成为保护人民的大宪章,而且成为保护犯罪人的大宪章.报应主义一经脱胎于原始的报复便与其分道扬镳,它以意志自由为立论前提、道义责任为归责基础,主张罪刑均衡,彰显公正、人权、秩序之现代文明社会三大价值.虽然单纯的报应并不足以解释刑罚的目的,与预防相结合才是其真正归宿,但是报应优先、兼顾功利的一体化思想应当成为我们坚定的立场并贯穿于死刑、刑罚个别化和"严打"等诸多刑事政策的考量之中.     

论刑罚的犯罪预防功能

刑罚和犯罪都是历史的产物,二者相伴而生。刑罚的本质属性内在地决定其具有预防犯罪的作用,刑罚在将刑罚本质外化的过程中实现预防犯罪的作用。但刑罚功能具有局限性,需要其自身的完善以及综合运用其他手段来突破这种局限性。而预防犯罪被主观化为刑罚的目的的同时,也促进了刑罚立法和司法的日益发展和完善。     

Inference of Genetic Networks from Time Course Expression Data Using Functional Regression with Lasso Penalty

Statistical inference of genetic regulatory networks is essential for understanding temporal interactions of regulatory elements inside the cells. In this work, we propose to infer the parameters of the ordinary differential equations using the techniques from functional data analysis (FDA) by regarding the observed time course expression data as continuous-time curves. For networks with a large number of genes, we take advantage of the sparsity of the networks by penalizing the linear coefficients with a L ₁ norm. The ability of the algorithm to infer network structure is demonstrated using the cell-cycle time course data for Saccharomyces cerevisiae.     

Penalized Maximum Likelihood Principle for Choosing Ridge Parameter

We consider the problem of choosing the ridge parameter. Two penalized maximum likelihood (PML) criteria based on a distribution-free and a data-dependent penalty function are proposed. These PML criteria can be considered as “continuous” versions of AIC. A systematic simulation is conducted to compare the suggested criteria to several existing methods. The simulation results strongly support the use of our method. The method is also applied to two real data sets.     

Gender gaps in STEM in Japanese academia: The impact of research productivity,outside offers,and home life on pay

To understand differences in labor market outcomes between genders, economists must examine a complex array of potentially significant factors, such as institutional context, productivity differences, child-bearing and home production, and bargaining behavior. Many of these factors are not well captured by standard data sources. We use a new survey of academics in Japan to better understand the sources of gender pay differences. We find a 6% pay gap which persists when we control for research productivity, despite an institutional context shaped by explicit salary tables. We do not find a motherhood wage penalty, and the gender salary we document is not affected by differences in outside job offers.     

基于复杂网络的电动汽车充电桩众筹市场信用风险建模与分析

因其经济优势及环境友好特性，电动汽车（EV）保有量持续攀升。而当前中国充电设施建设明显滞后于电动汽车的扩张速度，成为制约电动车发展潜力的主要瓶颈。由于充电设施具有高正外部性，同时投资回收期较长，难以吸引到传统融资，而基于互联网的众筹作为新型融资方式则受到了广泛关注。但由于缺乏强制性的信息披露制度及相关法律法规，众筹融资过程中的信息不对称问题相较传统融资方式更为严重，由此导致的高违约率也进一步削弱了投资者信心。本文利用复杂网络对电动汽车充电桩众筹融资市场进行建模，刻画了众筹投资者决策过程中的羊群效应，基于信息不对称使用多Agent模型对信用风险的产生、影响及针对性政策效果进行了模拟分析。结果表明，众筹投资者在决策过程中易受到社交网络中负面信息的影响，使得筹资人违约行为的不利影响进一步扩散。而严格的罚款机制可以在不影响融资市场均衡的情况下，使违约行为的恶性循环得到遏制。     

论毒品纯度与涉毒行为之定罪量刑关系

现行刑法第357条第2款之规定使得我国刑法理论界及司法实务界对于涉毒行为中的毒品纯度问题极为轻忽,体现出较为明显的＂惟数额论＂,因之导致的结果必然是定罪与量刑上的显失公正。毒品纯度不容置辩地与涉毒行为的社会危害性密接相关,其不仅影响罪犯处刑的轻重,而且关涉行为的定性,即牵及行为的罪与非罪、此罪与彼罪的问题。对涉毒行为欲实现定罪与量刑上的公允,就必须彻底摒弃＂惟数额论＂,对毒品纯度进行充分考量。     

简论经济犯罪与死刑

我国是世界上对经济犯罪适用死刑的极少数国家之一。随着我国经济的发展,我国的经济犯罪也日益严重,立法机关希望通过死刑的适用来遏制经济犯罪。但事与愿违,死刑的适用并没有收到预期的效果,还违背了刑罚的目的和罪刑均衡原则。因此,我国在立法上应当废除对经济犯罪的死刑,规定经济犯罪的法定最高刑为无期徒刑,并附加适用财产刑。