A Characterisation of ‘Phelpsian’ Statistical Discrimination

We establish that a type of statistical discrimination—that based on informativeness of signals about workers’ skills and the ability appropriately to match workers to tasks—is possible if and only if it is impossible uniquely to identify the signal structure observed by an employer from a realised empirical distribution of skills. The impossibility of statistical discrimination is shown to be equivalent to the existence of a fair, skill-dependent, remuneration for workers. Finally, we connect the statistical discrimination literature to Bayesian persuasion, establishing that if discrimination is absent, then the optimal signalling problem results in a linear pay-off function (as well as a kind of converse).

Some properties of the fundamental solution to the signalling problem for the fractional diffusion-wave equation

In this paper, the one-dimensional time-fractional diffusion-wave equation with the Caputo fractional derivative of order α, 1 ≤ α ≤ 2 and with constant coefficients is revisited. It is known that the diffusion and the wave equations behave quite differently regarding their response to a localized disturbance. Whereas the diffusion equation describes a process where a disturbance spreads infinitely fast, the propagation speed of the disturbance is a constant for the wave equation. We show that the time-fractional diffusion-wave equation interpolates between these two different responses and investigate the behavior of its fundamental solution for the signalling problem in detail. In particular, the maximum location, the maximum value, and the propagation velocity of the maximum point of the fundamental solution for the signalling problem are described analytically and calculated numerically.

Pulsatile Waterhammer Subject to Laminar Friction

This paper deals with elastic waves which may be generated in a fluid by the sudden movement of a flow boundary. In particular, an analysis of the classical piston, or signalling problem is presented for the special case of arbitrary velocity input into a stationary fluid contained in a circular, semi-infinite waveguide. The decay of the pulse, as well as the resulting flow development in the inlet region of the pipe are analyzed by means of an asymptotic expansion of the suitably nondimensionalized Navier-Stokes equations for a compressible, nonheat-conducting Newtonian fluid. The results differ significantly from those of the more conventional one-dimensional approach based on the so-called telegrapher’s equation of mathematical physics. The present theory realistically predicts the growth of a boundary layer both in time and position and, hence, it appears to represent the transient fluid motion in a manner which is physically more appealing.