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This paper presents a model of a competitive labour market where workers vary in firm-specific and general skills, and firms choose the kind of information to disclose. We show that provision of general training, recruitment, and outplacement are linked. Disclosing general human capital information on bad matches but revealing nothing about good matches (information disclosure that resembles outplacement support in professional service firms) leads to an efficient allocation of workers and creates adverse selection that enables workers to pay for general training. It also implies that wages of released workers can be higher than wages of those who are retained.

This paper investigates recent advances in our understanding of the global distribution of income, and produces the first estimates of global inequality that take into account data on the incomes of the top one percent within countries. We discuss conceptual and methodological issues - including alternative definitions of the global distribution, the use of household surveys and national accounts data, the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates, and the incorporation of recently available data on top incomes from income tax records. We also review recent attempts to estimate the global distribution of income. Our own estimates combine household survey data with top income data, and we analyze various aspects of this disribution, including its within- and between-country components, and changes in relative versus absolute global inequality. Finally, we examine global poverty, which is identified through the lower end of the global distribution.This paper appears in (Eds.) A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2A, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2015.

This paper argues that government should pay greater heed to recruitment and retention when designing performance measurement systems for bureaucracies. In the face of pervasive rigidities in public sector pay, internal performance measurement rewards quitters and scars stayers and therefore makes it difficult to recruit and retain. Full and immediate publication of performance minimizes the cost of initial recruitment but entails retaining and paying rents to poor performers. This is optimal only if skill differences are low and the value of public production is moderate: high enough to warrant recruitment but not so high that good performers are retained. Human capital objectives are typically better met by abstaining from performance measurement altogether or 'stage-managing' its publication, suggesting that the current emphasis on incentives and accountability may be misplaced.

Our knowledge of the respiratory chain and associated defects depends on the study of the multisubunit protein complexes in the inner mitochondrial membrane. Functional analysis of the plant mitochondrial respiratory chain has been successfully achieved by a combination of blue-native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (BN-PAGE) for separation of the protein complexes, and in-gel histochemical staining of the enzyme activities. We have optimized this powerful technique by determining linear ranges of amount of protein and enzyme activity for each respiratory complex. Time courses of the in-gel enzyme activities were also performed to determine optimal reaction times. Using the in-gel activity staining method we have previously shown decreased activity of complex V (F₁F₀-ATPase) in male-sterile sunflowers (Sabar et al., 2003). Here we have identified unique supercomplexes comprising complex IV (cytochrome c oxidase) in sunflower mitochondria. This method therefore represents a reliable tool for the diagnosis of respiratory dysfunction. In addition, the wider application of BN-PAGE in combination with enzyme activity staining is discussed.

In mammals, the electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF) is a heterodimeric protein composed of two subunits, α and β, that is responsible for the oxidation of at least nine mitochondrial matrix flavoprotein dehydrogenases. Electrons accepted by ETF are further transferred to the main respiratory chain via the ETF ubiquinone oxide reductase (ETFQO). Sequence analysis of the unique Arabidopsis homologues of two subunits of ETF revealed their high similarity to both subunits of the mammalian ETF. Yeast two-hybrid experiments showed that the Arabidopsis ETFα and ETFβ can form a heteromeric protein. Isolation and characterization of two independent T-DNA insertional Arabidopsis mutants of the ETFβ gene revealed accelerated senescence and early death compared to wild-type during extended darkness. Futhermore in contrast to wild-type, the etfb mutants demonstrated a significant accumulation of several amino acids, isovaleryl CoA and phytanoyl CoA during dark-induced carbohydrate deprivation. These phenotypic characteristics of etfb mutants are broadly similar to those that we observed previously in Arabidopsis etfqo mutants, suggesting functional association between ETF and ETFQO in Arabidopsis, and confirming the essential roles of the ETF/ETFQO electron transfer complex in the catabolism of leucine and involvement in the chlorophyll degradation pathway activated during dark-induced carbohydrate deprivation.

This paper argues that governments should pay greater heed to recruitment and retention when designing performance measurement systems for bureaucracies. In the face of pervasive rigidities in public sector pay, internal performance measurement rewards quitters and scars stayers and therefore makes it difficult to recruit and retain. Full and immediate publication of performance minimizes the cost of initial recruitment but entails retaining and paying rents to poor performers. This is optimal only if skill differences are low and the value of public production is moderate: high enough to warrant recruitment but not so high that good performers are retained. Human capital objectives are typically better met by abstaining from performance measurement altogether or ‘stage-managing’ its publication, suggesting that the current emphasis on incentives and accountability may be misplaced.

ORFB is the product of a gene that is conserved in plant mitochondrial genomes, and which, on the basis of sequence motif and structural similarity, is predicted to be the homologue of yeast and mammalian ATP8, part of the F₀ component of the F₁F₀ - ATP synthase. We have shown that, in sunflower, orfB transcripts are edited, increasing the similarity of the predicted protein to ATP8 proteins from non-plant species. Blue-native poluacrylamide gel electrophoresis and peptide sequencing confirm that ORFB localizes to the ATP synthase complex. The predicted amino-terminal 19 amino acids of ORFB are identical to those in the chimeric mitochondrial ORF522 protein, which is associated with cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) in sunflower. Assays comparing respiratory complexes from a male-sterile line expressing ORF522 with those from a male-fertile line show a specific decrease in ATP hydrolysis by the ATP synthase. These observations allow us to propose a mechanism underlying CMS that is associated with the expression of chimeric open reading frames containing part of the orfB gene.

Treatment of Arabidopsis cell culture for 16 h with H₂O₂ menadione or antimycin A induced an oxidative stress decreasing growth rate and increasing DCF fluorescence and lipid peroxidation products. Treated cells remained viable and maintained significant respiratory rates. Mitochondrial integrity was maintained, but accumulation of alternative oxidase and decreased abundance of lipoic acid-containing components during several of the treatmnets indicated oxidative stress. Analysis of the treatments was undertaken by IEF/SDS-PAGE, comparison of protein spot abundances and tandem mass spectrometry. A set of 25 protein spots increased > 3-fold in H₂O₂/ manadione treatments, a subset of these increased in antimycin A-treated samples. A set of 10 protein spots decreased significantly during stress treatments. A specific set of mitochondrial proteins were degraded by stress treatments. These damaged components included subunits of ATP synthase, complex I, succinyl CoA ligase, aconitase, and pyruvate and 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complexes. Nine increased proteins represented products of different genes not found in control mitochondria. One is directly involved in antioxidant defense, a mitochondrial thioredoxin-dependent peroxidase, while another, a thioredoxin reductase-dependent protein disulphide isomerase, is required for protein disulfide redox homeostasis. Several others are generally considered to be extramitochondrial but are clearly present in a highly purified mitochondrial fraction used in this study and are known to play roles in stress response. Using H₂O₂ as a model stress, further work revealed that this treatment induced a protease activity in isolated mitochondria, putatively responsible for the degradation of oxidatively damaged mitochondrial proteins and that O₂ consumption by mitochondria was significantly decreased by H₂O₂ treatment.