This paper reconsiders the cost of business cycles under incomplete markets. Primarily, we focus on the heterogeneity in the cost of business cycles among agents with different skill levels. Unskilled workers are subject to a much larger risk of unemployment during recessions than are skilled workers. Moreover, unskilled workers earn less income, which limits their ability to self-insure. We ex...

We present a strict separation between the class of “mismatch free” self-assembly systems and general aTAM systems. Mismatch free systems are those systems in which concurrently grown parts must always agree

The order we see in nature is self-assembled: atoms, crystals, cells, animals, solar systems, and galaxies are just a few examples. While we have been able to build phenomenal devices with controlled assembly techniques, we still cannot engineer machines at the scale of the ribosome. Can we understand the mechanism behind natural self-assembly and harness it to fabricate new devices? A systemat...

Vertical nanowire arrays can be used for both energy harvesting and storage. Using assembly to create such arrays allows two populations to be mixed together, while standard fabrication limits the product to a single material. However in the absence of applied fields [1] or controlled drying conditions [2], nanowires typically assemble parallel to the surface, forming horizontal arrays. The Kea...

With the invention of the DNA origami technique, DNA self-assembly has reached a new level of sophistication. DNA can now be used to arrange molecules and other nanoscale components into almost arbitrary geometries-in two and even three dimensions and with nanometer precision. One exciting prospect is the realization of dynamic systems based on DNA, in which chemical reactions are precisely con...

Self-assembly is the process in which simple objects autonomously aggregate into large structures and it has become one of the major tools for nano-scale engineering. We propose in this paper a string-based framework inspired by the principle of selfassembly: two strings with a common overlap, say uv and vw, yield a string uvw; we say that string uvw has been assembled from strings uv and vw. T...

Producing an automated assembly and test machine is a lengthy process consisting of numerous stages. It can involve several iterations through some or, very occasionally, all of these stages. There is one major similarity linking these stages: the requirement for consistent and accurate information. This unifying requirement makes communication a crucial, but often overlooked, aspect of produci...