Pathways to Green(er) Pastures: Reward Bundles,Human Capital,and Turnover Decisions in a Semi-Profession

This study brings together turnover and job design research to investigate how reward bundling and job fit generate staying and leaving decisions among one particular group of “semi-professionals”: urban schoolteachers with different types of human capital. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I analyze survey and interview data from 40 middle and high school teachers in one urban school district: 20 stayers and 20 leavers. The analysis identifies combinations or “bundles” of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that work together to motivate staying and leaving decisions. For all stayers, administrative support appears to serve as a compensating differential for the absence of other rewards. For all leavers, reward bundles simultaneously lacking student attachment and collegiality, or combining more stable teacher human capital resources in the school with the lack of administrative support, each promote leaving decisions. Further, results suggest that teachers with different types of human capital react to these bundles differently. This paper explores three of the fourteen bundles specific to teachers with selective college backgrounds, high SAT scores, or National Board Teaching Certification. The findings have implications for semi-professions in which workers carefully weigh their often contradictory set of working conditions and are prone to leave their workplace or occupation for any kind of “greener pasture.”     

Gender Differences in Unemployment Dynamics and Initial Wages over the Business Cycle

Using administrative data from Spanish Social Security for the period 2002–2013, we explore differences between unemployed men and women in: their probabilities to find a job, their initial wages if they find a new job, and the likelihood to fall back into unemployment. We estimate bivariate proportional hazard models for unemployment duration and for the consecutive job duration for men and women separately, and decompose the gender gap using a non-linear Oaxaca decomposition. Gender differentials in labour market outcomes are procyclical, probably due to the procyclical nature of typically male occupations. While a higher level of education protects women in particular from unemployment, having children hampers women’s employment and initial wages after unemployment. There are lower gender gaps in the public sector and in high technology- firms. Decompositions show that the gender gaps are not explained by differences in sample composition. Indeed, if women had similar characteristics to men, the gender gap would be even wider.     

Prevalence of job strain among Indian foundry shop floor workers

Global competition in manufacturing sector demand higher productivity levels. In this context, workers in this sector are set with high output targets, leading to job strain. In addition to the strain, hazardous conditions also prevail in some of the manufacturing processes like foundry activities. This paper attempts to appraise the prevalence of job strain among foundry shop floor workers in India with the help of Demands-Control model [8]. In this study, data was collected through a survey using 49-item Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) [9], a widely used and well-validated test for job strain. Then the data was subjected to statistical analysis after ascertaining the reliability. This survey has revealed that 25% of workers in foundry were experiencing high job strain. Hazardous working conditions, limited decision making authority, etc. appear to be the main contributing factors for the higher levels of strain.     

Do workers want OSHA’s ergonomics regulations?

conclusion OSHA’s proposed Ergonomics Rule will clearly impose serious costs on firms across many industries, but industries where MSD risk is highest will face much greater costs. OSHA recognizes this by excluding some high-risk industries. For the higher risk indus-tries that are covered by the proposal, OSHA suggests that benefits to firms and employ-ees will outweigh these costs. We argue that OSHA has ignored the importance of differences in individual preferences for accepting risk and that compensating wage differentials allow different individuals to maximize their utility by making trade-offs between safety and wages.     

The role of beliefs,trust, and risk in contributions to a public good

This paper experimentally investigates if and how beliefs, trust, and risk attitudes are associated with cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others’ cooperation and trust are positively correlated with cooperation in a public goods game. However, even though contributing to a public good resembles a situation of making decisions under strategic uncertainty, elicited risk preferences do not seem to explain cooperation in a systematic way.     

PROFIT-SHARES, BARGAINING, AND UNEMPLOYMENT

This paper considers the effect of profit sharing on unemployment in a simple model with an employment externality, overhead costs, and free entry. When wages are determined by Nash bargains and employment is set by firms, equilibrium unemployment is unambiguously reduced by mandated profit sharing. However, a bargained profit share may have the perverse effect of lowering both employment and compensation in general equilibrium. If overhead costs relevant to firms' entry decisions are excluded from the profit share accounting, then a mandated profit share may also have such a perverse effect. (JEL E24)     

Migration Decisions,Acculturation, and Overweight among Asian and Latino Immigrant Adults in the United States

Using the 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), we examine relationships between acculturation, migration decisions, and overweight among Latino and Asian immigrants. Pooled logistic regression models showed no evidence that acculturation and migration decisions were related to overweight among Asians, but models for Latinos indicated that aspects of acculturation (duration of US residence and English proficiency) and migration decisions (moving to find a job) were significantly associated with overweight status. However, interaction models also highlighted the gendered nature of the acculturation–weight relationship, such that country‐of‐origin ties can have different implications for the overweight status of male and female immigrants.     

LABOR QUEUES AND INVOLUNTARY UNEMPLOYMENT

This paper outlines a job search model which emphasizes the placing of applications by job searchers and the firm's use of a queue of applicants as an inventory of labor. The paper analyzes the consequences of the assumption that firms hold queues of applicants both for the decisions of a single firm and for a market composed of several such firms. The aggregate results suggest that considering such labor market queuing helps explain wage rigidity and involuntary unemployment.     

SOURCES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT: THE EFFECTS OF INTERNAL LABOR MARKETS AND WORKER VALUES

Data from the 1991 General Social Survey and National Organizations Survey are used to assess how organizational commitment is structured by one “demand side,” organizational-based factor, firm internal labor markets, and one “supply side,” individual-based factor, the values/preferences of workers. Findings indicate that organizational commitment is best explained by the joint influence of these two factors rather than by their independent effects. Specifically, firms with internal labor markets are conducive to the development of high levels of organizational commitment to the extent that what they offer, namely, opportunities for career-status and long-term employment “fit” what workers desire: job security and possibilities for promotion with their current employer. We offer directions for future research that may shed additional light on the manner in which internal labor markets and the values/preferences of workers may structure organizational commitment.     

Red light,green light: Color priming in financial decisions

Colors are widely present in the financial decision making arena: at firms’ and data providers’ websites; television reports; newspaper publications; advertizements; security market displays, with colors such as red and green prominently employed. Our experimental analysis involves a between subject design exposing subjects to financial substance on colored backgrounds and exploring the effect on their investment decisions. We focus on financial decisions under uncertainty about probability, examining subjects’ investment valuations and the probabilities they assign to the possible outcomes.This study explores the role of color exposure as a priming factor in financial decision making. Priming is a process of activating particular connections or associations in memory prior to carrying out an action or task. The associations occur when a certain stimulus or event increases the availability of specific information categories and, as a result, affect decision making.The results indicate that red color priming emphasizes value losses of the underlying asset. To wit, subjects who were exposed to red (R) assigned higher valuations and probabilities to events involving the loss domain, than to events involving the gain domain, relatively to the valuations assigned by subjects who were exposed to green (G). The aggregated evaluation given by the R subjects when the investment payback was subject to negative (positive) underlying asset returns was higher (lower) than that of the G subjects by roughly 15% (19%) of the invested amount.     

INNOVATION: ITS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ASPECTS AND SOME OF THEIR EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR MERGERS

Innovators may have incentives to incur the expense of the search for new knowledge even if others can use the results without contributing to the costs of the search for them. Why? Assume firms choose their actions independently. Assume new knowledge is a free public good: a firm can make the product at lower cost even if it spends nothing on research, if another does the research. The most plausible noncooperative equilibrium in this situation is stochastic: firms will decide what to do on the basis of a random device. The theory determines the probability that the firm spends nothing, or something, on research. In consequence, no firm can be certain that a rival will do the research; no firm can be certain of becoming a free rider. In consequence, there will be no relation on average between returns on research-outlays and size of outlays; but the yield on research always will be positive. Innovation can lead to differences among firms, but these differences should not persist, as firms can gain by eliminating them. In a non-cooperative equilibrium, where firms have different cost conditions, the allocation of output among them is inefficient. Such inefficiency can be eliminated if information about methods of production is sold, say by way of licensing. But royalty receipts are a very small fraction of total revenues, even in research and development intensive industries such as chemicals and scientific instruments. Merger is another avenue of cooperation. The theory which assumes research results are private predicts a positive relation between merger activity and technical change. Empirical evidence for the 1879–1930 inverval supports this prediction.     

HETEROGENEITY UNDER COMPETITION

A standard prediction of neoclassical microeconomics is that with perfect competition, free entry, and atomistic firms producing a homogeneous product, equilibrium finds all firms employing that technology which has minimum average cost. That competition drives out inefficient producers and reduces heterogeneity within industries is, consequently, a commonplace rule of thumb in economic thinking. This paper demonstrates that demand uncertainty is sufficient to produce heterogeneity in the equilibrium employment of production technologies and to permit the coexistence of producers exhibiting different minimum average costs. This heterogeneity is ubiquitous because the conditions for its presence are not stringent.     

Workers, Unions, and Takeovers

How do takeovers affect workers?? wages and job security in the short-run? What role does the labor union play in mitigating these effects? I answer these two questions by analyzing wage and employment outcomes of over 4,000 public firms that were acquired between 1981 and 2002, using establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I find that target establishments exhibit a net contraction in wages and employment, relative to comparable establishments after takeovers. Targets?? establishments in more unionized industries experience worse wage and employment outcomes after takeovers. These adverse effects are exacerbated when the establishment is located in a state with Right-to-work laws where unions face a less favorable bargaining environment. These findings indicate that target firms?? employees are negatively affected by takeovers and that their labor unions do not mitigate these negative effects.     

WAGES,RENTS, AND HETEROGENEOUS MOVING COSTS

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor and land markets was formalized by Roback (1982) . The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents as compensating firms and residents for inter‐regional differences in amenities. This paper extends the Roback model to allow for moving costs which vary among a city's residents and businesses. This modification of the model generates new interpretations of regional differences in rents and wages. The theoretical results suggest that the interpretation of inter‐city rent and wage differentials as compensating is misguided, that such differentials are inappropriate as weights in Quality of Life (QOL) comparisons, and stresses the importance of local housing market parameters in the determination of these differentials. The importance of amenities is retained, but housing supply becomes the main other determinant of regional rents. Housing supply was ignored in the literature following on Roback's initial insight. We show that interactions between amenities and housing supply will bias QOL rankings. Finally, we support the empirical importance of heterogeneous moving costs by demonstrating the effects of exogenous supply constraints on local housing prices. (JEL R31)     

Work discipline and lay-offs: Is there a trade-off between wages and job security?

It is usually argued that workers can trade off wages and job security, an argument with limited empirical support. This article develops a worker discipline model where work effort involves a moral hazard problem, such that firms set wages and monitoring levels to reduce potential shirking. It is shown that the efficacy of such incentives might be reduced by an increased probability of lay-offs, in which case job security and high wages will be positively and not inversely related. The author thanks the following individuals for helpful comments (not always accepted) on various drafts of this paper: Roy Boyd, Satya Das, Gerry Duguay, Herbert Gintis, Donald Katzner, Tong Hun Lee, Richard Perlman, James Rebitzer, G. Richard Meadows, Mark Meitzen, W. Stanley Seibert, and Geoffrey K. Turnbull. He also thanks Donna Bennett of the Social Science Research Facility at UWM for technical assistance.     

INFORMATION VALUE UNDER DEMAND UNCERTAINTY AND ENDOGENOUS MARKET LEADERSHIP

In an oligopoly model with firms choosing to produce in one of two periods, we identify the circumstance under which a firm's having early information regarding stochastic demand results in market leadership. High demand volatility leads to Stackelberg competition with the information‐advantaged firm leading. In the N‐firm case an equilibrium with multiple leaders and multiple followers emerges endogenously. In a duopoly information acquisition game we identify conditions that determine whether neither, one, or both firms will pay to acquire early information and note that one firm's obtaining early information may generate a positive externality benefitting its competitor. Both symmetric and asymmetric outcomes are possible and Stackelberg market leadership may occur in equilibrium, but only when firms have different costs of information. Our finding that an information advantage may convey leadership which then affects the value of information to the players applies to other settings exhibiting first‐mover advantage such as certain public good provision games. (JEL C72, D82, L13)     

From assets to agents of change: social justice,organizing, and youth development

Young people are joining together to demand a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. In the process, they are transforming policies and making institutions more accountable.     

开展海外能源合作,确保中国石油供应

中国的石油需求增长迅速已成为世界性共识.在国内资源条件不理想的情况下,中国的最佳选择是,积极开展海外能源合作,以确保石油供应.各种因素表明,中东产油国应是中国的首选合作方.在开展海外能源合作,与一些主要的石油生产国或石油输出国互动时,既要重视提高海外能源运输的安全系数,也应以积极、友善的姿态,与周边邻国合作,构建亚洲石油供应保障体系.     

Neighborhood effects of high unemployment rates: Welfare implications among different social groups

This study analyzes spillover effects of high unemployment rates on well-being using cross-sectional data for Germany. Context effects among the employed arise due to the informational character of high unemployment rates. Using data on job security perceptions as well as regional unemployment rates the paper shows that high unemployment rates cause negative externalities among the employed. In addition, subjective perceptions of job security depend on local labor market conditions indicating the informational value of employment data. For unemployed persons we cannot find any welfare gains owing to a social norm effect. Thus, the existence of a public bad is not more enjoyable the more people suffer from the public bad.     

The role of social capital in the job-related regional mobility decisions of unemployed individuals

Social capital is an important factor in interregional mobility. Although most prior research has focused on its role in the job-finding process, this study investigates the function of social networks and the social capital embedded therein after an interregional job offer has been received. This subject is particularly important for the unemployed, who should be able to exploit a mobility strategy to re-enter the labour market. Unemployed persons rely on their social networks to cope with joblessness, but there is evidence that social contexts can also act as mobility traps for this group (Windzio, 2004). We examine whether the unemployed weight social capital in a unique manner when making decisions regarding mobility.To investigate these issues, we combine a factorial survey module (FSM) with data from the German “Labour market and social security” (PASS) panel study to generate representative samples of both unemployed and employed persons with a randomised mobility stimulus in the form of hypothetical interregional job offers. Our results reveal the mobilising effects of exposure to conflict-laden relationships with the social network and the household. These are particularly pronounced for unemployed persons, highlighting the importance of factors that influence decision making about mobility beyond simple economic considerations.