Unions’ and Firms’ Attitudes Towards Research Joint Ventures: When Will the Incentives Be Aligned?

Abstract. This paper studies the relationship between unionization and innovation activity. Under a unionized labour market, we find that when R&D spillovers are relatively low (high), cooperative, as well as non‐cooperative R&D is a strategic substitute (complement). Furthermore, irrespective of the spillover rate, cooperation increases firms’ profits, whereas it increases union utility only if spillovers are sufficiently high. Alignment of incentives between firms and unions requires that firms pay transfers in the form of ‘rent‐sharing’ to make a Research Joint Venture attractive to unions. Our results suggest that if spillovers are low enough, the amount of money that firms give up in order to buy unions’ acquiescence weakens their incentives to form a Research Joint Venture.     

Women’s Employment Status and Hours Employed in Urban Brazil: Does Husbands’ Presence Matter?

The determinants of hours worked for employed women in developing countries is a little‐studied topic. We compare the determinants of employment with the determinants of hours worked for prime‐aged urban Brazilian women with and without husbands present. Given employment status, we find systematic differences for women in couple‐headed and female‐headed households. For the former, the same variables that affect employment do a good job of explaining hours worked. In contrast, our model generally fails to capture determinants of variation in hours worked for women who are sole heads of households. Sample selectivity functions in opposite directions for the two groups.     

WHO IS ‘BEHAVIORAL’? COGNITIVE ABILITY AND ANOMALOUS PREFERENCES

In this paper, we ask whether variation in preference anomalies is related to variation in cognitive ability. Evidence from a new laboratory study of Chilean high‐school students with similar schooling backgrounds shows that small‐stakes risk aversion and short‐run discounting are less common among those with higher standardized test scores. The relationship with test scores survives controls for parental education and wealth. We find some evidence that elementary‐school GPA is predictive of preferences measured at the end of high school. Two laboratory interventions provide suggestive evidence of a possible causal impact of cognitive resources on expressed preferences.     

DO FINANCIAL INCENTIVES AFFECT FIRMS’ DEMAND FOR DISABLED WORKERS?

A number of OECD countries aim to encourage work integration of disabled persons using quota policies. For instance, Austrian firms must provide at least one job to a disabled worker per 25 nondisabled workers and are subject to a tax if they do not. This “threshold design” provides causal estimates of the noncompliance tax on disabled employment if firms do not manipulate nondisabled employment; a lower and upper bound on the causal effect can be constructed if they do. Results indicate that firms with 25 nondisabled workers employ about 0.04 (or 12%) more disabled workers than without the tax; firms do manipulate employment of nondisabled workers but the lower bound on the employment effect of the quota remains positive; employment effects are stronger in low‐wage firms than in high‐wage firms; and firms subject to the quota of two disabled workers or more hire 0.08 more disabled workers per additional quota job. Moreover, increasing the noncompliance tax increases excess disabled employment, whereas paying a bonus to overcomplying firms slightly dampens the employment effects of the tax.     

Authentic Leadership: Getting Back to the Roots of the ‘Root Construct’?

In their 2011 review paper, Gardner et al. (Authentic Leadership: a review of the literature and research agenda. Leadership Quarterly, 22, pp. 1120–1145) concluded that the authentic leadership (AL) construct was still in the first stage of evolution, that of concept introduction and evaluation. At that time, the field was characterized by two types of contribution: conceptual expositions and largely quantitative research seeking to map out its antecedents and consequences, moderators and mediators. The current review aims to: (1) critically evaluate the development of the AL construct to the present time; and (2) taking this evaluation as a point of departure, propose the need for a radical re‐grounding of understanding of AL aimed at countering what the authors believe to be the substantive flaws in both its philosophical underpinnings and empirical grounding. The authors propose that these shortcomings have arisen owing to the failure of existential and other critiques of the dominant (normative and functionalist) discourse of AL to gain traction, and owing to an absence of practice‐based, qualitative research. As a strategic platform for the potential re‐grounding and relaunch of AL, the authors propose a radical return to the existential and practice roots of authenticity as the basis for a broader understanding of ‘authentic leadership’ as a ‘central organizing principle’ in leadership studies. Despite the flaws identified in the AL construct, the authors suggest that the notion of authenticity may still have a valuable role to play in the study of leadership: that role, however, can only be determined through a thorough understanding of AL as a practice‐based phenomenon.     

CAN WE INFER HOSPITAL QUALITY FROM MEDICAL GRADUATES’ RESIDENCY CHOICES?

This paper uses a novel approach to infer hospital technical quality from revealed preferences over residency programs. Specifically, we use Spanish medical graduates’ residency choices made from 1995 to 2000. We start by estimating a model of medical graduates preferences that controls for hospital, proximity, specialty, and gender effects. We interpret the coefficients on the hospital dummy variables as measures of medical graduates’ preferences over hospitals. Our results show that graduates do indeed discriminate between hospitals and that their preferences correlate with hospital‐specific covariates arguably related to hospital training quality. We then show that preferences from medical graduates are positively and statistically significantly correlated with risk‐adjusted hospital rankings based on five alternative outcome measures. Finally, we construct reputation scores for each hospital using news story counts in three media outlets and find that medical graduates’ preferences are especially valuable for inference of hospital technical quality of care as they do not simply reflect well known reputation.     

Do Chief Executives’ Traits Affect the Financial Performance of Risk‐trading Firms? Evidence from the UK Insurance Industry

We examine the effects of four key dimensions of Chief Executive Officers’ (CEOs’) traits on six financial performance metrics using panel data for 1999?2012 drawn from the UK's property?casualty insurance industry. We find that CEO insurance experience and CEO financial expertise enhance financial performance, while two other CEO traits ? power and age ? are generally not significant. Our results thus reinforce the importance of CEO insurance industry expertise and CEO financial expertise in the management and trading of risks. Our results have potential commercial and policy implications.     

2019:关键开局

位于上海市徐汇区武康路103号甲的一栋小楼,是长三角区域合作办公室所在地。武康路本是一个幽静安逸、车流稀少的路段,2019年以来,这个路段突然繁忙起来,进进出出的人和车络绎不绝,绿树掩映中的那栋小楼在晚间也经常灯火通明。     

有感于“以××落实××”

一看“以××落实××”,也许会让人丈二和尚摸不着头脑,其实十分简单,有例为证——     

从·速·处·理

“总书记是百姓的贴心人” 2000年2月19日，新千年第一个元宵节的下午，一辆中巴车穿过广东茂名高州市漫山遍野的荔枝林，停在了高州市根子镇这座小山上的观荔亭旁。     

补锅·风险·分手·点火

不利苗头显露出时,不是简单地扼杀于摇篮之中,反而四处煽风点火,主动将局面导入更加混乱、更加危险的地步。补锅是一门老手艺,补锅匠为客户补锅的时候,一定是拿到破锅先敲三敲,借以判断破损的位置及程度,然后就会和客户商量说:这锅某处有3分长的裂缝,需要将敲它到5分,才方便下手修补,如何?李宗吾据此引申出一个“补锅法”:凡你需要解决任何问题,一定要想方设法先将该问题夸大或搞大,然后再施展各种手段予以解决一     

Reading the Tea Leaves—Did Citigroup Risk Their Reputation During 2004–2005?Presented at ICAA's Second International Conference Globalization – The Good Corporation June 26–28, 2007 Baruch College,New York City

In this paper, we challenge the conventional wisdom that high‐quality news reports of questionable corporate business practices will stimulate various marketplace negative responses, which in turn, will pressure management to undertake actions designed to protect the organization's reputation. Analysis is confined to a relatively brief period of bad news relating to Citigroup, Inc. We conclude that while none of the expected negative marketplace responses are evident in widely available news sources, the CEO did exhibit significant concern and instituted a targeted reputation risk management program. In the absence of a concerned CEO, analysts should not, we suggest, expect a management team to respond with reputation‐enhancing corrective action solely as a reaction to negative publicity regarding questionable business practices.     

2019第二届绿色能源与可持续发展国际会议(GESD 2019)

正中国·上海2019年10月18—20日GESD 2019将于2019年10月18日至20日在中国上海召开,本会议主要围绕"绿色能源与可持续发展"的最新研究领域而展开,致力于促进世界顶尖创新者、科学家、学者、研究人员和思想领导者之间的交流和探讨,促进数据科学与信息技术领域的发展,在会议的这三天里,您将有机会聆听到前沿的学术报告,