VOLATILITY,LABOR MARKET FLEXIBILITY,AND THE PATTERN OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

This paper studies the link between volatility, labor market flexibility, and international trade. International differences in labor market regulations affect how firms can adjust to idiosyncratic shocks. These institutional differences interact with sector specific differences in volatility (the variance of the firm‐specific shocks in a sector) to generate a new source of comparative advantage. Other things equal, countries with more flexible labor markets specialize in sectors with higher volatility. Empirical evidence for a large sample of countries strongly supports this theory: the exports of countries with more flexible labor markets are biased towards high‐volatility sectors. We show how differences in labor market institutions can be parsimoniously integrated into the workhorse model of Ricardian comparative advantage of Dornbusch, Fischer, and Samuelson (1977, American Economic Review, 67, 823–839). We also show how our model can be extended to multiple factors of production.     

CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN COOPERATION AND MINIMUM WAGE REGULATION

In a cross‐section of countries, state regulation of labor markets is negatively correlated with the quality of labor relations. In this paper, we argue that these facts reflect different ways of regulating labor markets, either through the state or through the civil society, depending on the degree of cooperation in the economy. We rationalize these facts with a model of learning of the quality of labor relations. Distrustful labor relations lead to low unionization and high demand for direct state regulation of wages. In turn, state regulation crowds out the possibility for workers to experiment negotiation and learn about the potential cooperative nature of labor relations. This crowding out effect can give rise to multiple equilibria: a “good” equilibrium characterized by cooperative labor relations and high union density, leading to low state regulation; and a “bad” equilibrium, characterized by distrustful labor relations, low union density, and strong state regulation of the minimum wage.     

Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wage Growth: An AKM Approach

This paper estimates a wage growth equation containing human capital variables known from the traditional Mincerian wage equation with year, worker and firm fixed effects included as well. The paper thus contributes further to the large empirical literature on unobserved heterogeneity following the work of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis [1999; Econometrica 67(2): 251–333]. Our main contribution is to extend the analysis from wage levels to wage growth. The specification enables us to estimate the individual‐specific and firm‐specific fixed effects and their degree of explanation on wage growth. The analysis is conducted using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data from 1980 to 2006. We find that the worker fixed effect dominates both the firm fixed effect and the effect of the observed covariates. Worker effects are estimated to explain 7–12 per cent of the variance in wage growth whereas firm effects are estimated to explain 4–10 per cent. We furthermore find a negative correlation between the worker and firm effects, as do nearly all authors examining wage level equations.     

An economic model of world energy 1900–2020

This report presents a model of the supply and demand for the world's energy during the period from 1900 to 2020. This model leads to the conclusion that even without new kinds of energy sources becoming practical, world energy demand can be met during the next 50 years with only a gradual increase in energy costs. Assumptions with respect to exhaustion of reserves that I regard as mildly conservative lead to a demand that can be satisfied by a 1.5 per cent per year energy price increase. This would raise the percentage of world GNP devoted to primary energy from the present 3–4 per cent in the year 2020. Eliminating per capita economic growth would reduce the required annual price increase only from 1.5 to 1.8 per cent. Eliminating normal technological progress in existing energy technologies would increase the required annual price increase from 1.5 to 2.7 per cent. The model shows oil and gas reaching their maximum share of the energy market during the 1980's. By 2020 approximately 50 per cent of all energy comes from nuclear power.The model provides a framework for the analysis of the world energy market under a wide variety of assumptions. In particular, the model allows explicitly for assumptions about technological progress, economies and diseconomies of scale, and the rate of substitution of cheaper energy sources for more expensive ones.     

Career Patterns in the U.S. Army Officer Corps

In order to examine the careers of high attaining personnel in a large organizational labor market, variation in 5,114 U.S. Army officer careers is shown to be reducible to a small number of career rhythms with similar speeds in attainment of promotions and credentials. Early promotion to captain, early awarding of a temporary higher rank during war, and career entry close to the onset of war are consistently associated with “star” careers. This finding suggests that career outcomes are driven by temporal proximity to exogenous events like wars and cumulative advantage processes in which benefits accrue to early achievements.     

APPROXIMATE QUEUEING NETWORK MODELS FOR CLOSED FABRICATION/ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS. PART I: SINGLE LEVEL SYSTEMS

We address the issue of performance analysis of fabrication/assembly (F/A) systems, which are systems that first fabricate components and then join the components and subassemblies into a product. Here we consider an F/A system consisting of a single assembly station with input from K fabrication stations. We assume that the system uses a Kanban control mechanism with a fixed number of kanbans circulating between each input station and the assembly station. Even with Markovian assumptions, computing an exact solution for the performance evaluation of such systems becomes intractable due to an explosion in the state-space. We develop computationally efficient algorithms to approximate the throughput and mean queue lengths. The accuracy of the approximations is studied by comparison to exact results (K = 2) and to simulations (K > 2). Part II of this paper demonstrates how these models can be used as building blocks to evaluate more complex F/A systems with multiple levels of assembly stations.     

Fertility and Employment in Italy,France, and the UK

Abstract. According to the agenda for employment set by the European Union in 2000 for the following 10 years, the target for female employment was set at 60 per cent for the year 2010. Although Northern and most Continental countries have achieved this quantitative target, the Mediterranean countries are lagging behind. Labor market policies should be aimed to encourage women's participation and reduce the cost of working. However, the persistence of a negative relationship between participation and fertility in these countries implies that it is important to take fertility into account. We analyse a model of labor supply and fertility, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for the period 1994–2000, merged with regional data describing the available labor market opportunities in the households’ environment.     

Building strategy on technological resources and commercial proactiveness: The Gemplus case

This article uses the resource-based framework for analyzing the strategy of Gemplus, a spin-off of the French group Thomson, that has grown by 50 per cent each year since its creation in 1988. Three points are highlighted: (1) Gemplus combined various resources in order to build a distinctive competence base in three areas: smart cards design, mass production and mass customization, commercial capabilities. (2) The company's strategy is two-fold: a constant enlargement of the spectrum of applications of its core product (i.e. the smart card), supported by technology exploitation and commercial awareness, and an aggressive search for new geographical markets, supported by commercial proactiveness. (3) Gemplus continuously nurtures its resource base through a vast network of partners (with means such as R&D and joint-ventures). To summarize, we explain the success of Gemplus by a talented balance between an outside-in and an inside-out approach.     

Interventions Targeting Deep Tissue Lymph Nodes May Not Effectively Reduce the Risk of Salmonellosis from Ground Pork Consumption: A Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment

The inclusion of deep tissue lymph nodes (DTLNs) or nonvisceral lymph nodes contaminated with Salmonella in wholesale fresh ground pork (WFGP) production may pose risks to public health. To assess the relative contribution of DTLNs to human salmonellosis occurrence associated with ground pork consumption and to investigate potential critical control points in the slaughter‐to‐table continuum for the control of human salmonellosis in the United States, a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) model was established. The model predicted an average of 45 cases of salmonellosis (95% CI = [19, 71]) per 100,000 Americans annually due to WFGP consumption. Sensitivity analysis of all stochastic input variables showed that cooking temperature was the most influential parameter for reducing salmonellosis cases associated with WFGP meals, followed by storage temperature and Salmonella concentration on contaminated carcass surface before fabrication. The input variables were grouped to represent three main factors along the slaughter‐to‐table chain influencing Salmonella doses ingested via WFGP meals: DTLN‐related factors, factors at processing other than DTLNs, and consumer‐related factors. The evaluation of the impact of each group of factors by second‐order Monte Carlo simulation showed that DTLN‐related factors had the lowest impact on the risk estimate among the three groups of factors. These findings indicate that interventions to reduce Salmonella contamination in DTLNs or to remove DTLNs from WFGP products may be less critical for reducing human infections attributable to ground pork than improving consumers’ cooking habits or interventions of carcass decontamination at processing.     

New Evidence on the Impact of Legal Status on Immigrant Labor Market Performance: The Spanish Case

Using a recent and rich Spanish data set on immigrants, we examine the impact of legal status on two measures of labor market performance: the likelihood of being employed and earnings. The Spanish case is of special interest given the rapid increase in immigration over the past 15 years and the large number of amnesties granted during the 1990s and 2000s. We find that a 10 per cent increase in the share of legal immigrants would raise the overall employment likelihood of immigrants by 4 percentage points and their earnings by 3.3 per cent. The results, which prove robust to alternative sample specifications, confirm the well‐known importance of being legal for the economic assimilation of immigrants.     

中国农业全要素生产率的再检验——基于省级面板数据农业中间消耗品的分析

提高农业全要素生产率（ATFP）是推进农业高质量发展的必然选择。通过引入农业中间消耗品，利用LP方法测算1999-2016年中国30个省市ATFP，并基于空间杜宾模型分析影响ATFP的关键因素。主要研究结论包括：ATFP对数值集中在[6.0，6.5]区间，总体呈现上升趋势，且存在σ收敛；全局Moran's I指数低于0，即ATFP呈现空间负相关关系，其空间集聚效应减弱，但分布格局相对稳定；大部分省市ATFP的增长率总体呈现先升后降的变化趋势，部分省份明显存在多个峰值，尤以西部地区的省市最为明显；农村人力资本及农村金融发展水平对ATFP的影响系数显著为正，但仅农村人力资本的空间交互作用对本地区的影响显著，即农村人力资本有助于提升邻近地区的ATFP；农业地位、农业内部经济结构及农田受灾率的系数显著为负，但仅农业内部经济结构的空间溢出作用显著。     

Can corporate planning ‘Invent’ the future of the third world?

Corporate planners, accustomed to stretch their mind in time will need to distend it in geographic space as well. Seemingly unrelated events in faraway countries suddenly implicate the work of planners, their homes and their futures. Europe and Japan rely for 95 per cent of their petroleum requirements upon the Third World. Huge pipelines carrying natural gas connect Soviet Russia with the United States and Europe. One electric power grid will eventually tie Europe together. Europe depends for 10 million guest workers upon southern countries, including North Africa and the Near East. Energy and labor are weighty factors in the increasing inter-dependence of nations. The author argues that these and related demands will require creative responses from corporate planners.     

Labor-use efficiency in Indian banking: A branch-level analysis

This paper uses data envelopment analysis to measure labor-use efficiency of individual branches of a large public sector bank with a sizable network of branches across India. We find considerable variation in the average levels of efficiency of bank branches across the four metropolitan regions considered in this study. In this context, we introduce the concept of area or spatial efficiency for each region relative to the nation as a whole. Our findings suggest that the policies, procedures, and incentives handed down from the corporate level cannot fully neutralize the detrimental influence of the local work culture across different regions. Most of the potential reduction in labor cost appears to be coming from possible downsizing in the clerical and subordinate staff. Our analysis identifies branches that operate at very low levels of labor-use efficiency and possible candidates for increased supervision and control.     

Capital‐skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis

The supply and price of skilled labor relative to unskilled labor have changed dramatically over the postwar period. The relative quantity of skilled labor has increased substantially, and the skill premium, which is the wage of skilled labor relative to that of unskilled labor, has grown significantly since 1980. Many studies have found that accounting for the increase in the skill premium on the basis of observable variables is difficult and have concluded implicitly that latent skill‐biased technological change must be the main factor responsible. This paper examines that view systematically. We develop a framework that provides a simple, explicit economic mechanism for understanding skill‐biased technological change in terms of observable variables, and we use the framework to evaluate the fraction of variation in the skill premium that can be accounted for by changes in observed factor quantities. We find that with capital‐skill complementarity, changes in observed inputs alone can account for most of the variations in the skill premium over the last 30 years.     

A 2-approximation for the preceding-and-crossing structured 2-interval pattern problem

The 2-interval pattern problem over its various models and restrictions was proposed by Vialette (2004) for the application of RNA secondary structure prediction. We present an O(n ³logn)-time 2-approximation algorithm for the problem of finding a largest { < ,-structured subset of 2-intervals given an input 2-interval set of size n. This greatly improves the previous best approximation ratio of 6 by Crochemore et al. (2005).     

European competitiveness: Bargaining between boom and gloom

The newly-renamed European Union is in crisis from economic weakness and political claustrophia. Ralf Boscheck argues that, in addition to a suggested ‘New Founding Contract’, broad-based development of the EU requires that priority is given to adjusting competitive specialization and to centralizing political power. The management of internal and external bargaining is critical. per cent, and 19 per cent respectively. EUROSTAT (1994).     

Uncertainty and Variability in Health-Related Damages from Coal-Fired Power Plants in the United States

The health‐related damages associated with emissions from coal‐fired power plants can vary greatly across facilities as a function of plant, site, and population characteristics, but the degree of variability and the contributing factors have not been formally evaluated. In this study, we modeled the monetized damages associated with 407 coal‐fired power plants in the United States, focusing on premature mortality from fine particulate matter (PM_2.5). We applied a reduced‐form chemistry‐transport model accounting for primary PM_2.5 emissions and the influence of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions on secondary particulate formation. Outputs were linked with a concentration‐response function for PM_2.5‐related mortality that incorporated nonlinearities and model uncertainty. We valued mortality with a value of statistical life approach, characterizing and propagating uncertainties in all model elements. At the median of the plant‐specific uncertainty distributions, damages across plants ranged from $30,000 to $500,000 per ton of PM_2.5, $6,000 to $50,000 per ton of SO₂, $500 to $15,000 per ton of NO_x, and $0.02 to $1.57 per kilowatt‐hour of electricity generated. Variability in damages per ton of emissions was almost entirely explained by population exposure per unit emissions (intake fraction), which itself was related to atmospheric conditions and the population size at various distances from the power plant. Variability in damages per kilowatt‐hour was highly correlated with SO₂ emissions, related to fuel and control technology characteristics, but was also correlated with atmospheric conditions and population size at various distances. Our findings emphasize that control strategies that consider variability in damages across facilities would yield more efficient outcomes.     

Guidelines for Improving the Power Values of Statistical Tests for Nonresponse Bias Assessment in OM Research

The assessment of nonresponse bias in survey‐based empirical studies plays an important role in establishing the credibility of research results. Statistical methods that involve the comparison of responses from two groups (e.g., early vs. late respondents) on multiple characteristics, which are relevant to the study, are frequently utilized in the assessment of nonresponse bias. We consider the concepts of individual and complete statistical power used for multiple testing and show their relevance for determining the number of statistical tests to perform when assessing nonresponse bias. Our analysis of factors that influence both individual and complete power levels, yielded recommendations that can be used by operations management (OM) empirical researchers to improve their assessment of nonresponse bias. A power analysis of 61 survey‐based research papers published in three prestigious academic operations management journals, over the last decade, showed the occurrence of very low (<0.4) power levels in some of the statistical tests used for assessing nonresponse bias. Such low power levels can lead to erroneous conclusions about nonresponse bias, and are indicators of the need for more rigor in the assessment of nonresponse bias in OM research.     

Public Sector Wage Premium in Canada: Evidence from Labour Force Survey

Although previous research has pointed to a public/private sector wage gap for men and women in Canada, the extent of this gap has not been measured in recent years. Using data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey for September 2008, and using an endogenous switching regression framework to control for self‐selection, I find that both men and women earn a wage premium in the public sector in Canada, although the premium is higher for women. The pure wage premium or economic rent that public sector workers receive relative to their counterparts in the private sector is $1.09, or 5.4 per cent for men and $3.15, or 20 per cent for women. An analysis of selection in the pubic/private sector reveals that public sectors workers are ‘positively selected’ on observables and consist of the ‘cream of the crop’.     

Labor market integration of refugees: An institutional country-comparative perspective

To examine variations in refugee labor market integration from country to country we first conceptualize integration success as an attribute and outcome of a two-way process involving multiple actors whose roles and activities are enabled and restricted by the institutional environment in the host country. We then develop a framework that specifies macro factors influencing successful refugee labor market integration. In particular, our framework elucidates how regulative, cognitive, and normative aspects of the national institutional environment in the host country create different conditions for refugee employment, thereby shaping three stages of the integration process: (1) arrival and asylum procedure; (2) finding employment; and (3) workplace inclusion. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of this research.