Unions,Firing Costs,and Unemployment

Abstract. We study the effects of firing costs in unionized economies with heterogeneous workers. We consider an overlapping generations model where workers participate in the labour market both when young and when old. All workers belong to the same union that sets wages unilaterally. We find that at given wages firing costs increase youth unemployment and decrease old‐age unemployment. However, once the wage response is considered, firing costs increase both youth and old‐age unemployment. Indeed, knowing that when firing costs are higher firms refrain from firing, the union increases the wage of old workers, and, therefore, old‐age unemployment increases.     

Silent Running: Tacit,Discursive and Psychological Aspects of Management in a Top UK Advertising Agency

In old American World War II movies submarine commanders called for ‘silent running’ when the enemy were near. No orders were issued but anarchy did not ensue. Everyone knew what to do. This paper describes a research study of one of the top five UK advertising agencies, in which management appeared silent in the sense that explicit, overt, bureaucratic, sanction‐backed directive corporate authority was not evident. But this agency is one of the most successful, serious, creative, effective, least showbizzy agencies in the industry. It is a good example of an organization which manages and sells knowledge: knowledge about advertising, about consumers and about creative craft. The research used critical discourse analysis to explore the ways in which power, authority and professional identity were discursively reproduced in the service of corporate instrumentality. As a real, concrete source of authority and direction, ‘management’ seemed silent, yet as a discursive construction its controlling presence was psychologically pervasive     

货币政策非对称性与惰性区域的识别和检验

在对货币当局政策偏好分析的基础上,构建更为一般的货币政策反应模型,用于识别名义利率对通胀缺口和产出缺口的非线性和非对称调整特征以及货币政策对通货膨胀和产出变化的惰性属性。采用7天期银行间同业拆借加权平均利率作为名义利率的代理变量,对上述货币政策反应模型进行广义矩估计,并对参数进行约束检验。研究结果表明,中国货币政策对通货膨胀的调整存在明显的惰性区域,即当通货膨胀率在目标通货膨胀率的较小范围内波动时,利率并未针对通货膨胀与目标通货膨胀率的偏离做出调整,而当通货膨胀率与目标通货膨胀率的偏离(即通胀缺口)超过惰性区域时,货币当局开始针对通胀缺口调整利率,并且随着通胀缺口的增大,利率对通货膨胀的反应越来越强烈,存在明显的非线性调整特征。     

Using a Grey model optimized by Differential Evolution algorithm to forecast the per capita annual net income of rural households in China

China is a major developing country where farmers account for over 57% of the population. Thus, promoting a rural economy is crucial if the Chinese government is to improve the quality of life of the nation as a whole. To frame scientific and effective rural policy or economic plans, it is useful and necessary for the government to predict the income of rural households. However, making such a prediction is challenging because rural households income is influenced by many factors, such as natural disasters. Based on the Grey Theory and the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm, this study first developed a high-precision hybrid model, DE-GM(1,1) to forecast the per capita annual net income of rural households in China. By applying the DE algorithm to the optimization of the parameter λ, which was generally set equal to 0.5 in GM(1,1), we obtained more accurate forecasting results. Furthermore, the DE-Rolling-GM(1,1) was constructed by introducing the Rolling Mechanism. By analyzing the historical data of per capita annual net income of rural households in China from 1991 to 2008, we found that DE-Rolling-GM(1,1) can significantly improve the prediction precision when compared to traditional models.     

Intergenerational Considerations Affecting the Future of Nuclear Power: Equity as a Framework for Assessing Fuel Cycles

Alternative fuel cycles are being considered in an effort to prolong uranium fuel supplies for thousands of years to come and to manage nuclear waste. These strategies bring with them different benefits and burdens for the present generation and for future generations. In this article, we present a method that provides insight into future fuel cycle alternatives and into the conflicts arising between generations within the framework of intergenerational equity. A set of intersubjective values is drawn from the notion of sustainable development. By operationalizing these values and mapping out their impacts, value criteria are introduced for the assessment of fuel cycles, which are based on the distribution of burdens and benefits between generations. The once‐through fuel cycle currently deployed in the United States and three future fuel cycles are subsequently assessed according to these criteria. The four alternatives are then compared in an integrated analysis in which we shed light on the implicit tradeoffs made by decisionmakers when they choose a certain fuel cycle. When choosing a fuel cycle, what are the societal costs and burdens accepted for each generation and how can these factors be justified? This article presents an integrated decision‐making method, which considers intergenerational aspects of such decisions; this method could also be applied to other technologies.     

Duties to Future Generations, Proxy Consent, Intra- and Intergenerational Equity: The Case of Nuclear Waste

How does one deal with problems of risk transfer if it is the case that increasing risks to future generations decreases the risks to present generations, and increasing the risks to present generations decreases the risks to future generations? In the case of high‐level nuclear waste and spent fuel, for example, should billions of dollars be spent to secure the wastes and protect future generations, or should the same monies be spent on present‐day needs, under the assumption that future generations will be better able to deal with the waste than we are at present? Although these questions may appear insoluble, they become less so when one recognizes several common ethical and logical errors that beset many discussions of technological risk and duties to future generations. After briefly explaining the grounds for inter‐ and intragenerational equity, this analysis argues for three propositions about many treatments of inter‐ and intragenerational ethics: (1) these discussions often err because they frame policy arguments in terms that ignore rights and focus on maximizing welfare or utility, (2) they err because they frequently frame policy arguments in ways that set inter‐ and intragenerational welfare at odds, when they are not, because they ignore ameliorating practices and the conditions for proxy consent, and (3) they also err because they engage in risk practices that do not match their risk rhetoric.     

Examining the Antecedents and Consequences of CIO Strategic Decision‐Making Authority: An Empirical Study*

Despite the strategic importance of information technology (IT) to contemporary firms, chief information officers (CIO) often still have varying degrees of strategic decision‐making authority. In this study, we apply the theory of managerial discretion to define CIO strategic decision‐making authority and argue that the CIO's level of strategic decision‐making authority directly influences IT's contribution to organization performance. We also draw on the power and politics perspective in the strategic decision‐making literature to identify the direct antecedents to the CIO's strategic decision‐making authority. A theoretical model is presented and empirically tested using survey data collected from a cross‐industry sample of 174 matched pairs of CIOs and top business executives through structural equation modeling. The results suggest that organizational climate, organizational support for IT, the CIO's structural power, the CIO's level of strategic effectiveness, and a strong partnership between the CIO and top management team directly influence the CIO's level of strategic decision‐making authority within the organization. The results also suggest that the CIO's strategic decision‐making authority in the organization directly influences the contribution of IT to firm performance and that effective CIOs have a greater influence on IT's contribution when provided with strategic decision‐making authority.     

Single-Parenthood and Poverty in Great Britain

ABSTRACT This paper examines empirically the relationship between single-parenthood and absolute poverty in Great Britain. Data from two years of the Family Expenditure Survey are used (1968 and 1986). A poverty measure that is additively decomposable with population share weights, and consistent with Sen's axiomatic approach to poverty measurement, is used to decompose the total amount of poverty into the “shares” accruing to different types of households (i.e. female and male single-parents, two-parent households and “other” types of households). Three main conclusions concerning the poverty experience of British single-parents emerge from the analysis. The first is that poverty rates for single-parent households are generally higher than the average for all households. However, this disadvantage is not as large as one might expect, especially when a comparison is made with two-parent households. The second is that single-parent households are over-represented in the ranks of the poor. That is, their “share” of total poverty is greater than their population share. The third is that increasing single-parenthood has had little impact on the overall trend in absolute poverty in the period 1968 to 1986.     

存在二手市场时耐用品垄断厂商再制造策略研究

运用稳态均衡分析方法，利用消费者效用模型分析存在二手市场时耐用品垄断厂商再制造策略选择问题。通过模型分析得到，耐用品垄断厂商选择再制造策略的条件为：新耐用品成本、再制造成本以及旧耐用品贬值率低于临界值，而消费者认可程度高于临界值。耐用品垄断厂商选择再制造策略不仅会对新耐用品市场产生挤兑效应，而且也会对二手市场产生挤兑效应。存在旧耐用品再利用率的临界值，当耐用品垄断厂商的旧耐用品再利用率高于该临界值时，选择再制造策略可以提高消费者对耐用品的需求量，产生市场增长效应；新耐用品的生产成本正向影响市场增长效应。     

Equivalence Scales Reconsidered

The paper proposes a new and normative approach for adjusting households’ incomes in order to account for the heterogeneity of needs across income recipients when measuring inequality and welfare. We derive the implications for the structure of the adjustment method of two conditions concerned with the way the ranking of situations is modified by a change in the reference household type and by more equally distributed living standards across households. Our results suggest that concern for greater equality in living standards conflicts with the basic welfarist principle of symmetrical treatment of individuals that is at the core of the standard equivalence scale approach.     

More than just two offices.

Some believe that there is an entrepreneur inside every one of us just waiting to get out (and get rich!). Others counter with the old saw that physicians make poor businessmen and businesswomen. Although we tend to laugh at old saws, they often provide significant insight. Thus, when considering becoming an entrepreneur, perhaps one should begin by pondering the business and philosophical differences between a medical practice and an entrepreneurial endeavor.     

Shocks,Stocks, and Socks: Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss

We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of allowing for the fact that households buy durable as well as non‐durable goods. The theoretical analysis shows that in the short run households can cut back significantly on total expenditures without a significant fall in welfare if they concentrate their budget reductions on durables. We then present an empirical analysis based on a Canadian survey of workers who experienced a job separation. Exploiting changes in the unemployment insurance system over our sample period we show that cuts in UI benefits lead to reductions in total expenditure with a stronger impact on clothing than on food expenditures. Our empirical strategy allows that these expenditures may be non‐separable from employment status. The effects we find are particularly strong for households with no liquid assets before the spell started. These qualitative findings are in precise agreement with the theoretical predictions. (JEL: D11, D12, D91, J65)     

TRANSFERABLE CONTROL

In this paper, we introduce the notion of transferable control, defined as a situation where one party (the principal, say) can transfer control to another party (the agent) but cannot commit herself to do so. One theoretical foundation for this notion builds on the distinction between formal and real authority introduced by Aghion and Tirole, in which the actual exercise of authority may require noncontractible information, absent which formal control rights are vacuous. We use this notion to study the extent to which control transfers may allow an agent to reveal information regarding his ability or willingness to cooperate with the principal in the future. We show that the distinction between contractible and transferable control can drastically influence how learning takes place: with contractible control, information about the agent can often be acquired through revelation mechanisms that involve communication and message‐contingent control allocations; in contrast, when control is transferable but not contractible, it can be optimal to transfer control unconditionally and learn instead from the way in which the agent exercises control. (JEL: C70, C72, D23, L2)     

Unemployment and Retirement in a Model with Age‐specific Heterogeneity

This paper presents a model where young and old workers compete for one type of jobs in the presence of retirement opportunity. Within this framework, we show that increased retirement opportunities (such as a decrease of the retirement age) has most of the time a depressing impact on the unemployment rate. Indeed the number of vacancies posted by firms is influenced by the probability that an old worker is going into retirement. We show that the degree to which younger workers are influenced by retirement of older workers depends on the relative productivity of young and older workers. It is only when older workers are much more productive than young workers that retirement may benefit to unemployment.     

From solidarity to division: An analysis of Lech Wałęsa's transition to constituted leadership

This essay analyzes the capacity and constraints of authority in the contexts of constituted vs. non-constituted leadership. Using the experience of Lech Wa??sa's transition from the leader of the Solidarity social movement to the president of Poland as a case study, this article evaluates the portability of leadership skills and informal authority to the changing operational context of constituted leadership. It argues that the constraints of formal authority are significantly higher than those imposed on non-constituted leaders. As a result, while constituted leaders may have greater resources available to broadcast power, the allocation of these resources entails higher expectation for their custodians. This analysis concludes that a successful transition from non-constituted to constituted leadership is possible only when the leader manages to build new bases of informal authority. Wa??sa failed to expand his informal authority and was unsuccessful at transferring his leadership skills to the presidency.     

家族企业跨代资源整合与组合创业

跨代创业是家族企业传承和永续经营的核心问题,涉及到两代企业家之间的资源整合和传承创新.现有研究大多关注家族企业的独特资源对创业的影响,但忽视了家族企业资源在代际之间形成的异质性结构及其在传承过程中的动态变化,二代涉入带来的资源异质性及其与一代资源之间的整合是组合创业的资源基础,也是推动跨代创业的动力.本文从资源基础观的角度出发,探究家族跨代资源异质性及其整合对家族企业创业行为的影响.基于1999年-2012年中国上市家族企业的数据进行回归分析,结果显示:家族二代异质性的知识资源对家族企业组合创业有显著的促进作用,而家族一代社会资本与二代异质性资源的整合也会正向影响家族企业的组合创业行为.分析结果还表明,地区市场化水平会负向调节知识资源异质性与家族企业组合创业的关系.本文结论对资源观在家族企业研究中的应用以及转型经济背景下的组合创业研究有重要贡献.     

Assessing Infection Control Measures for Pandemic Influenza

We construct a mathematical model of aerosol (i.e., droplet-nuclei) transmission of influenza within a household containing one infected and embed it into an epidemic households model in which infecteds occasionally infect someone from another household; in a companion paper, we argue that the contribution from contact transmission is trivial for influenza and the contribution from droplet transmission is likely to be small. Our model predicts that the key infection control measure is the use of N95 respirators, and that the combination of respirators, humidifiers, and ventilation reduces the threshold parameter (which dictates whether or not an epidemic breaks out) by ≈20% if 70% of households comply, and by ≈40% if 70% of households and workplaces comply (≈28% reduction would have been required to control the 1918 pandemic). However, only ≈30% of the benefits in the household are achieved if these interventions are used only after the infected develops symptoms. It is also important for people to sleep in separate bedrooms throughout the pandemic, space permitting. Surgical masks with a device (e.g., nylon hosiery) to reduce face-seal leakage are a reasonable alternative to N95 respirators if the latter are in short supply.     

Generations in organizations

Despite a rich tradition of scholarship across many disciplines, organizational research on the topic of generations has been relatively scarce. In this article we develop a framework for studying generations in organizations that draws on multiple conceptualizations across multiple disciplines. Our framework distills two distinct critical elements that give ‘generations’ agency in organizational settings – chronology (the idea that a unique location in time creates a ‘generation’) and genealogy (the idea that generations are linked through the transmission/descent of ideas/values/skills/knowledge). After an historic overview of the evolution of the topic of generations, we review generational research across the fields of political sociology, family sociology, psychology, social anthropology, cultural sociology, demography, and gerontology. Our framework elucidates how linkages between generations, based on chronology and genealogy, can be characterized in organizations and how the nature of intergenerational contact and transfer predicts a wide range of organizational outcomes such as change/innovation, conflict, turnover, and socialization. We outline the implications of this framework for future research on generations in organizations.     

Household‐Level Coastal Adaptation and Its Drivers: A Systematic Case Study Review

Evidence‐based information on household‐level adaptation is an important element of integrated management of vulnerable coastal regions. A growing number of empirical studies deal with household‐level adaptation at the coast in different regions. This article provides a systematic review of these studies. We analyze studies according to how households in different parts of the world are currently adapting, or how they are intending to adapt, and identify explanatory factors for adaptation behavior and intention. We find that households implement a broad range of adaptation measures and that adaptation behavior is explained by individual factors such as socioeconomic and cognitive variables, experience, and perceived responsibilities. Nonpersonal characteristics have also been used to explain adaptation behavior and intention but have not been extensively investigated. Few studies employ qualitative research methods and use inductive approaches as well as models stemming from behavioral economics. Our findings suggest that coastal risk management policies should communicate the efficacy of household‐level adaptation, in addition to information about flood risk, in order to encourage coastal households in their adaptation activities. In this context, we discuss the role of resources and responsibility of households for their adaptation behavior. We describe the lessons learnt and formulate a research agenda on household‐level adaptation to coastal flood risk. In practice, coastal risk management policies should further promote individually driven adaptation by integrating it in adaptation strategies and processes.     

中国居民代际收入流动性的变化趋势及影响机制研究

基于1989~2015年共计10轮CHNS数据,本文采用代际收入弹性和代际收入秩关联系数双重测度指标对我国居民代际收入流动性进行了测算,发现代际收入流动性在1991~2004年期间基本保持稳定,2004年以后呈现出不断上升的变化趋势。基于收入分组视角的研究发现,各收入组2004年以后代际收入阶层固化程度均有所降低,但高收入组和低收入组的固化程度远高于其他各组,中等收入群体是目前我国保持较高代际收入流动性的主要动力来源。从城乡差异视角看,受大规模农村劳动力向城镇流动的影响,2000年后农村家庭的代际流动性显著提升,且持续高于城市居民的代际流动性。进一步,基于人力资本分析框架对我国代际收入传递机制进行了探究,发现父亲的非教育因素在代际收入传递中起到主导作用。受整体社会制度环境不断改善的积极影响,2004年以后非教育传递机制不断减弱,对代际收入流动性的提升起到较大助推作用;而受高等教育扩张政策的影响,教育因素在2004年左右一定程度上削弱了代际收入流动性。