ECONOMIES OF SCALE IN A MULTIPLANT TECHNOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM THE OILPATCH

A unique micro data set detailing operating costs and technical characteristics of 133 Texas oil leases was used to estimate an econometric cost function, yielding a number of interesting findings. First, evidence of economies of scale in crude extraction implies additional gains from oil field unitization and helps explain the paradox that voluntary unitization often occurs in the later stages of a field's life. Second, marginal operating costs per well were found to be about 30 percent below average costs, explaining why many wells remain operational despite falling crude oil prices. Finally, the results confirmed a number of plausible technical relationships. For example, operating costs rise sharply with depth, explaining the existence of shallow, low-production stripper wells.     

Improving the quality of working life through job redesign: work humanization or work rationalization?

Deux des principaux types de programmes relatifs à la 'qualité de la vie au travail' sont la participation à la gestion et la redefinition de la tache. On interprète habituellement ces programmes comme étant des réponses de la direction à l'agitation des travailleurs, qui visent à augmenter la motivation de la main d'oeuvre. Cet article s'attache aux programmes de redéfinition de la tache, et soutient que ces programmes (a) ne sont pas principalement des réponses à l'insatisfaction des travailleurs, et (b) atteignent les buts de la direction non par une alteration de la conscience des travailleurs, mais par une rationalisation du procès de travail. Les conditions économiques et technologiques qui fondent les décisions des patrons sont illustrées et débattues. De plus, une évaluation critique est presentée, de la thése selon laquelle les programmes de redefinition de la tache profitent autant aux travailleurs qu'à la direction.
Two major types of QWL programs - participative management and job redesign - typically are understood as corporate responses to worker unrest intended to develop a highly motivated workforce. This paper concentrates on job redesign and argues that it 1/ is not primarily a response to employee discontent and 2/ achieves corporate goals not by altering workers' consciousness but by rationalizing the labour process. Economic and technological conditions which underlie corporate decisions to modify the division of labour are discussed and illustrated. The claim of QWL proponents that job redesign equally benefits labour and capital is also critically assessed.     

DO LABOR MARKETS PROVIDE ENOUGH SHORT-HOUR JOBS? AN ANALYSIS OF WORK HOURS AND WORK INCENTIVES

This paper examines the role that work incentives play in the determination of work hours. We use a conventional efficiency wage model to analyze how firms respond to worker preferences regarding wage-hours packages. In contrast to previous work, we study markets in which workers have heterogeneous preferences. In this context we demonstrate that job offers will specify both wages and work hours and many individuals will not be able to work their preferred number of hours. We show that the labor market equilibrium may be characterized by a less than optimal number of short-hour jobs.     

Conflicts, Conciliation and Social Work

Correspondence to Adrian L. James, Lecturer in Applied Social Studies, Department of Social Policy and Professional Studies, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX. Summary This article seeks to draw together some issues and themes whichare identifiable in recent social work literature and practice,and in the criminal and civil law. It explores the nature ofconciliation as a method for dealing with conflict. It alsoconsiders some aspects of the nature of social work and theprocess by which problems become the object of social work treatment.It is argued that this process can effectively limit the scopefor client involvement in seeking solutions to their problems,and that conciliation might offer some potential for increasingthis, whilst also revitalizing the ethical base of social workpractice.     

INTERNATIONAL PRICE BEHAVIOR AND THE DEMAND FOR MONEY

Oil prices, commodity prices and American monetary policy, the last operating through a variety of channels, have all figured prominently in explanations of the international inflation process in the late 1960s and early 70s. OUT major purpose in this paper is to test these various hypotheses. We do so in the context of a reduced-form rational-expectations price equation which we estimate for the United States and seven other industrial countries using quarterly data for the period 1955 through 1976.
The principal conclusion that emerges from this exercise is that movements in domestic money in these countries served as the key link in the inflation process. The factors that produced these monetary changes, however, differed among countries. Price shocks of various sorts were clearly of secondary importance.
The other important set of conclusions concerns the demand for money. In place of a traditional stock adjustment model, we used GLS with a second-order correction for autocorrelation. We believe this produced more plausible estimates of the parameters of the long-run demand function and of the adjustment process itself.     

Canonical Correlation as an Exploratory Technique of Attitude Scale Correlation

Concept measurement and the determination of unidimensionalityare usually based upon techniques which depend on the relationsbetween the items measuring the concept or concepts: a set ofitems having the same relations with one another is inferredto be unidimensional. However, an additional criterion for unidimensionalityis that these items also have the same relations with a setof predictors. One multivariate technique which explicitly considersthese relations between predictors and items is canonical correlation.In this study, after analysis of a set of items with factoranalysis, canonical correlation is applied. The results demonstratethe promise of the technique for exploratory data analysis.     

EQUILIBRIUM PATTERNS OF COMPETITION IN OCS LEASE SALES

An equilibrium model of bidding behavior is developed that accounts for observed fluctuations in the degree of competition to acquire offshore petroleum leases. As one might expect, such fluctuations are related to the heterogeneity of geological prospects that are offered for sale, with a relatively high degree of competition to acquire tracts of the highest quality. The equilibrium configuration of bids is also shown to reflect structural characteristics, such as capital market constraints, that may restrict competition in the lease auction. Empirical evidence is presented which tends to confirm our general theory of bidding equilibria, but which contradicts the popular notion that capital constraints have restricted competition in OCS lease sales. Policy implications are discussed in the concluding section.