Employment Behaviour of Marginal Workers: The Roles of Preferences and Opportunities

Abstract. We use structural estimation techniques to analyse labour supply effects of changes in economic incentives for individuals who have just finished vocational rehabilitation in Norway. The complicated and sometimes non‐convex budget sets for this group of marginal workers are accounted for. We also focus on the limitation in the choice sets this group faces. Parametric bootstrap and simulation techniques are applied to construct confidence intervals for the predicted impacts of changes in the economic environment. The results show that there is a small to moderate effect of changes in economic incentives on the chance of vocational rehabilitation bringing individuals back to employment. We also find that individual health status and local labour market conditions are the most important factors affecting the transition from rehabilitation to work.     

Risk and time preferences of entrepreneurs: evidence from a Danish field experiment

To understand how small business entrepreneurs respond to government policy one has to know their risk and time preferences. Are they risk averse, or have high discount rates, such that they are hard to motivate? We have conducted a set of field experiments in Denmark that will allow a direct characterization of small business entrepreneurs in terms of these traits. We build on experimental tasks that are well established in the literature. The results do not suggest that small business entrepreneurs are more or less risk averse than the general population under the assumption of Expected Utility Theory. However, we generally find an S-shaped probability weighting function for both small business entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, with entrepreneurs being more optimistic about the chance of occurrence for the best outcome in lotteries with real monetary outcomes. The results also point to a significant difference in individual discount rates between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs: entrepreneurs are willing to wait longer for certain rewards than the general population.     

Is workplace bullying related to the personality traits of victims? A two-year prospective study

The main aims of this two-wave prospective study were to (1) present different theoretical mechanisms for relationships between bullying and personality characteristics, (2) determine forward and reverse long-term associations between victimization from bullying and personality traits included in the five-factor model and (3) establish whether these personality traits contribute to the variance in bullying, beyond work environment factors in the form of role conflict and role ambiguity. The prospective sample comprised 3066 Norwegian employees. The time lag between the two measurement points was two years. Neuroticism significantly predicted subsequent bullying in analyses of direct associations between personality traits and victimization. When adjusting for role conflict and role ambiguity, conscientiousness emerged as the only significant predictor of later victimization from bullying. In tests of reverse associations, victimization from bullying at baseline was significantly related to agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness at follow-up. Taken together, the study findings indicate that personality traits may function as both predictors and outcomes of workplace bullying.     

Deservingness put into practice: Constructing the (un)deservingness of migrants in four European countries

The increased comparative research on perceptions of public welfare deservingness studies the extent to which different subgroups of citizens are deemed worthy or unworthy of receiving help from the welfare state. The concept of deservingness criteria plays a crucial role in this research, as it theorizes a universal heuristic that citizens apply to rank people in terms of their welfare deservingness. Due to the mainly quantitative nature of the research and despite the indisputable progress it has made, the subjective existence and actual application of these deservingness criteria remain a bit of a black box. What criteria of deservingness do citizens actually apply, and how do they apply them? This article opens the black box of welfare deservingness and sheds light on the nature and practice of deservingness criteria. Empirically, the paper explores how the deservingness of immigrants is discussed and established within 20 focus groups conducted in Slovenia, Denmark, UK, and Norway in 2016 with a total of 160 participants. All 20 focus groups discussed the welfare deservingness of immigrants based on similar vignette stimuli. Our analysis shows that (1) deservingness criteria are used both to construct images of target groups and as normative yardsticks; (2) deservingness criteria do not work independently of each other, but rather co-function in specific hybridized discourses; and (3) the moral logic of deservingness is supplemented by alternative moral logics, at least in the case of migrants.     

Trust in the face of uncertainty: a qualitative study of intersubjective trust and risk

Contemporary trust research regards trust as a way of dealing with uncertainty and risk. Predominantly, it suggests that trust reduces uncertainty by means of risk assessment and rational calculation. However, phenomenological research proposes that trust is an alternative way of relating to uncertainty rather than a way to reduced uncertainty. This paper investigates these propositions in an interview study on intersubjective trust. The study focuses on the modes of uncertainty management employed in trust and risk, and particularly on how knowledge, experience, familiarity, and decision-making are combined in the act of trusting. The main finding is that trust and risk are better characterised as different ways of perceiving the social and managing uncertainty, than as different elements of the same decision process. The concept of ‘risk compartmentalisation’ is developed to describe the different ways people work to contain risk and maintain trust by combining adaptation and familiarity.     

Nearly Efficient Likelihood Ratio Tests of the Unit Root Hypothesis

Seemingly absent from the arsenal of currently available “nearly efficient” testing procedures for the unit root hypothesis, that is, tests whose asymptotic local power functions are virtually indistinguishable from the Gaussian power envelope, is a test admitting a (quasi‐)likelihood ratio interpretation. We study the large sample properties of a quasi‐likelihood ratio unit root test based on a Gaussian likelihood and show that this test is nearly efficient.     

EC merger control

Today's business papers are rife with news about mergers, take-overs, joint ventures and other kinds of business concentrations. An important, but often overlooked, part of such concentrations is the approval by the competition authorities. In the European Community the more significant concentrations must be cleared by the European Commission. Even though the Commission is considered to be sympathetic towards concentrations, the task of notifying and the difficulties which may arise can be considerable. This article by Morten Broberg provides an examination of the pitfalls which such notification presents, and it points out ways in which these pitfalls are best handled by management.     

Partnership Transitions and Mental Distress: Investigating Temporal Order

The study uses 15 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and the General Health Questionnaire to investigate changes in mental distress over several years surrounding transitions both into and out of marital partnerships (marriages and cohabitations) using fixed effects models. Entering marital partnerships is associated with reduced distress in separated or divorced individuals but not with those not previously married. Partnership dissolution is associated with very high levels of distress, but most people experience levels of distress a few years after leaving a partnership similar to that of a few years before leaving. These results vary, however, between married and cohabiting individuals, between fathers and mothers, and between age and gender groups.     

Classification Error of the Thresholded Independence Rule

We consider classification in the situation of two groups with normally distributed data in the ‘large p small n’ framework. To counterbalance the high number of variables, we consider the thresholded independence rule. An upper bound on the classification error is established that is taylored to a mean value of interest in biological applications.