Explaining Attitudes towards Self-employment among Immigrants: A Canadian Case Study

Implicit in Canada's immigration policies is that some immigrants are endowed with a particular entrepreneurial spirit, and that this spirit relates to immigrants’ origin. This paper examines whether attitudes towards entrepreneurship indeed relate to origin, or whether they can be explained through labour market circumstances at the place of settlement and/or Canada's immigrant selection procedure. The empirical study focuses on the reported attitudes towards entrepreneurship. A survey of 509 Vancouver residents of a predominantly Chinese immigrant neighbourhood, a predominantly South Asian immigrant neighbourhood, and a neighbourhood of non‐immigrants reveals that ethnic origin is a weak indicator of entrepreneurial attitudes. Instead, urban or rural background emerges as a more powerful predictor. The results also raise doubts about whether the Canadian government's immigration policy, which selects immigrants on the basis of economic potential, indeed selects immigrants with a greater desire to become self‐employed. Furthermore, the amount of time immigrants have spent in Canada does not significantly affect attitudes towards entrepreneurship.     

The Recurrence of Violence

This article examines the recurrence of violence in the contemporary world based on the premise that states can use their monopoly of violence not only for preserving the life of their citizens but also for the sake of terror and annihilation. This ambiguous nature of the use of violence derives from the fact that the legal order of the state is a function of concrete acts of bloodshed and killing. The state bases the law on violence because authorities fear the psychological attraction that bloodshed has on the human imagination. The contagious character of violence, however, is not based on man's innate potential for aggression. Rather, it depends on the nature of the reciprocity of social relations. Violent conflict often feeds on negative social communication such as hatred and desire for vengeance. Yet, faced with the inevitable recurrence of violence humans have the capacity to act on the spiral of vengeance. One possible way to pacify violence is to transform the destructive, negative reciprocity of retaliation into the creative, positive reciprocity of active non-violence.     

Worker Turnover,Capital Dispersion,and Matching

Abstract. A model acknowledging technology and wage dispersion, search frictions, and costly worker turnover is used for testing the notion of random matching. Using a linked employer–employee data set on roughly 9,000 Norwegian establishments and 200,000 jobs during the period 1989–95, I show that establishments investing more in capital, pay more, and experience lower worker turnover rate. Strictly convex turnover costs are identified. High‐wage establishments post on average less intensively than low‐wage establishments. Positive relationships between wages and posting are observed for high‐tech industries and in the capital and surroundings. Thus, the notion of random matching is generally rejected.     

Profit implications of estimation methods for the allocation of marketing resources

We deal with the question whether estimating heterogeneous multiplicative sales response models without carry over effects by either ordinary least squares or Gibbs sampling makes a difference if resources (like advertising budgets, sales budgets, sales force sizes, sales calls) have to be allocated to sales units (like sales districts, customer groups, individual costumers or prospects) in a profit maximizing way and only short time series are available. To this end we generate artificial series on sales and allocations by stochastic simulation. These series are used to estimate multiplicative models whose coefficients are either specific to individual sales units or follow a hierarchical Bayesian framework. Ordinary least squares and Gibbs sampling serve as appropriate estimation methods. Performance of the two estimation methods is measured by recovery of optimal profits which are computed on the basis of the known true parameter values. We start to determine optimal allocations based on the plug-in method which uses average coefficients to determine expected profits. Gibbs sampling always leads to profits nearer to the true optima. This advantage of Gibbs sampling is especially pronounced for combinations with high average elasticity, high variation of elasticity and high number of sales units. On the other hand, differences between Gibbs sampling and OLS become smaller the more observations are available. Optimization with expected profits taking parameter uncertainty (i.e., the distribution of parameters) into account leads to higher profits than the plug-in method, but relative increases turn out to be rather small.     

DEALER INTERMEDIATION BETWEEN MARKETS

We develop a dynamic model of dealer intermediation between a monopolistic customer–dealer market and a competitive interdealer limit order market. Dealers face inventory constraints and adverse selection. We characterize the optimal quote setting and inventory management behavior for both markets in closed form and reveal how price setting in one market segment influences quote behavior in the other. The framework is used to explore market stability issues of the two‐tier market structure and delivers testable predictions about how the dispersion of retail prices is related to the state of the interdealer limit order book. Data from the European sovereign bond market is used to test for inventory related retail price dispersion.     

Sickness Absence,Sick Leave Pay,and Pay Schemes

Utilizing Norwegian linked register and survey data, while exploiting a discontinuity in public sick pay legislation, I show that the public sick pay compensation level causally affects male performance pay workers' sick leave days. Both male and female performance pay workers experience longer sick leaves when provided private supplementary sick pay compared with those being eligible for public sick pay only. This differential impact of the replacement rate on workers' sick leave rates reveals heterogeneous behavioural changes following public sick pay cuts, and this heterogeneity will be reinforced by the provision of employer‐provided sick pay to attractive worker groups.     

Long-Term Effects of a Plant Closure: a Multistate Duration Analysis of Event History Data in a Ten-Year Follow-Up Study

This paper discusses the possible effects on future prospects in the labour market of those who suffer a plant closure. A multistate duration model is estimated on monthly event data comprising 172 individuals over ten years, with the occurrence of the plant closure among the regressors. An individual can escape to one of several destinations when exiting one of three origin states (unemployed, sick leave, outside the labour force). Our prime concern has been transitions leading to a new job or to destination states outside the labour force (disability pension and at home, without any social security benefit). We find indications of severe negative long-term effects on employment from a plant closure: long durations in unemployment when searching for new jobs, higher incidence of leaving the labour force, longer periods of sick leave and higher incidence of disability pension. Thus, an adverse shock reducing employment may have negative long-term effects on the labour market through long spells of unemployment and a shrinking labour force. Our findings thus support the hypothesis of hysteresis dynamics in the labour market.