Current prospects for employee representation in the U.S.: Old wine in new bottles?

A major issue currently being debated in the U.S. is whether to allow employers to establish works councils, employee committees, or other representational systems not permitted under the current labor laws. I bring economic, political, and historical analysis to bear on this issue and recommend an experimental relaxation of current law proscribing employer assistance to labor organizations. This is likely to improve the quality of employee participation, although it is unlikely to raise the amount of it.     

Efficiency of spatial price discovery for U.S. rice under different farm policies and economic conditions

Changes in the discovery of U.S. spatial milled rice prices due to the shift from stable economic conditions and government policy of supply control in the 1960s to the more variable economic conditions and market-oriented rice farm policy of the 1970s are investigated. Efficiency of the markets was evaluated in terms of the magnitude and speed of price adjustments over three different time periods. The efficiency of the price discovery process is of concern to policymakers because firms must receive price signals quickly and accurately in order to use their resources optimally.     

Accessibility to micro-finance services by people with disabilities in Bushenyi District,Uganda

The Poverty Reduction Strategy of the Ugandan Government identified provision of microfinance as one of its interventions. Despite the known connection between poverty and people with disabilities, it remains unclear to what extent this intervention includes or accommodates them. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of how people with physical and sensory disabilities access existing microfinance services in the Bushenyi District of Uganda. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies are used. The findings suggest that people with disabilities are not necessarily denied access to microfinance if they meet the desired requirements. These relate to adequate savings or collateral and perceived trustworthiness. These are seen to be key determinants of success and can be linked to impaired functioning relating to limited mobility, distance, poorer access to information and disabled people’s own negative attitudes. Increasing access and utilization of microfinance services by people with disabilities requires formulation of financial policies that accord them special consideration. At the same time, improvement is needed in the knowledge, attitudes and skills of the people with disabilities themselves and also microfinance providers.     

Individuals v. states: The correlates of Human Rights Committee rulings, 1979-2007

This paper examines the outcomes of individual abuse claims filed against states under the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as decided by the Human Rights Committee (HRC). Results from selection models that account for a country’s initial decision to join the Optional Protocol and an individual’s subsequent decision to file a complaint under it show that the substantive nature of complaints were more determinative of HRC outcomes than were country-level characteristics. Claims relating to due process rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms most often resulted in violations, whereas claims pertaining to discrimination, suffrage rights, and the rights of women and children were much less successful. Only two country-level characteristics robustly affected HRC outcomes, net of rights claims: democratizing countries were found in violation at higher rates than were other countries, while violation rates declined as a function of aggregate wealth.     

What Does Non-standard Employment Look Like in the United States? An Empirical Typology of Employment Quality

Despite significant interest in the changing nature of employment as a critical social and economic challenge facing society—especially the decline in the so-called Standard Employment Relationship (SER) and rise in more insecure, precarious forms of employment—scholars have struggled to operationalize the multifaceted and heterogeneous nature of contemporary worker-employer relationships within empirical analyses. Here we investigate the character and distribution of employment relationships in the U.S., drawing on a representative sample of wage-earners and self-employed from the General Social Survey (2002–2018). We use the multidimensional construct of employment quality, which includes both contractual (e.g., wages, contract type) and relational (e.g., employee representation and participation) aspects of employment. We further employ a typological measurement approach, using latent class analysis, to explicitly examine how the multiple aspects of employment cluster together in modern labor markets. We present eight distinct employment types in the U.S., including one resembling the historical conception of the SER model (24% of the total workforce), and others representing various constellations of favorable and adverse employment features. These employment types are unevenly distributed across society, in terms of who works these jobs and where they are found in the labor market. Importantly, women, those with lower education, and younger workers are more likely to be in precarious forms of employment. More generally, our typology reveals limitations associated with binary conceptions of standard vs. non-standard employment, or insider–outsider dichotomies envisioned within dual labor market theories.

     

Maintenance Orders and Causes for Non-Payment

From the very inadequate statistics kept by courts in the past in England, Canada and especially Australia, it appears that there is a high rate of default in the payment of maintenance for broken families. This article discusses the causes for this situation.     

Measuring performance of two-stage network structures by DEA: A review and future perspective

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a method for measuring the efficiency of peer decision making units (DMUs). An important area of development in recent years has been devoted to applications wherein DMUs represent two-stage or network processes. One particular subset of such processes is those in which all the outputs from the first stage are the only inputs to the second stage. The current paper reviews these models and establishes relations among various approaches. We show that all the existing approaches can be categorized as using either Stackelberg (leader-follower), or cooperative game concepts. Future perspectives and challenges are discussed.     

Estimating and testing conditional sums of means in high dimensional multivariate binary data

We study the estimation of the strength of signals corresponding to the high valued observations in multivariate binary data. These problems can arise in a variety of areas, such as mass spectrometry or function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), where the underlying signals could be interpreted as a proxy for biochemical or physiological response to a condition or treatment. More specifically, the problem we consider involves estimating the sum of a collection of binomial probabilities corresponding to large values of the associated binomial random variables. We emphasize the case where the dimension is much greater than the sample size, and most of the probabilities of the events of interest are close to zero. Two estimation approaches are proposed: conditional maximum likelihood and nonparametric empirical Bayes. We use these estimators to construct a test of homogeneity for two groups of high dimensional multivariate binary data. Simulation studies on the size and power of the proposed tests are given, and the tests are demonstrated using mass spectrometry data from a breast cancer study.     

Training the workforce following a serious case review: lessons learnt from a death by fabricated and induced illness

In England, when a child dies as a result of suspected maltreatment, the Local Safeguarding Children Board is required to establish whether lessons can be learnt about collaborative working to safeguard children. These reviews usually include recommendations for both inter and intra‐agency training. In this paper, the authors argue that it is crucial, when planning and delivering training in this situation, to recognise the emotional impact on the workforce of the death of a child from maltreatment. This is particularly important when the child has died as a result of fabricated and induced illness (FII) by a carer and professionals may have inadvertently contributed to the child's suffering. Drawing on a case example of training following the death of a child from FII, this paper considers the challenges encountered by those responsible for commissioning and providing training. Attention is given to managing logistics, such as time delays between the death of the child and the eventual publication of the serious case review. The particular knowledge and skills required by trainers, not only in relation to the subject matter but also in managing complex group processes, are discussed. The support required by course participants and the trainers themselves is explored. The paper concludes with a checklist for those commissioning and providing training. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.