Echelons in Incomplete Relations

An efficient method of value assessment of a set of exchangeable alternatives A = {a ₁,a ₂, ,a _n} is presented. It particularly applies to situations where certain preferences may be easily evaluated or are already known, while other binary comparisons may not at once be available. Further applications are to ranking partial tournaments and the emergence and the characterisation of organisational hierarchy. By sequentially performing transitively efficient assessments of uncompared pairs, an initial weakly acyclical preference structure in A is transformed into an ordering of A in echelons. We call these nicely surveyable preference structures echelon orders. Theoretical properties of echelon orders are investigated, including a characterisation and a numerical representation.     

Productivity,Real Wages and Worker Rights: A Cross-National Comparison

ABSTRACT: High unemployment in Europe has led many economists to recommend labour market deregulation — the removal of obstacles to labour market flexibility. These “obstacles” include union power, employment protection legislation and income security arrangements. We argue that such worker rights promote productivity and real wage growse effects. Policy-makers should be aware of these positive effects on productivity and real wage growth when considering curtailing worker rights in order to reduce unemployment.