过度劳动及其就业挤出效应分析

本文将过度劳动界定为“人力资源在较长时期的过度使用”,即就业者在较长时期处于一种超出社会平均劳动时间和强度的就业状态。中国许多行业存在过度劳动现象,从业人员的过度劳动造成了很多就业机会被挤占,从而造成一些具有就业能力的人员的失业;而过度劳动并不影响所在行业的资本盈利与经济增长。资本盈利与经济增长所应带来的就业增长均被过度劳动所抵消,甚至在某些行业或领域还出现了就业负增长的情况。过度劳动的存在可以对中国经济增长与就业增长二者之间的“非一致性”做出部分解释。     

论巴西在第二次世界大战期间的作用

第二次世界大战期间,巴西加入到世界反法西斯阵营,源源不断地供应盟军战略物资,派兵作战,积极配合盟军的军事行动,从政治、经济和军事各方面贡献出自己的人力、物力和财力,为世界反法西斯战争取得最终胜利铺平了道路。     

媒介事件对电视广告创意的影响

从对媒介事件的重新界说以及媒介事件对受众心理状态的影响入手,通过对近期国内一些电视广告片的创意特点的分析,指出在媒介事件的影响下,电视广告的创意正呈现出一些趋向,如诉求路线的情感化、表现内容的公益化、运作方式的潜隐化等等。对于这些趋向的认识,有助于企业改变以往程式化的广告操作手段,获得更加积极有效的广告产出;有利于拓展电视广告创意者的思维空间,使电视广告创作更上一个台阶。     

听力显性教学"聚焦输入、强化互动"的有效性研究

以在读非英语专业本科生和硕士生为研究对象,进行大学英语听力显性教学“聚焦输入、强化互动”的有效性研究。实验数据和问卷调查结果表明:“聚焦输入、强化互动”的显性教学效果明显,多维隐性效应得到学习者充分肯定。该研究对听力教学的启示是:进行听力显性教学策略研究,听力显性教学与学习者隐性学习结合都很有必要。     

浅论图腾崇拜的特点及影响——兼论图腾崇拜向祖先崇拜的演变

图腾崇拜是人类历史上极为古老而奇特的文化现象之一。它是在原始社会母系氏族时期与氏族制度一起形成的,图腾是不同婚姻集团和氏族的标志。与其它原始宗教形式相比具有自己的特点,对原始社会的发展产生了重大的影响。最终随着生产力的发展、科学知识的普及以及人类的认识水平的提高,图腾崇拜逐渐走向消亡,并最终为祖先崇拜所取代。     

Gender differences in risk behavior and the link to household effects and individual wealth

This study examined the differences in risk behavior between men and women using a household survey that captured the risk preferences of two members in a household and recorded wealth at the individual level instead of the usual approach of representing wealth at the household level. After controlling for commonly used explanatory variables, such as gender, education, age, and wealth, household fixed effects explain about 15% of the variation in risk behavior. This highlights the magnitude of household effects in shaping one’s risk behavior. In general, females in the study area are more risk averse than males based on a risk game with real payout. The gender differences disappear when focusing on only the top land owners. However, even in those cases, females consider themselves more risk averse, supporting results from previous studies that link culture and societal norms to the gender differences in risk behavior.     

Alternative estimation methods for identifying contagion effects in dynamic social networks: A latent-space adjusted approach

Contagion effects, also known as peer effects or social influence process, have become more and more central to social science, especially with the availability of longitudinal social network data. However, contagion effects are usually difficult to identify, as they are often entangled with other factors, such as homophily in the selection process, the individual’s preference for the same social settings, etc. Methods currently available either do not solve these problems or require strong assumptions. Following Shalizi and Thomas (2011), I frame this difficulty as an omitted variable bias problem, and I propose several alternative estimation methods that have potentials to correctly identify contagion effects when there is an unobserved trait that co-determines the influence and the selection. The Monte-Carlo simulation results suggest that a latent-space adjusted estimator is especially promising. It outperforms other estimators that are traditionally used to deal with the unobserved variables, including a structural equation based estimator and an instrumental variable estimator.     

Work-family culture and job satisfaction: does gender and parenting status alter the relationship?

Previous studies on work-family culture have examined its relationship with different employee outcomes (e.g., work-family conflict, job satisfaction, commitment) but neglected one important question; namely, who are most likely to benefit from a supportive work-family culture in terms of positive employee outcomes? The aim of this study was to shed new light on the work-family culture–job satisfaction linkage by examining the moderator effects of gender and parenting status in this relationship. Specifically, we asked whether gender and parenting status would alter the association between work-family culture and job satisfaction. We hypothesized – on the basis of traditional gender roles – that women, and especially mothers, would benefit most from a family supportive organizational culture. We utilized three divergent samples gathered from male (N=768) and female (N=1364) employees in Finland: (1) a female-dominated sample from social and health care; (2) a male-dominated sample from paper industry; and (3) more gender-mixed sample from the ICT company. Work-family culture was described through its positive (work-family support) and negative facets (work-family barriers), whereas job satisfaction was operationalized via a facet-based scale. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses performed separately for the three different organizations revealed that the results for mothers and fathers under the condition of high work-family support differed in the paper mill and the information and communication technology (ICT) company. Thus, in addition to gender, the type of organization also moderated the relationship. Specifically, in the paper mill, mothers benefited more from high work-family support than fathers, whereas in the ICT company the reverse situation held: fathers benefited more than mothers. Thus, high work-family support was associated with higher job satisfaction among mothers in the paper mill and among fathers in the ICT company.     

Evolution of product quality in European,Japanese and US automotive firms: An exploratory longitudinal analysis

For years we have been hearing that US automobile manufacturers have been losing market share to their Japanese rivals who are reputed to make better quality vehicles. Most such reports are based on the initial quality surveys on new automobiles. In this paper we address two exploratory questions: (1) how does the quality of an automobile change with its age, and, (2) can firm level variables help explain differences quality. To answer these questions, we collected Consumer Reports’ reliability ratings on approximately 300 automobile models made by European, Japanese and US automotive firms during the 1998–2007; and approximately 240 models made by these firms over period of 2008–2015. For both periods we found that not only do automobiles made by Japanese firms have higher initial quality, but, as automobiles get older the difference in the product quality between Japanese versus European and US firms increases. We also found that the more generalist a European or US automobile firm, i.e., the wider is the firm׳s product offering in the marketplace, the lower its overall automobile quality during the 1998–2007 period. Conversely, Japanese generalist firms were found to have higher quality than specialist firms over the same period. The result is partly explained by the fact that Japanese firms have taken a different path to broadening their product variety – they have ensured a high level of quality of their initial offerings before entering newer market segments. The rate of reliability decline was found to be slower for all firms, and the differences in reliability across the 3 groups of firms were much less pronounced during the 2008–2015 period. This improvement may be as result of restructuring done by US automobile firms.     

Enabling robust assessment of QTc prolongation in early phase clinical trials

Since the implementation of the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) E14 guideline in 2005, regulators have required a “thorough QTc” (TQT) study for evaluating the effects of investigational drugs on delayed cardiac repolarization as manifested by a prolonged QTc interval. However, TQT studies have increasingly been viewed unfavorably because of their low cost effectiveness. Several researchers have noted that a robust drug concentration‐QTc (conc‐QTc) modeling assessment in early phase development should, in most cases, obviate the need for a subsequent TQT study. In December 2015, ICH released an “E14 Q&As (R3)” document supporting the use of conc‐QTc modeling for regulatory decisions. In this article, we propose a simple improvement of two popular conc‐QTc assessment methods for typical first‐in‐human crossover‐like single ascending dose clinical pharmacology trials. The improvement is achieved, in part, by leveraging routinely encountered (and expected) intrasubject correlation patterns encountered in such trials. A real example involving a single ascending dose and corresponding TQT trial, along with results from a simulation study, illustrate the strong performance of the proposed method. The improved conc‐QTc assessment will further enable highly reliable go/no‐go decisions in early phase clinical development and deliver results that support subsequent TQT study waivers by regulators.