Unions and fringe benefits: Additional evidence

Arguing that the fringe benefit demand function is probably discontinuous, a two-stage estimating procedure is used to estimate the continuous component of the function while correcting for selectivity bias. Results reveal an asymmetrical union impact on health and pension fringes. Although the union effect is positive for health insurance, it is nil for pension fringes. Nevertheless, unionism positively influences the likelihood that pension and health plans will be available to workers. I am grateful to the Oakland University Research Committee for grant support.     

Does Health Insurance Premium Exemption Policy for Older People Increase Access to Health Care? Evidence from Ghana

Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa causes major challenges for policy makers in social protection. Our study focuses on Ghana, one of the few Sub-Saharan African countries that passed a National Policy on Aging in 2010. Ghana is also one of the first Sub-Saharan African countries that launched a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS; NHIS Act 650, 2003) with the aim to improve access to quality health care for all citizens, and as such can be considered as a means of poverty reduction. Our study assesses whether premium exemption policy under the NHIS that grants non-payments of annual health insurance premiums for older people increases access to health care. We assessed differences in enrollment coverage among four different age groups (18–49, 50–59, 60–69, and 70+). We found higher enrollment for the 70+ and 60–69 age groups. The likelihood of enrollment was 2.7 and 1.7 times higher for the 70+ and 60–69 age groups, respectively. Our results suggest the NHIS exemption policy increases insurance coverage of the aged and their utilization of health care services.     

Supplier integration,operational capability and firm performance: an investigation in an emerging economy environment

Abstract

The literature on supplier integration’s (SI) impact on firm performance is intertwined with mixed findings in terms of definitional differences, study context, specific integration components, and the types of relationships examined. This study contributes to the supplier integration and firm performance (SI-FP) literature by investigating how and when supplier integration influences firm performance. Drawing on the relational view, the resource-based view, and the Dynamics Capability theories, we suggest that improvements in firm performance from the supplier integration perspective are dependent on gains in operational capabilities. We test this dependency with survey data from firms in Ghana, a developing economy. The results show positive significant relationships between supplier integration and competitive operational capabilities and between supplier integration and firm performance. Our results highlight the importance for managers in developing economies and elsewhere to improve their firms’ operational capabilities and competitiveness by investing in supplier integration. We also discuss implications of these findings for research.     

Inequality, income, and poverty: comparative global evidence

Objectives. The study seeks to provide comparative global evidence on the role of income inequality, relative to income growth, in poverty reduction.Methods. An analysis-of-covariance model is estimated using a large global sample of 1980–2004 unbalanced panel data, with the headcount measure of poverty as the dependent variable, and the Gini coefficient and PPP-adjusted mean income as explanatory variables. Both random-effects and fixed-effects methods are employed in the estimation.Results. The responsiveness of poverty to income is a decreasing function of inequality, and the inequality elasticity of poverty is actually larger than the income elasticity of poverty. Furthermore, there is a large variation across regions (and countries) in the relative effects of inequality on poverty.Conclusion. Income distribution plays a more important role than might be traditionally acknowledged in poverty reduction, though this importance varies widely across regions and countries.     

Nonwage benefits as a limited-dependent variable: Implications for the impact of unions

To better delineate the role of unionism in influencing the provision of nonwage benefits, this article argues that benefits should be viewed as a limited-dependent variable. Employing such an approach, the study finds that previous OLS estimates of the union effect embody substantial biases, which vary by industrial and employee-group classification. Moreover, the role of unionism — plan initiation versus ability to augment benefit levels at established plans — varies according to employee group, industrial classification, and the type of benefits.     

Antidiscrimination measures of the 1960s and occupational mobility: Evidence for black American men

Based on an economywide index, I estimate that the occupational status of U.S. black men, relative to white men, rose an average of .5 percent per year over the 1965–1981 period. After accounting for pre-existing trends, education, and censoring supply factors, approximately 40 percent of the increase remains. I argue that these residual post– 1964 effects may be attributed to the antidiscrimination measures of the times, particularly Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although there seems to be some cyclical censoring, I uncover no evidence in support of the secular censoring hypothesis that observed post– 1964 black male occupational progress results largely from black male labor supply declines. I assign about one-half of the 21 percent relative earnings gains by black men during 1965–1981 to occupational mobility. Compared with previous findings for black women, however, the results suggest substantially lower gains for black men. In addition, occupational advancement appears to explain a much smaller proportion of the earnings increases for black men than for black women. An earlier version of this paper was revised while the author was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and the Frederick Douglass Institute, University of Rochester, New York. Useful comments were provided by members of the Institute and the Department of Economics. Grant support by the Oakland University Research Committee and the School of Business Administration is gratefully acknowledged.