stayers as workers and savers the classic selection effect posits that deferred wages attract stayers the results in this paper suggest an alternative explanation deferred wage contracts attract savers all else constant savers are better workers than nonsavers a firm naturally works harder to retain better workers and thus is led to pay them higher wages thereby encouraging savers to remain in the firm s employ this process creates a confluence of deferred wages high levels of compensation and low quit propensities in this explanation staying is merely the result of a selection process and not the underlying factor that drives selection

pension portability and labor mobility evidence from the survey of income and program participation abstract the evidence presented in this paper casts doubt on the proposition that pension backloading is responsible for the low job mobility rates observed for pension covered workers it corroborates earlier findings by the authors based on different data that pension covered jobs offer higher levels of compensation than workers can obtain elsewhere and it is this compensation premium rather than non portability that accounts for lower turnover among pension covered workers this evidence is further bolstered by the finding that defined contribution plans which are not backloaded and defined benefit plans bear similar negative relations to mobility

targeting inflation by constant interest rate forecasts this paper reviews the concept of constant interest rate inflation forecast cir targeting it stresses the time inconsistent nature of cir targeting and provides a new method for constructing cir forecasts consistently in the context of models with forward looking variables a dynamic new keynesian model with forward looking price setting is used as an illustration suggesting that the main reason for choosing a relatively long forecast targeting horizon lies in the monetary authorities objective to smooth interest rate movements as greater nominal and real stabilization is achieved at a relatively short inflation forecast targeting horizon

corporate social responsibility for supply chain management a literature review and bibliometric analysis corporate social responsibility csr in supply chain management scm has gained an increasing research attention in recent years extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests performance evaluation ethical sourcing and sustainable production the purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of csr for scm this research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the csr related publications for scm the analysis involves 628 peer reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work data analytic techniques including citation analysis co citation analysis and co word analysis are used key findings for researchers include 1 an analytical discussion of the five sub fields that constitute the intellectual structure of csr for scm 2 theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field 3 the topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars 4 key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies the findings suggest that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories

consumer trust social marketing and ethics of welfare exchange the global corporate scandals such as enron worldcom and global crossing have raised fundamental issues of business ethics as well as economic social and anthropological questions concerning the nature of business competition and global capitalism the purpose of this conceptual paper is to introduce the concept of welfare exchange to the existing notions of economic social and anthropological notions of business and exchange in markets and society in the 21st century global competition and business success in the 21st century continue to raise the nature of economic value and the interaction among diverse actors in international markets institutions and society we believe that the nature of such exchange between consumers and organizations which can also be termed social marketing need to increasingly take into account a welfare and ethical component in this paper we introduce our concept of welfare exchange to emphasize the importance of such welfare and ethical issues in the global business environment of the 21st century

optimal constrained interest rate rules we show that if policymakers compute the optimal unconstrained interest rate rule within a taylor type class they may be led to rules that generate indeterminacy and or instability under learning this problem is compounded by uncertainty about structural parameters since an optimal rule that is determinate and stable under learning for one calibration may be indeterminate or unstable under learning under a different calibration we advocate a procedure in which policymakers restrict attention to rules constrained to lie in the determinate learnable region for all plausible calibrations and that minimize the expected loss computed using structural parameter priors subject to this constraint

a balanced concept of the firm and the measurement of its long term planning and performance this paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic social and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach it intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies to a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other however if they conflict they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation only then can a balanced approach be realized section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement in section 2 a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic social and environmental responsibilities according to these concepts different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in section 3 followed up by a summary and conclusions

employment opportunities earnings and the journey to work of minority workers in great britain the cost to minority workers of employer discrimination is generally measured in a competitive framework which focuses upon differences in on the job benefits usually wage rates between racial groups after training and experience are allowed for with other potential costs of employer discrimination given at best more subsidiary attention chiswick i 98 i dex i 984 mcnabb and psacharopoulos i982 mccormick i986 and stewart i983 have recently provided analyses of asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom this paper explores the consequences of employer discrimination if firms cannot discriminate by offering different wages for the same job but may set higher job rejection rates perhaps costlessly because markets do not clear our primary focus is upon comparative journey to work patterns and expenditures for asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom and whether these workers accept jobs at locations that would be unacceptable to whites in order to avoid either a longer spell of unemployment or an inferior occupation with commensurate lower earnings thus within a given residential area minority workers may experience greater commuting expenditures ceteris paribus which are overlooked when comparing earnings or occupational status unlike previous models of search and discrimination in labour markets the focus is placed upon employee response to discrimination rather than the search behaviour of discriminating employers see lippman and mccall i 976 the possibility that the costs of reaching suitable work sites should be incorporated into our understanding of the problems faced by minority workers has been investigated in the united states although in a different context by kain i 964 i 968 i 980 and various other authors including recently ellwood i983 kain considers that the cost of housing market discrimination is understated by focusing upon the relative price of housing for blacks because this overlooks how obstacles to black workers obtaining suburban accommodation concentrates the supply of black labour into comparatively declining inner city areas whereas kain argues that housing market discrimination reduces earnings net of travel costs by creating a spatial mismatch of workers and jobs the concern in this paper is that earnings net of travel costs are reduced because job market discrimination may increase average journey to work distance

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

job tenure and asset holdings the paper examines the impact of housing equity and occupational pension scheme membership on job tenure using job duration data from the 1985 general household survey appropriate hazard functions are constructed and estimated housing equity data is constructed from ghs with appropriate adjustment for selection on house movers housing equity has a negative impact on male job tenure which is more pronounced the longer the job lasts in contrast pension scheme membership raises average tenure in accordance with other studies but the results show variation according to pension scheme characteristics

an empirical test of the theory of on the job search preunemployment search is the fundamental labor market process generating beneficial effects of advance notice yet theory indicates that workers receiving notice may not search whereas others may search even without advance notice our weighted results

do council housing policies reduce migration between regions data from the 1973 general household survey of great britain are used to examine whether the council house system which currently provides a dwelling for one british family in every three tends to discourage long distance migration controls are introduced for various socioeconomic variables and the importance of occupation sector of employment age and education in explaining migration is discussed comparisons are also made between local movements and long distance migration the findings indicate that over longer distances council tenants have much lower migration rates than owner occupiers

ethical business and investment a model for business and society two key questions lie at the heart of the business challenge for business ethics is it possible for business and investors to do well while doing good and if so how can this be achieved this paper adopts an international investment perspective to address these questions it demonstrates that it is possible for business and investors to achieve a triple bottom line of environmental social and financial performance

a critical analysis of the intellectual capital measuring managing and reporting practices in the non profit sector lessons learnt from a case study in management literature intellectual capital ic is considered the key driver of the competitive advantage of the third millennium enterprise firm consequently measuring managing and reporting ic has become a critical issue frameworks addressed to measure and report ic have proliferated nevertheless the adoption of these frameworks is not so widespread in practice the strong call for critically investigating ic practices has been raised by several leading authors in the area doing a critical and performative ic research means empirically researching ic organisational practices in specific contexts in order to increase the understanding of the ic dynamics by critically analysing the ic practices of anpas piemonte an italian non profit organisation chosen for its long standing experience in issuing audited ic reports from 2003 to 2011 the article contributes to the knowledge of how and why ic is measured and reported in a specific outstanding npo disclosing ic moreover the case study analysis contributes to shed lights on the levers and barriers that should be faced by other managers intending to implement and effectively use an ic measurement management and reporting system within organisation

responsible management incentive systems and productivity a disconnect remains between theories about responsible management and application in real life organizations part of the reason is due to the complexity and holistic nature of the field and the fact that many of the benefits of aligning business objectives with changing societal conditions are of an intangible nature human resource management is an increasingly important part of the field with benefits including talent retention higher levels of motivation and improvements in organizational cohesion this paper sets out an experiment run at a large spanish university to try to analyze the impact on worker productivity of a responsible management stance by an employer based on the corporate social performance model the paper examines the issue from the point of view of responsibilities responsiveness and outcomes and considers the cost benefit effect of incorporating a social responsibility variable into the wage structure to measure the impact on productivity

pitfalls of forward looking monetary policy a distinctive feature of the procedures recently adopted by inflation targeting central banks is their forward looking character forecasts of the economy s future evolution conditional upon alternative policies play a central role in the banks deliberations to an extent that the procedures adopted are sometimes characterized as forecast targeting this emphasis upon the future consequences of policy is unsurprising in an approach that tries to maintain as transparent as possible a relation between the banks9 decisions and the ultimate goals of monetary policy after all current decisions can still affect the future but not the past nonetheless common descriptions of how inflation targeting is or should be practiced go too far in proposing purely forward looking procedures i shall argue instead that an optimal framework for the conduct of monetary policy must generally be history dependent in ways

the impact of human capital investments on pension benefits this article develops a model with deferred compensation and severance pay that predicts that workers bear all the costs and receive all the returns of human capital investments and that specific investments yield higher returns than general investments this model also predicts that pensions which efficiently defer compensation will be positively related to specific investments evidence from the national longitudinal survey of older men confirms these predictions participation in company sponsored training programs proxying for specific investments increases the probability of pension receipt and the level of benefits more general training outside the firm has much smaller effects on pensions

opportunistic behavior by firms in implicit pension contracts several studies have established that under the most common form of pension coverage benefits accrue disproportionately near the end of a worker s career such backloading establishes a penalty for early quitting but may also create an incentive for opportunistic firm behavior because benefits generally are a function of highest earnings when nominal earnings are expected to rise an employer can reduce pension liabilities by discharging workers prior to retirement this paper uses the national longitudinal survey of mature men to test whether such actions by employers are systematic we estimate that pension covered workers with mean losses are less likely to be discharged unexpected increases in pension losses due to increases in inflation however raise the risk of discharge we find no evidence that the minimum vesting standards of the employees retirement income security act reduces the likelihood of discharge for older workers who previously were not vested these results are consistent with an implicit pension contract under which employer compliance is enforced by reputation

a review of monetary policy rules this article reviews monetary policy rules edited by john taylor the book evaluates the taylor rule a policy rule that specifies changes in the central bank s interest rate according to what is happening to two variables real output and inflation questions are raised about a how well the models fit the data b the validity of the assumption that there has been clear improvement in monetary policy and c the rule s microfoundations

monetary policy and welfare in a small open economy this paper analyzes optimal monetary policy in a small open economy featuring monopolistic competition and nominal rigidities it shows that the utility based loss function for this economy can be written as a quadratic expression of domestic inflation output gap and real exchange rate the presence of an internal monopolistic distortion and a terms of trade externality drives optimal policy away from domestic inflation targeting and affects the optimal level of exchange rate volatility when domestic and foreign goods are close substitutes for each other the optimal policy rule implies lower real exchange rate volatility than a domestic inflation targeting regime the reverse is true when the elasticity of substitution between goods is low

assessment of leading apparel specialty retailers csr practices as communicated on corporate websites problems and opportunities despite the increased attention to corporate social responsibility csr and regulatory changes in recent years little is known about how apparel companies are implementing and communicating csr practices to their stakeholders to fill the gap this study investigated the range and strategies of leading apparel specialty retailers csr practices as communicated on their websites over a longitudinal period of 1 year in total 17 apparel specialty retailers were included in the analysis the companies websites were content analyzed in depth using the coding criteria focusing on labor and environmental issues developed for this study the initial data were collected in november 2011 and the study was replicated in december 2012 to examine any changes in the csr practices as of 2011 only nine companies addressed csr issues on their websites at different degrees despite their leadership positions in the industry environmental issues were addressed by only five companies with different ranges of practices in 2012 all 17 companies addressed labor issues on their websites with varying degrees of specificity in terms of environmental issues six companies an increase of one company from 2011 addressed environmental initiatives on their websites with wider ranges of practices discussed are problems and opportunities as well as the role of the government and stakeholders for the effective communications of csr policies and initiatives for the apparel industry

competence implies credibility the credibility of monetary policy under discretion has been traditionally linked to the central bank s conservatism we show that another trait of the central bank cb her competence at doing her job or reputation thereof can be just as important to make her policy credible and transparent we analyze a static barro and gordon 1983 s game where the effects of monetary policy depend on an unknown state of the economy the cb forms her own private and imprecise view of this state that she may announce to p in a cheap talk game to explain and motivate her policy intentions the precision of the noise in the cb s view measures her competence the more accurate her assessment the clearer an idea she has about what to do the fineness of the equilibrium message space measures monetary policy s transparency in any equilibrium of the cheap talk game the cb credibly announces one of finite inflation targets that differ by at least a multiple of the inflation bias competence ratio if this ratio is too large the cb can credibly communicate only the direction of monetary policy as the cb s competence rises and this ratio falls p knows that the cb puts increasing weight on pursuing her objective targets relative to surprising expectations to stimulate output therefore the equilibrium message space becomes finer a more competent cb is also less likely to erroneously observe extreme realizations of the shocks so she is more able tofine tune expectations at times of business as usual

csr practices and corporate strategy evidence from a longitudinal case study this paper aims to contribute to the present debate about business ethics and corporate social responsibility csr that the journal of business ethics is hosting numerous contributions argued theoretical frameworks and taxonomies of csr practices the authors want to ground in this knowledge and provide further evidence about how companies adopt csr practices to address stakeholders claims and consolidate their trust evidence was provided by a longitudinal case study about an italian food company that is one of the largest producers of baby food this company reshaped its corporate strategy along three decades through the adoption of csr practices in order to win stakeholders trust about food safety and supply chain behaviour the empirical exercise was informed by a literature review of the relevant contributions in terms of csr business practices and levels of efforts to adopt them in light of this review the authors adopted for the research framework the taxonomy of business practices proposed by spiller 2000 ethical business and investment a model for business and society journal of business ethics27 149 160 and the levels of commitment towards csr proposed by stahl and grigsby 1997 strategic management total quality global competition blackwell oxford the main findings are discussed in order to argue theoretical implications and identify further areas of research and debate

occupational pensions and job mobility in britain estimation of a random effects competing risks model we analyse transitions between pensionable jobs non pensionable jobs and other labour market states using the 1988 9 uk retirement survey we focus on the positive association between length of job tenure and pensionable status allowing for the possibility that pension scheme members are less mobile than other workers because they have persistent unobserved characteristics that predispose them towards a high degree of security in both employment and retirement we use a competing risks model with state specific random effects the model is estimated by simulated maximum likelihood

the taylor rule and optimal monetary policy where it denotes the fed s operating target for the federal funds rate pt is the inflation rate measured by the gdp deflator yt is the log of real gdp and y t is the log of potential output identified empirically with a linear trend the rule has since been subject to considerable attention both as an account of actual policy in the united states and elsewhere and as a prescription for desirable policy taylor argues for the rule s normative significance both on the basis of simulations and on the ground that it describes u s policy in a period in which monetary policy is widely judged to have been unusually successful taylor 1999 suggesting that the rule is worth adopting as a principle of behavior here i wish to consider to what extent this prescription resembles the sort of policy that economic theory would recommend i consider the question in the context of a simple but widely used optimizing model of the monetary transmission mechanism which allows one to reach clear conclusions about economic welfare the model is highly stylized but incorporates important features of more realistic models and allows me to make several points that are of more general validity out of concern for the robustness of the conclusions reached the analysis here addresses only broad qualitative features of the taylor rule and attempts to identify features of a desirable policy rule that are likely to hold under a variety of model specifications

inflation targeting a new framework for monetary policy he world s central bankers and their staffs meet regularly in venues from basle to washington to share ideas and discuss common problems perhaps these frequent meetings help explain why changes in the tactics and strategy of monetary policymaking such as the adoption of money growth targets in the 1970s the intensification of efforts to reduce inflation in the 1980s and the recent push for increased institutional independence for central banks tend to occur in many countries more or less simultaneously whatever their source major changes in the theory and practice of central banking are of great importance for both individual countries and the international economy in this article we discuss a new strategy for monetary policy known as inflation targeting which has sparked much interest and debate among central bankers and monetary economists in recent years this approach is characterized as the name suggests by the announcement of official target ranges for the inflation rate at one or more horizons and by explicit acknowledgment that low and stable inflation is the overriding goal of monetary policy other important features of inflation targeting include increased communication with the public about the plans and objectives of the monetary policymakers and in many cases increased accountability of the central bank

employment based health insurance and job mobility is there evidence of job lock the majority of privately insured americans obtain their health insurance through their own or a family member s employment the rationale for employers to provide health insurance is straightforward by pooling the risks of individuals employers can reduce adverse selection and lower administrative expenses in addition they benefit from tax laws allowing businesses to deduct their health insurance costs these advantages of employer provision however must be weighed against the distortions they may generate in individual labor market decisions in particular health insurance may distort job mobility if employees decide to keep jobs they would rather leave for fear of losing coverage for preexisting conditions a possibility that has been termed job lock this paper attempts to quantify the effect of employer provided health insurance on the labor market mobility of individuals the link between employer provided health insurance and

corporate decisions about labelling genetically modified foods this paper considers whether individual companies have an ethical obligation to label their genetically modified gm foods gm foods and ingredients pervade grocery store shelves despite the fact that a majority of north americans have worries about eating those products the market as whole has largely failed to respond to consumer preference in this regard as have north american governments a number of consumer groups ngo s and activist organizations have urged corporations to label their gm products this paper asks whether in such a situation individual corporations can be ethically required to take such unilateral action we argue that they cannot given the lack of solid evidence for any risk to human health and the serious market disadvantage almost surely associated with costly unilateral action no individual company has an ethical obligation to label its gm foods

the robustness and efficiency of monetary policy rules as guidelines for interest rate setting by the european central bank abstract this paper examines the implications of recent research on monetary policy rules for practical monetary policy making with special emphasis on strategies for setting interest rates by the european central bank ecb the paper draws on recent research and new simulations of a large open economy model to assess the efficiency of a simple benchmark rule in comparison with other proposed rules further it stresses new results on the robustness of monetary policy rules in which each rule that is optimal or good according to one model or researcher is tested for robustness by other researchers using different models because of the large increase in the number of economists focussing on econometric evaluation of monetary policy rules for the interest rate instrument and because of the parallel increase in the variety of models being developed for this purpose much more evidence is becoming available on the robustness of simple monetary policy rules for the interest rate than ever before

term structure evidence on interest rate smoothing and monetary policy inertia abstract numerous studies have used quarterly data to estimate monetary policy rules or reaction functions that appear to exhibit a very slow partial adjustment of the policy interest rate the conventional wisdom asserts that this gradual adjustment reflects a policy inertia or interest rate smoothing behavior by central banks however such quarterly monetary policy inertia would imply a large amount of forecastable variation in interest rates at horizons of more than 3 months which is contradicted by evidence from the term structure of interest rates the illusion of monetary policy inertia evident in the estimated policy rules likely reflects the persistent shocks that central banks face

the influence of pensions on job mobility in this paper we construct a model of the loss of firm specific capital suffered by employees with occupational pensions who change job the simplest loss function may be represented as the product of job tenure and years to retirement estimates of logit equations for individual job search in great britain suggest that the effect of pension status can be satisfactorily captured by this simple loss function these equations and others for job turnover indicate that membership of an occupational pension scheme substantially reduces job mobility

what is wrong with taylor rules using judgment in monetary policy through targeting rules it is argued that inflation targeting is best understood as a commitment to a targeting rule rather than an instrument rule e ither ageneral targeting rule explicit objectives for monetary policy or a specific targeting rule a criterion for the forecasts of the target variables to be fulfilled essentially the equality of the marginal rates of transformation and substitution between the target variables targeting rules allow the use of judgment and extramodel information are more robust and easier to verify than optimal instrument rules and they can nevertheless bring the economy close to the socially optimal equilibrium

making monetary policy objectives and rules what is it that monetary policy makers do and how do they do it the simple answer is that a central banker moves interest rates in order to maintain steady real growth and stable prices in this essay i examine the issues that arise in framing the problem faced by monetary policy makers i begin with a discussion of how over the past decade or so central banks have been made more independent and more accountable the result has been the virtual elimination of the inflation bias problem that is caused by political interference in the monetary policy process and better overall macroeconomic performance the essay proceeds with an example of a formal version of the policymakers problem describing their objectives and the information they need to formulate a policy rule i conclude with a discussion of a simple versus complex policy rules the impact of uncertainty on policy making and how central bankers use formal modelling in making their day to day decisions copyright 2000 by oxford university press

what are occupational pension plan entitlements worth in britain the acquisition of rights by workers in private pension plans underpins retirement behaviour recruitment policy and wage structure but there is controversy as to how these individual pension rights should be valued the paper combines four data sets to calculate pension entitlements for a sample of 3000 british workers in 1987 expected scheme tenure is a key variable in valuation younger workers and women face greater initial uncertainty as to their pension outcomes which is resolved as job tenure lengthens given the distribution of tenure durations many employees would obtain higher returns in defined contribution schemes than in a typical final salary defined benefit plan

monetary policy expectations and commitment commitment in monetary policy leads to equilibria that are superior to those from optimal discretionary policies a number of interest rate reaction functions and instrument rules have been proposed to implement or approximate commitment policy we assess these rules in terms of whether they lead to a rational expectations equilibrium that is both locally determinate and stable under adaptive learning by private agents a reaction function that appropriately depends explicitly on private sector expectations performs particularly well on both counts

the effects of pension funds on markets performance a review the worldwide reforming process of pension systems triggered by the demographic transition and globalization has led several countries to implement multi pillar pension systems and enhance pension funds for this reason the studies on the effects that pension funds exert on markets performance have been flourishing in the last decades in this paper we provide an updated review of the empirical advances in this field of study with particular focus on the effects that pension funds produce on labour markets financial markets and economic growth

encouraging long term tenure wage tilt or pensions the author analyzes data on 6 416 persons in 109 firms to determine whether the length of these workers tenure was positively related either to wage tilt the payment of below market wages in the early years of the worker s employment with a firm and above market wages in the later years or to the presence of defined benefit pension plans contrary to the popular but little tested hypothesis that wage tilt is important in inducing workers to make long term commitments to the firm the results show that wage tilt had no significant effect on tenure except indirectly through its effect on pension quit costs in contrast pensions increased tenure in the firm on average by more than 20

monetary policy under model and data parameter uncertainty abstract empirical taylor rules are much less aggressive than those derived from optimization based models this paper analyzes whether accounting for uncertainty across competing models and or real time data considerations can explain this discrepancy it considers a central bank that chooses a taylor rule in a framework that allows for an aversion to the second order risk associated with facing multiple models and measurement error configurations the paper finds that if the central bank cares strongly enough about stabilizing the output gap this aversion leads to significant declines in the coefficients of the taylor rule even if the central bank s loss function assigns little weight to reducing interest rate variability furthermore a small degree of aversion can generate an optimal rule that matches the empirical taylor rule