does employment protection create its own political support this paper investigates the ability of employment protection to generate its own political support a version of the mortensen pissarides model is used for this purpose if wages are set through nash bargaining workers value employment protection because it strengthens their hand in wage negotiations workers in high productivity matches benefit most from higher wages as they expect to stay employed for longer by reducing turnover employment protection shifts the distribution of match specific productivity toward lower values thus stringent protection in the past actually reduces support for employment protection today introducing involuntary separations reverses this conclusion now workers value employment protection because it delays involuntary dismissals workers in low productivity matches gain most since they face the highest risk of dismissal the downward shift in the productivity distribution is now a shift towards supporters

payment schemes and gender in germany the authors estimate the determinants of five types of variable payment schemes using panel data on german establishments in 1994 and 1996 women were disproportionately included in schemes based on individual productivity and on profit sharing but not in those based on work group productivity this pattern seems inconsistent with the claim that women are sorted due to their shorter expected tenure instead the authors argue the critical issue may be that women have a greater need for flexibility between work and home than men do collective bargaining coverage and other industrial relations variables are shown to be influential determinants interacting with gender

optimized quantity within distance models of spatial welfare heterogeneity abstract spatial welfare heterogeneity is frequently modeled within stated preference analysis as a function of discrete or continuous distance between households and affected resources a common example is distance decay analysis although distance based models such as these are easily estimated the ubiquity of this paradigm can lead to analyses that overlook other forms of analysis with equal or greater relevance this paper develops an alternative approach to spatial heterogeneity in stated preference willingness to pay wtp based on the quantity or area of an affected resource surrounding each respondent at an optimized distance band or radius with distance bands optimized using a grid search algorithm that maximizes model likelihood methods and results are illustrated using a choice experiment on riparian land restoration in maine usa the resulting quantity within distance model identifies systematic spatial patterns that are undetectable using distance based analysis and directly relevant for welfare analysis

nonmarket valuation of water quality addressing spatially heterogeneous preferences using gis and a random parameter logit model abstract the spatial distribution of agri environmental policy benefits has important implications for the efficient allocation of management effort the practical convenience of relying on sample mean values of individual benefits for aggregation can come at the cost of biased aggregate estimates the main objective of this paper is to test spatial hypotheses regarding respondents local water quality and quantity and their willingness to pay for improvements in water quality attributes this paper combines choice experiment and spatially related water quality data via a geographical information system gis to develop a method that evaluates the influence of respondents local water quality on willingness to pay for river and stream conservation programmes in canterbury new zealand results showed that those respondents who live in the vicinity of low quality waterways are willing to pay more for improvements relative to those who live near to high quality waterways the study also found that disregarding the influence of respondents local water quality data has a significant impact on the magnitude of welfare estimates and causes substantial underestimation of aggregated benefits

nonmarket values of major resources in the korean dmz areas a test of distance decay the demilitarised zone dmz and its adjoining areas serve not only as a geopolitical buffering zone between north and south korea but also as rare refuges for various animals and plants this paper investigates conservation values of major dmz resources and comparatively tests distance decay between contingent valuation and choice modelling the overall conservation value for the dmz resources per person as one off payments was 9 06 or 34 97 respectively from the cvm and cm datasets research findings deny distance decay regardless of elicitation methods when the distance variable is parameterised as part of utility functions conversely a segmentation valuation approach demonstrates conflicting conclusions on distance decay and the wtp anomaly between users and non users depending on elicitation methods the cm results demonstrate that protection of the dmz resources might be less important and attractive to local populations than to those in the distant regions a direct cross method transfer of any distance effect might not be granted

the effects of unions on organisational change and employment this paper investigates the association between unionism organizational change and employment using british data over 1980 84 union plants were more likely to have experienced organizational change this is likely to be due to both the once for all removal of restrictive practices and union voice effects the oft cited negative relationship between unionism and employment growth may well arise from the differential extent to which restrictive practices were removed in union plants during 1980 84 more importantly the authors present evidence suggesting that unions were associated with faster employment growth during the late 1970s copyright 1991 by royal economic society

the employment consequences of wrongful discharge laws large small or none at all uniquely in the industrialized world the united states has long had the presumption that employers may legally fire workers at will that is for good cause bad cause or no cause at all during the 1970 s and 1980 s this presumption eroded rapidly most u s state courts created three classes of common law restrictions that limited employers ability to fire these exceptions garnered media headlines created costly litigation and perhaps as importantly generated substantial uncertainty among employers about when they could terminate workers with impunity we refer to these common law exceptions as wrongful discharge laws briefly summarized the public policy exception prevents employee discharges that would thwart an important public policy for example performing jury duty filing a worker s compensation claim reporting an employer s wrongdoing or refusing to commit perjury the good faith exception prohibits employers from firing workers to deprive them of earned benefits such as sales commissions or pension bonuses the implied contract exception makes informal employer assurances of ongoing employment such as those found in personnel manuals or promotion letters legally enforceable under the implied contract exception an employer implicitly offering ongoing employment can only terminate a worker for good cause understanding the economic consequences of these doctrines is essential to an evaluation of the costs of using litigation to protect employment rights fortunately for empirical analysis states vary greatly in the timing and extent of adoption of wrongful discharge laws most state courts have adopted at least one wrongfuldischarge law in the last three decades three states florida georgia and rhode island have never adopted an exception while 10 states recognize all three exceptions one may potentially use this cross state over time variation to analyze how wrongful discharge laws affected employment and earnings in state labor markets we are not the first authors to recognize this opportunity in an influential paper james n dertouzos and lynn a karoly 1992 dk hereafter estimated that the adoption of wrongfuldischarge laws was economically equivalent to a 10 percent employer side tax on wages leading to a 3 percent reduction in aggregate employment in states that allow workers to sue for punitive tort damages for wrongful discharge as is typically true under the good faith and public policy exceptions moreover dk found that states that adopted a doctrine under which plaintiffs may sue only for economic contract losses typically the implied contract discussants henry farber princeton university joshua angrist massachusetts institute of technology richard thaler university of chicago

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

on the economic rationale for codetermination law abstract this paper develops a positive efficiency economic case for codetermination law resting on the correction of labor and capital market and organizational failures a legally mandated codetermination structure is shown to provide employee checks on several structural incentives for management opportunism codetermination is shown to offer advantages for technical efficiency skill development and knowledge generation through its protection of specific human capital investments financial markets cannot enforce codetermination due to a set of free rider problems

the aggregation of environmental benefit values welfare measures distance decay and total wtp abstract we review the literature regarding the aggregation of benefit value estimates for non market goods two case studies are presented through which we develop an approach to aggregation which applies the spatial analytic capabilities of a geographical information system to combine geo referenced physical census and survey data to estimate a spatially sensitive valuation function these case studies show that the common reliance upon political rather than economic jurisdictions and the use of sample mean values within the aggregation process are liable to lead to significant errors in resultant values we also highlight the fact that for resources with use values then we should expect overall values to reduce with increasing distance from such sites but that changes in the choice of welfare measure will determine whether such distance decay is to be expected within values stated by those who are presently non users the paper concludes by providing recommendations for future improvements to the methodology

applications of aggregation theory to sustainability assessment in order to aid operations that promote sustainability goals researchers and stakeholders use sustainability assessments although assessments take various forms many utilize diverse sets of indicators numbering anywhere from two to over 2000 indices composite indicators or aggregate values are used to simplify high dimensional and complex data sets and to clarify assessment results although the choice of aggregation function is a key component in the development of the assessment there are few literature examples to guide appropriate aggregation function selection this paper applies the mathematical study of aggregation functions to sustainability assessment in order to aid in providing criteria for aggregation function selection relevant mathematical properties of aggregation functions are presented and interpreted cases of these properties and their relation to previous sustainability assessment research are provided examples show that mathematical aggregation properties can be used to address the topics of compensatory behavior and weak versus strong sustainability aggregation of data under varying units of measurements multiple site multiple indicator aggregation and the determination of error bounds in aggregate output for normalized and non normalized indicator measures

age size growth and survival uk companies in the 1980s this paper examines growth and survival amongst quoted and unquoted u k companies in the period 1975 85 and compares the results with earlier u k and u s studies an examination of death rates shows that smaller companies had higher death rates but the largest and smallest companies were least vulnerable to takeover careful attention is therefore paid to problems of sample selection bias it is shown that smaller companies grew faster than larger companies that gibrat s law does not hold amongst smaller firms that age is negatively related to growth and that these results are not an artifact of sample selection bias copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

job protection the macho hypothesis this paper shows that the stringency of employment protection in mediterranean countries can be partly explained by cultural values embedded in religion both the security provided by this legislation and its redistributive effects in favour of the male breadwinner insiders fit into the framework of mediterranean religions first international individual surveys allow us to document that catholics and muslims are more likely to agree with traditional gender division of work than protestants and the non religious second we develop a political economy model predicting that employment protection should be more stringent in countries where there is a larger share of insiders supportive of traditional family values we then show that this prediction is supported by empirical evidence on oecd countries over the period 1970 99 copyright 2006 oxford university press

enforcement of implicit employment contracts through unionization in a world in which employment contracts are incomplete it is costly for a firm to establish credibility for honoring implicit terms of employment agreements by monitoring the employment relationships between the firm and its workers the labor union may provide the workforce with valuable information regarding the firm s adherence to these implicit agreements thus the union provides a signaling mechanism that allows workers to coordinate their actions in order to discipline the firm for a breach of the implicit contract this mechanism enhances the firm s credibility when forming employment contracts and facilitates increased employment levels

directional heterogeneity of environmental disamenities the impact of crematory operations on adjacent residential values a hedonic study of residential house sales in rawlins wyoming was conducted to estimate the impact of an environmental shock from a new point source upon adjacent residential property values we use a unique data base of house sale prices and associated house attributes including structural and neighbourhood characteristics and geographic distances and directions from the source of the shock atmospheric emissions from a new crematory our data spans 27 months of house sales 7 months before and 20 months after the startup of crematory operations results indicate that proximity measured both in terms of direction and distance from the crematory imparts a statistically significant negative impact on average house sale prices an increase of 0 3 to 3 6 of average sale price for every one tenth mile increase up to one half mile in distance away from the crematory but depending on direction from the crematory this distance benefit increases somewhat with calendar time only for houses located west of

efficiency and internal organization works councils in west german firms efficiency voice theory has not explained why highly competent managers cannot maintain effective communication without formal or mandatory institutions of l abor s voice powerful west german works councils are negatively rela ted to productivity in the sample suggesting that the best managers can do better without councils however excessive pressure on worker s should encourage both unionization and councils to gain compensatin g differentials and the simultaneous wls tobit estimates also suppor t this effect general productivity benefits from formal voice organi zation are strongly rejected but evaluating welfare efficiency and causality directly requires data on job satisfaction and managerial ability copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

works councils and employment growth in german establishments using data from german manufacturing establishments this article examines the relationship between works councils and employment growth taking the endogeneity of councils into account the estimates show a positive growth effect of works councils this suggests that the performance enhancing voice role of german works councils dominates their monopoly role moreover the findings of this study support the hypothesis that workers are more likely to implement a council to protect their quasi rents when the establishment is facing a long term crisis copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

contracting productivity growth in this paper we analyze the interactions between growth and the contracting environment in the production sector allowing incompleteness in contracting implies that viable production relationships for firms and workers and therefore the profitability of industries depend on the rates of innovation and growth the speed at which new innovations arrive in turn depends on the profitability of production for the usual reasons examined in the endogenous growth literature we show that these interactions can have important implications which are consistent with observed phenomena in both the micro and macro environment in particular we demonstrate that a technological shock increasing productivity of research can through this interaction lead to a productivity slowdown and a shift in labor market contracts away from firms providing implicit guarantees of lifetime employment and towards shorter term contractor type arrangements we show the consistency of an increase in the proportion of the labor force under short term employment increased relative returns of workers in high productivity sectors and increased income inequality with a productivity slowdown of finite duration

the determination of r d empirical evidence on the role of unions abstract this paper examines the empirical evidence of the role of union bargaining on innovation we review the existing empirical evidence and emphasis some of the problems with the theoretical assumptions we outline a simple model of strategic rd b the union bargains only over wages

seniority sectoral decline and employee retention an analysis of layoff unemployment spells we investigate the effect of tenure on employee retention under varying labor market conditions using a competing risks analysis of recall and new job acceptance applied to layoff unemployment spell data from waves 15 and 16 1982 83 of the panel study of income dynamics we find that adverse conditions sectoral employment decline significantly reduce the positive tenure effect on recall probabilities this result is consistent with firm default on delayed payment contracts and does not appear to reflect the effect of technological change on the value of firm specific investments

employment protection tough to scrap or tough to get difierences in employment protection across countries appear to be quite persistent over time one mechanism that could explain this persistence is the so called constituency efiect high employment protection creates a mass of workers in favor of maintaining high protection because deregulation would mean that they would lose their jobs to the extent that this mechanism is at work employment protection would appear to be a policy that is di cult to deregulate once it has been introduced in this paper i consider an alternative mechanism generating persistence that makes employment protection a policy that is di cult to introduce if a legislative process is initiated to introduce employment protection it is reasonable to assume that flrms have an opportunity to lay ofi workers before employment protection becomes efiective firms would have an incentive to do so in order to avoid the cost associated with stringent employment protection in the future anticipating this workers whose situation is already precarious may not flnd it in their best interest to support the legislative process to introduce employment protection in the flrst place the main result of the paper is that the ability of flrms to adjust employment before an increase in employment protection becomes efiective may give rise to situations in which both low and high employment protection are stationary political outcomes