analysing the determinants of environmental technology investments a panel data study of spanish industrial sectors abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically assess the determinants of environmental technology investments in the spanish industrial sectors with the help of panel data econometric techniques the paper confirms the relevance of the stringency of environmental regulation to explain overall investment patterns in environmental technologies these investments are also positively related to human and physical capital intensity and r d intensity and negatively related to the export intensity of sectors furthermore the study shows that the determinants for investments are likely to differ between environmental technology types i e end of pipe versus cleaner technologies

extending the cyert march duopoly model organizational and economic insights two studies were conducted to further explore the organizational and economic insights provided by the cyert march duopoly model c m described ina behavioral theory of the firm abtof cyert and march 1963 study 1 examined the extent to which two firms that differed solely in the decision behavior of a routine would also differ in organizational quasiresolution of conflict uncertainty avoidance problem driven search and organizational learning and economic profit price market share cost measures and impacts three such manipulations were separately examined where each manipulation altered the relative propensity of the firm to be more or less reactive to three events production growth pressure price adjustment under organizational goal conflict and initial price adjustment under profit goal failure analysis of the behaviors revealed how subtle changes in these key routines could generate complex organizational and economic effects that impact firm success the dominant result demonstrated that organizations that did not perform well organizationally did not perform well economically in addition higher reactivity resulted in higher costs in part because of quantified organizational constructs e g slack pressure study 2 examined the data from the first study to determine the extent to which the performance of the duopoly was consistent with a set of eight stylized economic facts drawn from the empirical literature on oligopoly study 2 demonstrated consistency with five of the eight stylized economic facts and provided partial support for two others we conclude that behavioral constructs of abtof as articulated in the cyert march duopoly model provide behavior and performance capabilities that bridge the gap between game theoretic models of duopoly and the computational and informational realities of organizations

family earnings and wage inequality early in the life cycle a bstract this article proposes an explanation for the fact that while wages of married women contribute to equalizing the distnrbution of family wages the equalizing effect declines during the early stages of the married life cycle the explanation is based on the interaction between on the job accumulation of human capital and labor supply behavior empirical results from the nls panel data suggest that the explanation is plausible and also show that in contrast to the results of previous cross section studies there is no decline over time in the equalizing effect of wives earnings on the distribution of family earnings

an alternative approach to estimate the wage returns to private sector training summary this paper follows an alternative approach to identify the wage effects of private sector training the idea is to narrow down the comparison group by only taking into consideration the workers who wanted to participate in training but did not do so because of some random event this makes the comparison group increasingly similar to the group of participants in terms of observed individual characteristics and the characteristics of planned training events at the same time the point estimate of the average return to training consistently drops from a large and significant return to a point estimate close to zero copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

occupational self selection a human capital approach to sex differences in occupational structure a rich and diverse literature exists concerning the distribution of labor incomes one approach namely that of human capital concentrates on lifetime accumulation paths of earnings capacity units human capital individual variations in human capital imply differences in earnings power thereby yielding strong implications concerning earnings distribution within a population despite its explanatory power the human capital model has been widely criticized one criticism centers on its inability to obtain inferences concerning occupational distribution the purpose of this paper is to alleviate at least some such criticism by applying the hedonic price approach so as to embed occupational choice into the human capital framework the significance is that neoclassical economic theory can be used to obtain implications concerning the determinants of occupational structure excerpt

wage structure and gender earnings differentials in china and india summary this study analyzes how changes in overall wage inequality and gender specific factors affected the gender wage gap in chinese and indian urban labor markets in the 1990s and 2000s we observe the significant expansion of skilled workers and the increase in overall wage inequality in both countries over the period analyses of micro data present that contrasting evolutionary patterns in gender wage gap emerged over the period showing a widened wage gap in china but a dramatically reduced gap in india in both countries female workers increased skill levels contributed to reducing the gender wage gap however increases in observed prices of education and experience worked unfavorably for high skilled women counterbalancing their improvement in labor market qualifications decomposition of changes in the gender wage gap shows that china s widened gap was attributable to gender specific factors such as deteriorated observable and unobservable labor market qualifications and increased discrimination especially against low and middle skilled female workers for india gender specific factors and relatively high wage gains of low and middle skilled workers reduced the male female wage gap our study suggests that consideration of overall wage structure unobserved skills and gender specific factors such as unobserved labor market qualification and discrimination against women should be included in designing policies to promote gender equity and inclusiveness in labor markets

investment in human capital and gender wage differences evidence from the nlsy this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital since the nlsy includes relatively detailed information regarding on and off the job training we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post school training also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap it is found that about 60 of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances this suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found the research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men our research suggests that the largest factor

sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

interrupted work careers depreciation and restoration of human capital the quantitative effects and even the existence of a human capital depreciation phenomenon have been a subject of controversy in the recent literature prior work however was largely cross sectional and the longitudinal dimension if any was retrospective using longitudinal panel data on married women in nls we have now established that real wages at reentry are indeed lower than at the point of labor force withdrawal and the decline in wages is greater the longer the interruption another striking finding is a relatively rapid growth in wages after the return to work this rapid growth appears to reflect the restoration or repair of previously eroded human capital the phenomenon of depreciation and restoration is also visible in data for immigrants to the united states however while immigrants eventually catch up with and often surpass natives returnees from the nonmarket do not fully restore their earnings potential

what aspects of formality do workers value evidence from a choice experiment in bangladesh this study uses a choice experiment among 2 000 workers in bangladesh to elicit willingness to pay wtp for job attributes a contract termination notice working hours paid leave and a pension fund using a stated preference method allows calculation of wtp for benefits in this setting despite the lack of data on worker transitions and the fact that many workers are self employed which makes it difficult to use revealed preference methods workers highly value job stability the average worker would be willing to forego a 27 percent increase in income to obtain a 1 year contract relative to no contract or to forego a 12 percent increase to obtain thirty days of termination notice there is substantial heterogeneity in wtp by type of employment and gender women value shorter working hours more than men while government workers place a higher value on contracts than do private sector employees

gender differences in training capital and wages this paper constructs an equilibrium job matching model where workers differ in their attachment to the labor force the model predicts that workers with weaker attachment to the labor market will receive lower starting wages and lower post training wages and will be placed in jobs that offer less training and use less capital the implications of the model for gender differences in pay and job assignment are tested with the eopp data set ourfindings suggest that while training intensity during the first three months of employment is similar in positions filled by males and females females are employed in positions that have a shorter duration of on the job training and that use less capital these differences in on the job training and capital in positions filled by men and women as well as a lower market value for women s prior labor market experience account for a substantial part of the gap in wages between males and females

stimulating different types of eco innovation in the uk government policies and firm motivations in this paper we adopt a recent oecd framework and examine the role of external policy tools and internal firm specific factors for stimulating three different types of eco innovations that range on a spectrum of lower to higher technological and environmental impacts end of pipeline pollution control technologies integrated cleaner production technologies and environmental r d using a novel firm level dataset from a defra survey we estimate a tobit model which provides empirical evidence showing that these eco innovations are motivated by different external policy tools and internal firm specific factors our findings indicate that end of pipeline technologies and integrated cleaner production technologies are mainly driven by equipment upgrade motives with a view of improving efficiency while environmental regulations are effective in stimulating the end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d interestingly alongside government induced regulations we find that market factors mainly motivated by cost savings are effective in driving environmental r d finally iso14001 certification is effective in strengthening the positive impact of environmental management systems on both end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d while csr policies have no significant impact on motivating any of the eco innovations

job matching and on the job training conventional analysis predicts that workers pay part of their on the job training costs by accepting a lower starting wage and subsequently realize a return to this investment in the form of greater wage growth missing from the conventional treatment of on the job training is a discussion of the process by which heterogeneous workers are matched to jobs requiring varying amounts of training this matching process constitutes a key feature of the on the job training model presented in this article and tested with a unique data set containing extensive information concerning on the job training employer search wages and wage and productivity growth

on gender gaps and self fulfilling expectations alternative implications of paid for training i introduction the recent literature on gender differences in the labor market has focused mainly on two issues the first one deals with the mechanisms e g adverse selection that can amplify initial differences in preferences or productivity across genders leading to sizeable gender gaps in wages labor force participation or working hours these models help us understand to what extent changes in gender gaps have been due to changes in fundamentals including differences in the pattern of endogenous accumulation of human capital by men and women 1 the second one is related to the channels explaining persistence in gender gaps even when exogenous differences across the sexes are of little importance or even absent 2 these studies tend to rely upon the existence of incentive problems in the labor market e g moral hazard leading to self fulfilling prophecies about differences in gender roles without assuming any initial comparative advantages our paper falls into this second strand of the literature by considering an alternative mechanism based on statistical discrimination by firms in the provision of paid for training to male and female workers this yields multiplicity of equilibria in gender gaps even in the absence of moral hazard 3 the basic idea in models of gender gaps relying upon self fulfilling prophecies is that employers beliefs about women s lower attachment to the labor market lead to wage differentials in favor of men hence since women expect to face a lower expected opportunity cost they end up devoting more time to housework validating in this way firms beliefs for example albanesi and olivetti 2009 propose a model where firms are subject to incentive compatible constraints due to their imperfect monitoring of workers effort a moral hazard problem and of hours of housework an adverse selection problem as a result different types of labor contracts are offered to men and women in a similar vein lommerud and vagstad 2007 deal with a model where firms allocate workers to fast and slow track jobs the former requiring a fixed investment cost if women have traditionally exerted primary major responsibility at home and wages are non contractible they will predominantly follow a mommy track in equilibrium while incentive problems often used to derive additional predictions on the structure of wages to be confronted with the data provide a useful modeling device they could be somewhat restrictive for instance concerning the difficulty of perfectly monitoring effort pay gaps should be negligible for routine tasks performed by less skilled employees for whom effort and output should be easily observable yet even after removing differences in observable characteristics and in the overall wage dispersion there is evidence about substantial gender gaps in hourly wages in these categories see e g blau and kahn 2000 bassanini and saint martin 2008 de la rica et al 2008 our paper contributes to this literature by proposing a novel mechanism which does not rely on incentive problems we consider a two period model in which firms initially offer paid for training to workers taking as given the division of housework between spouses in the second period spouses decide on how to split the certain and uncertain parts of housework where the latter is captured by the realization of a shock affecting household tasks during this period e g unexpected need of housework or events that require parental leave etc both decisions interact because the housework decision determines whether a spouse works or quits after receiving training and the firm chooses the amount of training without observing the household s housework allocation statistical discrimination arises in this setup as a result of firms prior beliefs about which spouse is more likely to quit the job under the key assumptions that wages are predetermined with respect to housework shocks and that the household does not re optimize after the shock is revealed asymmetric beliefs will induce differences in the provision of training across spouses

the intertemporal stability of the concentration margins relationship using a longitudinal data base we find that there has been a substantial narrowing of the spread between the price cost margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries including measures of macroeconomic fluctuations into standard price cost margin regressions we find significant differences in cyclical behavior across market structure we also explore a possible explanation unionization for differences in cyclical behavior finally we investigate the degree to which our results are affected by the potential simultaneity of concentration advertising and the price cost margin

the role of past performance in export ventures a short term reactive approach this paper employs organizational learning theory to examine the short term effect of past export performance and internal management and external market forces on marketing strategy adaptation and current export performance results from a survey of over 500 export managers indicate that current period performance improvement in terms of performance achievement export intensity and performance satisfaction in the current year is influenced by the firm s commitment to exporting further the authors found that while performance satisfaction feeds performance improvement in the following year both the previous year s export intensity and export performance achievement produce a negative impact on current period performance improvement more importantly the level of development in the export market facilitates marketing strategy adaptation in the short term as does export intensity in the previous year however satisfaction with previous year performance negatively influences the degree of distribution adaptation implications for international business researchers and practitioners are also discussed

do women prefer women s work a new methodology is implemented to determine whether job characteristics can explain why women are concentrated in low paying female dominated occupations extensive information on jobs and labour market histories are collected from the 1982 national longitudinal survey youth cohort for women and men characterized by substantial labour market attachment significant differences in nonpecuniary job characteristics between the male and female samples are found to exist nevertheless we find no evidence that women differentially favour those job characteristics commonly associated with women s work

inequality in the lifetime earnings of women haworth charles t and carol jean reuther industrial concentration and inter industry wage determination this review 60 feb 1978 85 95 johnson george e economic analysis of trade unionism american economic review 65 may 1975 23 28 lester richard pay differentials by size of establishment indiuistrial relaitionis 7 oct 1967 57 67 lewis h gregg interpreting unionism coefficients in wage equations mimeo duke university aug 1980 masters stanley h wages and plant size an interindustry analysis this review 51 aug 1969 341 345 mellow wesley unionism and wages a longitudinal analysis this review 63 feb 1981 43 52 miller edward m size of firm and size of plant soulther i econotnic journal 44 apr 1978 861 872 ohta makoto and zvi griliches automobile prices revisited extensions of the hedonic hypothesis in nestor e terleckyj ed houisehlold production anid conisumtiption1 studies in income and wealth no 40 n ber new york columbia university press 1975 gi walter heterogeneous firms and the organization of production mimeo university of rochester mar 1981 pugel thomas a profitability concentration and the interindustry variation in wages this review 62 may 1980 248 253 rosen sherwin trade union power threat effects and the extent of organization reviei of economic studies 36 apr 1969 185 196 unionism and the occupational wage structure in the united states initernattionatil economic reviewi 11 june 1970 269 286 stigler george j information in the labor market joirt1i11 of political econoiny1 70 supplement oct 1962 94 105 u s bureau of the census 1972 censuss of manufjactures special report series washington d c government printing office 1973 1972 enterprise statistics pairt 1 genieral report oni i industriai l or gantiiza tioni washington d c government printing office 1977 u s bureau of labor statistics selectedl earninigs anid deinograph ic characteristics ojl uniioni members 1970 report 417 washington d c government printing office 1972 emplon ee comnpenisati otn in the private notijoairm economv 1974 bulletin 1963 washington d c government printing office 1977 weiss leonard concentration and labor earnings amnericanl economic review 56 mar 1966 96 117

sex related wage differentials and women s interrupted labor careers the chicken or the egg wage differentials between men and women are often attributed to differences in on the job training the lower investment of women being explained by their plans to interrupt their careers for family reasons career interruptions however are often explained by low wages to trace this interrelationship i adopt a simultaneous equations approach trying to explain wages planned separations on the job training and the skill intensity of the job simultaneously skill intensity is found to be a key variable in the explanation of the wage differential traditional theory is hard pressed to explain the sex related differences in this variable

discrimination empirical evidence from the united states the study of discrimination received a major impetus in the 1960 s when increasing social attention focused upon race and gender differentials in market outcomes gary becker s the economics of discrimination 1957 strongly influenced empirical research by providing a definition of wage discrimination and suggesting a specific way in which it might operate during the following years new theories were developed and refined in an attempt to explain why there appears to be continued discrimination in spite of market forces presumably operating against it similarly a large amount of empirical work has been done to determine whether and how much discrimination actually exists and to a lesser extent to test the implications of the various theories even so the hope expressed by becker in the preface of the second edition 1971 that our understanding of discrimination would increase so rapidly that the materials in his book would become obsolete before another decade began has clearly not been fulfilled here we review what has been learned in the intervening years and suggest some fruitful directions for future research 1 the focus of this paper like that of most of the empirical research in this area is on determining the extent of discrimination rather than on testing alternative models of discrimination

the trend in the male female wage gap in the united states despite the rise in the feminist movement the enactment of equal opportunity legislation and the rapid increase in women s labor force participation a substantial sex differential in wages has persisted in the united states for at least 4 decades measured by hourly earnings of year round workers this wage gap was 31 in 1955 widened to a 35 37 range by the 1960s and early 1970s and then narrowed to 33 by 1982 this paper examines the extent to which changes in the characteristics of men and women in the labor force and other factors can account for the observed pattern the main finding is that increases in women s labor force participation were initially associated with a declining skill level of employed women relative to employed men where skill is measured by years of schooling and job tenure more recently the work experience of employed women has been increasing which helps account for the recent narrowing trend in the wage gap during the 1970s the wage gap probably woul have narrowed m

occupational segregation rejoinder to polachek this article examines worker sorting across occupations in response to the risk of death on the job we use family structure as a proxy for willingness to trade safety for wages to test the proposition that workers with strong aversion to this risk sort

toward a model of risk in declining organizations an empirical examination of risk performance and decline scholars who study organizational decline have argued that declining organizations reduce or eliminate their riskier activities such as innovation further they cite reduced risk taking as a primary contributor to further decline scholars with an interest in risk per se come to the opposite conclusion low performing firms often take more risks than other firms and such risks reduce subsequent performance this study attempts to resolve these conflicting views by examining the risk of firms in decline our model based on cyert march s cyert r m j g march 1963 a behavioral theory of the firm prentice hall englewood cliffs nj behavioral theory of the firm includes six basic variables 1 performance 2 slack 3 aspirations 4 expectations 5 risk income stream uncertainty and 6 organization size as a measure of decline the estimated model includes prior levels of risk and performance in the risk and performance equations respectively as controls this study uses data on 34

how environmental regulations affect innovation in the australian oil and gas industry going beyond the porter hypothesis the impact of environmental regulation on innovation is of central interest to many industries and policy makers alike while traditional research adopts a top down view of regulation and attempts to measure the innovation response the more bottom up view of contemporary theory argues that firms produce innovations that exceed compliance levels as a competitive strategy we approach this dichotomy by investigating innovation introduced by australian oil and gas firms in light of environmental regulatory compliance burden and firm level characteristics including competitive capabilities analyses of survey responses executive level interviews and conference proceedings reveal both regulatory top down and competitive advantage bottom up perspectives explain innovation in this industry regression analyses reveal that product service and novel innovations all types are related to a high compliance burden competitive skills research and development activity and engagement in formal collaborations interview and conference data add nuance to our findings revealing collaborative compliance frameworks result in similar innovation outcomes

worker effort decisions and efficient gender specific wage tenure profiles i introduction during the past thirty years women have increased their labor force participation female labor market intermittency has decreased and women s total labor market experience and years of tenure with the current employer have increased what these trends imply about the evolution of the gender gap in wages depends in part on gender differences in returns to tenure it is therefore surprising that economists have all but ignored the empirical finding that women have higher returns to tenure than do men over a significant portion of their working lives one reason why this finding has been ignored or treated as an anomaly may be the lack of theoretical constructs which predict an inverse gender gap in returns to tenure several labor market models predict that women should have lower returns to tenure than men human capital theory offers the most frequently cited explanation of flatter earnings profiles for female workers according to human capital theory gains from specialization and exchange lead to one household member specializing in home production and the other in market work since only women bear children historically the outcome of the exchange has been that women have specialized in home production indeed all surveys of time use indicate that women spend on average two to three times as long on housework as men as a consequence of this allocation women anticipate intermittent labor force participation and fewer years overall in the labor force than men this pattern too is borne out in national surveys which invariably find shorter average tenure and fewer total years of labor market experience for women than for men women typically have shorter completed job spells as well hall 1982 table 5 presents evidence that the gender gap in completed job duration is quite large he estimates that 63 8 percent of men but only 49 6 percent of women hold jobs with eventual tenure of at least five years with 37 3 and 15 1 percent of men and women respectively holding jobs with eventual tenure of at least twenty years because of the greater intermittency and shorter anticipated work history for women than men women will find it optimal to acquire less human capital than men 1 lesser quantities of general human capital tends to flatten both the observed earnings experience profile and the observed earnings tenure profile two factors contribute to this pattern first skills deteriorate during periods out of the labor market as in mincer and polachek 1974 which flattens the earnings experience profile for women relative to men second women anticipating discontinuous work histories select into occupations with flatter earnings profiles to minimize the penalty to labor force withdrawals as in polachek 1981 the effects of firm specific human capital on gender differences in wage tenure profiles vary across models for example kuhn 1993 constructs an elegant game theoretic model of gender differences in training and wages if women have a higher exogenous exit rate than men in equilibrium they will be placed in jobs with lower levels of firm specific training with a positive relation between training and productivity and a common share rate of the costs and benefits of specific training for men and women the wage tenure profiles of men will be steeper than those for women in contrast becker and lindsay 1994 argue that firm specific human capital leads to higher returns to tenure for women than men becker and lindsay assume that men and women have the same level of firm specific training however women have greater variance in their opportunity cost of remaining with a firm and so are more likely than men to separate inefficiently by giving women a greater share of both the costs and benefits of firm specific human capital through a steeper wage tenure profile firms reduce undesirable turnover although human capital arguments dominate the literature on gender differences in the labor market other models of wage growth predict flatter wage tenure profiles for women

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

persistent wage dispersion and involuntary unemployment it is costly for firms offers to workers to be turned down both because firms must make additional offers and making offers is costly and because capital is underused or unused provided that workers apply to at least two firms for jobs there will be wage dispersion in equilibrium and some workers will randomly fail to receive any wage offers firms in the same industry with access to the same technology may nevertheless choose different levels of capital intensity firms using capital intensive technologies will pay higher wages

equilibrium wage dispersion and interindustry wage differentials this paper develops a search theoretic explanation of interindustry wage differentials given coordination problems in the labor market the probability of filling a vacancy is an increasing function of the wage offered in equilibrium firms that find vacancies more costly will offer higher wages the model thus explains the persistence of interindustry wage differentials and their correlation with industry average capital labor ratio and profitability additionally the model predicts that high wage firms will receive more applications per job opening and that wages in the labor market will behave as strategic complements

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

worker sorting and the risk of death on the job this article examines worker sorting across occupations in response to the risk of death on the job we use family structure as a proxy for willingness to trade safety for wages to test the proposition that workers with strong aversion to this risk sort into safer jobs we estimate conditional logit models of occupation choice as a function of injury risk and other job attributes our results confirm the sorting hypothesis within gender single moms and dads are the most averse to risk overall differences in the risk of death across occupations explain about one quarter of occupational gender segregation

eco innovations in developing countries the case of manaus free trade zone brazil innovations focused on sustainability are called in academic papers sustainable innovations environmental innovations eco innovations or green innovations this is an emerging subject whose terms and concepts are still not fully consolidated in addition literature review indicates the need to identify the challenges to the implementation of eco innovations in developing countries especially in resource rich regions such is the case of the manaus free trade zone mftz in brazil this research aims to identify factors that promote or inhibit eco innovations in this context by analyzing the impact of these drivers and companies orientation to innovation this is a case study that aimed at assessing industries of the mftz data was collected through in depth interviews direct observation and analyses of formal documentation data collected was analysed through content analysis the results obtained demonstrated despite the region s vocation for environmental issues initiatives on eco innovations are still scarce the companies studied were also dependent on their headquarters which means that there is little concern over local issues and investment in eco innovations is low in conclusion this study makes a theoretical and practical contribution to research on eco innovation firstly it analyses drivers of eco innovation in developing countries especially in free trade zones new drivers have been identified and those presented in previous researches demonstrated that their impact on eco innovations is less significant secondly it provides a panoramic understanding of the main eco innovation processes as local condition to develop eco innovation finally it offers significant insights for researchers and experts who are challenged by the need to perform sustainability from an eco innovation point of view difficulties and hindrances to eco innovate

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

the marriage earnings premium as a distributed fixed effect wage equations using cross sectional data typically find an earnings premium in excess of 10 percent for married men one leading hypothesis for the premium is that marriage facilitates specialization that enables married men to become more productive than single men another is that the premium is attributable to an unobserved fixed effect married men possessing qualities that are valued in the labor market as well as the marriage market this paper suggests that the premium is attributable to an unobserved timedistributed fixed effect that emerges and grows with the approach of marriage and continues to grow for some years after marriage a similar distributed fixed effect is found in the case of women but it is smaller and declines after a few years of marriage the results appear to cast doubt on the specialization hypothesis

domestic concentration foreign trade and economic performance abstract in a competitive fringe model the impact of concentration on price cost margins can be shown to be ambiguous therefore looking at the relationship between rates of return and concentration ratios is not sufficient for perceiving collusive elements in this paper a model is set up that permits discerning collusion more clearly additional evidence concerning collusion can be gained by analyzing the influence of exports and imports on price cost margins applying this approach to west germany yields the result that the collusiveness prevailing in domestic markets has not visibly decreased in spite of a substantial increase in foreign trade

remittances and financial inclusion evidence from el salvador this paper investigates the impact of remittances on financial inclusion this is an important issue given recent studies showing that financial inclusion can have significant beneficial effects on households using household level survey data for el salvador the authors examine the impact of remittances on households use of savings and credit instruments from formal financial institutions they find that although remittances have a positive impact on financial inclusion by promoting the use of deposit accounts they do not have a significant and robust effect on the demand for and use of credit from formal institutions if anything by relaxing credit constraints remittances might reduce the need for external financing from financial institutions while at the same time increasing the demand for savings instruments

vocational training and gender wages and occupational mobility among young workers this paper investigates the relationship between the gender wage gap the choice of training occupation and occupational mobility we use longitudinal data for young workers with apprenticeship training in west germany workers make occupational career choices early during their careers and women and men pursue very different occupational careers we reconsider whether through occupational segregation women are locked in low wage careers kunze 2005 or whether they can move up to higher wage paths through mobility we furthermore investigate whether patterns have changed across cohorts during the period 1975 and 2001 and whether effects vary across the distribution the main results are first while there exists a persistent gender wage gap over experience the gap has decreased over time second in the lower part of the wage distribution the gap is highest and it increases with experience third occupational mobility is lower for women than for men and the wage gains due to occupational mobility are higher for men than for women especially in the lower part of the wage distribution we conclude that occupational mobility has reduced the gender wage gap but lock in effects are still stronger for women compared to men

the driving forces of process eco innovation and its impact on performance insights from slovenia this study endeavors to explore the driving forces of process eco innovation and its effect on company performance by adopting an integrative approach we focus on process eco innovation which pertains to technological and non technological solutions that result in a reduction of material and energy costs for companies in this regard the study sheds light on the drivers and outcomes of process eco innovation adoption using data collected from 223 slovenian companies the results reveal that certain determinants i e competitive pressure customer demand managerial environmental concern command and control instrument and economic incentive instrument are conducive to the deployment of process eco innovation empirical evidence reveals competitive pressure as the most influential driving force of process eco innovation followed by managerial environmental concern and customer demand effectiveness in spurring process eco innovation is also found to be a command and control instrument and an economic incentive instrument while expected benefits do not spur process eco innovation pertaining to the outcomes of process eco innovation adoption we can conclude that it pays to be eco process eco innovation is worthwhile in terms of company profitability growth and competitive benefits these findings suggest several courses of action for both policy makers and companies hence we conclude by providing implications for both

estimating a dynamic adverse selection model labour force experience and the changing gender earnings gap 1968 1997 this paper addresses two questions what accounts for the gender gap in labour market outcomes what are the driving forces behind the changes in the gender labour market outcomes over the period 1968 1997 it formulates a dynamic general equilibrium model of labour supply occupational sorting and human capital accumulation in which gender discrimination and an earnings gap arise endogenously it uses this model to quantify the driving forces behind the decline in the gender earnings gap and the increase in female labour force participation the proportion of women working in professional occupations and hours worked it finds that labour market experience is the most important factor explaining the gender earnings gap in addition statistical discrimination accounts for a large fraction of the observed gender earnings gap and its decline it also finds that a large increase in aggregate productivity in professional occupations plays a major role in the increase in female labourforce participation number of hours worked and the proportion of females working in professional occupations although of less importance demographic changes account for a substantial part of the increase in female labour force participation and hours worked whereas home production technology shocks do not

why are the returns to schooling higher for women than for men many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible reasons for this effect using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 one explanation is that education appears to have a double effect on the earnings of women it increases their skills and productivity as it does with men and in addition it appears to reduce the gap in male and female earnings attributable to factors such as discrimination tastes and circumstances the latter appear to account for about half of the differential in the returns to schooling

firms choice of method of pay using data from the bls industry wage survey the author tests the theory that firms choose their methods of pay by balancing the gains from more precise links between performance and pay against m

optimal mismatch and promotions i introduction a substantial proportion of workers are employed in jobs for which they appear to be either overqualified or underqualified for instance using data from the panel study of income dynamics sicherman 1991 finds that 40 percent of his sample are overeducated and another 16 percent are undereducated rumberger 1987 reports similar values using data from the quality of employment surveys other studies which find substantial education mismatch include duncan and hoffman 1981 verdugo and verdugo 1989 and hersch 1991 and evidence that a single firm hires both under and overqualified workers is presented here this paper provides an explanation for why firms hire both overqualified and underqualified workers firms hire overqualified workers because these workers require less training for their initial positions such workers also form a pool from which promotions are made which lowers hiring costs for higher level positions within the firm workers accept positions for which they are overqualified to enhance their probability of promotion and because of search and mobility costs but if they fail to be promoted to a position that better matches their qualifications they are more likely to quit firms hire underqualified workers despite their longer training requirement since such workers are less likely to quit and provide continuity of the labor force over time thus contrary to job matching arguments that would explain these hires as a result of imperfect information hiring of seemingly mismatched workers is optimal and these matches are made with perfect information the model developed in this paper yields three testable hypotheses 1 training time for entry level jobs is inversely related to overqualification at the time of hire 2 workers who are overqualified on their current job are those who have failed to be promoted to a job which better matches their qualifications and such workers are more likely to quit and 3 workers overqualified at time of hire are more likely to be promoted to test these hypotheses i use new data collected for this purpose previous empirical research such as that cited above was restricted by data availability to examining only the match between education and the worker s current job thus the quality of the match with the worker s initial job and the match between worker qualifications other than education has gone unexplored however various worker characteristics in addition to education are often substituted for each other in determining a worker s qualification for a job thus i examine additional qualifications including the match between the worker s experience level of previous job and use of skills information on the match between the worker s qualifications and those required for the initial job with the employer is particularly important since entry level qualifications determine training time for the initial job as well as the likelihood of promotion further individual specific training time for the initial job is necessary but typically not available since data sets providing information on training such as the panel study of income dynamics and quality of employment surveys request information on training time for the average worker and not for the individual worker the data set reveals several interesting statistics qualification mismatch at hire is fairly common for this firm 29 percent of the sample report themselves overqualified for their first job with the firm while 13 percent report themselves as underqualified lateral intra firm mobility is common and occurs far more frequently than promotions workers in the sample average 1 3 promotions but four different jobs with the employer this suggests that the job matching process occurs not only by turnover but through intrafirm mobility consistent with the assumptions and implications of the model the empirical results indicate that workers who are overqualified at hire receive less training and more promotions and that workers overqualified for their current job are more likely to quit

complementarities between obstacles to innovation evidence from france abstract this paper investigates obstacles to innovation faced by french manufacturing firms using cis2 data we distinguish between obstacles in postponed projects and obstacles in abandoned projects first we highlight the most important barriers to innovation faced by firms and find that lack of skilled personnel is one of these second based on descriptive analysis correspondence analysis and multivariate probit models we explore factors explaining the perception of obstacles and study complementarities between those obstacles we show that while adopting a package of policies increases the pace of innovation a more targeted choice among policies is needed to encourage firms to persevere in their innovative efforts

male female disparity in starting pay empirical studies of the earnings of male and female workers persistently reveal a gap that is unexplained by the economic variables in these models this gap has been given two interpretations in the literature one holds that the gap reflects non market forces which distort the equilibrium relation among the wages of competing workers discrimination according to this view prevents female workers from being offered jobs commensurate with their qualifications and crowds them into low productivity occupations 2 the alternative interpretation holds that some substantial portion of the gap is an artifact the result of missing variables biased parameters or measurement error these researchers view the labor market as highly competitive and were it possible to correct for all these statistical problems the measured wage gap would largely vanish 3 this research belongs to the latter category we argue that a portion of the measured gap at least that observed between the earnings of young men and women during their first few years with their employers reflects sex related differences in the shares of investment in firm specific human capital borne by workers of each group moreover these variations in investment levels are freely chosen by women and in no way imply long run deficits in their earning power on the contrary the model predicts steeper earnings profiles of women who undertake this firm specific investment thus women s earnings are predicted eventually to overtake and surpass those of equally qualified men this theory was developed in earlier research by becker and lindsay 2 based on a model of hashimoto 11 12 and extensions by parsons 21 we argued that young women for nondiscriminatory reasons elect to shoulder a larger share of this investment than young men the explanation for this is developed in two stages the first derives the terms under which both male and female workers share the investment with their employers the second argues that female workers will be led by these considerations to bear a larger share workers of both sexes agree to enter into inflexible wage contracts with employers specifying a share of the investment i e a wage deduction from current mvp and a post investment wage the advantage to such contracts lies in the solution to an assymetric information problem the

pay differences among the highly paid the male female earnings gap in lawyers salaries this article uses very detailed information on graduates of the university of michigan law school to examine male female pay differences in that population men and women in this population have virtually identical human capital on graduation from law school allowing us to examine carefully the different impact of children and work history on men s and women s careers and earnings taking time from work in order to care for children reduces wages significantly but a rich set of controls including childcare work history school performance and job setting measures still leave one fourth to one third of the earnings gap unexplained

asset choice and supplier performance in two organizations us and japanese the problem of vertical integration is a venerable but increasingly important focus of attention in profit seeking organizations over the past ten years many industries have seen increased cooperation between buyers and suppliers to achieve more difficult goals caused by rising product market competition in many firms this cooperation is balanced against the putative advantages of diminishing but still substantial in house operations one way to compare the performance of cooperative suppliers with in house operations is to focus on the buyer s choice of assets used to produce the inputs needed for the final product for strategic reasons some of these assets will be highly specialized and others standardized the question this paper asks is whether this choice of specialized or standard assets influences the performance of the supplier controlling for whether it is in the market or in house the hypothesis is that the choice of specialized assets for strategic reasons is associated with lower supplier conformance with the buyer s target price for the input in other words for these assets the supplier s price which is higher than the buyer would have liked to pay reflects some of the strategic value of the input to the buyer the supplier is simply appropriating some of this value since it can raise its price with a low threat of termination by the buyer for standard assets in contrast the threat of termination is omnipresent so that the choice of assets is irrelevant for supplier price performance the test is performed using data on both in house operations and market suppliers from a quite large us manufacturing firm and on market suppliers to a very successful japanese manufacturing firm interestingly there is no difference between these firms in the applicability of the hypothesis also in house and market suppliers differ in price performance only for standard assets market suppliers performing better organizations can therefore gain quite a bit from outsourcing the production of less specialized inputs but achieve roughly the same performance from in house and market suppliers for more specialized inputs this last result is controversial and should bc tested repeatedly using other micro level data this study therefore addresses three sides of the current debate surrounding modern questions of vertical integration first does the strategic value of the input make a difference in supplier performance the answer is yes but only for specialized inputs second do in house and market suppliers differ in their performance the answer is yes but only for standardized inputs third do us and japanese firms differ in the performance of their suppliers given variation in asset specialization and strategic importance the answer is no at least for the two firms studied here all caveats regarding the generalizability of results from small sample studies apply

the effect of a first child on female labor supply evidence from women seeking fertility services estimating the causal effect of a first child on female labor supply is complicated by the endogeneity of fertility this paper addresses this problem by focusing on a sample of women from the national survey of family growth nsfg who sought help to become pregnant after a certain period only some of these women gave birth results using this strategy show that having a first child younger than one year old reduces female employment by 26 percentage points these estimates are close to ols estimates from census data and to those from ols and fixed effects models on nsfg data

empirical generalizations in eco innovation a meta analytic approach abstract although discussions on eco innovation are ongoing and the concept is evolving its central idea is highly stimulating thus a great number of studies has been conducted in recent years around the world based on different perspectives contexts and outcomes therefore the identification and analysis of factors related to eco innovation are essential if knowledge in this field is to be improved and consolidated this research aimed to advance our understanding of the different dimensions of eco innovation through a meta analytical review of its antecedents or drivers consequents and moderators thus a total of 71 studies was analysed generating 818 effect sizes and 220 582 cumulative samples the main findings revealed that barriers company capabilities environmental regulation market turbulence information sources r d and company size were significant antecedents to eco innovation it was also noted that a significance relationship exists between eco innovation and firm performance regarding the moderating effect it was observed that culture the economic situation of the country and context influence the relationship between eco innovation and performance the results revealed that countries with a lower hdi presented stronger effects between eco innovation and firm performance than countries with a higher hdi these findings were interesting because they could demonstrate that eco innovation tends to promote more competitive advantage in countries with environmental problems and consequently a lower hdi

gender wage discrimination methodological issues and empirical results for a canadian public sector employer a methodology for testing the statistical significance of wage discrimination is presented from two perspectives first the question of whether or not wage discrimination is present and second the question of whether or not wage discrimination is of sufficient magnitude to make a statistically significant contribution to the earnings advantage of the majority group using this methodology the total effect of within occupation wage discrimination against females at a large canadian public sector employer is estimated to be statistically insignificiant at the same time occupational femaleness has a negative effect on female earnings so that a pay equity programme is estimated to reduce the earnings advantage of males at this employer by 27 37

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

estimating workers marginal willingness to pay for job attributes using duration data this paper develops and applies a method for estimating workers marginal willingess to pay for job attributes when workers job choices are characterized by imperfect information and labor market search as an application this paper analyzes the job durations of white males using data from the national longitudinal survey youth cohort and the dictionary of occupational titles estimates of workers willingness to pay derived from the job duration model are compared with those derived from an hedonic wage model

income losses of women and men injured at work women and men injured at work in wisconsin during 1989 and 1990 have similar levels of lost earnings in the quarter of injury however in the three and one half years after the post injury quarter women lose an average of 9 2 percent of earnings while men lose only 6 5 percent even after accounting for covariates with a variant of the oaxaca blinderneumark decomposition the disparity in long term losses remains differences in injury related nonemployment account for about half the covariate adjusted gap over the four year post injury period changes in hours worked may explain all or part of the remaining gap gender differ

you paid for the skills now keep them tuition reimbursement and voluntary turnover does investing in employees marketable skills reduce turnover this study uses insights from human capital theory to explain how general skill development and promotion relate to voluntary turnover data from 9 439 salaried employees of a large manufacturer show that participation in tuition reimbursement reduces turnover while employees are in school voluntary turnover increases when individuals earn graduate degrees but is significantly reduced if they are subsequently promoted

market structure and market value while the use of market models to determine the sources of economic profits is quite new at least two empirical studies considering the market structure and market value relation have appeared to date interestingly they conflict thomadakis 1977 found a close positive relation between the four firm concentration ratio and relative excess valuation measured as the difference between the market value of the firm and the book value of tangible assets all normalized by sales as a result thomadakis argued that industry concentration plays a role in the determination of excess profits from currently held assets and those expected from the firm s investment options p 185 in contrast lindenberg and ross 1981 reported no significant relation between concentration and tobin s q ratio measured as the ratio of the market value of the firm to the replacement cost of tangible assets this result disputes thomadakis s findings and a purely structuralist interpretation of economic profits according to lindenberg and ross market power may or may not be evident in highly concentrated markets since high q s can occur in concentrated or unconcentrated markets and conversely low q s indicating no significant market power can occur in markets that have high degrees of concentration p 28

income inequality and the development of environmental technologies within rich countries a large dispersion in the capacity of generating environmental innovations appears correlated to the level of inequality previous works analyze the relationship between inequality and environmental quality in a static setting this paper builds a dynamic model more suitable to analyze technological externalities driven by the emergence of a new demand for green products under fairly general assumptions on technology and preferences we show that 1 the relationship between inequality and environmental innovation is highly non linear and crucially depends on per capita income 2 an excessive inequality harms the development of environmental technologies especially in rich countries key to our results is the fact that externalities generated by pioneer consumers of green products benefit the entire population only for relatively low income distances the empirical analysis robustly confirms our theoretical results that is whereas for rich countries inequality negatively affects the diffusion of innovations per capita income is paramount in poorer ones

sex discrimination in the promotion process previous research has suggested that intra occupational earnings differences are the principal source of the long standing earnings gap between men and women following that line of research this study examines the extent of gender differences in the incidence of and returns to promotions drawing on the quality of employment panel the authors compare the earnings and promotion experience of men and women over the period 1973 1977 after controlling for unmeasured differences in job level and constant individual ability in a fixed effect model they conclude that the returns to promotion are comparable for men and women further analysis indicates however that women are held to higher promotion standards than men and therefore receive fewer promotions than men with equal measured abilities although the female male wage ratio in this sample increased by nearly 6 percent over four years the increase could have been as much as 9 2 percent if women and men had been held to the same promotion standards

gender discrimination and compensating differentials in sweden the determinants of the unexplained component of the male female wage difference in sweden are examined the hypothesis that there is a compensating wage differential associated with undesirable job charcteristics is tested hedonic wage equations are estimated using data collected in the 1981 swedish level of living survey the estimation takes into consideration possible sample selection bias due to the non randomness takes of employment and the potential endogeneity of job choice variables in wage offer equations overall the analysis indicates that compensating wage differentials are not a major determinant of the male female wage difference in sweden

male female wage differentials in job ladders much of the male female wage differential exists because men and women are assigned to different jobs within narrow job categories there is no male female differential only a tortured taste theory of discrimination can reconcile these facts we argue that differential movement along job ladders entails comparative advantage so the ability standard for promotion is higher for women this implies that more able women will be passed over in favor of less able men women assumed to have the same ability distribution as men earn less the differential reflects females lower promotion probability not within job discrimination

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

collusion versus differential efficiency testing alternative hypotheses the predictions of collusion and efficiency based static equilibrium explanations of interindustry profitability differences are formally developed and tested using appropriate econometric techniques with intraindustry data on seventy u s internal revenue service minor manufacturing industries in 1963 and 1972 none of the explanations has much explanatory power the 1963 data are consistent with collusion based models while the 1972 data are inconsistent with all non null hypotheses considered patterns of profitability are sharply different in the two years in complex ways apparently unrelated to cyclical forces or the phase ii price controls implications of these results are discussed copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

persistence of occupational segregation the role of the intergenerational transmission of preferences this article provides an explanation of the evolution and persistence of the women s segregation in jobs with less on the job training opportunities within the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of preferences job priority and family priority preferences are considered firms policy and the distribution of women s preferences are endogenously and simultaneously determined in the long run the results show though the gender gap in training will diminish it will also persist over time this is because both types of women s preferences coexist at the steady state due to the socialisation effort of parents to preserve their own cultural values

process eco innovation assessing meso level eco efficiency in industrial water service systems eco innovation combines economic advantage with lower ecological resource burdens eco innovation has been generally directed at energy input substitutes component recycling etc some companies have made investments reducing resource burdens in the production process this study investigated options for eco efficiency improvement in two large manufacturing companies volvo and arla foods their impetus for eco innovation comes from the companies environmental policies as well as from external drivers such as future higher costs and resource scarcity relative to their respective industrial sector these companies represent strong prospects for reducing resource burdens in water service processes especially from chemical inputs and wastewater such eco innovations involve more com plex interactions beyond the production site so the options warrant a whole system comparative assessment

the impact of differences in turnover rates on male female pay differentials economic theory suggests that wages vary with turnover rates because of hiring and training costs workers viewed as likely to quit can anticipate a wage discount workers in industries with high layoff rates may demand a compensating wage premium by pooling time series industry turnover rates by sex with 1970 census data we are able to examine the effect of past industry turnover on current earnings turnover proves to be important for both males and females although the wage discount for a high quit probability is larger for females when differences in turnover are taken into account the portion of the male female earnings gap explainable by human capital and socioeconomic variables increases by a factor of one half

employability miles and worker employability awareness this article studies the use and impact of a employability miles voucher scheme these vouchers could be used for participation in a restricted number of training courses which all aim to stimulate employees to develop a more active attitude towards their own employability using data from two surveys of one firm s workforce we find that voucher use is related to various personality traits and personal characteristics in particular a worker s ambition goal setting and education level are positively related to voucher use in addition workers with longer tenure spend their vouchers more often conversely workers with a more positive self image as well as those who are negatively reciprocal spend their vouchers less often the negative relation between voucher use and negative reciprocity suggests that workers who are more negatively reciprocal perceive the voucher as an hr tool for outplacement further we find that voucher use positively affects worker employability awareness and willingness t

cumulative gender disadvantage in contract employment women s wages do not grow with experience or tenure as much as men s do many accounts of this cumulative gender disadvantage attribute it to women s underinvestment in firm specific skills yet if that were true this disadvantage would not exist where firm specific skills are not rewarded by the labor market this article investigates this argument in the context of contract employment where demand for firm specificity is minimal contrary to expectations men still receive higher rewards than women over time drawing on quantitative evidence and qualitative fieldwork using job histories of high skill contractors affiliated with a staffing firm the author finds support for two sources of women s disadvantage lower rates of movement across clients on the supply side and unmeasured demand side factors by which similar levels of tenure and client transitions accrue lower rewards to women implications for research on gender stratification and career advancement in nonformalized labor markets are discussed

employer discrimination evidence from self employed workers during the last two decades the issue of equality according to sex and race has become one of increasing importance to economists an extant literature on the economics of discrimination began with the pioneering work of becker 1957 this paper is an attempt to shed further light on the extent of employer discrimination by sex and race by comparing the earnings of self employed workers to their wage and salary counterparts in short if employer discrimination is a principal source of discrimination against blacks and women then we would expect the black white and female male earnings ratios to be higher for the self employed compared to their wage and salary counterparts no discrimination of this type is applicable to self employed workers in addition blacks and women should be relatively overrepresented among the self employed compared to wage and salary workers in the economy section ii of this paper further elaborates on this indirect method to estimate the extent of employer discrimination in the labor market for blacks and women in section iii the results of this method are presented using the 1978 current population survey as the data source results indicate the black white and female male earnings ratios are no larger for the self employed compared to their wage and salary counterparts even after making various attempts to adjust for differences in other variables that affect earnings and to limit the influence of consumer discrimination on the results

the effects of national culture on corporate social responsibility disclosure a cross country comparison this article presents a cross country analysis of the influence of national culture on corporate social responsibility csr disclosure we analyse the relationship between the hofstede s cultural

training opportunities in monopsonistic labour markets this paper studies the empirical relationship between the extent of monopsonistic power observed in occupational labour markets and the training opportunities available to workers in those markets