outcome based accountability theory and evidence abstract a firm s payoffs can often depend on whether it exceeds a threshold of performance in a principal agent setting we demonstrate that the optimal contract induces efficient effort by basing firing decisions solely on whether the agent was successful even though the absolute level of performance is more informative we test the predictions of our model using thirty seasons of nfl data we find that a coach is 6 percentage points more likely to be fired after a close loss beyond this the margin of victory has no significant impact on firing probabilities despite being more informative about future success also consistent with the predictions of our model coaches maximize team effort by playing their best players when doing so has the largest impact on the probability of winning

the positional power of american labor 1963 1977 this paper extends perrone s conceptualization of positional power of labor and investigates its impact on three labor outcomes we conceptualize positional power as embedded in the structural relations among interconnected spheres of production in the economy we maintain that positional power is a threedimensional construct it entails 1 the ability of workers in a given industry to disrupt operations of other industries upstream in the production process 2 the ability to disrupt operations downstream in the production process and 3 the ability to disrupt production locally within their own industry after developing new measures of these three dimensions from interindustry input output flow matrices we estimate the impact of positional power on three labor outcomes a labor s organizational capacity b labor militancy and c labor s economic standing our findings suggest that positional power positively influences all three of these dimensions we discuss the significance of these results for future research

labor law reform and the role of delay in union organizing empirical evidence from canada this paper examines the determinants and consequences of delay in the union certification process using data from certification applications and unfair labor practice complaints ulps from british columbia 1986 98 and ontario 1993 98 during the period studied there were several changes in delay related laws including laws regulating the presence and stringency of election time limits and the availability of expedited ulp hearings key findings are that ulps against the employer reduced the likelihood of compliance with time limit laws except where expedited ulp hearings also existed employer filed objections to the application reduced the likelihood of compliance and election delay reduced the likelihood of certification success both in policy regimes without time limits and in those where stipulated time limits were frequently breached overall the results suggest that enforced time limits on elections coupled with expedited ulp hearings may substantially mitigate the adverse effects of election delay on certification success

the late season bias explaining the nfl s home underdog effect this article examines price efficiency and out of sample predictability in the nfl point spread betting market our main contribution to the existing literature is the identification of a persistent increase in bias magnitude during the final few weeks of each season we demonstrate that this anomaly causes the much documented home underdog effect we also offer evidence that the limits of arbitrage have enabled this phenomenon to persist for decades finally we use several regression models to confirm our univariate analysis and show that these models can be used to implement profitable betting strategies the predictive models presented differ from those in the prior literature by taking into account both short term and aggregate biases

skill biased technological change and rising wage inequality some problems and puzzles the recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to skill biased technical change sbtc associated with new computer technologies we review the evidence for this hypothesis focusing on the implications of sbtc for overall wage inequality and for changes in wage differentials between groups a key problem for the sbtc hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s despite continuing advances in computer technology sbtc also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality including the gender and racial wage gaps and the age gradient in the return to education

the impact of international outsourcing on unionization and wages evidence from the apparel export sector in central america it is often assumed that manufacturing workers in developing countries as recipients of outsourced jobs would achieve economic benefits and organizational power the author argues that job growth in developing countries through outsourcing to competing firms has often actually resulted in declining unionization and lower wage rates relative to traditional integrated manufacturing firms using time series data on union membership from 1980 2003 for honduras and el salvador as well as 2004 household survey data for el salvador he examines the determinants of unionization rates and wages in the manufacturing sectors he finds that that competitive outsourcing hurts labor at the plant level in three ways 1 it reduces labor s strike leverage by geographically dispersing the production process 2 it increases the threat of plant mobility by decreasing plant level investments and 3 it increases labor costs relative to total costs which creates an incentive for employers to keep wages low and unions out

union characteristics and bargaining outcomes this paper investigates the impact of union militancy size centralization and democracy on wages fringe benefits and other bargaining outcomes using data on bargaining outcomes at the bargaining unit level in conjunction with data on comparative union characteristics the authors find strong evidence that union characteristics affect bargaining outcomes determining the exact nature of those effects is complicated by several problems notably the difficulty of distinguishing effects on outcomes from effects on goals the possibility of reverse causality and complex interactions between such organizational characteristics as democracy and centralization the findings do suggest however that organizational complexity reduces union bargaining effectiveness whereas democracy and centralization tend to change the shape of outcomes as opposed to their size

estimating demand from ebay prices abstract this paper presents results for identification and estimation of the value distribution from ebay auction prices the paper presents results for ebay type auctions with independent private values and unobserved participation it is first shown that the distribution of values is identified from observing the distribution of prices and knowing the distribution of potential bidders the main identification result presents conditions for which the distribution of values and the distribution of potential bidders are simultaneously identified not surprisingly the intuition is similar to the standard results for identifying demand from observed equilibrium prices the estimation method suggested by the identification results is used to estimate the value distribution for the c5 chevrolet corvette sold on ebay the results suggest that a simple ols model on prices will over estimate the mean value of the item the estimation results are then used to calculate the optimal reserve price for these cars the estimated optimal reserves are compared to the actual reserves actual hidden reserves are set much higher than actual non hidden reserves the evidence suggests sellers set buy it nows and hidden reserves optimally to account for re listing opportunities

testing mixed strategy equilibria when players are heterogeneous the case of penalty kicks in soccer the concept of mixed strategy is a fundamental component of game theory and its normative importance is undisputed however its empirical relevance has sometimes been viewed with skepticism the main concern over the practical usefulness of mixed strategies relates to the indifference property of a mixedstrategy equilibrium in order to be willing to play a mixed strategy an agent must be indifferent between each of the pure strategies that are played with positive probability in the mixed strategy as well as any combination of those strategies given that the agent is indifferent across these many strategies there is no bene t to selecting precisely the strategy that induces the opponent to be indifferent as required for equilibrium why an agent would in the absence of communication between players choose exactly one particular randomization is not clear of course whether agents in real life actually play nash equilibrium mixed strategies is ultimately an empirical question the evidence to date on this issue is based almost exclusively on laboratory experiments e g barry o neill 1987 amnon rapoport and richard b boebel 1992 dilip mookherjee and barry sopher 1994 jack ochs 1995 kevin a mccabe et al 2000 the results of these experiments are mixed o neill 1987 concludes that his experimental evidence is consistent with nash mixed strategies but that conclusion was contested by james n brown and robert w rosenthal 1990 with the exception of mccabe et al 2000 which looks at a three person game the other papers generally reject the nash mixedstrategy equilibrium while much has been learned in the laboratory there are inherent limitations to such studies it is sometimes argued that behavior in the simpli ed arti cial setting of games played in such experiments need not mimic real life behavior in addition even if individuals behave in ways that are inconsistent with optimizing behavior in the lab market forces may discipline such behavior in the real world finally interpretation of experiments rely on the assumption that the subjects are maximizing the monetary outcome of the game whereas there may be other preferences at work among subjects e g attempting to avoid looking foolish that distort the results tests of mixed strategies in nonexperimental data are quite scarce in real life the games played are typically quite complex with large strategy spaces that are not fully speci ed ex ante in addition preferences of the actors may not be perfectly known we are aware of only one paper in a similar spirit to our own research using data from classic tennis matches mark walker and john wooders 2001 test whether the probability the player who serves the ball wins the point is equal for serves to the right and chiappori department of economics university of chicago 1126 east 59th street chicago il 60637 levitt department of economics university of chicago groseclose graduate school of business stanford university 518 memorial way stanford ca 94305 the paper was presented at games 2000 in bilbao and at seminars in paris and chicago we thank d braun j m conterno r guesnerie d heller d mengual p reny b salanie and especially j l ettori for comments and suggestions and m mazzocco and f bos for excellent research assistance any errors are ours 1 the theoretical arguments given in defense of the concept of mixed strategy equilibria relate either to puri cation john c harsanyi 1973 or to the minimax property of the equilibrium strategy in zero sum games for recent elaborations on these ideas see authur j robson 1994 and phil reny and robson 2001 2 the ultimatum game is one instance in which experimental play of subjects diverges substantially from the predicted nash equilibrium robert slonim and alvin e roth 1998 demonstrate that raising the monetary payoffs to experiment participants induces behavior closer to that predicted by theory although some disparity persists

political bias in nlrb unfair labor practice decisions previous research has suggested that u s presidents appoint members to the national labor relations board who reflect the administration s own union management predilections no adequate empirical evidence has yet been reported however to show that once appointed board members act in a biased manner the present study develops and tests a choice model of board member decisions in selected unfair labor practice cases over the 1954 77 period the evidence strongly supports the popular belief that board decisions are heavily dependent upon shifting political winds

what happened to long term employment the role of worker power and environmental turbulence in explaining declines in worker tenure recent declines in the average length of time that u s workers spend with a given employer represent an important change in the nature of the employment relationship yet it is one whose causes are poorly understood i explore those causes using current population survey data on the tenure of men aged 30 65 from the years 1979 2008 i argue that long term employment relationships primarily occur when workers pressure employers to close off employment from market competition reducing the attractiveness of external mobility relative to internal opportunities and increasing employment security i then explore how two changes in organizations environments a decline in union strength and increased turbulence from changes in technology and globalization might have affected workers ability to secure such closed employment relationships over the last 30 years my results support the argument that declines in tenure reflect the reduced power of workers to secure closed employment relationships recent declines in tenure have been concentrated in large organizations and many of those declines are explained by controlling for the changing levels of industry unionization i find little evidence that foreign competition or technological change affected mobility the results are robust to measures of changing industry growth rates and within industry reorganization supplementary analyses suggest that layoffs are associated with different industry pressures than tenure and that voluntary mobility may have played an important role in declines in tenure

stopping on nine evidence of heuristic managerial decision making in major league baseball pitcher substitutions economic agents who exhibit left digit bias over emphasize round numbers using data on managers pitcher substitution decisions in major league baseball i find that managers remove starting pitchers more often when the next pitch will result in a pitch count ending in zero unlike counts ending in nine pitch counts ending in eight do not exhibit higher substitution rates despite the fact that pitchers usually throw multiple pitches before the manager s next decision opportunity managers apparently use rules of thumb that emphasize leftmost digits and ignore at least some future consequences of present actions however these significant biases disappear when the stakes are high i find no evidence of disproportionate substitutions on the nine s in close games and the final digit of the pitch count does not discontinuously affect the probability of winning managers act in a manner consistent with rational inattention using heuristics only when the stakes are low

the determinants of voting by the national labor relations board on unfair labor practice cases 1955 1975 this study has employed logit analysis in an attempt to determine important variables that influence the voting by the nlrb on unfair labor practice cases pooled regression results on the odds of voting prolabor were reported for the administrations of eisenhower kennedy johnson and nixon and for the entire period 1955 1975 a number of interesting findings are offered in this empirical investigation of the nlrb first it was found that if a board member is reappointed to the board the greater will be the odds that the member will vote prolabor this verifies the speculation that the democrats preferred a solidly prolabor voting board and that the republicans desired a strong prolabor voting minority on the board secondly political variables such as the party of the administration appointing the nlrb member and the member s own political party had an influence on the odds of voting prolabor if the administration in power was democratic or if the board member was a democrat the greater were the odds that the member would vote prolabor even if a member of the board professed to be an independent politically which was the case for two members during the eisenhower administration this variable was found to have a positive effect on prolabor voting for that particular administration and for the entire study period also in the eisenhower and nixon administrations being a former nonmember employee of the nlrb may have had some impact on the voting behavior finally variables for economic conditions in the economy were introduced into the regression equations to test whether or not these variables had any effect on the voting behavior of the nlrb members in almost all of the logit models reported the unemployment rate had an influence on voting by board members the effect was found to be positive in the eisenhower period and negative in the kennedy johnson and nixon periods the effect for the entire period was positive it is suggested that whether or not the influence of the unemployment rate on the voting on unfair labor practice cases was positive or negative depended on how the board perceived the role of organized labor in the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment if the members believe that organized labor s demands for higher wages caused accelerated inflation when the administration in power was simultaneously trying to reduce unemployment then the odds of the member voting prolabor were reduced besides the unemployment rate some other economic condition variables that were found to have a possible effect on nlrb voting during the kennedy johnson administration were real gnp strike days lost and union membership in the united states while admittedly this study is only a first attempt at modeling the voting behavior of the nlrb on important unfair labor practice decisions we believe that we have captured some of the most important political and economic variables that effect the behavior of a quasi judicial agency the nlrb

state revenue extraction from different income groups variations in tax progressivity in the united states 1916 to 1986 we examine the conditions that affected the progressivity of the individual income tax in the united states between 1916 and 1986 a multivariate time series analysis shows how macroeconomic conditions state imperatives the organizational capacities of social classes and political conditions have affected the progressivity and the symbolic component of the income tax progressivity is measured by the difference between the effective tax rates paid by moderate income and very high income families the symbolic component of this tax is measured by the difference between the nominal tax rate and effective income tax rate paid by very high income families the results reveal that changes in tax progressivity are due largely to macroeconomic and state fiscal conditions such as unemployment economic development and budget deficits although the organizational capacities of social classes and political conditions such as labor organization and political participation also have effects changes in progressivity are due primarily to adjustments in the rates paid by very high income families however the impacts of these conditions on tax progressivity changed somewhat when the federal income tax was transformed into a mass tax during world war il finally political conditions have a relatively greater effect on the symbolic component of the income tax than on progressivity overall this analysis supports a structural theory of the state in which the influences of politics and social classes on revenue extraction are circumscribed by macroeconomic and state fiscal conditions

union strength neoliberalism and inequality contingent political analyses of u s income differences since 1950 do historically contingent political accounts help explain the growth in family income inequality in the united states we use time series regressions based on 60 years to detect such relationships

the hangover the lasting impact of early conflict on the duration of bargaining relationships although studies have shown that employer opposition negatively affects the likelihood of success at the certification and first contract stages there is little to no indication of what the long term impact of such opposition might be for relationships that successfully conclude a first agreement using survival analysis on nearly three decades of data from ontario this article investigates whether relationships that experience early conflict encounter a hangover a heightened likelihood of dissolution that extends into the representation phase of the process meaning beyond the settlement of the first agreement using unfair labor practice charges and first contract arbitration applications as proxies for conflict the author finds evidence of a hangover for relationships that exhibit a turbulent start further findings suggest that relationships that experience this early conflict also have a higher likelihood of dissolution throughout the entire relationship

the politics of union decline the contingent determinants of union recognition elections and victories despite the close political regulation of union recognition disputes sociologists have paid little attention to recent political determinants of success in these contests a state centered political opportunity approach suggests that if conservative political officials can reduce the number of union recognition elections union organization will be blocked partly because many labor scholars claim there was a postwar departure in labor movement fortunes we attempt to detect and model a contingent break in the relationship between republican control of the presidency and these elections using interactive specifications our findings show that shortly after the conservative anti union reagan administration took office recognition elections and union victories in these elections fell sharply with macroeconomic and other determinants held constant other political conditions with explanatory power include congressional oversight committee ideology and conservative appointments to the key regulatory age

an empirical analysis of the unionization of foreign manufacturing firms in the u s the ability of american labor unions to organize workers in majority and wholly foreign owned manufacturing plants in the u s is examined by analyzing union representation election results the principal conclusions are that the nationality of a firm is not a significant factor influencing election outcomes and that foreign firms are as difficult to unionize as domestic american firms several reasons are offered to explain these findings

illegal immigration border enforcement and relative wages evidence from apprehensions at the u s mexico border we examine illegal immigration in the united states from mexico over the period 1976 1995 one challenge is that we do not observe the number of individuals that attempt to enter the united states illegally we only observe the number of individuals apprehended attempting to cross the u s mexico border illegally based on a simple migration model we postulate the existence of an apprehensions function which expresses apprehensions at the border as a function of illegal attempts to cross the border and u s border enforcement effort we find that a 10 decrease in the mexican real wage leads to a 7 5 to 8 8 increase in apprehensions at the border excerpt

do firms maximize evidence from professional football this paper examines a single narrow decision the choice on fourth down in the national football league between kicking and trying for a first down as a case study of the standard view that competition in the goods capital and labor markets leads firms to make maximizing choices play by play data and dynamic programming are used to estimate the average payoffs to kicking and trying for a first down under different circumstances examination of actual decisions shows systematic clear cut and overwhelmingly statistically significant departures from the decisions that would maximize teams chances of winning possible reasons for the departures are considered

racial diversity and union organizing in the united states 1999 2008 does racial diversity make forming a union harder case studies offer conflicting answers and little large scale research on the question exists most quantitative research on race and unionization has studied trends in membership rather than the outcome of specific organizing drives and has assumed that the main problem is mistrust between workers and unions paying less attention for example to the role of employers the author explores the role of racial and ethnic diversity in the outcomes of nearly 7 000 organizing drives launched between 1999 and 2008 by matching the national labor relations board s information on union activity with the equal employment opportunity commission s surveys of large establishments the author reconstructs the demographic composition of the work groups involved in each mobilization the study finds that more diverse establishments are less likely to see successful organizing attempts little evidence is found however that this is because workers are less interested

when unionization disappears state level unionization and working poverty in the united states although the working poor are a much larger population than the unemployed poor u s poverty research devotes much more attention to joblessness than to working poverty research that does exist o

risk aversion and expected utility theory a calibration theorem within the expected utility framework the only explanation for risk aversion is that the utility function for wealth is concave a person has lower marginal utility for additional wealth when she is wealthy than when she is poor this paper provides a theorem showing that expected utility theory is an utterly implausible explanation for appreciable risk aversion over modest stakes within expected utility theory for any concave utility function even very little risk aversion over modest stakes implies an absurd degree of risk aversion over large stakes illustrative calibrations are provided

unions norms and the rise in u s wage inequality from 1973 to 2007 private sector union membership in the united states declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women during this period inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent we report a decomposition relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution s shrinking weight we argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries accounting for unions effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education

the perversity of preferences gsp and developing country trade policies 1976 2000 industrial countries maintain special tariff preferences namely the generalized system of preferences gsp for imports from developing countries critics have highlighted the underachieving nature of such preferences but developing countries continue to place the gsp at the heart of their agenda in multilateral negotiations what effect do such preferences have on a recipient s own trade policies the authors develop and test a simple theoretical model of a small country s trade policy choice using a dataset of 154 developing countries from 1976 through 2000 they find that countries removed from the gsp adopt more liberal trade policies than those remaining eligible the results corrected for endogeneity and robust to numerous alternative measures of trade policy suggest that developing countries may be best served by full integration into the reciprocity based world trade regime rather than continued gsp style special preferences

the public and private marginal product of capital lowe gratefully acknowledges financial support from esrc award number es i02476x 1 and perez sebastian from ministerio de economia y competitividad and fondo europeo de desarrollo regional eco2015 70540 p mineco feder and the generalitat valenciana prometeo 2013 037 papageorgiou acknowledges financial support from the uk department for international development

a non parametric revealed preference test of optimal intra firm resource allocation the collective rationality hypothesis initiated by chiappori 1988a and applied by seaton 1997 2001 for a two person household is used to distinguish the organizational behaviour of firms firms produce satisfaction to groups as traditional managerial and early behavioural theories of the firm of williamson baumol and marris suggest as well as more modern principle agent models under certain conditions intra firm bargaining leads to a pareto optimal outcome what makes this work an important contribution is that it identifies a set of nonvacuous testable restrictions to empirically detect if firm level data satisfy pareto optimal behaviour for the main decision makers in the organization

long run price elasticities of demand for credit evidence from a countrywide field experiment in mexico we use randomized interest rates offered across eighty geographically distinct regions for twenty nine months by mexico s largest microlender to sketch the adjustment from a price change to a new equilibrium demand is elastic and more so over the longer run e g the dollars borrowed elasticity increases from 1 1 in year one to 2 9 in year three credit bureau data do not show evidence of crowd out although this and other null results are imprecisely estimated the lender s profits increase albeit noisily starting in year two but competitors do not respond by reducing rates these findings together with other results suggest that informational frictions are important and that cutting rates furthered compartamos banco s double bottom line of improving social welfare subject to a profitability constraint

union suppression and certification success over the past decade a number of provinces have abandoned the long standing canadian tradition of automatic certification of unions based on card signing and instead opted for mandatory representation voting this trend however has developed with little understanding of the effectiveness of management opposition within a voting regime in this paper the impact of union suppression on union organizing success within the voting regime of british columbia is examined we find that union suppression tactics were highly effective with estimates rivalling those found in the united states moreover results from instrumental variable models suggest that ols estimates may seriously underestimate the true impact of suppression effort de suppression du syndicat et succes dans le processus de certification au cours de la derniere decennie un certain nombre de provinces canadiennes ont abandonne la pratique traditionnelle de certification automatique des syndicats sur la base des signatures de cartes d adhesion au syndicat et ont choisi de reclamer un scrutin pour determiner le support des membres potentiels on ne comprend pas bien l efficacite de l action d opposition des patrons au syndicat dans ce regime de scrutin ce memoire examine l impact des efforts de suppression des syndicats sur les succes des syndicats dans leurs efforts d organisation dans le cadre du regime de scrutin en colombie britannique on decouvre que ces tactiques ont ete tres efficaces tout autant qu aux etats unis de plus les resultats obtenus a l aide de modeles de variables instrumentales montrent que ceux qu on obtient a l aide de la methode des moindres carres ordinaires peuvent sous evaluer l impact des tactiques de suppression de maniere significative

worker replacement costs and unionization origins of the u s labor movement the embattled state of u s labor has generated a voluminous body of research on the processes of deunionization contributing to its decline revisiting the less researched topic of unionization this study explores the social conditions facilitating union growth during the labor movement s formative years focusing on the first decade of the twentieth century in many respects for labor a period not unlike the present i seek to explain the pattern of organizing success and failure across industries and occupations i find that the most organized settings occurred where workers had greater disruptive capacities due to the high cost of being replaced during work stoppages the highest replacement costs were associated with three conditions scarcity of skilled labor geographically isolated worksites that raised the cost of importing strikebreakers and time sensitive tasks that rendered replacement workers economically impractical workplaces that had at least one of these conditions formed the backbone o

certification delay under elections and card check procedures empirical evidence from canada this paper examines the determinants and consequences of delay in the union certification process using data from certification applications and unfair labor practice complaints ulps from british columbia 1986 98 and ontario 1993 98 during the period studied there were several changes in delay related laws including laws regulating the presence and stringency of election time limits and the availability of expedited ulp hearings key findings are that ulps against the employer reduced the likelihood of compliance with time limit laws except where expedited ulp hearings also existed employer filed objections to the application reduced the likelihood of compliance and election delay reduced the likelihood of certification success both in policy regimes without time limits and in those where stipulated time limits were frequently breached overall the results suggest that enforced time limits on elections coupled with expedited ulp hearings may substantially mitigate the adverse effects of election delay on certification success

trade benefits under the eec generalized system of preferences the purpose of the paper is to test for the existence of a statistically significant effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on actual trade flows between developing countries and the eec using a gravity type model we estimate the gross trade creation effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on the eec imports from 10 major developing countries estimation on a yearly basis for the period 1967 1978 indicates the presence of a statistically significant effect it would appear that gross trade creation amounted to about s2 billion for these 10 countries in 1978 in addition to these calculations the paper reviews the eec generalized system of preferences in detail and offers comments on its future impact on exports from developing countries

the happy farmer the effect of nonpecuniary benefits on behavior i test empirically the relationship between farmers perceptions of the nonpecuniary benefits from farming with a variety of field behaviors such as disinvestment production diversification and off farm labor market participation results suggest that nonpecuniary benefits have an important influence on a wide range of farmer activities while costs and returns are clearly important i suggest that nonpecuniary benefits may make some choices more attractive than others which may be more rewarding financially

effects of economic integration in industrial countries on asean and the asian nies abstract this paper assesses the effect of the proposed north american free trade area the second enlargement of the european community ec and ec 1992 on association of southeast asian nations asean and south korea by matching the commodities exported by asean or south korea to an integrating market such as the united states with those exported to the same market from internal sources such as canada it identifies the industries that would bear the brunt of the discrimination total trade diversion is estimated as a terms of trade effect at 4 of asean exports and 5 of south korean exports to north america and 8 and 5 of their respective exports to the ec ec 1992 is expected to have further discriminatory influences the effect of integration on direct foreign investment in asean and south korea is also evaluated

optimal soccer strategies this paper examines soccer teams strategic choices about the extent of offense defense to adopt in competing with other teams the sample is european champions league group stage matches played between 1997 1998 and 2009 2010 we begin by developing a characterization of teams strategies extent of offense or defense using principal component analysis this is used to estimate the relationship between a team s probabilities of scoring and conceding goals and its chosen strategy knowing that relationship it is then possible to derive a team s optimal strategy and to study how this varies in different situations such as playing at home or away a comparison between optimal and actual strategy reveals that teams appear to adopt more defensive strategies than is optimal a notable feature of our study is that we model a team as choosing a strategy at the start of each match and also at half time thereby incorporating a dynamic element jel c23 c72 l83 z00

contraction and expansion the divergence of private sector and public sector unionism in the united states the institutional structure of the american labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s in the 50s and 60s trade unions seemed permanently established in the private sector of the economy a third of nonagricultur al wage and salary workers and over half of blue collar workers were union members hundreds of thousands of workers voted annually in national labor relations board nlrb representation elections to join unions most large firms sought stable collective bargaining relations with their unions by contrast in the public sector only 10 12 percent of workers were union members fewer were covered by collective bargaining contracts and most experts regarded public employees as intrinsically nonorganizable according to afl cio president george meany it was impossible to bargain collectively with the government kramer 1962 p 14 the massive contraction of unionism in the private sector and expansion in the public sector in the 1970s and 1980s see exhibit 1 has produced an utterly different situation today in the private sector the proportion of wage and salary workers in unions plummeted to 14 percent in 1986 a level comparable to that in the great depression only a minuscule number of workers joined unions through nlrb elections and national companies openly proclaimed their intent to establish a union free environment by contrast in the public sector over a third of the work force was unionized some 40 percent were covered by collective contracts 1 and 1 estimates of organization in the public sector differ somewhat among sources though all data show greater organization than in the private sector see freeman ichniowski and zax forthcoming for a detailed analysis of the various statistics

trade and welfare effects of the european schemes of the generalized system of preferences through the last two rounds of multilateral tariff negotiations the kennedy round and the tokyo round discussions have been dominated by the interests of the three major trading blocs the united states the european economic community eec and japan all three groups have sought to exempt certain domestic industries from the negotiations the eec and japan have vigorously defended their agricultural sectors while the united states and other industrialized countries have protected the domestic textile and clothing industries consequently the products of greatest immediate interest to the less developed countries ldcs have not been the object of significant reductions in tariffs or nontariff barriers ntbs however the ldcs have not been excluded completely most of the industrialized countries have substituted a scheme of sub most

minimax after money max why major league baseball players do not follow optimal strategies using real life sports data of major league baseball this paper investigates whether professional players follow the minimax theorem in their strategies our empirical results using the 2010 regul

an innovative approach to national football league standings using bonus points we investigate the inclusion of bonus points in the national football league nfl using a prediction model built on league points both touchdown based and narrow loss bonuses are shown to be significant determinants of match outcomes this implies that including bonus points in league standings generates a more accurate ranking of teams from best to worst than a system that only rewards wins and ties our preferred system awards four points for a win two for a tie one point for scoring three or more touchdowns and one point for losing by seven or fewer points such a system would also make it easier for supporters to identify playoff contenders and place importance on otherwise meaningless end of game plays in some matches which would increase spectator interest

determinants of the outcomes of union certification elections this study analyzes determinants of union election outcomes at the level of the work unit within a theoretical framework of utility maximization voting behavior is modeled as a function of the social psychology of groups the economic and sociopolitical environment nlrb procedures and the extent of union organization of the industry utilizing nlrb certification election records for 1979 the author finds a negative relationship between unit size and union victories in units of fewer than 65 workers but no relationship in larger units also negatively related to union victories are delays between petition and election dates elections held in southern states having right to work laws and elections involving the teamsters in contrast workers are more likely to vote for representation as unemployment levels and the proportion of consent elections rise and as the rate of unionization in their industry rises to 35 percent

through the contested terrain implementation of downsizing announcements by large u s firms 1984 to 2005 since the 1980s leading u s firms have announced massive downsizing plans in the name of maximizing shareholder value but some observers are skeptical about how serious firms are in implementing

the loser s curse decision making and market efficiency in the national football league draft a question of increasing interest to researchers in a variety of fields is whether the biases found in judgment and decision making research remain present in contexts in which experienced participants face strong economic incentives to investigate this question we analyze the decision making of national football league teams during their annual player draft this is a domain in which monetary stakes are exceedingly high and the opportunities for learning are rich it is also a domain in which multiple psychological factors suggest that teams may overvalue the chance to pick early in the draft using archival data on draft day trades player performance and compensation we compare the market value of draft picks with the surplus value to teams provided by the drafted players we find that top draft picks are significantly overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets and consistent with psychological research this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behav

trade preferences for developing countries a survey of results empirical studies of the trade and development effects of the major preferential trading schemes between the industrialised countries and the developing countries are surveyed most studies find the agreements to be trade creating improving welfare for the donor though general equilibrium analysis indicates that terms of trade deterioration offsets efficiency gains there is some evidence that trade preferences stimulate ldc exports of preferred products but total exports are not significantly affected due to limited product coverage the existing literature does not provide evidence on the degree of infant industry protection or on economic diversification of the beneficiaries

the role of union strategies in nlrb certification elections analyzing 1986 87 data from 261 nlrb certification election campaigns the author finds that union tactic variables explain more of the variance in election outcomes than any other group of variabl

first contract arbitration effects on bargaining and work stoppages newly certified unions often experience difficulty negotiating a first agreement to remedy this the employee free choice act proposes that the national labor relations act provide for first contr

cognitive performance in competitive environments evidence from a natural experiment competitive situations that involve cognitive performance are widespread in labor markets schools and organizations including test taking competition for promotion in firms and others this paper studies cognitive performance in a high stakes competitive environment the analysis takes advantage of a natural experiment that randomly allocates different emotional states across professional subjects competing in a cognitive task the setting is a chess match where two players play an even number of chess games against each other alternating the color of the pieces white pieces confer an advantage for winning a chess game and who starts the match with these pieces is randomly decided the theoretical analysis shows that in this setting there is no rational reason why winning frequencies should be better than 50 50 in favor of the player drawing the white pieces in the first game yet we find that observed frequencies are about 60 40 differences in performance are also stronger when the competing subjects are more similar in cognitive skills we conclude that the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that psychological elements affect cognitive performance in the face of experience competition and high stakes