Investments in worker health and production: Evidence from Vietnam

In manufacturing industries, occupational health and safety measures ensure better working conditions for employees, which may influence their productivity. We study the impact of investments undertaken by small and medium enterprises in Vietnam in mitigating indoor pollution (including air quality improvements, heat and noise protection as well as lighting) on firm-level gross output and value added. We find that the amount invested by the firm in health has a significant positive effect on both outcomes. Given historically poor working conditions in Vietnam, policy implications relate to incentivizing and enabling firms to undertake such investments, on both moral and economic grounds.     

The Assessment of Exclusive Contracts: The Competition Case Against Computicket in South Africa

Review of Industrial Organization - This article reviews an abuse of dominance decision against the main outsourced ticketing firm in South Africa. The decision of the Competition Tribunal in...     

Telework quality and employee well-being: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) forced organisations to implement intensive telework for many of their workers overnight. This scenario was completely new, and the emergency caused by COVID-19 created the possibility of experimenting with new ways of working with an unknown impact on employee well-being. Drawing on previous literature, we defined a model of telework quality consisting of the following four core domains: agile offices within organisations, functional remote workstations, flex-time and engaging management. We identified two high-quality and low-quality telework profiles using latent profile analysis on a data sample of 2295 insurance and financial sector employees. Demographic, occupational and procedural characteristics were associated with the probability of being in the positive or negative profiles. Our results showed that employees' emotional exhaustion and work engagement levels were related to telework quality. This study suggests that organisations need to consider the quality of telework to effectively adopt new ways of working that foster employee well-being.     

Forward-Looking Belief Elicitation Enhances Intergenerational Beneficence

Environmental and Resource Economics - One of the challenges in managing the Earth’s common pool resources, such as a livable climate or the supply of safe drinking water, is to motivate...