EQUIVALENCE SCALE SENSITIVITY OF POVERTY STATISTICS FOR THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

Using microdata from Household Budget Surveys of the Member States of the European Community, this paper examines the sensitivity of poverty statistics with respect to the choice of the equivalence scale. The results show that the ranking of the countries with respect to the overall poverty incidence is hardly affected when different equivalence scales are used. However, the composition of the poor population shows considerable changes when e.g. subjective equivalence scales are used instead of the OECD equivalence scale. The poverty incidence among specific household groups, such as single elderly and households with children, is particularly sensitive to the choice of the equivalence scale.     

Career Management in High‐Performing Organizations: A Set‐Theoretic Approach

The aim of this study is to investigate the elements of organizational career management (OCM) that can lead to strong organizational performance. The growing unpredictability of careers requires a different organizational approach of careers. Yet, new career models all focus on the individual as the central actor, leaving the role of the organization rather underdeveloped. Based on a combined perspective integrating insights from the literature on careers, high performance work systems, and idiosyncratic deals (I‐deals), we address four dimensions of OCM: supportive and developmental practices, development I‐deals, individual responsibility, and consensus. We study their relationships with company performance, thereby including the firm's human capital composition. Surveys were administered to the HR directors of 293 organizations. We apply a relatively new method, fsQCA (fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis), and complement this with more conventional structural equation modeling (SEM). The SEM analyses suggest that only supportive and developmental practices are positively associated with high performance. However, based on the fsQCA, three configurations are identified in which OCM is associated with high performance. The most prevalent configuration combined supportive and developmental practices with I‐deals and individual responsibility for career management. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings, and address the utility of adopting a configurational approach in career research. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Do satisfying walking and cycling trips result in more future trips with active travel modes? An exploratory study

Previous studies have indicated that travel satisfaction - the experienced emotions during, and cognitive evaluation of, a trip - can be affected by travel mode choice and other trip characteristics. However, as satisfactory trips might improve a person's attitude towards the used mode, persons may be more likely to use that same mode for future trips of the same kind. Hence, a cyclical process between travel mode choice and travel satisfaction might occur. In this paper we begin to analyse this process—using a structural equation modelling approach on cross-sectional data—for people who engage in walking and cycling for leisure trips in the Belgian city of Ghent. The focus on walking and cycling reflects recent studies indicating that active travel is often associated with the highest levels of travel satisfaction. Results of this exploratory analysis offer tentative support for the idea of a cyclical process: the evaluation of walking and cycling trips positively affects the respondents' attitude towards the respective mode, which in turn has a positive effect on choosing that mode.     

Marginal likelihood and unit roots

We develop new tests for the hypothesis of unit roots that are based on the marginal likelihood of the general linear model. The marginal likelihood allows the incorporation of invariance arguments in the likelihood function. It turns out that marginal likelihood tests for unit roots appear to be more powerful than other unit root tests. For some basic models power functions almost coincide with the power envelopes, even in small samples. General correlation structures can be incorporated, either by standard likelihood procedures or by adjustments of the test statistics on the basis of asymptotic distributions.     

TRADE AND FINANCIAL FLOWS IN A WORLD ACCOUNTING FRAMEWORK: A BALANCED WAM FOR 1990

How accurately do we measure the external deficit of the U.S. or the surplus of Japan? If checked at the global level, statistics on international trade and finance show large discrepancies. Such global statistical discrepancies hamper the analysis and understanding of world economic developments. An accounting framework—labelled World Accounting Matrix (WAM)—is proposed to cross-check the statistical consistency of commodity flows, international payments and internal balances across countries. The framework is applied to data for 1990. To obtain global consistency, substantial adjustments had to be made to the estimates of the external balances of the U.S. and Japan. The implications for global modelling work are potentially vast.     

Editorial

This article does not have an abstract     

Boorstin's consumption community concept: A tale of two countries

The concept of consumption community, first proposed by historian Daniel Boorstin, claims that in the modern era of high mobility, people look not only to neighborhood as a basis for feelings of community but also to communality of consumption behavior (e.g., drinking the same brand of beer). The idea was tested cross-nationally by administering a newly devised psychological sense of community (PSC) scale to more than 100 adult respondents in Belgium and a like number in the U.S. The findings support Boorstin in that for both national samples, PSC values for consumption items were generally positive and consistent with social science theoretical expectations. Implications of the study findings are discussed for theory and social policy.

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Zusammenfassung Das Konzept der Konsumgemeinschaft von Boorstin: Eine Geschichte von zwei Ländern. Das Konzept der Konsumgemeinschaft, erstmals durch den Historiker Daniel Boorstin vorgestellt, behauptet, da\ im heutigen Zeitalter hoher Mobilität der Einzelne sein Gemeinschaftsgefühl nicht nur durch seine Beziehung aus der direkten Nachbarschaft bezieht, sondern auch aus der Gemeinsamkeit bestimmter Konsumverhaltensweisen (z. B. das Trinken derselben Biermarke). Diese Idee wurde empirisch geprüft durch eine ländervergleichende Untersuchung, in der eine neu entwickelte psychologische Skala für den Gemeinschaftssinn bei jeweils einer Stichprobe von mehr als 100 erwachsenen Personen in Belgien und in den USA angewendet wurde. Die Ergebnisse stützen Boorstin insofern, als beide Länderstichproben zu Skalenwerten führen, die mit den theoretischen sozialwirtschaftlichen Erwartungen übereinstimmen.

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Koen De Vos is a Research Assistant at the same institution.     

Site competence dynamics in international manufacturing networks: instrument development and a test in Eastern European factories

The objective of this paper is to introduce an instrument that enables the measurement of dynamics in the roles of factories in international networks. Starting from Ferdows’ framework on strategic factory roles, a clear definition and more precise operationalization of ‘site competence’ is provided. Our proposed instrument is tested in a context, being the Eastern European factories of Dutch multinationals, where it is plausible to expect changes in the strategic factory roles over time. This test comprises four exploratory case studies that provide the basis for future, more extensive empirical work. At the same time, they contribute to the under-researched area of company and industry case studies with respect to the international context of operations management.     

A decision support system for strategic planning on pig farms

This paper reported on a decision support system (DSS) for strategic planning on pig farms. The DSS was based on a stochastic simulation model of investment decisions (ISM). ISM described a farm with one loan and one building using 23 variables. The simulation model calculated the results of a strategic plan for an individual pig farm over a time horizon of a maximum of 20 years for a given scenario. For six distinct replacement strategies, regression metamodels were specified to describe the outcome of the response variable as a function of the farm variables. The regression results indicated that a linear function with only nine or ten farm variables gave a reasonable estimate of the results of the simulation model. Turnover ratio, feed conversion ratio, percentage of meat, farm size, family expenses, and experience were the main parameters determining future relative farm position. For farms with high levels of family expenditures and/or financial leverage an economic replacement strategy was optimal. Risk attitudes played a minor role in the choice of the optimal strategy, because one strategy was preferred to another regardless of risk preference. To analyze the attractiveness of a chosen strategic plan for different ‘what-if’ scenarios, the visual method using graphical representations offered sufficient information. The number of years ahead for which the decision maker evaluated the consequences of simulated strategic plans influenced which strategy was preferred.