Employer Penalties for Failure to Provide Individual Employee Notification Under the Family and Medical Leave Act: “Clarifications” Following Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

This article examines the Supreme Court's ruling in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. (2002) and considers its implications for employer and employee rights and responsibilities relative to implementing the FMLA policies. We provide an overview of the pre-decision regulatory environment including the general leave provisions of the FMLA and DOL's regulations requiring employer notification of leave designated as FMLA leave. We also identify those provisions that the decision did not alter and provide a broader consideration of the issues and implication of this decision for employers and employees.     

Towards a Theory of Organizational Improvisation: Looking Beyond the Jazz Metaphor

abstract This paper calls for research on organizational improvisation to go beyond the currently dominant jazz metaphor in theory development. We recognize the important contribution that jazz improvisation has made and will no doubt continue to make in understanding the nature and complexity of organizational improvisation. This article therefore presents some key lessons from the jazz metaphor and then proceeds to identify the possible dangers of building scientific inquiry upon a single metaphor. We then present three alternative models – Indian music, music therapy and role theory. We explore their nature and seek to identify ways in which the insights they generate complement those from jazz. This leads us to a better understanding of the challenges of building a theory of organizational improvisation.     

Nonpoint Source Pollution Taxes and Excessive Tax Burden

If a regulator is unable to measure firms’ individual emissions, an ambient tax can be used to achieve the socially desired level of pollution. With this tax, each firm pays a unit tax on aggregate emissions. In order for the tax to be effective, firms must recognize that their decisions affect aggregate emissions. When firms behave strategically with respect to the tax-setting regulator, under plausible circumstances their tax burden is lower under an ambient tax, relative to the tax which charges firms on the basis of individual emissions. Firms may prefer the case where the regulator is unable to observe individual firm emissions, even if this asymmetric information causes the regulator to tax each firm on the basis of aggregate emissions.     

Domestic financial market frictions,unrestricted international capital flows,and crises in small open economies

Summary. We present an example of a small open economy where small increases in the world interest rate may induce a sharp decline in output and a precipitous depreciation of the exchange rate. Due to a costly state verification problem in domestic credit markets, combined with unrestricted international capital flows, our economy generates two long-run equilibria, one with low GDP and a relatively depreciated real exchange rate (RER), and one with high GDP and a relatively appreciated RER. The first is always a saddle, while the second may be a sink or a source, depending on the level of the world interest rate. A crisis is identified with the economy switching from an equilibrium path approaching the high-output steady state to the saddlepath approaching the low-output steady state. In Mexicos recent history, periods of growth associated with appreciation of the RER have alternated with periods of sharp contraction and depreciation of the RER. Our economy displays such behavior in response to changes in the world interest rate.Received: 9 April 2002, Revised: 20 March 2003JEL Classification Numbers: E5, F4.G. Antinolfi, E. Huybens: We thank Steve Fazzari, Tim Kehoe, Todd Keister, Manuel Santos, Karl Shell and especially Bruce Smith for very helpful discussions. Jaime Calleja Alderete, Eduardo Camero Godínez, and Juan Vargas Hernández provided excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are ours. Huybens was an assistant professor in the Centro de Investigación Económica, ITAM, at the time this article was written, and part of this work was completed while Antinolfi was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not reflect those of the World Bank or the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Correspondence to: G. Antinolfi     

Total factor productivity differences: Appropriate technology vs. efficiency

Recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross-country differences in income levels and growth rates. This paper makes two contributions. First, it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to the Cobb-Douglas specification of the production function. Second, within the Cobb-Douglas framework, it weighs evidence of the two alternative explanations of total factor productivity differences: the inefficiency view and the appropriate technology view. To accomplish these tasks, the world production frontier is estimated using a nonparametric deterministic approach known as data envelopment analysis. I find that the fraction of income differences explained by physical and human capital increases from 32% to 55% when departing from the Cobb-Douglas assumption. There is also evidence consistent with the appropriate technology view; countries with an inadequate mix of inputs are unable to access the most productive technologies. Moreover, the world technology frontier appears to be shifting out faster at input combinations close to that of the R&D leader. However, inefficiency appears to be the main explanation for low incomes throughout the world; it explains 43% of output variation in 1995, and its importance has increased over time.     

Sectoral and aggregate technology growth in Spain

In this paper we analyze technological change in the Spanish economy by constructing adjusted Solow residuals, where the adjustment attempts to correct for the bias associated with the potential presence of imperfect competition, increasing returns, variable input utilization and, especially, sectoral reallocation of inputs across sectors. We refer to this modified Solow residual as a technology index. Sectoral reallocations and variable input utilization are key determinants of the differences between the aggregate Solow residual and the technology index resulting from the aggregation of estimated sectoral technological growth. We show that starting in the mid nineties, there has been a deceleration in the aggregate growth rate of technology which is basically due to the behaviour of the manufacturing sectors. Finally, our results imply that aggregate technology growth is less volatile than aggregate productivity as measured by the Solow residual.     

Comparing Environmental Policy Instruments in the Presence of Imperfect Compliance – A Case Study

In this paper, we aim to include rule making, implementation, monitoring and enforcement costs into the cost comparison of policy instruments. We use a simple partial equilibrium model and apply it to the textile industry. The model includes discrete abatement functions and costly monitoring and enforcement. The case study uses individual firm data to simulate the differences in abatement costs and compliance decisions between firms. We compare combinations of regulatory instruments (emission taxes, emission standards and technology standards) and enforcement instruments (criminal fines, civil fines and transaction offers). We show that the inclusion of information, monitoring and enforcement costs indeed alters the relative cost efficiency of the different instruments.     

Has Austria’s Accession to the EU Triggered an Increase in Competition? A Sectoral Markup Study

We estimate the pro-competitive effects of Austrias participation in the Single Market after its European Union (EU) accession in 1995 in terms of firms market power as measured by the Lerner index, using a sample of 46 industries and 7 industry groups, covering the period 1978–2001. In the framework of the markup estimation method suggested by Roeger (1995), we test for both an instantaneous structural break between 1993 and 1998 and also estimate logistic smooth transition models to take up the proposition that the regime shift is likely to have occurred gradually rather than as a big bang. In sum, the results provide no reason for being euphoric: Pronounced markup reductions were only found in three industry groups (mining and quarrying, wholesale and retail trade; financial services and real estate). At the more disaggregate level, the picture is mixed: Both increases and reductions in market power have been found.     

Timing and Commitment of Environmental Policy,Adoption of New Technology,and Repercussions on R&;D

We investigate the interplay between environmental policy, incentives to adoptnew technology, and repercussions on R&D. We study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in R&D and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms. We consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies: ex post taxation (or issuing permits), interim commitment to a tax rate (a quota of permits) after observing R&D success but before adoption, and finally two types of ex antecommitment before R&D activity, one with a unique tax rate (quota of permits), the other one with a menu of tax rates (permit quotas). We study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare. In particular, we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes.