Teamworking: a new dynamic in the pursuit of management control

This article examines the introduction of teamworking in the pharmaceutical industry. It was found that the organisation of work contained a mix of benefits and costs. The balance between the two was not random; employees' response was influenced by and connected to prior experiences and expectations, management's business strategies and approach to industrial relations and HRM. The article argues that there was a new dynamic, but one cast within the familiar terrain of management seeking to maintain control and generate consent.     

Economic Impacts of Inbound Tourism under Different Assumptions Regarding the Macroeconomy

On what is taken to be the 'Standard View', increased tourism expenditure from inbound markets has direct, indirect and induced effects on a host destination, leading to increased production, income and employment. Strong links between tourism and other sectors of business reduce import leakages from tourism expenditure thereby enhancing the multiplier effects of the injected expenditure on domestic output, value added and employment. The usual technique for analysing these effects is input-output analysis. This paper argues that economy-wide effects must be taken into account in determining the impacts of increased tourism expenditure on a destination, and that the 'Standard View' is superficial and very often misleading. An expanding tourism industry tends to 'crowd out' other sectors of economic activity, reducing the demand for traditional exports and import competing industries. The extent of these 'crowding out' effects depends, in turn, on the workings of labour markets, changes in prices and the real exchange rate, and the macroeconomic policy context. It is argued that these mechanisms can only properly be taken into account using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models rather than input-output modelling. The paper then looks at applications of CGE modelling to tourism growth in both nations and regions, classifying the various studies according to assumptions made about labour markets and government policies. The discussion has relevance for estimating the economic contribution of tourism in all destinations. The paper concludes with some observations regarding the use of CGE modelling in tourism contexts internationally and issues for further research.     

Generic advertising without supply control: implications of funding mechanisms for advertising intensities in competitive industries

Producer profit-maximising rules for generic commodity advertising programs and associated funding levies are derived. Lump-sum, per unit and ad valorem levies, and government subsidy funding arrangements are compared and contrasted. The initial single-product competitive market model is extended to incorporate international trade, government price policies, and multiple commodity interactions.     

Timing Equilibria in an Urban Model with Congestion

All spatial urban models with congestion assume that the departure (arrival) time of commutes is exogenously determined and assume that travel speed at a given time and location depends upon the traffic density at that point in time and space. This paper presents a framework that encompasses such models, but allows workers to choose the time at which they leave home (arrive at work). This paper then proves that in general only one equilibrium exists for urban models with traditional congestion technology: a commuting pattern in which commuting is continuous and the rush hour never ends, which is unrepresentative of traffic patterns anywhere. This paper concludes by discussing alternative general equilibrium urban models with congestion that may have more realistic equilibria.     

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Mixing Sunnis and Shias: A Bayesian Errors-in-Variables Approach

How damaging is the Sunni/Shia split to the economies of Islamic countries? Is it better to be one or the other? Or is it better to have an even balance between the two? Answering these questions is complicated by the fact that the data are often missing or imprecisely measured. We employ the technique of Bayesian data augmentation to circumvent these two problems, and find that properly controlling for these features in the data leads to drastically different conclusions than what is found using ordinary least squares. We find that there is nothing in the differential nature of Sunni or Shia Islam to make one more economically prosperous than the other. Nor do we find any support for the popular hypothesis that Sunnis and Shias cannot mix.     

Imports,monopoly power,profits and exchange rates

This study uses pooled data on U.S. manufacturing industries and on U.S. imports to analyze the level of monopoly power and the restraining influence of the import penetration ratio at the industry level. In general, industries with higher levels of imports have lower levels of monopoly power. In addition, imports have a greater impact on industries with more monopoly power (i.e., higher concentration), even though the level of imports may be lower. Finally, the impact of imports on monopoly power appears to be increasing over time indicating that U.S. manufacturing has become significantly more competitive over the 1961 to 1984 period. (JEL F14, L12)     

THE EFFECT OF PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT ON CHILD SCHOOLING

This paper presents a model that provides conditions under which a causal interpretation can be given to the association between childhood parental employment and subsequent educational attainments of children. The key parameter comes from theconditional demand function for children's future earning capacity. Its identification rests on having data on siblings and assumptions about the timing of parents' knowledge of their children's endowments. In addition to sibling differences, the useof a fixed‐effects instrumental‐variables estimator identifies the parameter under weaker conditions. Empirical analysis informed by the model reveals a negative and significant effect on the child's educational attainment of the months of the mother's full‐time employment when the child was aged 0–5. The effect of the mother's part‐time employment is smaller and less well determined, but again negative. These results suggest that the substitution effect of the mother's employment dominates the income effects. Stronger adverse effects are found for children of less‐educated mothers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.