The Influence of Environmental Pressures, Diversification Strategy, and Union/Nonunion Setting on Employee Participation

This study tests the hypotheses that environment, diversification strategy, and union/nonunion setting affect the number and variety of employee participation programs. A survey of large U.S. manufacturing firms measured the implementation of employee participation programs. Regression results suggest that environmental pressures exert a direct effect on participation in union settings. However, in nonunion settings, environment and diversification strategy both correlated directly with participation. These results suggest that unions could potentially affect participation program implementation.     

Introduction: What Role Can Experiments Play in Research on Regulation?

Journal of Regulatory Economics -     

Concessional Amnesty and the Politics of Immigration Reforms

This paper establishes a political support model of immigration reforms. The analysis highlights the distinction between border enforcement and employer sanction measures in that the former can be more aptly characterized as an income transfer from employer to native labor interests, whereas the latter generates deadweight losses that are borne entirely by producers. We show that while amnesty may appear to run contrary to the original intent of the immigration reform, it may nevertheless facilitate rent capture by the politician by "wiping the slate clean" and reducing the deadweight loss of employer sanction measures.     

Taking the “Q” Out of Research: Teaching Research Methodology Courses Without the Divide Between Quantitative and Qualitative Paradigms

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence that the debate between quantitative and qualitative is divisive and, hence, counterproductive for advancing the social and behavioral science field. We advocate that all graduate students learn to utilize and to appreciate both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. As such, students will develop into pragmatist researchers who are able to utilize both quantitative and qualitative techniques when conducting research. We contend that the best way to accomplish this is by eliminating quantitative research methodology and qualitative research methodology courses from curricula and replacing these with research methodology courses at different levels that simultaneously teach both quantitative and qualitative techniques within a mixed methodological framework.An earlier version of this article received the 2003 Southwest Educational Research Association (SERA) Outstanding Paper Award.     

Legalistic organizational responses to catastrophic illness: The effect of stigmatization on reactions to HIV/AIDS

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has focused increased attention on catastrophic illnesses in the workplace, and because of the stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS, it raises three primary concerns for organizations: (1) organizational avoidance of legal sanctions and litigation; (2) the maintenance of organizational legitimacy; and (3) organizational protection of employee rights. Although many organizations adopt legalistic responses to cope with these concerns, the analysis presented in this article suggests that while legalistic approaches function well to protect organizational interests in terms of both legal liability and legitimacy, the are only partially able to protect employee rights. Drawing upon the limited literature on HIV/AIDS in the workplace, this article presents an agenda for future research on organizational responses to HIV/AIDS.     

Land use externalities, open space preservation, and urban sprawl

Parcel data on residential land conversion are used to investigate how land use externalities influence the rate of development and modify policies designed to manage urban growth and preserve open space. Several “smart growth” policies are found to significantly influence land conversion, including a development clustering policy that concentrates development and generates preserved open space. In addition to directly affecting a parcel's hazard rate of conversion, this policy is found to affect neighboring parcels' conversion by generating a positive open space externality that hastens their development. The implication that the clustering policy could generate a more sprawled pattern of development is explored using spatial simulation.     

The 'Parent Shift' program: incentives for nurses, rewards for nursing teams

To create new opportunities for nurses to reenter the workforce, a RN p.r.n. program must meet the needs of nurses who wish to make dual commitments to home and work. The Parent Shift program provides an innovative model of attracting and retaining nurses in a hospital workforce. Many nurses who joined the program were away from the field of nursing for many years and were drawn to the program because of the promise of flexible shifts and minimal requirements for participation. In this study, flexible shifts not only encouraged program entry, they were also a powerful motivator for continued program participation over time. Parent Shift nurse presence was perceived by nurse managers to decrease stressors and improve time efficiency of full-shift staff.     

Economic Performance, Trade Restrictiveness, and Efficiency

The paper addresses the question of whether trade restrictiveness impacts economic performance, via a trade restrictiveness index that is decomposable into a trade distortion and a domestic distortion component. The paper builds on the Anderson and Neary price index measure of trade distortion, in evaluating trade restrictiveness via a distance function approach. This is accomplished by adding a “dual” version to their trade restrictiveness price index, based on distance functions that scale output quantities. The authors compute the trade restrictiveness quantity index (TRQI) using a parametric frontier approach to model the production side of the economy, and a panel of information on the agricultural sector of a set of European Community countries. The results suggest that the use of TRQI makes a considerable difference to interpretations of the efficiency impact of agricultural trade policies in EC countries, as compared to policy‐oriented aggregates or result‐oriented measures of trade restrictiveness.     

CMBS Subordination,Ratings Inflation,and Regulatory‐Capital Arbitrage

Using detailed origination and performance data on a comprehensive sample of commercial mortgage‐backed security (CMBS) deals, along with their underlying loans and a set of similarly rated residential mortgage‐backed securities (RMBS), we apply reduced‐form and structural modeling strategies to test for regulatory‐capital arbitrage and ratings inflation in the CMBS market. We find that the spread between CMBS and corporate‐bond yields fell significantly for ratings AA and AAA after a loosening of capital requirements for highly rated CMBS in 2002, whereas no comparable drop occurred for lower rated bonds (which experienced no similar regulatory change). We also find that CMBS rated below AA upgraded to AA or AAA significantly faster than comparable RMBS (for which there was no change in risk‐based capital requirements). We use a structural model to investigate these results in more detail and find that little else changed in the CMBS market over this period except for the rating agencies' persistent reductions in subordination levels between 1997 and late 2007. Indeed, had the 2005 vintage CMBS used the subordination levels from 2000, there would have been no losses to the senior bonds in most CMBS structures.