The Politics of Partnership? Innovation in Employment Relations in the Scottish Spirits Industry

Perspectives that emphasize links between workplace innovation and broader HR policies, particularly of a 'mutual gains' nature, have become increasingly influential. This paper analyses the links and tensions between workplace change and industrial relations systems in the context of attempts to create a shop-floor politics of partnership during a period of corporate restructuring in two spirits companies. We argue that interface tensions between the employment relationship, the labour process and organizational governance are inextricably linked to the outcomes of partnership initiatives. While there are positive outcomes to more integrated approaches to partnership, a range of industrial relations issues, notably the ambivalent position of shop-stewards, remains problematic.     

Reciprocity in the workplace

Using combined experimental and survey data, this paper provides empirical evidence that firm productivity is related to worker’s pro-social behavior in the workplace. At the firm level, we find a strong positive relationship between firm productivity and reciprocating behavior among workers. Investigating workers’ individual behavior we find a similar, strong relationship when regressing earnings, a proxy for productivity, on reciprocity. To address simultaneity we use an instrumental variable approach and find that the initial estimate was upwards biased, presumably because it did not take into account the positive feedback from earnings to reciprocity. The new coefficient remains substantially above zero, but it is statistically insignificant.      

Australia's retirement income system

This paper reviews the current reforms to Australia's retirement income structure which now incorporates a means-tested age pension, a compulsory retirement enefit system which is fully unded in the private sector and a voluntary savings scheme. This approach has been widely discussed in he international scene and some consider it to epresent an ideal structure. However, a number of fundamental problems remain and these are discussed.     

Economic and health effects of fruit and vegetable advertising: Evidence from lab experiments

This study investigates consumer response to various types of advertising for fruits and vegetables—a food category which health officials uniformly agree is significantly under-consumed in the United States. Using an adult, non-student subject pool of 271 participants in an economic experiment, consumers’ response to different types of fruit and vegetable advertising is measured empirically. This study finds that broad-based advertising, which is generic advertising for the entire fruit and vegetable category, increases consumer willingness to pay by an average of 24.6%. The simulation model shows that broad-based advertising for fruits and vegetables, either alone or as a hybrid with individual commodity-specific campaigns (e.g., apple advertising), would reduce average caloric intake per person by approximately 1800 kcal per year. The results of this study may contribute to new public policy initiatives that aim to reduce diet-related illnesses and obesity, which have become increasingly prevalent in the United States.     

Revisiting technical workers: professional and organisational identities in the software industry

This paper eradicates some of the myths of software workers as prototypes of the knowledge worker. Based on qualitative and quantitative research conducted in five Information Technology (IT) organisations, it examines how the factors of education, skill level and work role determine the opportunities presented to these workers, and how they are associated with differing levels of organisational identity. At the same time, the data reveal a consistently high professional identity, regardless of work role and qualifications.     

Assessing competition in hospital care markets: the importance of accounting for quality differentiation

Quality differentiation is especially important in the hospital industry, where the choices of Medicare patients are unaffected by prices. Unlike previous studies that use geographic market concentration to estimate hospital competitiveness, this article emphasizes the importance of quality differentiation in this spatially differentiated market. I estimate a random-coefficients discrete-choice model that predicts patient flow to different hospitals and find that demand responses to both distance and quality are substantial. The estimates suggest that patients do not substitute toward alternative hospitals in proportion to current market shares, implying that geographic market concentration is an inappropriate measure of hospital competitiveness.     

A Growth Maximising Tax Structure for New Zealand

Annual growth rates of real GDP in New Zealand have varied widely, from 18% to –8%, since World War II. During this period the tax burden (the ratio of tax revenue to GDP) has trended upward from 23% to 35%. The tax mix (the ratio of indirect taxes to direct taxes) has varied between 0.31 and 0.75, having increased recently with the introduction of the goods and services tax. In this paper we estimate a combination of the tax burden and the tax mix which would maximise the rate of growth of real GDP. We find that such a tax structure would have a time-varying tax burden with a mean of 22.5%, and a time-varying tax mix with a mean of 0.54, which implies a mean share of direct taxes in total tax revenue of 65%. We also find that a move to such a tax structure would generate nearly a 17% increase in real GDP, and while this increase would yield a 6% reduction in tax revenue to the Treasury, it would deliver a 27% increase in purchasing power to the remainder of the economy.