Informal pay gaps in good and bad times: Evidence from Russia

Informal work is traditionally large in Russia and has further increased in the recent years. We explore the implications of this shift in terms of wage dynamics. Our characterization is based on the estimation of informal pay gaps at the mean and along the wage distribution, relying on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for 2003–2017. Our approach comprises three original features: we rely on unconditional quantile effects of informality, we incorporate quantile-specific fixed effects using a tractable approach, and we suggest a treatment of the incidental parameter bias. Over the whole period, informal wage penalties are relatively small and do not suggest heavily segmented labor markets, even at low wage levels. Yet, in the past decade, a substantial negative selection into informal employment and self-employment has taken place, on average and especially at low earnings. Economic downturns and labor market policies have likely contributed to the shakeout of less productive workers in the formal sector, making the low-tier informal sector more of a last resort.     

Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable

Social media emerged as a primary source of information among young users, but its severe effect on mental state due to information overload, still an area of concern for the researchers. Generation Z users' addiction to the mobile phone/gadgets is increasing with a rise in social media and consequently their behavioral outcomes have transformed completely. Nowadays behavioral issues including stress, fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’ and ‘phubbing’, anxiety etc. rising each day but the relationship among these issues and information overload is less examined. The social media users are unable to filter the trustworthy information due to its enormous size and thus role of information support from government becomes essential. The current study extends the S-O-R theory exploring relationship between the stimulus of enormous information on the responses generated among the Generation Z such as social media fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety. The findings from a sample of 319 users belonging to Generation Z suggest that social media platforms need to understand user's compulsive usage that is resulting into fatigue and consequently anxiety. The role of government information support on reducing fatigue and anxiety is found to be positive. The relationship between ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety is found significant and shows presence of partial mediation. The study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. It is significant for the service providers and social media platforms to advance interfaces with minimum fatigue for the users and offers information support to the users to reduce stress caused by information load.     

Is online-to-offline customer care support essential for consumer service?

Customer satisfaction is the main pillar for convenient and profitable retailing. The retail sector continuously tried to develop new strategies to improve consumer satisfaction. It is impossible to provide each service directly to the consumer by the retailer. In this direction, the retailer establishes customer care to provide the best service to consumers. Consumer care can provide promotional or prevention services, increasing the consumer's satisfaction level. This study is developed to show the impact of retailers' customer care service for an offline-to-online retailing strategy. The demand is consumer support, advertisement, and selling price dependent. For maintaining consumer service, some free home delivery policies are offered, when consumers ordered more than a certain percentage of the amount. Finally, the total profit of this O2O retailing system is calculated by the classical optimization technique. Some special cases are discussed in the numerical section to prove the impact of customer care services. Numerical results prove that customer care support enhances the profit by 48.20%, whereas investment in the advertisement and home delivery strategy helps the retail industry to earn 44.80% and 16.74% more profit, respectively. Finally, from this study, it is clear that customer care activities are essential to increase the profit of the retailing sector.     

The relation between municipal and government bond yields in an era of unconventional monetary policy

In this paper, we investigate how the 5‐year Swedish municipal bond yield has been related to the corresponding yield on government bonds during the period that the Riksbank has conducted unconventional monetary policy in terms of bond purchases. Using daily Swedish data on bond yields from February 2015 to January 2018, we first conduct an event study to assess the short‐run effects of the Riksbank's bond‐purchase announcements. We then estimate bivariate vector autoregressive models to study the dynamic relationship between the yields. Results from the event study suggest that the accumulated short‐run effect of the Riksbank's announcements was to lower the government bond yield by approximately 40 to 50 basis points and municipal bond yields by 30 to 35 basis points. Our vector autoregressive analysis indicates—in line with the event study—that an unexpected decrease in the government bond yield initially increases the municipal bond‐yield spread. However, after approximately 4 weeks, the effect has been reversed and the municipal bond‐yield spread is lower than it was initially. By conducting this analysis, we contribute to the understanding of the transmission of unconventional monetary policy.     

Workplace bullying and presenteeism in the cruise industry: Evaluating the effect of social support

A cruise ship constitutes a unique research laboratory for the study of workplace bullying and presenteeism because of its manifestation of the phenomena and situations that traditionally characterize total institutions. This study analyzes the role of workplace bullying as a potential risk factor for presenteeism in the workplace and the moderating role of social support. Results confirmed that work-related bullying is positively connected to the phenomenon of presenteeism, whereas person-related bullying is negatively related. The findings also confirmed the role of social support, specifically supervisor support, as a moderating agent of this relationship. The supporting details are further elaborated, and the main implications for the future of the cruise industry are presented. The findings can facilitate cruise line companies in designing prevention plans and implementing well-targeted anti-bullying policies according to the type of workplace bullying experienced by workers that can substantially improve their effectiveness.     

Depletion of psychological,financial, and social resources in the hospitality sector during the pandemic

This study details how psychological, financial, and social factors shape employee deviant interpersonal behaviors during a pandemic. Data were collected with a survey of 372 front-line employees of hotels and analyzed with PLS-SEM. The findings showed social disconnectedness and perceived risk of unemployment leads to perceived isolation, which further creates depression in employees. The findings also showed that depression is positively related to employee deviance. Financial strain is a major cause of perceived isolation, depression, and deviant behaviors among front-line employees. Results also proved that social support reduces fear of isolation, depression, and employee deviance. This study provides guidelines that hotels need to understand the psychological stance of employees and design policies to overcome employee perceived fears and psychological disorders.     

Labor market analysis through transformations and robust multivariate models

The work presents a robust approach to labor share analysis. The estimate of labor share presents various complexities related to the nature of the data sets to be analyzed. Typically, labor share is evaluated by using discriminant analysis and linear or generalized linear models, that do not take into account the presence of possible outliers. Moreover, the variables to be considered are often characterized by a high dimensional structure. The proposed approach has the objective of improving the estimation of the model using robust multivariate regression techniques and data transformation.     

基于乡村振兴战略的湖南省乡村治理体系研究

［目的］乡村治理有效作为实施乡村振兴战略的五大战略总要求之一和重要组成部分，对其进行分析有利于完善农村现代化建设以及促进乡村振兴战略的实施。［方法］文章以湖南省为例，采用问卷调查法和Logistic回归模型法对乡村治理体系进行分析，探讨影响区域乡村治理体系的主要因素。［结果］被调查农户的年龄主要集中在30~60岁，年收入主要集中在1万元以上。进而结合Logistic回归模型可知：社区生活组织、村规民约、农村养老服务设施、留守儿童之家、集中性治丧场所以及村务公开等6个变量对乡村治理体系的开展实施正向显著影响，而年龄对乡村治理体系的开展负向影响。［结论］基于乡村振兴战略发展乡村治理体系主要在于创新乡村治理体系，通过分析影响湖南省乡村治理体系的因素，为乡村有效治理提供参考意见，同时充分发挥乡村治理功能实现乡村振兴战略的全面实施。     

Spurious principal components

The principal component regression (PCR) is often used to forecast macroeconomic variables when there are many predictors. In this letter, we argue that it makes sense to pre-whiten the predictors before including these in a PCR. With simulation experiments, we show that without such pre-whitening, spurious principal components can appear and that these can become spuriously significant in a PCR. With an illustration to annual inflation rates for five African countries, we show that non-spurious principal components can be genuinely relevant in empirical forecasting models.     

闽侯县闲置农地生态安全评价研究

[目的]根据闽侯县农用地闲置情况,结合当地社会经济及生态环境发展情况,深入分析闽侯县闲置农地的生态安全发展水平。[方法]建立闽侯县闲置农地生态安全评价指标体系,分别从农村垃圾处理点数量、财政支农资金、外部进入农村投资、农业生产总值、种粮补贴、自然灾害、农业技术水平、农村生物的多样性程度、农村家庭收入结构、农村生态补偿金额、农地的整理规模及环保支出占GDP比重共确定12个指标进行深入研究,运用普通最小二乘法对设计的多元线性回归模型进行回归,进一步对闽侯县闲置农地的生态安全水平进行评价。[结果]农村垃圾处理点数量、财政支农资金、种粮补贴、环保支出占GDP比重、生态补偿金额、生物多样性程度对闽侯县闲置农地生态安全水平起到促进作用,呈正相关趋势;自然灾害则与闲置农地生态安全水平呈负相关趋势。[结论]整体看来,闽侯县闲置农地的生态安全水平主要受到当地经济、环境及生态基础三大因素的影响。