Sweatshop Regulation and Workers’ Choices

The choice argument against sweatshop regulations states that public officials should not prohibit workers from accepting jobs that require long hours, low pay, and poor working conditions, because enforcing such regulations would be disrespectful to the workers who choose to work in sweatshops. Critics of the choice argument reply that these regulations can be justified when workers only choose to work in sweatshops because they lack acceptable alternatives and are unable to coordinate to achieve better conditions for all workers. My thesis is that the presence of unacceptable alternatives to sweatshop labor or barriers to coordination cannot justify sweatshop regulations such as minimum wage and maximum hour laws. Although officials should promote alternatives to difficult and dangerous sweatshop labor, they should not do so by limiting workers’ and employers’ options through coercive regulation. And the fact that sweatshop workers may face coordination problems does not undermine the claim that sweatshop workers choose to work in sweatshops, just as other workers face coordination problems but nevertheless make occupational choices. Furthermore, efforts to restrict sweatshop workers’ choices are morally risky and may not promote workers’ wellbeing or wellbeing in general.     

Comprehensive assessment of patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and chronic idiopathic constipation using deterministically linked administrative claims and patient-reported data: the Chronic Constipation and IBS-C Treatment and Outcomes Real-World Research Platform (CONTOR)

Abstract

Aims

To characterize a US population of patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) or chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) using CONTOR, a real-world longitudinal research platform that deterministically linked administrative claims data with patient-reported outcomes data among patients with these conditions.     

Owning and testing smoke alarms: findings from a qualitative study

Reducing injury and death in house fires is an important public health intervention activity with the presence of an operating smoke alarm widely considered an important way of reducing harm from fire. Yet despite a number of initiatives and fire-safety campaigns, a number of households at greater risk of domestic fire fail to have a functioning alarm. This paper provides empirical insight into everyday experiences of owning, maintaining and testing smoke alarms among a purposive sample of individuals identified as being less likely to own a functioning smoke alarm. Analysis from focus group data identifies a number of reasons why individuals may not own or test an alarm, and provides new insight into how fire risk is understood in the context of a range of competing, and potentially more prominent, individual and household risks. We suggest that while initiatives that aim to reduce fire injury and death should be continued, their success, and indeed future research on fire risk, should pay attention to the mundane and everyday contexts within which individuals currently rarely reflect on their risk of experiencing a domestic fire.     

Motivating a Productive Discussion of Normative Issues Through Debates

In this article, the author presents a way of using in-class debates to discuss contentious issues and help students develop critical thinking skills. Three elements were incorporated into an undergraduate public finance course: a presentation of ethical approaches in order to formally discuss normative issues, class debates which required students to work in groups and imaginatively occupy a perspective with which they were not personally comfortable, and individual reflection which forced students to reconcile their beliefs with academic evidence. The results show that even if students did not change their perspectives on economic policy, the reasons why they have those perspectives did change to be based in academic theory and evidence and not their blind adherence to specific political platforms.     

Prepurchase financing pool: Revealing the IRR problem

Internal rate of return (IRR) is one of the most common and important indicators in investment analysis because it is often used by managers and practitioners as a decision-making criterion. Moreover, the IRR reflects the financial cost in financing decisions and it helps to answer the following question when comparing different financing alternatives: “Which loan is the cheapest?” Among the different types of loans in Brazil, there is a financial product called a prepurchase financing pool (PPFP) that is generally regarded as the best option for financing or loans. The objective of this article is to use the prepurchase financing pool to show the flaws of IRR in financial analysis. In particular, when IRR is used to evaluate the prepurchase financing pool, one finds problems of reliability regarding (i) existence, (ii) uniqueness, and (iii) economic interpretation of the rate. The results show that the prepurchase financing pool is relevant evidence that the IRR flaws are found in financial products.     

Appraisal Accuracy and Automated Valuation Models in Rural Areas

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - Accurate and unbiased property value estimates are essential to credit risk management. Along with loan amount, they determine a mortgage’s...     

谷歌盈利能否持续增长？

业绩有所恢复，但仍不尽如人意，至少对谷歌公司而言是不够的.     

A review of research on personality in teams: Accounting for pathways spanning levels of theory and analysis

Over the last half century there has been a great deal of interest in the role of personality in teams. In this article we review the theoretical and empirical research on this topic to summarize what we have learned and also to provide a foundation for future research necessary for application of this knowledge to human resource management decisions. We describe research that emphasizes both team- and individual-levels of analysis and theory, and we discuss recent efforts that attempt to bridge these two levels. We conclude by identifying several issues that should take precedence in research in order to advance our understanding of the role of personality in teams.