Demographic change, social security systems, and savings

In theory, improvements in healthy life expectancy should generate increases in the average age of retirement, with little effect on savings rates. In many countries, however, retirement incentives in social security programs prevent retirement ages from keeping pace with changes in life expectancy, leading to an increased need for life-cycle savings. Analyzing a cross-country panel of macroeconomic data, we find that increased longevity raises aggregate savings rates in countries with universal pension coverage and retirement incentives, though the effect disappears in countries with pay-as-you-go systems and high replacement rates.     

Democracy,Veto Players and the Depth of Regional Integration

We examine how domestic political factors influence the type of regional integration arrangement (RIA) that states enter. States can pursue at least five types of RIA, in order of their depth of policy integration: preferential trade agreements, free trade areas, customs unions, common markets and economic unions. We argue that a country's regime type and the number of institutional ‘veto players’ strongly affect the type of arrangement that states choose. Democracies are more likely to form an RIA than other states, a tendency that becomes more pronounced as the proposed level of integration in an arrangement rises. However, all democracies are not the same. As the number of veto players rises, the likelihood of a democracy entering an RIA declines. Furthermore, veto players are expected to have a larger effect on the odds of a democracy forming an RIA, the greater is the extent of integration that the arrangement aims to achieve. A series of statistical tests, based on analysis of all pairs of countries from 1950 to 2000, support our arguments.     

The Legal and Economic Evolution of Workers Compensation: Prospects for Enhancing Choice in the System

ABSTRACT: Workers compensation in the United States has been designed as a no-fault system that provides comprehensive medical and income benefits to employees with work-related injuries. Under its no-fault concept and the exclusive remedy doctrine, injured workers relinquish the right to sue their employer in tort in exchange for prescribed, guaranteed benefits that are paid promptly without protracted disputes. However, there is considerable evidence of increasing litigation in and outside the system that is undermining its no-fault principles and siphoning resources away from the efficient delivery of benefits to injured workers. This article reviews the legal and economic developments that are reshaping workers compensation and the threats they pose. The authors argue for a comprehensive reexamination of the structure of the system to resolve the conflicts among its stakeholders and improve its efficiency. Specifically, the authors explore several potential measures that would enhance worker and employer choice to reconcile their interests while restoring the nofault foundation of the system.     

A Consistent Method for Calibrating Contingent Value Survey Data

This paper outlines a statistical method for calibrating contingent value survey data derived from the assumption that individuals make constrained utility maximizing decisions. The method proposed allows us to determine the influence of respondent characteristics on bias, as distinct from their influence on the preference parameters. A specific functional form for individual preferences was used to derive closed-form analytical expressions for willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept that allow systematic deviations in individual responses to be explicitly modeled by providing a structural interpretation of the error term. Promising results are obtained for both open-ended and dichotomous choice data using three CV data sets.     

British Managers' Attitudes and Behaviour in Industrial Relations: A Twenty-Year Study

A unique longitudinal study of Britain's managers conducted in 1980, 1990 and 2000 permits comparisons of managerial attitudes and behaviour in industrial relations over twenty years. We find clear evidence of the relationship between macro‐level political and economic movements of the period from 1980 up until the late 1990s on managerial attitudes, the impact of changes in power relations and the ‘lag effect’ of institutions. The most unexpected findings are the modest rise of managerial unionism in the 1990s and the limited evidence of the replacement of collective bargaining by either individual or group involvement or by employee financial participation.     

Probability Updating and the Market for Directors’ and Officers’ Insurance

Over the past decade, much attention has been given to the topics of corporate governance and corporate risk management. One increasingly important insurance product associated with each of these issues is directors’ and officers’ (D&O) liability insurance. Given the interconnectedness that exists between D&O insurance, corporate risk management, and corporate governance, we exploit industry‐specific D&O data to explain how industries most associated with the corporate scandals of the early 2000s adjusted demand patterns during periods of certainty and uncertainty. The rich data set coupled with dramatic changes in the marketplace allows for the testing of insurance demand patterns and enables us to offer insight into the market's response to a unique type of loss shock. The results of this study suggest evidence in favor of demand‐side probability updating, whereby those industries most associated with the corporate scandals of the early 2000s adjusted the demand for D&O insurance during periods of greater uncertainty.     

Patterns of Continuity and Change in Managerial Attitudes and Behaviour in Industrial Relations, 1980-1990

In this paper, data are reported from a longitudinal study of managers' attitudes and behaviour in industrial relations based on a sample of fellows and members of the British Institute of Management. An account of two surveys, carried out in 1980 and 1990, follows an examination of theories of the managerial role in industrial relations and the presentation of a research model. Managerial attitudes and behaviour are then analysed with respect to views on trade unions, personal commitments to collective representation, collective bargaining, employee participation and involvement and views on the role of government. The findings have an added significance because survey dates roughly correspond with the so-called ‘Thatcher years’. The conclusion is that some major changes in industrial relations have occurred during the decade in question, but there are also substantial continuities which cannot be ‘read off’ directly from the dramatic alterations in the political, economic and legal environment.