Workers’ Participation in Training and Import Competition: Evidence from the USA

Merging industry‐level data on imports into the NLSY79 cohort data, we examine the relationship between rising imports and the amount of time workers in the US manufacturing sector spend in training events. A simple theoretical model shows the effect of foreign competition may depend on the type of training. Controlling for both industry and individual fixed effects, we find that rising imports lead workers to spend less time in training for the purpose of career advancement. There is some evidence this effect is stronger for less educated and lower ability workers.     

US inflation dynamics on long-range data

In this article, we evaluate inflation persistence in the United States using long-range monthly and annual data. The importance of inflation persistence is crucial to policy authorities and market participants, since the level of inflation persistence provides an indication on the susceptibility of the economy to exogenous shocks. Departing from classic econometric approaches found in the relevant literature, we evaluate inflation persistence through the nonparametric Hurst exponent within both a global and a rolling window framework. Moreover, we expand our analysis to detect the potential existence of chaos in the data generating process, in order to enhance the robustness of our conclusions. Overall, we find that inflation persistence is high from 1775 to 2013 for the annual data-set and from February 1876 to May 2014 in monthly frequency, respectively. Especially from the monthly data-set, the rolling window approach allows us to derive that inflation persistence has reached to historically high levels in the post–Bretton Woods period and remained there ever since.     

A model for evaluating the effectiveness of middle managers' training courses: evidence from a major banking organization in Greece

Contemporary management thinking embraces the organizational training theory that sustainable success rests, to a great extent, upon a systematic evaluation of training interventions. However, the evidence indicates that few organizations take adequate steps to assess and analyse the quality and outcomes of their training. The authors seek to develop the existing literature on training evaluation by proposing a new model, specific to management training, which might encourage more and better evaluation by practitioners. Their thesis is that training evaluation is best if it can be based on criteria derived from the objectives of the training and they draw on the management effectiveness literature to inform their proposed model. The study seeks to examine the effect of six evaluation levels – reactions, learning, job behaviour, job performance, organizational team performance and some wider, societal effects – in measuring training interventions with regard to the alterations to learning, transfer and organizational impact. The model was tested with data obtained from 190 middle managers employed by a large banking organization in Greece and the results suggest that there is considerable consistency in the evaluation framework specified. The paper discusses these results and draws conclusions about their practical implications. The study's limitations are considered and some future research needs identified.     

Macroeconomic uncertainty,growth and inflation in the Eurozone: a causal approach

In this article, we evaluate the causal relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty indices, inflation and growth rate for 17 Eurozone countries on a county-level examination. In performing a series of linear and nonlinear causality tests, we find little evidence of a causal relationship between uncertainty and macroeconomic variables. Thus, macroeconomic analysis based on uncertainty indices should be treated with caution.     

Foreign direct investment and productivity spillovers: a quantile analysis

This paper estimates the within-plant and spillover productivity effects of foreigninvestment in Mexican manufacturing plants. It contributes to the existing literature by analyzing whether FDI of North American origin differs from FDI from the rest of the world. I also use quantile regression analysis to determine whether spillovers are equal for plants of different productivity levels. The results indicate positive and significant spillovers from the presence of foreign firms. However, these spillovers accrue only to plants at the upper end of the productivity distribution. Furthermore, North American based FDI appears to yield slightly larger spillovers relative to FDI from the rest of the world; however the difference is not statistically significant. A deeper look at this issue reveals that Canadian FDI yields large productivity spillovers relative to both US and rest of the world FDI. These differences are highly statistically significant.     

Job satisfaction and employer-sponsored training

This article examines whether participation in employer-sponsored training has a causal impact on job satisfaction by accounting for individual fixed effects, individual-by-employer fixed effects and controlling for promotions in a sub-sample of the data to address the endogeneity of participation arising from within employer job changes. The estimates show a consistent, positive effect of participation in employer-sponsored training on job satisfaction. Conversely, participation in other types of training does not have a significant impact upon job satisfaction. Additionally, participation in employer-sponsored training has a strong, negative correlation with turnover even while controlling for job satisfaction. Training does not exhibit a lasting effect of either job satisfaction or turnover.     

Gender Role Attitudes,Labor Supply,and Human Capital Formation

This study examines the relationship between attitudes toward women's roles in the labor force and human capital acquisition. I analyze both educational attainment and post schooling training spells. Holding more traditional attitudes about gender roles is associated with both lower educational attainment and lower probability of participating in post schooling training episodes. Also, gender role attitudes appear to have significant indirect effects on human capital acquisition, operating through a lower probability of labor market participation.     

Spill over effects of futures contracts initiation on the cash market: a regime shift approach

This paper investigates possible spillover effects on the spot market due to the initiation of derivatives markets. Although speculation, which is apparent because of the low transaction cost of derivatives markets, produces noise in the financial system, the speculative forces and the rational hedging strategies jointly contribute to the price discovery process. Furthermore, the demand and supply forces are responsible for the financial system equilibrium and high volatility regimes imply high rates for the accumulation of new information. According to many analysts, there still exists a puzzle regarding the stabilization or destabilization effect of Futures contracts’ onset, which is both country and model specific. For that reason, this paper examines empirically the case of three European countries by the application not only of conventional structural break analysis, but also of regime shift analysis in order to account for the timing of possible spillover effects, and hence, to overcome the conflicting results of the extant literature. Furthermore, the proposed econometric methodology considers some stylized financial facts such as the leverage effect, the time varying risk premium, the decomposition of the day of the week effect, the leptokurtosis and the skewness of the returns’ distributions. For the purposes of our analysis we use data from the UK, Spain and Greek capital markets and according to the empirical findings, there exists a significant stabilization effect, which is negatively associated with the level of efficiency and completeness of the capital markets examined. However, in some cases there exists a short run destabilization effect for 1 or 2 months.     

Macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants of non-performing loans in Greece: A comparative study of mortgage,business and consumer loan portfolios

This paper uses dynamic panel data methods to examine the determinants of non-performing loans (NPLs) in the Greek banking sector, separately for each loan category (consumer loans, business loans and mortgages). The study is motivated by the hypothesis that both macroeconomic and bank-specific variables have an effect on loan quality and that these effects vary between different loan categories. The results show that, for all loan categories, NPLs in the Greek banking system can be explained mainly by macroeconomic variables (GDP, unemployment, interest rates, public debt) and management quality. Differences in the quantitative impact of macroeconomic factors among loan categories are evident, with non-performing mortgages being the least responsive to changes in the macroeconomic conditions.