Market Structure and Racial and Gender Discrimination:

The Annual Equal Employment Opportunity Reports and Current Population Survey files are used to examine employment and earnings by race and gender in the telecommunications industry following changes in the industry's affirmative action guidelines and following the divestiture of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Nonblack minority men were the only underrepresented group to experience marked employment gains as managers and professional. The relative employment probability of other underrepresented workers remained similar to the levels experienced during the implementation of affirmative action guidelines. Earnings differentials did decline for minority men and white women in the telecommunications industry. However, this finding is only unique to black men as the earnings pattern for white women and nonblack minority men mirror that found for these groups nationally.     

How to Pay for the NHS

The Achilles heel of the NHS is its flawed financing of personal services by taxation, which destroys information on costs, weakens incentives to economise in scarce medical manpower and resources, and removes the inducement to pay more for better services. The NHS misguidedly reconstructed the supply of medical care to remedy inefficiency in demand. Basic medical decisions must be 'economic' in the light of opportunity costs, which require knowledge of prices by charging according to value and quality of service. Here Norman McKenna, formerly Managing Director of ICI Svenska, reveals the devastating failures of state medicine and offers the constructive half-way house of charging according to income, with requisite topping-up.     

Gender Pay Gap in Poland

In this paper we examine the gender pay gap in Poland over 1987–1996, i.e., shortly before and during the transition to market economy. The principle source of data used throughout the paper is the Household Budget Survey conducted by the Polish Central Statistical Office. The study documents three major results. First, the transition to market economy in Poland favored women substantially in terms of relative earnings differentials. The gender pay gap decreased by 10.2 log% points and the position of mean female in male wage distribution went up by 9.9 percentiles over 1987–1996. By 1995, the values of these measures reached the level observed in industrial economies such as the U.K., Austria, Italy or Australia. Second, rising relative skills of women and rising returns to skills explain about half of the fall in the gender pay gap over 1987–1996. Third, the pay gap did not follow a smooth adjustment process. 1989, the year of the first democratic parliamentary elections, which resulted in forming the first non-communist government, saw the most spectacular change, although actual market reforms began one year after. The changes in the early phase of the transition were mostly driven by sudden shifts in relative wages and employment across industries. Afterwards, the pay gap measures stabilized, partly because rising overall wage inequalities offset the advantages of females due to observed skills. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Using Occupational Preference in Estimating Market Wage Discrimination: the Case of the Gender Pay Gap

ABSTRACT Past occupational preference is used to estimate the gender pay gap. The use of predetermined variables in a reduced-form wage equation avoids the bias caused by using variables that are correlated with the random error. Using a gender coefficient, the potential discriminatory gap is about 11.5 percent when past occupational preference is included. Decomposition yields an estimate of 10.5 percent when past occupational preference is included. In both cases, the discriminatory gap is close to that obtained when actual occupation is included. This suggests public policy directed toward reducing hiring discrimination by gender might be misdirected.     

Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay

We analyze the optimal combination of promotion tournaments and linear individual performance pay in an employment relationship. An agent's effort is nonobservable and he has private information about his suitability for promotion. Thus, the two incentive schemes need to be combined to serve both incentive and selection purposes. If harder working agents respond less to intensified effort incentives, we find that the principal puts less emphasis on individual performance pay when selection becomes more important. Thus, we provide a possible explanation as to why, in practice, individual performance pay is less prevalent than promotion‐based incentives.     

The Economics of Training Nurses in the NHS

How should the training of nursing be reformed? Keith Hartley and Alan Shiell, of the University of York, argue that the ‘Project 2000’ plan has been accepted by the Government despite serious flaws.     

Pay to Switch or Pay to Stay: Preference-Based Price Discrimination in Markets with Switching Costs

In many markets, firms can price discriminate between their own customers and their rivals' customers, charging one price to consumers who prefer their own product and another price to consumers who prefer a rival's product. We find that when demand is symmetric, charging a lower price to a rival's customers is always optimal. When demand is asymmetric, however, it may be more profitable to charge a lower price to one's own customers. Surprisingly, price discrimination can lead to lower prices to all consumers, not only to the group that is more elastic, but also to the less elastic group.     

Cash in Your Face: The Cost of Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in Housing

According to recent evidence, racial and ethnic discrimination in housing continues to be widespread. This paper estimates the cost this discrimination imposes on black and Hispanic households. Building on the work of4, the paper develops a housing search model and measures the cost of discrimination by its impact on the gain a household can achieve through housing search. The cost of discrimination is then calculated for a representative sample of households. The punchline: Black and Hispanic households pay a discrimination “tax” of almost $4,000, on average, every time they search for a house to buy.     

Changing Pay Systems,Occupational Concentration and the Gender Pay Gap: Evidence from Australia and the UK

While aggregate level pay equity comparisons between Australia and the UK confirm expectations based on their different wage distributions and regulatory systems, observation of trends and occupational level analysis reveal additional complexity. Our analysis suggests the need for a multi‐faceted approach to closing the average gender pay gap.     

A Simple Matter of Control? NHS Hospital Nurses and New Management*

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades the National Health Hospital Service has been subjected to considerable changes in is organization. ‘New’ public sector management (NPM) has been given the task of changing hospital culture and making service provision more efficient. Nurses, as the largest occupational group within the National Health Service (NHS), have attracted considerable management attention and there are two distinct accounts concerning how NPM has supposedly gained control of the nursing labour process. Firstly, it is proposed that the physical division of labour of health care professionals is now firmly in the hands of hospital management through the use of Tayloristic techniques. Secondly, alternative accounts suggest that public sector organization cultures have been successfully orientated toward a customer service ethos, and that the convincing discourse of ‘quality’ is achieving some success as a normative control device. This paper investigates the responses of nurses to NPM, whichever form this may take, and presents data collected as part of a longitudinal study carried out in an NHS Trust hospital. It charts the changes which have occurred in the nursing labour process over a six year period, but especially draws upon more recent data to show how nurses, over a period of time, develop their own ways of reinterpreting management's desires. It argues that management is more likely to continue to rely on nurses’ traditional autonomy in the delivery of health care in recognition that nurses may resist some but accommodate many of the demands made of them.     

Education,Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates*

Despite anti‐discrimination policies, women are paid 20% less then men in the UK. A large proportion of this wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, I investigate whether the unexplained component is due to mis‐specification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, I examine the role of choice variables (subject of study and occupation) as well as career expectations and aspirations. The evidence indicates that women are more altruistic and less career‐oriented than men. Career break expectations, for example, explain 10% of the gender wage gap in the favoured model. By omitting attitudinal variables, most studies are likely to overestimate the unexplained component of the gender wage gap. Women with a more traditional view concerning childrearing are also found to have less intensive search behaviour. Since aspirations may reflect perceived discrimination or social pressure, current legislations are unlikely to reduce the gender wage gap.     

Regulation, Unionization, and Racial Wage Discrimination: An Analysis of the Trucking Industry

A bstract . This article tests the hypothesis that increased product market competition of deregulation decreased employer and union wage discrimination in the motor carrier industry. Specifically, in each regulatory period, we estimate the portion of the industry racial wage differential that is due to racial differences: in driver attributes, returns to attributes, and unionization. Our findings suggest that enhanced product market competition directly reduces wage discrimination and may have a smaller indirect effect of further reducing racial wage disparities in industries with racially exclusive unions. These findings support the use of competition to reduce wage discrimination as opposed to government intervention.     

辨析审价与审计 提升工程审价质量

文章对工程造价审核与审计从性质、依据、标的、约束力、从业人员等方面进行了对比分析,辨析两者差异,强调指出审价的职能是定价管理,审计的职能是监督,两者不能相互混淆。同时,从合理确定工程造价、有效控制项目投资角度,就做好工程审价进行了探讨,提出了全方位审核、全过程跟踪审核、建立内控机制以及加强人员培训等具体建议。     

文化社会学视野下的欧美竞技体育领域种族歧视

本文从文化和社会学角度观察欧美竞技领域有色人种运动员的处境与遭遇,总结、归纳出竞技体育领域种族歧视的表现形式和形成的深层次原因,提出了要在竞技体育领域消除种族歧视的若干建议。     

Low Pay,Higher Pay and Job Satisfaction in Wales

Abstract

Using the first six waves of the Welsh boosts to the British Household Panel Survey this paper attempts to explain the determinants of overall job satisfaction and four facets of job satisfaction in Wales, distinguishing between female and male workers and low-paid and higher paid workers. The motivation of the paper is the claim made widely in the EU that low-paid jobs are jobs of inherently low quality, in which case we should expect that job satisfaction would be lower in low-paid jobs. Since there are proportionately more low-paid workers in Wales than in either England or Scotland we would also expect to find that job satisfaction would be lower in Wales than in the other two countries.     

Prospects for industrial relations in NHS trusts

This article looks at management's intended strategies in the new self-governing trusts in the National Health Service. It finds that many managers are planning far-reaching changes affecting union recognition and pay systems. Because of the relative weakness of the staff organisations, they are likely to meet little effective opposition.     

对大学生就业中性别歧视问题的调查研究——以陕西省为例

在中国高等教育大众化,大学扩招的背景下,高校毕业生急剧增加,就业成为高校毕业生面临的首要问题,而在大学生就业过程中,女大学生就业中的性别歧视问题尤为突出,成为社会关注的焦点。本文通过对大学生、企业、高校三方面对女大学生就业性别歧视问题进行调研,结合国内外文献研究成果,系统分析女大学生就业性别歧视问题的成因、现状及影响,并在此基础上从高校、用人单位、政府和女大学生自身等方面提出对策建议。     

The Changing Nature of Pay Systems and the Need for New Midrange Theories of Pay

Previous research suggests that new pay systems (e.g., variable pay and skill based pay) are related to improved employee and organizational performance. Less certain, however, is why these new forms of pay systems work and under what conditions they are likely to work. Current compensation theory does not provide sufficient explanation because it relies upon grand theories, main effects, and commonalities across pay plans. It is argued that the articles in this special issue will advance our understanding of why the new pay systems are effective because they provide research propositions helpful for the study of midrange theories, interaction effects, and differences across types of pay systems.     

Disproportionate Black and Hispanic Unemployment in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: The Roles of Racial Inequality, Segregation and Discrimination in Male Joblessness

Abstract . Three common hypotheses about disproportionate Black and Hispanic unemployment among metropolitan males are tested, using data from the 1980 Population and the 1977 Economic Censuses. It is found that Black and Hispanic male unemployment is higher relative to that of Whites where jobs are most suburbanized and the minority population least so. This supports the view that segregation which separates minorities from job location elevates minority unemployment. It is also found that relative levels of Black, but not Hispanic, unemployment correlate positively to the minority percentage in metropolitan populations. This is consistent with the view that potential White gains from discrimination are greater where the Black (but not Hispanic) population is larger. Finally, both Blacks and Hispanics experience more disproportionate unemployment where their percentage of high school graduates is low relative to Whites, though this is less true for areas with larger Black populations. This suggests that job skill differentials also play some role in disproportionate minority unemployment.