Enterprise Unions in the United States

Through a case study of a large industrial company ( TRW ) , this paper examines the history and functioning of independent local unions ( ILUs ). TRW's ILU plant wages were about the same as those at affiliated union plants and higher than those at nonunion plants. The premium explains why TRW and other companies discarded ILUs in favor of a "new" nonunion model. Yet ILUs can remedy some of the defects in that model and thus belong on the policy and research agenda     

The Social Cost of Rent Seeking by Labor Unions in the United States

The conventional welfare loss to trade unions and collective bargaining has been put at some fraction of 1.0 percent. Added to this should be the costs of resources deployed by the parties as they compete for monopoly gains. These additional social costs turn out to be on the same order as the conventional welfare loss. The analysis finds in passing that the investment by union members in paying dues yields very handsome dividends.     

Job Mobility in Europe,Japan and the United States

Evidence about job mobility outside the United States is scarce and difficult to compare cross‐nationally because of non‐uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labour market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we replicate the information in this survey to compare the results with the United States. We find that (a) US graduates hold more jobs than European graduates, (b) contrasting conventional wisdom, job mobility in Japan is only somewhat lower than the European average, and (c) there are large differences in job mobility within Europe.     

经济奇迹的助推器--日本、美国与欧洲质量奖综述

近年来,通过推行国家质量奖计划来提升企业的管理水平已成为许多国家强化和提高产业竞争力的重要途径,除了一些发达国家和地区外,许多新兴的工业化国家和发展中国家也都设立了国家质量奖。在全世界诸多国家质量奖计划中,影响最大的当推日本爱德华·戴明质量奖(EdwardDemingPrize)、美国马尔科姆·波德里奇质量奖(MalcolmBaldrigeAward)和欧洲质量奖(EuropeanQualityAward),这三大质量奖被誉为卓越管理与绩效模式的创造者和经济奇迹的助推器。一、日本爱德华·戴明质量奖1949年,为了引进和推广质     

Lessons from broadband development in Canada,Japan, Korea and the United States

Broadband network development does not always track closely a nations overall wealth and economic strength. The International Telecommunication Union reported that in 2005 the five top nations for broadband network market penetration were: Korea, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. The ITU ranked the United States sixteenth in broadband penetration.Aside from the obvious geographical and demographic advantages accruing to small nations with large urban populations, broadband development thrives when it becomes a national priority. Both developed and developing nations have stimulated capital expenditures for infrastructure in ways United States public and private sector stakeholders have yet to embrace. Such investments have accrued ample dividends including the lowest broadband access costs in the world. For example, the ITU reports that in 2002 Japanese consumers paid $0.09 per 100 kilobits per second of broadband access compared to $3.53 in the United States.Economic policies do not completely explain why some nations offer faster, better cheaper and more convenient broadband services while other nations do not. This paper will examine best practices in broadband network development with an eye toward determining the optimal mix of legislative, regulatory and investment initiatives. The paper will track development in Canada, Japan and Korea as these nations have achieved success despite significantly different geographical, political and marketplace conditions. The paper also notes the institutional and regulatory policies that have hampered broadband development in the United States.The paper also will examine why incumbent local exchange and cable television operators recently have begun aggressively to pursue broadband market opportunities. The paper will analyze incumbents’ rationales for limited capital investment in broadband with an eye toward determining the credibility of excuses based on regulatory risk and uncertainty. The paper concludes with suggestions how national governments might expedite broadband infrastructure development.     

Female Part-time Workers' Attitudes to Trade Unions in Britain

This paper discusses the reasons that can be offered for the lower trade union membership rates of female part-time workers in the UK and focuses in particular on female part-timers' attitudes to trade unions. The findings are based on original research: 50 qualitative interviews with female part-time workers in the retail industry. The paper argues that female part-timers are supportive of the aims of the trade union movement and concludes that an integrated approach is necessary in order to understand part-timers' unionization rates. This includes structural factors, the approach that trade unions have taken towards part-time workers and attitudes towards trade unions.     

A study of company profit-rate time series: Japan and the United States

Usinf the methodology of D.C. Mueller as well as the alternative model we propose, we estimate the long-run profit rate (normalized to the cross-company mean in each year to eliminate the effect of the general rise or decline in profitability) of each of 294 major Japanese manufacturing corporations using the time series of its profit rate over 1964–1980. Three of the major findings are (1) a company with a high (low) initial profit rate tended to earn a high (low) profit rate even in the long run, implying a persistence of intercompany profit-rate differences, and (2) across companies, the estimated long-run profit rates were similarly distributed between Japan (our estimates) and the United States (Mueller's estimates), but (3) the movement of profit rate is more volatile and can be less well explained by the model in Japan. Further studies on the time series of the company profit rate revealed that the cross-company variance of the normalized profit rate (which equals the coefficient of variation of the unnormalized profit rate) was smaller in Japan in every year from 1964 to 1972, which together with the observed larger interindustry profit-rate differences, suggests smaller intraindustry intercompany profit-rate differences in Japan. Some preliminary discussions are given to eplain these findings.     

A comparative analysis of layoff announcements and stock price reactions in the United States and Japan

Downsizing and layoffs are an important mechanism for U.S. firms to cope with their strategic and economic environment. In contrast, the Japanese tradition of lifetime employment limits the ability of firms to employ layoffs as a strategic measure, relegating its use to conditions of financial distress. This paper provides the first comparison of layoffs in Japan and the United States and examines stock price reactions to layoff announcements in each country from 1990 to 1994. Agency theory and Aoki's cooperative game theory are employed to discuss differences in the governance structures of U.S. and Japanese firms and their implication for stock price reactions. Results show that layoff announcements trigger negative returns for both U.S. and Japanese firms. Specifically, layoff announcements of U.S. firms are associated with a negative 1.78 percent abnormal return, while layoff announcements for Japanese firms are associated with a negative 0.56 percent abnormal return. To better understand the impact of layoffs, this study examines the relationships between stock price reactions and various layoff characteristics (such as whether the layoff is proactive or reactive or whether the layoff is the first in the industry). Implications of the findings are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Competitive forces and strategic choice decisions: an experimental investigation in the United States and Japan

Managers operate in a complex, uncertain environment and tend to form simplified models in order to cope with this environment and make competitive strategic decisions (i.e., cost‐leadership, differentiation, or focus). In this study, we use an experimental design to examine the strategic choice decision‐making process in firms located in the United States and Japan. We develop several main‐effect propositions regarding managerial selection of competitive strategies, depending on the competitive forces (buyer power, threat of substitutes, threat of new firm entry, and high intensity of rivalry) they are facing. We propose a main effect due to country of origin: Japanese managers prefer a cost‐leadership strategy more than American managers do. We also propose several interaction effects regarding cross‐national differences in strategy selection between Japanese and U.S. managers. To test our propositions, we collected experimental data from 316 U.S. executives and 459 Japanese executives. We assessed relative impacts of the competitive forces on strategic decision‐making using a multilevel regression analysis. The research findings indicated that high buyer power and high substitution threat were associated with a preference for cost‐leadership strategies, and Japanese managers were significantly more likely to prefer a cost‐leadership strategy than U.S. managers. We also found that, under conditions of high buyer power, U.S. managers were less likely than Japanese managers to enter a market with a differentiation or focus strategy. We found little support for other interaction hypotheses, suggesting points of similarity between U.S. and Japanese managers. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications of our results. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Manufacturing environments in South Korea,Japan and the United States of America: A note

This paper reports a comparative analysis of the manufacturing facilities and the degree of automation of major manufacturing corporations in South Korea, Japan and the United States. We suggest that South Korea is behind Japan and the United States in manufacturing technology, but is aggressively incorporating automated equipment or processes into the manufacturing system.This project has been supported by a grant from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.     

Privatizing Highways in the United States

We review the experience of both private toll-roads built in the United States during the 1990s, and argue that the problems they encountered could have been avoided if the length of the franchise contract would adapt to demand realizations. We also argue in favor of adjudicating private toll-roads via BOT-type contracts in competitive (Demsetz) auctions. The lessons of this paper are relevant since growing congestion and troubled government finances have made private toll-roads increasingly attractive in the United States.     

Globalization and Declining Unionization in the United States

For decades, the private‐sector unionization rate in the United States has been falling. At the same time, the integration of the United States into the world economy has been rising. Many anecdotes suggest the latter has played a role in that decline, with unions feeling pressured to reduce employment and/or compensation demands in the face of rising cross‐border activity of employers. To investigate this possibility econometrically, in this paper I assembled a panel of U.S. manufacturing industries that matches union‐coverage rates with measures of global engagement such as exports, imports, tariffs, transportation costs, and foreign direct investment. The main finding is a statistically and economically significant correlation between falling union coverage and greater numbers of inward FDI transactions. Possible interpretations of this finding are then discussed. Because U.S. affiliates of foreign multinationals have higher unionization rates than U.S.‐based firms do, this correlation does not reflect just a compositional shift toward these affiliates. Instead, it may reflect pressure of international capital mobility on U.S.‐based companies, consistent with research on how rising capital mobility raises labor‐demand elasticities and alters bargaining power.     

Regulatory initiatives and related activities in the United States

Prevention of chemical incidents is an important issue in the chemical petroleum industries. This issue is receiving focus and attention from a wide spectrum—Industry, Labor, Professional Associations, Environmental Groups Government and the Public. The purpose of this paper is to review the various regulatory initiatives and related activities regarding chemical process safety.