Absence management and the issues of job retention and return to work

Strategies aimed at facilitating the job retention and return to work of sick and injured workers are currently the subject of growing attention. In this article the authors examine the nature and potential significance of such strategies to absence management and utilise interview findings to shed light on current employer policies and practices relating to the management of long‐term absences. They conclude that at the national level a large proportion of working days lost through sickness absence stem from relatively long spells of absence and that the adoption of a proactive approach to supporting the return to work of ill and injured workers can have beneficial consequences. However, they further conclude that few organisations appear to have comprehensive arrangements in place to handle cases of long‐term absence. A number of areas where present employer arrangements could usefully be reviewed are therefore identified.     

Work out or out of work — The labor market return to physical fitness and leisure sports activities

This study is the first to present evidence of the return to leisure sports in the job hiring process by sending fictitious applications to real job openings in the Swedish labor market. In the field experiment job applicants were randomly given different information about their type and level of leisure sports. Applicants who signaled sports skills had a significantly higher callback rate of about 2 percentage points, and this effect was about twice as large for physically demanding occupations.Additional evidence of a sports premium in the regular labor market is arrived at when analyzing the long-run impact of physical fitness on later labor market outcomes. The analysis uses register data on adult earnings and physical fitness when enlisting at age 18. The fitness premium, net of unobservable family variables, is in the order of 4-5%, but diminishes to 2% when controlling for non-cognitive skills.     

A return to incomes policy?*

The Government's continuing difficulties in controlling the money supply and determination to use cash limits to control the level of public sector pay settlements have renewed cause for a return to a form of incomes policy covering both the public and private sectors. In this article Brian Towers examines the nature of incomes policy and the importance of comparability and collective bargaining structure in its implementation and discusses the form which a viable future policy should take.     

物业管理应该回归本真

近年来,由于成本上涨及质价相符的定价机制不健全,行业发展出现了困难,业内不少企业纷纷开始探寻自己的应对之策,譬如开展延伸服务、建设幸福社区及智慧社区等等,但业内对此也有不同的声音,本文即是其中之一。本文作者的观点不代表中国物业管理协会和本刊的观点,我们欢迎不同的观点和意见来参与这一问题的讨论。     

The expected real return to equity

The expected return to equity – typically measured as a historical average – is a key variable in the decision making of investors. A recent literature uses analysts' forecasts, investor surveys or present-value relationships and finds estimates of expected returns that are sometimes much lower than historical averages. This study extends the present-value approach to a dynamic optimizing framework. Given a model that captures this relationship, one can use data on dividends, earnings and valuations to infer the model-implied expected return. Using this method, the estimated expected real return to equity ranges from 4.9% to 5.6% . Furthermore, the analysis indicates that expected returns have declined by about 3 percentage points over the past 40 years. These results indicate that future returns to equity may be lower than past realized returns.     

The economic return to schooling in Ireland

Recent developments in the schooling returns literature have focused on exploiting alternative instruments. A number of instruments are available in an Irish dataset, including parental background variables (social class and educational attainment), and variables measuring changes in the schooling system (the introduction of free secondary schooling in the mid-1960s, accompanied by a rapid rise in educational participation rates, and the raising of the school-leaving age in 1972). The results suggest, however, that OLS estimates of rates of return are not significantly downward biased as would be suggested by recent arguments in the literature.     

A property rights approach to legislative delegation

This paper applies the property rights theory to study both positive and normative aspects of legislative delegation in a setup where interest groups directly influence lawmaking by initiating regulatory bargaining. A self-interested legislature choosing between the direct exercise of its legislative authority and delegation to an administrative agency must therefore trade off the value of bureaucratic competence against bureaucratic drift and, importantly, loss of control over bargaining. Our analysis, first, clarifies when the legislature’s choice between delegation and no delegation is socially efficient or socially inefficient; second, highlights the role of political bargaining and shows that precluding interest group influence through bargaining may actually increase the scope for socially inefficient outcomes; and, third, illustrates the model’s predictions in light of selected stylized facts and the practice of scant empirical work on legislative delegation.     

基于工作过程的“企业所得税报税实务”课程开发与探究

企业所得税是税收实务教学中的难点,企业所得税的会计核算及纳税申报又是实务操作中的难点,基于工作过程系统化的职业课程设计理念,我们开发了＂企业所得税报税实务＂课程,本文论述了该课程的开发背景、课程设计、教学实施以及考核评价等内容。     

The return to firm investments in human capital

In this paper we estimate the rate of return to firm investments in human capital in the form of formal job training. We use a panel of large firms with detailed information on the duration of training, the direct costs of training, and several firm characteristics. Our estimates of the return to training are substantial (8.6%) for those providing training. Results suggest that formal job training is a good investment for these firms possibly yielding comparable returns to either investments in physical capital or investments in schooling.     

中国加入世贸组织后的机会、权利和发展

庆祝中华人民共和国成立十周年的时候,倾全国之力,在北京搞了十大建筑,如今任何一个城市到处都是高楼林立,为什么会出现这样的现象呢?其中有一个最重要的因素,政府开始重视土地是值钱的资源,如何进一步利用好土地资源,让土地资源利用得最有效益,是摆在城市经营和发展面前一个非常重大的课题.这个问题我是一个外行,所以我不想多讲.我想结合中国入世以后半年多的情况,分析一下中国加入世界贸易组织以后,一些基本的形势,对照一下我们当初在加入世界贸易组织当中我们所作出的估计和现实所发生的一些事情,来看看当初中国作出关于入世决策确实是完全正确的.     

Getting Wisconsin to work

Since the mid-1980s the state of Wisconsin has been pre-eminent in the field of welfare reform. With a consensus across the political spectrum, the state has pioneered a series of bold and innovative programmes which have slashed cash assistance by $30 million a month, compared with 1987 levels, and reduced its caseload by 85%. The latest programme, Wisconsin Works, is known as W-2, and is widely regarded as the most successful of the many welfare-to-work initiatives which have appeared throughout the USA.     

Applying human rights standards to employment rights in the USA: The Human Rights Watch Report 2000

This essay reviews the international human rights standards that the Human Rights Watch Report uses as standards for judgment, summarises with some commentary the Report’s major findings and recommendations, comments more fully on certain findings and recommendations, and, in conclusion, raises several issues that need to be addressed given the state of freedom of association and other related human rights in the USA.     

Public school availability for two-year olds and mothers' labour supply

French children start public school either the year they turn two or the year they turn three. We evaluate the impact of this unique schooling policy on maternal labour supply. Using a Regression–Discontinuity design, we show that early school availability has a significant employment effect on lone mothers, but no effect on two-parent families. Also we show that the effect grows larger as the child grows older and as the family loses eligibility for child benefits. Finally, we provide some new evidence that school enrolment at the age of two has no adverse effect on children's subsequent educational outcomes.