Globals,mutables, and immutables: a new look at the micro-macro link

Past work on the micro-macro problem has often been divisive, with scholars championing either the micro or macro position, and arguing against the other. This work has often stressed the uniqueness of one position (e.g., emphasizing emergence in the macro position or reduction to the micro). There is a recent resurgence of interest, with emphasis on cooperative and integrative attempts to forge a micro-macro link. A review of the literature shows both micro, subjective approaches to the problem, as well as macro-structural approaches, but with an emphasis on the micro. The bulk of the analyses are qualitative. There is a small literature on external or nonsubjective (including quantitative) approaches. The purpose of the paper is to add to the external literature in a way that will complement the qualitative approaches while also being sensitive to the relation between theory and method. The concepts of global macro variables, immutable and mutable micro variables, and immutable distributions are presented. The mutable distribution is the true external link between micro and macro. The mutable distributions have dual micro-macro properties, being formed from the allocation of the individuals in the population into the positions of the respective globals. An individual's position in the multidimensional global structure depends upon his or her particular set of mutable characteristics.Preparation of this paper was partially supported by UCLA Academic Senate Research Grant No. 2884.     

Another look at the role of emotion in the organizational change: A process model

The paper proposes a cognitive–emotional model of organizational change. It is argued that employees' emotions go through four sequential but distinguishable stages in the organizational change process. In the first stage, primary appraisal induces emotions that are high in arousal, mixed in hedonic tones, and are anticipatory. In the second stage, the mixed emotional experiences give way to either positive or negative emotions as a result of the secondary appraisal. The emotional experience then affects employees' coping behaviors in the third stage. In the forth stage, discrete emotions that are evaluative and have distinct action tendencies are induced. Given this changing nature of employees' emotional experiences during the organizational change process, and considering emotions' influence on individuals' attitudes and behaviors, it is suggested that change agents adjust the timing and content of the information communicated in order to promote employee acceptance to change. Implications of this conceptualization are discussed, as are directions for future research.     

Another look at the Tail Area Influence Function

A new way of computing the Tail Area Influence Function (TAIF) exactly is proposed and a new finite sample robustness measure, based on the TAIF, is introduced. The main properties of this robustness measure are also studied, for both finite and asymptotic sample sizes. Next, a very accurate approximation to the finite sample power function of a test is obtained; this is based on the TAIF plus an iterative procedure. The results are valid when there are no nuisance parameters.     

Another look at the naive estimator in a regression model

We consider the linear regression model where only a particular linear function of the dependent variables is observed, Stahlecker and Schmidt (1987) proposed a naive least squares (LS) estimator for regression coefficients in such a case. In this note we represent their estimator as a general ridge estimator. This observation leads to a view different from the previous work and provides an easy way of obtaining many important properties of the naive LS estimator. Our approach also gives some insight into the relationship between the naive LS estimator and the generalized least squares estimator.     

The baby boom and the housing market: Another look at the evidence

Based on tests for cointegration, the growth of housing demand resulting from the Baby Boom appears to be the major factor behind increased real residential investment, but not the major factor behind increased real housing prices in the postwar U.S. The housing market also passes a simple test for efficiency.     

Inequalities for the Gini coefficient of composite populations

Unlike other popular measures of income inequality, the Gini coefficient is not decomposable, i.e., the coefficient G($\text{X}$) of a composite population $\text{X}\text{=}\text{X}{}_1\text{∪…∪}\text{X}{}_{\mathrm{r}}$ cannot be computed in terms of the sizes, mean incomes and Gini coefficients of the components $\text{X}$_i. In this paper upper and lower bounds (best possible for r=2) for G($\text{X}$) in terms of these data are given. For example, $\text{G(}\text{X}{}_1\text{∪…∪}\text{X}{}_{\mathrm{r}}\text{)≧Σα}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{G(}\text{X}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{)}$, where α_i is the proportion of the pop ulation in $\text{X}$_i. One of the tools used, which may be of interest for other applications, is a lower bound for ∫^∞₀f(x)g(x)dx (converse to Cauchy's inequality) for monotone decreasing functions f and g.     

Extremal properties of the Theil and Gini measures of inequality

Quality & Quantity - Two popular inequality measures used in the study of income and wealth distributions are the Gini (G) and Theil (T) indices. Several bounds on these inequality measures are...     

An analysis of the bounds for the Gini coefficient

The bounds on the Gini coefficient obtained by Gastwirth for the case of grouped data are considered. While the population bounds will always include the value of the population Gini coefficient and the estimated bounds will always include a suitably chosen estimate of the Gini coefficient, estimated bounds need not include the value of the population Gini coefficient.The distributions of the estimators of the bounds are considered and it is shown that a failure to take account of sampling variation can lead to very misleading results. In fact, increasing the number of income groups used tends to decrease the difference between the bounds, but the relative frequency with which the estimated bounds includes the population Gini coefficient decreases. The relationship between sample size, the nature of income groups and estimator precision is considered.     

Exploring the linkage between human capital and economic growth: A look at 141 developing and developed countries

As a factor of production, human capital is defined both in its health and educational dimensions, incorporating qualitative and quantitative aspects. Using a panel of 141 countries (93 developing and 48 developed), we attempt to explore and compare the impact of human capital on economic growth at different development stages. For our estimation, we employ the System Generalized Methods of Moments (SGMM) for the period 1980–2008. Our findings reveal that all aspects of human capital positively influence growth in developing countries, especially life expectancy gain, which may be explained by the demographic transition these countries are going through. However, the scenario is different for developed countries, where increased life expectancy posits a drag on economic growth, probably because of the increasingly aging population and dependency ratio. Only when life expectancy is omitted does health expenditure, along with other educational measures of human capital, help sustain growth in developed countries.     

Public capital and regional output : Another look at some Japanese and American data

Japanese and American data are used to recover estimates of regional production functions that include government capital as an input. Estimated parameters are used to simulate allocations of government capital which would have resulted in equal per employee outputs across states and regions. Base case estimates indicate that complete equalization would have increased aggregate output by about 8 percent in 1954 but reduced it by 14 percent in 1963, in Japan, and reduced aggregate output by about 25 percent in the U.S. in 1972. Sensitivity analyses show that these results are not affected much by small changes in the parameters.     

Industrial energy efficiency: A look at the data

It is extremely difficult to make a precise, quantitative assessment of the impact of the myriad of factors affecting the improvement in industrial energy efficiency. It is certainly not correct to conclude that housekeeping measures alone have led to the observed improvement. Changing product mix among four digit SIC industries within the same two digit classification, variations in capacity utilization (returns to scale) and energy price increases as well as technological innovations have all contributed to part of the realized reduction in energy use per dollar value added over the period of investigation. Unfortunately, data limitations as well as modeling weaknesses prohibit an exact delineation of the impact of each of the factors on the increase in energy efficiency. The best that can be done—and quite convincingly so—is to qualitatively show that unequivocally these factors had an impact on the efficiency with which energy was used in the manufacturing process for the ten most energy intensive industries in the period 1971–1976.     

A new look at the two-mode problem

This paper considers the second-best policy problem that arises when auto travel is priced below its marginal cost and there is a substitute mass transit mode. We analyze the problem by combining a model of a rail line based on Kraus and Yoshida (J. Urban Econ. 51 (2002) 170) with the highway bottleneck model. The model involves a transit authority which optimizes, in addition to the fare, two dimensions of transit capacity. These are (1) the number of train units serving the route and (2) the capacity of an individual train unit. Under a very weak condition, second-best optimality involves expanding both dimensions of transit capacity. The larger percentage effect is on train capacity.     

从城市社区看社会分层与社会不平等——对天津市两个商品房社区的比较研究

依据对天津市两个居住区进行参与观察和个案访谈所获得的田野材料,通过比较研究的方法,揭示了社区的阶层化现状,勾画出不同社区居民之间的社会分层和不平等状况。并进一步指出,缩小城市区位差异、减少城市中的居住隔离不仅牵涉自然资源和社会资源的公平分配和使用,同时也关乎个体发展的代际公平。     

A new look at performance appraisal: The specimen check-list

The specimen check-list represents a breakthrough in appraisal because its format minimizes appraiser-errors common in rating, ranking, and essay appraisal methods. The specimen check-list requires the appraiser to diagnostically report behavioral incidents observed, based upon prompted recall.     

A look at productivity at the firm level in eight French service industries

In this paper, we take advantage of information collected by the French annual survey of market services to analyze productivity differences and changes among firms in eight major industries (restaurants, hotels, engineering, computer programming, computer processing, legal services, accounting and building cleaning), over the five-year period 1984–1988. We find a pattern of cross-sectional and time-series type estimates of the Cobb-Douglas production function, which is comparable to that typically found in studies of manufacturing industries, thus raising similar issues of interpretation and modeling. Using a capital stock measure corrected for rented equipment and building and taking into account the number of hours of work of work per employee improve these estimates to some extent. An interesting finding is that the output elasticity seems significantly smaller with respect to hours per employee than with respect to the number of employees.     

Insider Trading and regulation: A look at bank holding companies

With the passage of the Insider Trading Sanctions Act (ITSA) of 1984, regulators have attempted to reduce insider trading activities through their increased power to impose stiffer penalties on violators. In their study of trading activity associated with tender offers, Arshadi and Eyssell (1991) find that insiders went from being heavy net purchasers of their own firms' stock prior to tender offer announcements to being weak net sellers. The special status of bank holding companies suggests that the trading patterns of insiders would differ between bank holding companies and non-bank holding companies. The results in this paper indicate this to be the case as there is no change in the trading patterns for insiders of bank holding companies between the two regulatory periods.