The Impact of Union Political Activities on Public-Sector Pay, Employment, and Budgets

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the political power of public employee unions has been a major cause of excessive growth in municipal expenditures. Previous studies, however, have not directly measured union political activities but instead have used some type of unionization or collective bargaining proxy. This paper uses unpublished data from the International City Management Association (ICMA) to develop a more direct measure of police and fire union political activity. It is found that increased union political activity leads to greater department expenditures but not necessarily to greater municipal expenditures or revenues. The results also suggest that unions increase department spending through political activity and not through the collective bargaining process itself. Further, it appears that political activity increases department spending through higher employment and not through higher compensation.     

Overt Employment Discrimination by Multinational Firms: Cultural and Economic Influences in a Developing Country

An issue that has been explored only to a limited extent is the role that multinational firms might play in promoting or inhibiting employment discrimination based on gender in developing countries. This study focuses on this issue within the context of Thailand, a country that, until quite recently, had one of the world's fastest growing economies, driven to a large extent through investment by foreign multinational firms. The approach we take is to analyze the determinants of the inclusion of explicit gender restrictions in job announcements by both multinationals and Thai-owned firms. Some job announcements restrict jobs to male or to female applicants, and some are silent on the issue of gender. Others specifically invite both male and female applicants. There are no laws in Thailand restricting gender-based discrimination nor requiring equal opportunity language on the part of private employers.
The analysis examines the relationship of the cultural characteristics of the firm's home country, along with economic growth in the host country, with the likelihood of various gender-based restrictions being placed in job announcements. We employ widely used measures of national culture developed by Hofstede.Empirical results demonstrate relationships between discrimination and certain of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Economic growth was not found to have an impact on discrimination. Control variables in the study include dummy variables to control for occupation and the industry of the employee firm.     

The Impact of Size and Age on Firm-Level Performance: Some Evidence from India

Using contemporary data for an extensive sample of 1020 Indian firms, this paper investigates the impacts that size and age of firms have on firm-level productivity and profitability. In India older firms are found to be more productive and less profitable, whereas the larger firms are, conversely, found to be more profitable and less productive. These performance differences are explained as arising from the market-restricting industrial policies that have been followed in India over the past three decades.     

Ownership and Pay in Britain

Drawing on principal–agent perspectives on corporate governance, the article examines whether employees’ hourly pay is related to ownership dispersion. Using linked employee‐workplace data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011, and using a variety of techniques including interval regression and propensity score matching, average hourly pay is found to be higher in dispersed ownership workplaces. The premium is broadly constant across most of the wage distribution, but falls at the 95th percentile to become statistically non‐significant. This contrasts with earlier papers which indicate that higher level employees are the primary beneficiaries of higher pay from dispersed ownership. The dispersed ownership pay premium is not readily explained by efficiency wage perspectives but is consistent with a managerial desire for a ‘quiet life’.     

The Effects of Unions on Firm Behavior: An Empirical Analysis Using Firm-Level Data

We evaluate the use of firm-level union coverage rates in empirical models of firm behavior and performance. We focus on the potential for measurement error in both firm- and industry-level data, and find that firm-level union coverage rates provide more precise estimates of union effects. Higher union coverage at a firm is associated with slower employment and sales growth, decreased productivity in nonmanufacturing firms, increased productivity in manufacturing firms, lower profitability, and less investment in durable assets, such as research and development.     

Productivity and Wage Effects of Firm-Level Collective Agreements: Evidence from Belgian Linked Panel Data

How do firm-level collective agreements affect firm performance in a multi-level bargaining system? Using detailed Belgian-linked employer–employee panel data, our findings show that firm-level agreements increase both wage costs and labour productivity (with respect to sector-level agreements). Relying on approaches developed by Bartolucci and Hellerstein et al., they also indicate that firm-level agreements exert a stronger impact on wages than on productivity, so that profitability is hampered. However, this rent-sharing effect mostly holds in sectors where firms are more concentrated or less exposed to international competition. Firm agreements are thus mainly found to raise wages beyond labour productivity when the rents to be shared between workers and firms are relatively big. Overall, this suggests that firm-level agreements benefit both employers and employees — through higher productivity and wages — without being very detrimental to firms’ performance.     

Managerial Pay and Governance in American Nonprofits

This article examines the compensation of top managers of nonprofits in the United States using panel data from tax returns of the organizations from 1992 to 1996. Studying managers in nonprofits is particularly interesting given the difficulty in measuring performance. The article examines many areas commonly studied in the executive pay (within for-profit firms) literature. It explores pay differences between for-profit and nonprofit firms,pay variability within and across nonprofit industries, managerial pay and performance (including organization size and fund raising) in nonprofits, the effect of government grants on managerial pay, and the relationship between boards of directors and managerial pay in nonprofits.     

The Effects of Pay and Work Conditions on Farmworker Retention

Whether a seasonal farmworker returns to an employer in the following year depends on decisions by both the worker and the employer. Employers are more likely to rehire prime age, experienced, foreign-born workers. An employer increases the probability that a worker returns by spending the last dollar of compensation on benefits or improving working conditions rather than on higher wages.     

Athlete Pay and Competitive Balance in College Athletics

In this paper we analyze the argument—which has been used by both the National Labor Relations Board and the National Collegiate Athletic Association—that unionization and/or player pay will hurt competitive balance in college sports. We present a theoretical analysis of universities that recruit athletes and examine the assumptions that are needed for player compensation to decrease competitive balance. We also empirically illustrate the differences in balance between professional and college sports. Given the theoretical and empirical analysis, we argue that unionization and/or player pay is unlikely to hurt competitive balance.     

Opting Out of Pay Devolution? The Prospects for Local Pay Bargaining in UK Public Services

Abstract : Throughout the 1980s, government ministers strongly advocated the decentralization of pay determination in the public services. Despite this exhortation, by the end of the decade rates of pay and salary structures were rarely determined at workplace level. This paper explores the resilience of national pay determination and considers whether it will survive the radical restructuring of public services initiated in the last few years. The analysis focuses mainly on the health and education services, arguing that distinctive organizational, occupational and political characteristics of the services still constrain the devolution of pay bargaining. In the face of tight budgets and the recent introduction of pay restraint, service managers have sought to make paybill savings through unilateral changes in work organization rather than through devolved collective bargaining.     

The Legitimacy of Pay and Performance Comparisons: An Analysis of UK University Vice Chancellors Pay Awards

This article examines UK University Vice Chancellors (VC) pay awards. The empirical analysis, covering the period 1997–2002, evaluates the impact upon VC pay awards of university performance measures, internal pay comparisons and two external pay comparisons, that is, the pay of other VCs and the pay of chief executive officers (CEOs) leading comparable‐sized UK firms. For the total sample, we find no evidence that VC pay awards are related to any of the performance measures, although for the pre‐ and post‐1992 subsamples there is some evidence that pay awards are related to some ‘mission‐relevant’ performance measures. All the analyses show a positive relationship between changes in the proportion of other highly paid employees and VC pay awards, which suggests that internal pay comparisons play an important role in remuneration committee decision making. As anticipated, the two external pay benchmarks have very different effects upon VC pay awards; the pay received by other VCs produces a marked ‘mean reversion’ in pay levels while the pay of CEOs running comparable‐sized UK firms had a highly significant positive impact upon VC pay awards. Following the insights of institutional theory, we interpret this conservatism by university remuneration committees as stemming primarily from legitimation concerns rather than financial constraints.     

俄罗斯拼布艺术浅析

以索契冬奥会为切入点,通过解读出现在冬奥会的各种形式的拼布元素进一步深究俄罗斯的民族文化。在对俄罗斯民族手工艺品进行了了解的基础上进一步解读俄罗斯拼布被的流行与发展。在对拼布艺术进行剖析的同时,从历史与经济、气候的角度出发,细数俄罗斯历史上影响拼布工艺发展流传的几大关键性因素,最后结合群众的生活来分析俄罗斯拼布被在历史上、文化产业中以及生活中所扮演的角色。整篇文章重在通过政治、经济、文化多角度的对俄罗斯的拼布艺术进行探究。     

外国石油公司在俄罗斯投资面临的问题及其对我国的启示

自1991年外国石油投资进入俄罗斯石油勘探开发领域以来,已有上百个油气田列入按产量分成合同开发的清单,但仅有3个项目按产量分成协议正式实施,其他均处在待实施或谈判及待审批阶段。项目进展缓慢的原因,一方面是外国公司承担的风险很大,致使投资者持非常谨慎的态度;另一方面俄罗斯的税收制度、法律基础、项目审批制度、配套基础设施等对外国投资项目的顺利实施形成了严重障碍。中国石油天然气集团公司与俄罗斯就中俄石油管道问题的合作研究进行了9年。2002年12月,中油集团拟参与俄罗斯斯拉夫公司的竞拍,但未获成功。深入分析和比较外国石油公司在进入俄罗斯过程中遇到的问题,对于加快与俄罗斯在油气领域的合作步伐,加强两国在油气领域的合作,对促进亚洲能源市场的稳定具有重要的意义。建议今后我国石油企业与俄罗斯合作,要加大工作力度,加强多层面的直接交流,同时还要加强对俄罗斯法律法规的研究,并借鉴西方石油公司的经验和教训。     

BP在俄罗斯投资活动探析

受1998年俄罗斯金融危机的影响,俄罗斯国内的政治与投资环境遭到了较大的破坏,一些大的西方石油公司纷纷退出了俄的油气项目。“9·11”恐怖主义袭击事件和伊拉克战争爆发以后,一些西方石油公司的兴趣重新汇聚到了俄罗斯,欲将俄罗斯作为替代中东地区的石油来源地,并想方设法通过各种投资途径进入俄罗斯油气部门。BP在进入俄罗斯油气领域的开始几年经历了不少困难,但尽管如此,BP却从未放弃其在俄长期的战略部署。经过几年的实践摸索与经验积累,BP看准时机,借英俄两国政府加强能源合作的机会,凭借自身的管理及技术优势,在2003年2月成功并购了俄罗斯第四大石油公司——秋明石油公司。BP和秋明石油公司的合并为两家公司今后的发展开拓了空间,BP的先进技术与管理加上俄罗斯丰富的油气资源,使两家公司的合并成为典范,也为其他石油公司进入俄罗斯石油上游投资市场提供了新的思路。同时,也反映出俄罗斯近年来政治、经济和投资环境得到了较大的改善。     

Technological Innovation and Employment in Telecommunications

In this paper we examine how the diffusion of technological innovation in the telecommunications industry influences employment levels across occupations and how a firm chooses among alternative personnel mechanisms to reach its target employment levels. We find that technological change has influenced the demand for different types of workers and has centralized office functions. The adjustment patterns to these demand changes differ by the union status, tenure, age, and gender composition of the affected occupations.