Trading places: An experimental comparison of reallocation mechanisms for priority queuing

In a laboratory experiment, we compare two auction mechanisms that are designed to improve a queue's efficiency by allowing customers to trade places. In the server‐initiated auction, the server, when idle, sells the right to be served next to the highest bidding customer in the queue and distributes the proceeds among the remaining customers. In the customer‐initiated auction, new arrivals can sequentially trade places with queued customers. We use two novel experimental protocols to examine the behavioral properties of both auction mechanisms. We find that both auction mechanisms improve a queue's efficiency on average and that both perform equally well in terms of efficiency gain. We also find evidence of the sunk‐cost effect but not of the endowment effect. Participants indicated that they found the server‐initiated auction a fairer mechanism than the customer‐initiated auction. When voting between the two auctions, the participants tended to favor the server‐initiated auction.     

Is Improving Access to University Enough? Socio‐Economic Gaps in the Earnings of English Graduates

Much research and policy attention has been on socio‐economic gaps in participation at university, but less attention has been paid to socio‐economic gaps in graduates’ earnings. This paper addresses this shortfall using tax and student loan administrative data to investigate the variation in earnings of English graduates by socio‐economic background. We find that graduates from higher income families (with median income of around 77,000) have average earnings which are 20% higher than those from lower income families (with median income of around £26,000). Once we condition on institution and subject choices, this premium roughly halves, to around 10%. The premium grows with age and is larger for men, in particular for men at the most selective universities. We estimate the extent to which different institutions and subjects appear to deliver good earnings for relatively less well off students, highlighting the strong performance of medicine, economics, law, business, engineering, technology and computer science, as well as the prominent London‐based universities.     

Hospital performance standards and medical pricing: The impact of information disclosure in cardiac care

A policy concern is that the initiation of Hospital Compare (HC) reporting in Medicare provided leverage to insurers in price negotiations for lowering private sector prices without regard to hospital performance. Using the sequential Nash bargaining framework we provide economic intuition to the contrary: while average hospital prices decline under quality disclosures, hospitals with above‐average quality are able to exert a stronger bargaining position, consequently capturing prices above the market rate. To explore this issue empirically we estimate variants of difference‐in‐difference models, examining the effects of the three main scores (heart attack, heart failure, and combined mortalities) on transaction prices of related hospital procedures. States which had similar mandated reporting systems in place before the initiation of HC form the control group. Analyzing claims data of privately insured patients, we find that HC exerted downward pressure on prices. However, hospitals rated “above‐average” captured higher prices, thereby offsetting the overall policy effect fully or partially. Leads and lags analysis lends further support for our difference‐in‐difference approach. We find that highly ranked hospitals received a quality premium of 8–14%, comparable to price effects found in other health care markets. We conclude that HC was effective at constraining prices without penalizing high performers.     

Inter‐industry Wage Differences and Individual Heterogeneity*

Two well‐established findings are apparent in the analyses of individual wage determination: cross‐section wage equations can account for less than half of the variance in earnings and there are large and persistent inter‐industry wage differentials. We explore these two empirical regularities using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). We show that around 90% of the variation in earnings can be explained by observed and unobserved individual characteristics. However, small – but statistically significant – industry wage premia do remain, and there is also a role for a rich set of job and workplace controls.     

Analysis of Labour Participation Behaviour of Korean Women with Dynamic Probit and Conditional Logit*

We analyse the dynamic labour participation behaviour of Korean women. State dependence under unobserved heterogeneity is considered, where the heterogeneity may be unrelated, pseudo‐related, or arbitrarily related to regressors. Three minor methodological contributions are made: interaction terms with lagged response are allowed in dynamic conditional logit; a three‐stage algorithm for dynamic probit is proposed; and treating the initial response as fixed is shown to be ill‐advised. The state dependence is about 0.6 × SD(error), higher for the married or junior college‐educated, and lower for women in their twenties and thirties. While education increases participation, college education has negative effects for women in their forties or above. Marriage has a high negative short‐term effect but a positive long‐term effect.     

Do Labour Market Programmes Speed up the Return to Work?*

We evaluate the impact of labour market programmes on unemployment durations in Norway, by means of a distribution‐free mixed proportional competing risks hazard rate model. We find that programme participation, once completed, improves employment prospects, but that there is often an opportunity cost in the form of a lock‐in effect during participation. The average net effect of programme participation on the length of the job search period is found to be around zero. For participants with poor employment prospects, the favourable post‐programme effects outweigh the negative lock‐in effects.     

To get the best new CEO,must the old CEO go? Power distribution in external CEO successions

When chief executive officers (CEOs) are replaced by external successors, they frequently retain high levels of power. We found that outgoing CEOs' announced post‐succession involvement is negatively related to their successors' power. Additionally, we found that the magnitude of the stock market reaction to succession announcements is greater when the outgoing CEOs are allowed to continue to retain significant influence, and diminished when the new CEOs are awarded significant position power when they become CEO. These results suggest that to improve long‐term performance, companies should keep outgoing CEOs around and not grant new CEOs too much power. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the cargo and eco‐efficiencies of international container shipping companies: A network‐based ranking approach

This study aims to evaluate the cargo and eco‐efficiencies of international container shipping companies (CSCs) for the period 2013–2017 for benchmarking purposes. An integration of two‐stage network directional distance function and network‐based approach in data envelopment analysis is utilized to distinguish the efficient operators. Results show that most CSCs are highly ranked in the cargo efficiency stage but lowly ranked in the eco‐efficiency stage and vice versa. This study emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses of each factor of every CSC. Results can help the inefficient CSCs find the areas for improvement by learning from their peers.     

How and when matter: Exploring the interaction effects of high‐performance work systems,employee participation,and human capital on organizational innovation

Existing research on the relationship between high‐performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational innovation has paid insufficient attention to the boundary effects of employee participation and human capital. Bridging the human resource management (HRM) and employment relations literature, this study contributes to the contingency view of HRM and China‐specific research by investigating how human capital and employee participation, direct voice mechanism, and corporate governance participation jointly moderate the relationship between HPWS and organizational innovation. We test our three‐way interaction model using a sample of 108 firms and 1,250 employees in China. The results suggest that HPWS are positively associated with organizational innovation when employees with relatively less human capital are coupled with more direct voice mechanism or less corporate governance participation. In contrast, HPWS are negatively related to organizational innovation when employees possessing greater human capital are coupled with more direct voice mechanism. The theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Policy capturing in small‐group decision making: Using linear programming to assign factor weights for the NCAA Selection Committee's ranking decisions in the 2016 through 2018 men's basketball tournaments

We present a general approach for applying policy capturing to small‐group decision making and demonstrate the approach with the NCAA Selection Committee's rankings of the 68 teams in the three most recent Division I Men's Basketball Tournaments. We develop a linear programming model that minimizes the extent to which the evaluation of a lower‐ranked team exceeds that of a team ranked immediately above it. The result is a set of linear weights that approximates a group decision when the decision itself is demonstrably internally inconsistent in that a group ranks some teams higher than others despite a lower implied evaluation.     

Strategic behavior and social outcomes in a bottleneck queue: experimental evidence

We theoretically and experimentally study the differential incentive effects of three well known queue disciplines in a strategic environment in which a bottleneck facility opens and impatient players decide when to arrive. For a class of three-player games, we derive equilibrium arrivals under the first-in-first-out (FIFO), last-in-first-out (LIFO), and service-in-random-order (SIRO) queue disciplines and compare these predictions to outcomes from a laboratory experiment. In line with our theoretical predictions, we find that people arrive with greater dispersion when participating under the LIFO discipline, whereas they tend to arrive immediately under FIFO and SIRO. As a consequence, shorter waiting times are obtained under LIFO as compared to FIFO and SIRO. However, while our theoretical predictions admit higher welfare under LIFO, this is not recovered experimentally as the queue disciplines provide similar welfare outcomes.     

Global Engagement and Returns Volatility

This paper finds that a greater reliance on foreign market sales increases the volatility of firms’ stock returns, using high‐frequency data for publicly listed Japanese manufacturing firms over the period 2000–10. The two margins of global engagement we consider, namely, exports and sales via foreign affiliates (horizontal foreign direct investment), have both a positive and economically significant effect on firm‐level volatility. We find, however, that increasing the intensity of sales through foreign affiliates has a stronger effect on volatility than a similar change in export intensity. We also uncover evidence consistent with the notion that firms’ need to use external finance to cover the substantial costs involved in reaching foreign consumers can be an important channel through which firms’ participation in international markets increases their exposure to economic uncertainty.     

The Struggle for a Voice: Tensions between Associations and Citizens in Participatory Budgeting

The emergence of new participatory mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting, in towns and cities in recent years has given rise to a conflict between the old protagonists of local participation and the new citizens invited to participate. These mechanisms offer a logic of collective action different from what has been the usual fare in cities — one based on proposal rather than demand. As a result, urban social movements need to transform their own dynamics in order to make room for a new political subject (the citizenry and the non‐organized participant) and to act upon a stage where deliberative dynamics now apply. This article aims to analyse this conflict in three different cities that set up participatory budgeting at different times: Porto Alegre, Cordova and Paris. The associations in the three cities took up a position against the new participatory mechanisms and demanded a bigger role in the political arena. Through a piece of ethnographic research, we shall see that the responses of the agents involved (politicians, associations and citizens) in the three cities share some arguments, although the conflict was resolved differently in each of them. The article concludes with reflections on the consequences this conflict could have for contemporary political theory, especially with respect to the role of associations in the processes of democratization and the setting forth of a new way of doing politics by means of deliberative procedures.     

Cleaner production: organizational learning or business as usual? An example from the domestic appliance industry

It is frequently argued that approaches to minimizing the environmental, health and safety impact of industry (i.e. cleaner production) require that firms engage in a process of participative learning involving all levels of the organizational hierarchy. This paper examines the key concept of organizational learning, particularly in terms of the associated concepts of ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’, drawing on a study of a large, environmentally pro‐active firm and recent critical literature on the experience of work. It is suggested that, although contemporary management philosophy pays lip service to increased workforce participation and empowerment, there are formidable structural and cultural barriers to such change. Initiatives within firms to stimulate learning and continuous improvement around cleaner production can be understood in terms of firstly the relative power of individuals and groups within organizations to define and activate learning agendas and secondly the emphasis given to low cost, low skill and low trust as a route to competitiveness, particularly in a UK business context. Finally, attention is drawn to the weakness of external mechanisms for supporting genuine participation and empowerment within enterprises around health, safety and environmental issues. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Inter‐Team Coordination Patterns and Outcomes in Multi‐Team Projects

We examine what kinds of patterns of mechanisms can be applied in the coordination of several inter‐related project teams. We identify three distinct coordination schemes; namely: centralized coordination, decentralized coordination, and balanced coordination. In addition, we compare individuals' perceptions on communication, coordination effectiveness, project efficiency, learning, task analyzability, and task uncertainty between the three identified coordination schemes. The results of our study extend to both theoretical and practical understanding of coordination in multi‐team projects and its relation to communication, coordination effectiveness, project performance, and learning.     

A quantitative study of financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies: A three‐stage data envelopment analysis

This study set out to evaluate the financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies. Applying a three‐stage data envelopment analysis with the data from 85 listed companies in China's low‐carbon industries over the period 2011 to 2017, this study has found that the overall financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies was relatively high, and the pure technical efficiency was quite steady over the period. The overall financing efficiency of these low‐carbon companies on average tended to change with the scale efficiency. This study has also shown that the scale efficiency was the main constraint influencing the financing efficiency of low‐carbon companies in China over the period. Our results are robust and have significant implications for policy makers and corporate managers.     

Survey topic and unit nonresponse

Survey topic as a factor influencing participation rates is becoming increasingly important, as there is a growing trend in social science research for surveying specific populations about specific topics. Previous research has shown that respondents with high topic interest (often referred to as salience) are more likely to participate in surveys. However, the identification of mechanisms that affect respondents’ interest in a survey topic has been largely neglected in research literature. We present an explanatory model of participation that conceptualizes topic interest as a function of an actor’s relational position in a particular social setting. To illustrate the relationship between survey topic and participation behavior, we use an online survey on mating conducted on the user population of an online dating site. For our nonresponse analysis we use web-generated process data, consisting of profile and interaction data, which describe all units of the sample frame. Thus, comprehensive information is available for both participants and non-participants of the online survey on an individual level, enabling a particularly accurate analysis of nonresponse. Results show that the probability of participation varies according to a user’s chances of success on the mating market. Users who can be described as less attractive (e.g. older people, less educated men, overweight women) show a higher probability of participation, which we explain with the mechanism of topic salience. We conclude with general implications regarding (1) the relationship between survey topic and survey participation and (2) the potential of web-generated process data for (online) survey research.     

DO PEERS AFFECT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT? EVIDENCE FROM CANADA USING GROUP SIZE VARIATION

We provide the first empirical application of a new approach proposed by Lee (Journal of Econometrics 2007; 140 (2), 333–374) to estimate peer effects in a linear‐in‐means model when individuals interact in groups. Assumingsufficient group size variation, this approach allows to control for correlated effects at the group level and to solve the simultaneity (reflection) problem. We clarify the intuition behind identification of peer effects in the model. We investigate peer effects in student achievement in French, Science, Mathematics and History in secondary schools in the Province of Québec (Canada). We estimate the model using conditional maximum likelihood and instrumental variables methods. We find some evidence of peer effects. The endogenous peer effect is large and significant in Mathematics but imprecisely estimated in the other subjects. Some contextual peer effects are also significant. In particular, for most subjects, the average age of peers has a negative effect on own test score. Using calibrated Monte Carlo simulations, we find that high dispersion in group sizes helps with potential issues of weak identification. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Firm strategy and the Canadian Voluntary Climate Challenge and Registry (VCR)

The Canadian VCR is a climate change mitigation program that relies on firms' desire to signal environmental responsibility to external stakeholders through voluntary information disclosure. We analyze indicators of strategic behavior through three measures of engagement with the VCR program (annual participation behavior, quality of action plans and repeat participation), and test for differences in these measures among firms subjected to different regulatory climates that arise over time, across provinces and across economic sectors. Our findings suggest an increased perception of a regulatory threat in later years, as evidenced by an increase in participation rates, higher quality of action plans and higher rates of repeat participation. We also find higher levels of engagement with the VCR program in provinces with large petroleum (Alberta) and manufacturing (Ontario) industries and that have established provincial level greenhouse gas reporting mechanisms, and in certain sectors such as petroleum, electric utilities and to some extent services. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Evaluation of critical constructs for measurement of sustainable supply chain practices in lean‐agile firms of Indian origin: A hybrid ISM‐ANP approach

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the critical criteria that are influencing the successful implementation of sustainable supply chain practices (SSCP) in the lean‐agile manufacturing firm. From the systematic literature review and field professionals' opinion, various criteria that are influencing sustainable supply chain were identified. Data were collected from 16 experts and analysed by an integrated approach of “interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and analytic network process (ANP).” ISM methodology was utilized to get a hierarchical relationship between all criteria. Further, the input to the ANP matrices was taken from the output of ISM, and three organizations that differ in their principle of operation were ranked to find out the extent of implementation of SSCP in the Indian context. The obtained results indicate that “Information technology‐enabled system support (ITS), SC member's awareness and literacy (SAL), Societal issues (SIS), and Scarcity of natural resources (SNR)” were most significant constructs for successful implementation of SSCP for the case organizations.