Supermarket Entry and the Survival of Small Stores

We analyze the effect of supermarket entry on the exit of small stores in the food retailing sector in Montevideo between 1998 and 2007. We use detailed geographical information to identify the link between supermarket entry and the exit of nearby small stores. Entry of supermarkets using small- to medium-size formats creates a competitive threat for the existing small stores, decreasing their probability of survival. The result is robust to several model specifications and varying definitions of what constitutes a supermarket. The impact of supermarket entry is unequivocal for groceries, bakeries, fresh pasta shops, and butcher shops.     

Supermarkets and agricultural labor demand in Kenya: A gendered perspective

Many developing countries are experiencing a rapid expansion of supermarkets. New supermarket procurement systems could affect farming patterns and wider rural development. While previous studies have analyzed farm productivity and income effects, possible employment effects have received much less attention. Special supermarket requirements may entail intensified farm production and post-harvest handling, thus potentially increasing demand for hired labor. This could also have important gender implications, because female and male workers are often hired for distinct farm operations. Building on data from a recent survey of vegetable farmers in Kenya, a double-hurdle model of hired labor use is developed and estimated. Farmer participation in supermarket channels increases the likelihood of hiring labor by 20%, and demand for hired labor by 61%. A gender disaggregation shows that positive employment effects are especially pronounced for female laborers, who often belong to the most vulnerable population groups. Rural employment generation can be an important vehicle for poverty reduction.     

Reciprocal Loyalty and Union Mediation

This study investigates the concept of loyalty in the employment relationship using a stated preference approach and a dataset obtained through purpose‐built questionnaires. Reciprocal loyalty is defined as a gift exchange. Workers' good performance is rewarded by the employer by the provision of a job with a low likelihood of job loss. The study shows that such reciprocal employer–employee loyalty is highly rated by the workers as a desirable job attribute. Loyalty in the employer–employee relationship is differently valued by unionized and nonunionized workers. Overall, the evidence suggests that unionized workers are more receptive to arrangements involving reciprocal loyalty. This may be an outcome of adaptation to internalized norms of union behavior.     

Improved Metrics for Workplace Dispute Resolution Procedures: Efficiency,Equity, and Voice

Many debates surround systems for resolving workplace disputes. In the United States, traditional unionized grievance procedures, emerging nonunion dispute resolution systems, and the court‐based system for resolving employment law disputes have all been criticized. What is missing from these debates are rich metrics beyond speed and satisfaction for comparing and evaluating dispute resolution systems. In this paper, we develop efficiency, equity, and voice as these standards. Unionized, nonunion, and employment law procedures are then qualitatively evaluated against these three metrics.     

The rise of supermarkets and changing expenditure patterns of poor rural households case study in the Transkei area,South Africa

Since the late 1990s, the number of supermarkets in South Africa has been steadily growing. Due to a more effective and efficient management and procurement system, the supermarkets can benefit from economics of scale and sell food at a relative low price. In this paper, we present a case study of two villages in the Transkei area of South Africa. In these poor rural communities, the majority of households now buy their main food items from supermarkets rather than from local shops and farmers. While presenting an important step towards livelihood development and food security, these supermarkets form also a strong competitor for local agricultural sales. The supermarkets provide many food items at lower prices. With an increase in income, the households look for variety and exotism in their food products, and will most likely find this in the supermarkets, rather than the local stores. We argue therefore that development programs should focus on the local growers’ access to the supermarket procurement systems.     

Unions and the Duration of Workers' Compensation Claims

This paper examines the effect of union status on workers' compensation claim duration in Canada. I find that unionized workers have shorter claims than nonunionized workers and that relatively little of this difference can be attributed to differences in worker or job characteristics. I interpret this as being consistent with a strong union effect that reduces union member's claim duration. Plausible explanations for this finding and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Factors Related to Employees’ Desire to Join and Leave Unions

Regression analyses based on a sample of 3372 nonunionized and unionized employees showed that, while the desire to join a union is associated with a wide range of work attitudes, perceived company performance, and facets of satisfaction, one's desire to leave one's union is associated with a narrow range of economic concerns. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of the declining unionization rate in the United States.     

Effects of Occupational Licensing and Unions on Labour Market Earnings in Canada

Using longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics from 1999 to 2011, the article compares the pay and benefits of licensed and unionized workers. In a cross section of respondents and using ordinary least squares estimates, it finds a pay premium of 0.155 log points for those with an occupational licence compared to those without one; the comparable union wage premium is slightly more than half, that is 0.085 log points. Fixed‐effects estimates go in the opposite direction (0.028 and 0.046 log points for licensing and unionization, respectively), suggesting the existence of unobservable factors correlated with licensing and union status. Unionized workers are more likely to access standard benefits, such as medical insurance and pension plans, but licensed workers benefit little from their licensing status in access to benefits. Finally, union workers are significantly less likely to receive incentive pay, such as profit sharing, while the association between occupational licensing and incentive pay is close to zero and statistically insignificant.     

Supermarket contracts and smallholder farmers: Implications for income and multidimensional poverty

Food systems in developing countries are changing rapidly with a growing role of modern supermarkets. Supermarkets influence supply chains and the way agricultural products are sourced from farmers. Especially for the procurement of fresh fruits and vegetables, supermarkets often contract farmers directly to ensure consistent and high-quality supply. One important question, which is addressed here, is whether smallholder farmers benefit from supermarket contracts. Previous studies address this question, but mostly focus on income effects without exploring implications for other dimensions of household welfare, such as nutrition, health, or housing conditions. Moreover, most existing studies rely on cross-section data. We add to the literature by analyzing effects of supermarket contracts on income and multidimensional poverty using three rounds of panel data collected from smallholder vegetable farmers in Kenya and econometric models with household fixed effects. On average, supermarket contracts increase household income by over 40%. We also find significant reductions in income poverty and multidimensional poverty. Quantile regressions show that farmers in all income groups benefit, but richer households benefit more than poorer ones in absolute terms. However, supermarket contracts cause the strongest reductions in multidimensional deprivations among the poorest households.     

Employees' Desire to Join or Leave a Union: Evidence from Poland

This research note provides an empirical analysis of the factors related to Polish employees' desire to join and leave a union. Our regression analysis, based on a sample of 298 unionized and 338 nonunionized employees, shows that the desire to join a union is positively associated with career prospects and negatively with company commitment, while the desire to leave a union is positively associated with one's intention to leave the company.     

When Do U.S. Workers First Experience Unionization? Implications for Revitalizing the Labor Movement

Debates over revitalizing the U.S. labor movement often overlook when workers are first unionized. This article analyzes the frequency and nature of workers’ first unionized jobs by tracking a cohort of individuals from age 15/16 to 40/41. Though workers are most likely to be unionized when they are in their forties, this article shows that surprising numbers of individuals first encounter unionization in their jobs at a much younger age. These results highlight the importance of experiential union membership models as well as life‐cycle union representation strategies that recognize the young age at which many workers are first unionized.     

Optimally locating in-house logistics areas to facilitate JIT-supply of mixed-model assembly lines

In modern-day production systems, ever-rising product variety poses a great challenge for the internal logistics systems used to feed mixed-model assembly lines with the required parts. As an answer to this challenge many manufacturers especially from automobile industries have identified the supermarket-concept as a promising part feeding strategy to enable flexible small-lot deliveries at low cost. In this context, supermarkets are decentralized in-house logistics areas in the direct vicinity of the final assembly line, which serve as intermediary stores for parts. Small tow trains are loaded with material in a supermarket and deliver parts Just-in-Time to the stations lying on their fixed route. This paper discusses the general pros and cons of the supermarket-concept and treats the decision problem of determining the optimal number and placement of supermarkets on the shop floor. A mathematical model is proposed, an exact dynamic programming algorithm presented, and the validity of the proposed approach for practical purposes as well as the trade-off resulting from fixed installation and maintenance cost is investigated in a comprehensive computational study.     

The role of farmer organizations in supplying supermarkets with quality food in Vietnam

The development of supermarkets in Vietnam, as in other emerging countries, is accompanied by increasing consumer concern for food quality. This paper investigates whether farmer organizations are able to help small-scale farmers obtain access to supermarkets as well as examines the role that supermarkets and public support play in the emergence and development of these organizations. The paper is based on case studies of a number of stakeholders marketing vegetables, flavored rice and litchi fruit in Vietnam. Eight farmer groups operating in the form of private commercial organizations act as regular supermarket suppliers for the selected products. Their ability to supply supermarkets is related to the combination of functions they make available to their members, especially with regard to promoting and controlling quality for which they receive public support. Their participation in flexible contracts with supermarkets, shops and schools is also a key issue. Supplying supermarkets via farmer associations increases farmers’ profits per kilo compared to traditional chains, but the quantities supplied to supermarkets remain limited. The paper argues that changes in farmer organizations are not primarily due to supplying supermarkets, but rather to public and international support for food quality improvement which has been of benefit to supermarkets.     

Firm Responses to Income Inequality and the Cost of Time

The full cost of shopping includes the cost of the shopper's time.When that cost increases, stores have incentives to respond in waysthat economize on shopper time. One response is to substitute in-storelabor for shopper time. Pooled cross-sectional tests using data fromsuburban and city food stores show that various labor intensitymeasures are higher where the opportunity cost of shopper time ishigher. We distinguish between income and cost of time effects byshowing that store labor intensity depends on the composition ofincome between male and female members of the family, and notonly on the level of family income. We obtain similar results for twoother ways that food stores can economize on shopper time – locatingcloser to the customer and offering more check out stations withina store. We also use a unique shopping time survey to showthat shoppers from higher income households make fewer visitsto food stores, spend less time per visit in the check out line andare more likely to shop at stores with longer hours.     

Governors' Party Affiliation and Unions

Employing a regression discontinuity (RD) approach on gubernatorial elections in the United States over the last three decades, this paper investigates the causal effects of governors' party affiliation (Democrat versus Republican) on unionization of workers, and unionized workers' working hours and earnings. Surprisingly, we find no significant impact from the party affiliation of governors on union membership and union workers' labor‐market outcomes.     

A resource‐based perspective on human capital losses,HRM investments,and organizational performance

Reversing the focus on human capital accumulations in the resource‐based literature, the authors examine the issue of human capital losses and organizational performance. They theorize that human capital losses markedly diminish the inimitability of human capital stores initially, but that the negative effects are attenuated as human capital losses increase. They argue further that these effects are more dramatic when human resource management (HRM) investments are substantial. As predicted, Study 1 shows that the human capital losses (voluntary turnover rates)‐workforce performance relationship takes the form of an attenuated negative relationship when HRM investments are high. Study 2 shows stronger curvilinear effects of voluntary turnover rates on financial performance via workforce productivity under these conditions. Implications for resource‐based theory and strategic HRM are addressed.     

Teachers’ Unions,Compensation, and Tenure

In this paper I show that school districts in which teachers negotiate via collective bargaining have greater returns to experience and grant tenure earlier than districts without collective bargaining. Districts that are unionized, either with or without legal collective bargaining protections, have higher returns to degrees and higher starting salaries than districts without a union. Unionization is not strongly correlated with the existence of output‐based pay for performance but is correlated with the use of output‐based measures in tenure decisions. Unionization is positively correlated with the number of junior teachers dismissed for poor performance but not strongly correlated with the number of senior teachers dismissed for poor performance.     

Unionization and Job Design Under Programmable Automation

New findings from an original national survey indicate that machining jobs include major computer programming responsibilities far more commonly than received labor process theory would lead us to expect or predict. In unionized plants, workers are less likely to program their machines, perhaps because of management's desire to avoid the constraints imposed by collective bargaining agreements. Among recent adopters of the technology, informal bargaining through joint labor-management problem-solving committees neutralizes this negative union effect.     

Multiproduct retailing and consumer shopping behavior: The role of shopping costs

We empirically examine the role of shopping costs in consumer shopping behavior in a context of competing differentiated supermarkets that supply similar product lines. We develop and estimate a model of demand in which consumers can purchase multiple products from multiple stores in the same week, and incur transaction costs of dealing with supermarkets. We show that a similar model without shopping costs predicts a larger proportion of multistop shoppers and overestimates own-price elasticities and product markups. Further, we use our model along with a model of competition between supermarkets to study two practices that are commonly used by supermarkets: product delisting and loss-leader pricing. We show that the presence of shopping costs makes product delisting less profitable whereas it makes loss-leader pricing more profitable compared to a context in which consumers do not incur shopping costs.     

Ownership,organization, and private firms' efficient use of resources

The principal–agent theory asserts that public firms' performance is driven by efficient capital and labor markets but is silent about non‐listed private companies, which are less permeable to market forces (both capital and labor) than are public companies. We propose and test a 2 × 2 framework distinguishing owner‐controlled vs. agent‐led firms from firms with a flat vs. multilayer organization. Our findings provide highly contrasted results and raise important issues for further study of private firms. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.