The life satisfaction of teachers at work place,research of structural equation modelling regarding general and organized cynicism

This research aims to determine both the predictive role and level of teachers’ life satisfaction, as well as general and organizational cynic perceptions in their workplace. The study sample was composed of 457 teachers who worked in the middle schools in the center and districts of Konya in 2016, who were randomly selected by group sampling. Analysis of the research data was conducted using the statistical program AMOS 18.0, according to structural equation modeling. In the research, loneliness in teachers’ professional lives was considered in two dimensions: as “emotional deprivation” and “social friendship.” According to the research findings, it is evident that organizational cynicism is the most important variable affecting teachers’ emotional deprivation and social companionship levels. The second most important variable affecting teachers' levels of emotional deprivation is general cynicism, while social companionship levels are more affected by life satisfaction. It is also seen that there is a negative relationship between the emotional deprivation and social friendship and life satisfaction variables. The results also demonstrate a slight but statistically significant relationship between the general cynicism and the social friendship levels of teachers.     

Relative income,absolute income and the life satisfaction of older adults: do retirees differ from the non‐retired?

We examine life‐satisfaction of older adults using a representative sample of Canadian individuals aged 45+. Our findings confirm a long line of employment relations research on the importance of ‘relational concerns’ in that: (i) income relative to the average for a given person's gender, age, region and marital status (relative income) matters more in improving life satisfaction as a whole than does absolute personal income; (ii) the relationship between relative income and happiness is much stronger for the non‐retired than retired persons, likely reflecting the importance of comparisons among peers at the workplace; and (3) absolute personal income does have a small positive relationship with life satisfaction but only for retirees and not for the non‐retired.     

Marginal effects of public employment on unconditional distribution of wage income in China

This paper examines the marginal effects of an employment expansion in China’s public sector on the unconditional distribution of “wage income” using the unconditional quantile estimation suggested by Firpo et al. (2009). Empirical data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey is split into three sub-samples to eliminate the effects of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the subprime financial crisis in 2008 on our empirical results. To explore the marginal effects, the empirical unconditional distributions of wage income “before” and “after” an expansion of the public employment have been graphed and compared. It has been found that an expansion of China’s public employment reduces the dispersion of wage income and hence alleviates income inequality in China. Besides, an expansion of public employment makes the symmetrical unconditional distribution of wage income become leftward skewed. Given these findings, an expansion of the public employment caused by the strategy of “guojin mintui” could mitigate China’s income inequality.     

The effects of occupational stress on burnout and life satisfaction: a study in accountants

The aim of this study is to determine the impact of occupational stress on burnout and life satisfaction in accountants. The study deals with burnout from three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, lack of personal accomplishment and depersonalization. Certain hypotheses were developed according to a model. These hypotheses mainly measure the negative impact of occupational stress on life satisfaction and its positive impact on burnout. In order to test these hypotheses, a study was conducted in 217 accountants in the city of Kayseri in Turkey. On the research revealed that occupational stress has a negative impact on life satisfaction, while it has a positive impact on the three dimensions of burnout listed above. Based on these results, the study argues that occupational stress is an important factor in determining the life satisfaction and burnout levels of accountants. Finally in this study, some limitations and recommendations are presented for the researchers of future studies.     

Information Management and Incentives

We ask how the incentives of an agent are affected by an information management system that lets the agent receive information about the performance of a colleague before (“transparent firm”) rather than after he provides effort (“nontransparent firm”). Transparency is detrimental for incentives if the performance of the colleague provides information on the relative impact of the agent’s effort on his success probability. The findings imply that firms in which comparisons between employees play a minor role for compensation are transparent. Firms in which they play a major role sometimes choose to be nontransparent despite the flexibility gains transparency provides.     

Trust in government and its effect on preferences for income redistribution and perceived tax burden

This paper explores how trust in government shared by neighbors is associated with individual preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. Using individual-level data from Japan, a nation with shared homogenous racial and cultural backgrounds, this paper controls for unobservable heterogeneity among Japan’s population, thus reducing estimation bias. Three measures for trust in government are used: “trust in ministries and government agencies”, “trust in diet members”, and “trust in members of municipal councils”. After controlling for individual characteristics, the key findings are: (1) people are more likely to express preferences for income redistribution when trust in government in their residential area is high; (2) people are more likely to perceive their tax burden as low when trust in government in their residential area is high; and (3) when the sample is divided into people with above average income and those with below average income, these results are only clearly observed for people with above average income and not those with below average income.     

The impact of sentiment and attention measures on stock market volatility

We analyze the impact of sentiment and attention variables on the stock market volatility by using a novel and extensive dataset that combines social media, news articles, information consumption, and search engine data. We apply a state-of-the-art sentiment classification technique in order to investigate the question of whether sentiment and attention measures contain additional predictive power for realized volatility when controlling for a wide range of economic and financial predictors. Using a penalized regression framework, we identify the most relevant variables to be investors’ attention, as measured by the number of Google searches on financial keywords (e.g. “financial market” and “stock market”), and the daily volume of company-specific short messages posted on StockTwits. In addition, our study shows that attention and sentiment variables are able to improve volatility forecasts significantly, although the magnitudes of the improvements are relatively small from an economic point of view.     

中国区域发展新格局的四个问题思考

近年来,中国区域发展总体战略不断充实完善,逐步形成区域发展的新格局。概括起来,区域发展新格局的特征呈现“四三二一格局”。总体来看,中国区域发展正在梯度跨域“中等收入陷进”,但与此同时,区域发展也出现了一些不容忽视的问题,比如,城市发展中的“双核带动”问题,区域发展中的南北分化、对工业化和城市化的认识偏差等,这些问题的解决对于中国区域经济的发展实践至关重要,值得深入研究和关注。     

M regression approach for satisfaction of municipality services: the case of Eskisehir

Studies on increasing the effectiveness of municipality services will be carried out only by measuring and increasing the public’s satisfaction with the services. Such studies are considered as feedback for increasing the quality of municipality services and maintaining the productivity of these services. In recent years, thanks to the services provided in line with the understanding of social municipality services, Eskisehir, which has become one of the most popular cities in Turkey, set an example for the municipalities of other cities. The purpose of the present study was to determine the factors influencing the degree of public satisfaction with the services provided by the Metropolitan Municipality of Eskisehir and to establish a mathematical model determining the public’s level of overall satisfaction with the services. In the study, first, the attitudes of the public in Eskisehir towards the services of the Metropolitan Municipality of Eskisehir were examined via factor analysis. As a result of the analysis, the factor scores regarding the factors obtained from the public’s satisfaction with the municipality services were considered as independent variables, and a mathematical model determining the public’s level of overall satisfaction with the services was created. Because, while creating this model, outliers were found in y direction within the data set, M regression analysis, resistant to such outliers, was applied. With the help of the mathematical model established as a result of the study, it was possible to determine all the factors influencing the public’s overall satisfaction with the municipality services and to find out how influential these factors were on the degree of their satisfaction with such municipality services as the transportation and traffic regulations, cultural and art activities, environmental cleaning and planning and arrangement of parks/gardens and sports areas.     

Innovation, organisationale Routinen und strategische Pfade

This paper focusses on innovation processes by relying on the concepts of strategic paths and organizational routines. Referring to Burgelman’s framework of induced and autonomous strategic action and based on path dependence theory the paper elaborates on the potential countervailing impact of organizational routines with regard to strong strategic paths. The argument is illustrated by an reinterpretation of Burgelman’s empirical studies of Intel. Finally the idea of a “routinized capability of innovation” is critically examined.     

Gender differences in macroeconomic expectations: evidence from Turkey

The aim of this study is to examine how men and women’s expectations differ about macroeconomic outlook. We examine whether there exist similarities or differences in men and women’s macroeconomic expectations. For this paper, 365 of Turkey’s leading business economists, strategists, portfolio managers and industry managers participated in a survey titled “Economic Expectations in Turkey for 2010.” The survey investigates gender differences in regards to four macroeconomic expectations; namely, inflation, unemployment, growth and exports. The survey participants are first classified according to their gender, and then their economic perceptions are analyzed. Initially, Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistics are implemented to test normality of data. Then, the Chi-square test of independence is used to compare macroeconomic expectations of men and women. The empirical findings show that macroeconomic expectations of males and females are not statistically different for inflation, unemployment, and exports. On the other hand, macroeconomic expectations of males and females are statistically different only for economic growth at a 10% level. The results indicate that gender is not one of the main determinants for macroeconomic expectations.     

Discussion of the paper “Deciding between alternative approaches in macroeconomics”

The excellent article by David Hendry describes how to nest “theory-driven” and “data-driven” approaches when deciding between alternative models in macroeconomics. The article’s final conclusion is that theory allows the econometrician to select a set of variables, while data allows him/her to select across a wide range of alternatives: lag selection, structural breaks, functional forms, etc. The aim of this discussion is to provide the reader with an illustration of this proposed mixing of theory and data in one of the fields mentioned in the paper, macroeconomic forecasting.     

Strategies affecting Twitter-based networking pattern of South Korean politicians: social network analysis and exponential random graph model

This paper examines the Twitter networking pattern of “following” and “mention” relationships between South Korean politicians. The data were obtained from the Twitter profiles of Korea’s national assemblymen and the most influential political figures. We conducted social network techniques including exponential random graph model and a regression method. The results suggest that these politicians employ two different strategies to establish relationships with other politicians on Twitter. One is “following” other politicians as a social ritual based on dyadic reciprocity, and the other is to “mention” other politicians as asymmetric political support based on the public popularity of their peers on Twitter.     

东京都市圈生活功能建设经验及对中国的启示

在超千万人口的都市圈中,东京在生活体验上一直广受赞誉,是全球各大宜居城市排行榜的“常客”。东京都市圈在发展过程中面对内城拥挤加剧、生活成本增高、生态环境变差等问题,从居住、休闲、生态等方面构建美好生活圈。东京都市圈以生活圈建设缓解城市问题的主要做法包括建设职住平衡和适应老龄化的“宜居生活圈”、构筑便捷舒适的“休闲生活圈”、打造高效流通的“新鲜生活圈”、塑造生态美丽的“绿色生活圈”。借鉴东京的经验,中国都市圈建设应立足高质量发展,建设“非自立”新城、实施“交通+”策略、培育都市圈外围品质生活节点、以集约方式增强经济和人口承载力为重点推进生活圈建设。     

Organizational public value and employee life satisfaction: the mediating roles of work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

Building on Meynhardt’s public value concept, which has been developed to make transparent an organization’s contributions to the common good, we investigate the influence of organizational common good practices in the perceptions of employees (measured as public value) on employees’ work attitudes and life satisfaction. The proposed model is tested on a sample of 1045 Swiss employees taken from the 2015 Swiss Public Value Atlas data-set. Study findings reveal that organizational public value is positively related to employee life satisfaction, and that this relationship is partially mediated by work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior. Further, we show that employee common good orientations strengthen the positive impact of organizational public value on employee work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior. Results also provide evidence that the indirect effects of organizational public value on employee life satisfaction via work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior are stronger at higher employee common good orientation levels.     

The resource curse and income inequality in Iran

This paper has investigated the relationship between oil revenues and inequality in Iran from 1969 to 2012. For this purpose, a threshold regression model has been used for capturing the non-linearity impact of the share of oil revenues in GDP on inequality. Two indicators have been applied for inequality: “Gini coefficient” and “the share of the richest decile of household expenditures which were relative to the poorest decile”. Estimation results of both inequality models suggested that there is a non-linear relationship as a u-shape between “oil revenues/GDP” and inequality in two regimes of oil revenues including high and low oil revenues regimes. The threshold level of oil revenues divided by GDP was about 10% for both inequality models. Before this threshold value, in low oil revenues regime, an increase of oil revenues would decrease income inequality, but after the threshold level and staying in high oil revenues regime, a rise in oil revenues would increase income inequality in Iran.     

On the Mythology of the Keynesian Multiplier: Unmasking the Myth and the Inadequacies of Some Earlier Criticisms

Keynes’s multiplier story invites acceptance by building on the fact that people typically consume only a fraction of their income and that such purchases are incomes for sellers. By misrepresenting the classical definition of saving and the meaning of Say’s Law, Keynes laid the grounds for extolling the virtues of consumption spending as determining income and employment growth. But the mythology of the multiplier story becomes clear when we ask, “From where do people find the means to purchase consumption goods, other than production?” The inadequacies of several earlier criticisms stem from their failure to focus on this fundamental point.     

How do ARM rates and teasers differ between solvent and insolvent thrifts?

Some economists have argued that poorly capitalized thrifts are the most aggressive issuers of “underwater” ARMs. The results using data from the previously named Federal Home Loan Bank Board’s (now Office of Thrift Supervision) Monthly Survey suggest that, on average, insolvent thrifts do not offer deeper discounts than other thrifts, nor do they charge fewer points or lower margins. In fact over the “full-sample” 1986–1989, insolvent thrifts offered smaller discounts than solvent thrifts while charging higher margins and more points. Large discounts on the sampled ARMs were most closely associated with increases in the 1-year Treasury bill rate, but were also associated with higher origination fees and greater margins. Higher fees and margins tend to offset the income loss associated with large discounts.     

Machine learning in M4: What makes a good unstructured model?

The Makridakis Competitions seek to identify the most accurate forecasting methods for different types of predictions. The M4 competition was the first in which a model of the type commonly described as “machine learning” has outperformed the more traditional statistical approaches, winning the competition. However, many approaches that were self-labeled as “machine learning” failed to produce accurate results, which generated discussion about the respective benefits and drawbacks of “statistical” and “machine learning” approaches. Both terms have remained ill-defined in the context of forecasting. This paper introduces the terms “structured” and “unstructured” models to better define what is intended by the use of the terms “statistical” and “machine learning” in the context of forecasting based on the model’s data generating process. The mechanisms that underlie specific challenges to unstructured modeling are examined in the context of forecasting, along with common solutions. Finally, the innovations in the winning model that allowed it to overcome these challenges and produce highly accurate results are highlighted.