What aspects of the job have most effect on nurses?

The study reported here compared the influences of psychological constructs (job demands and scheduling control) and objective work characteristics (shiftwork, night‐work and hospital department type) on job satisfaction, organisational commitment, burnout and withdrawal intentions. Our hypothesis was that psychological constructs have a higher influence on work‐related attitudes than objective characteristics of work schedules. In addition to the main effects, we proposed an interactive hypothesis: poor attitudes would result from high demands and low control rather than from other combinations of both psychological variables. Using a sample of 153 hospital nurses in Israel, the hypotheses were generally supported. As night‐work, shiftwork and working in intensive care units are unavoidable characteristics of the modern medical environment, these findings are meaningful for improving the personal adjustment of hospital nurses.     

Diminishing effects of location? Some evidence from Swiss municipalities, 1950–2000

This paper analyzes how location has affected, in the second half of the twentieth century, the population growth of 2889 municipalities in Switzerland. The analysis demonstrates the temporal relativity of location attributes, even for small territorial divisions, such as the Swiss cantons. However, we also show that, both absolute and relative location attributes have weakened over time as population growth predictors, apparently due to improving road infrastructures, and growing motorization. The study has been made possible by a detailed historical population and accessibility database available for Swiss municipalities. To the best of our knowledge, no database of such scope and quality is available for any other European country.     

Production externalities and convexity

This paper explores in some detail the relation between production externalities (detrimental or positive) and convexity of the production-possibilities set. A set of sufficient conditions to rule out local non-convexity is derived in terms of the original production functions. The problem is illustrated for the case of one productive input. Regardless of whether externalities lead to non-convexity they may still give rise to a multiplicity of local private maxima even when the social maximum is a global one. The possibility of unique private maximum coupled with multiple local social maxima had been mentioned before by Baumol among others. The fact that externalities may lead to the converse case, as shown in the paper, seems not to have been noticed before.     

Stochastic orderings of convolution residuals

In this paper we study convolution residuals, that is, if $X_1,X_2,\ldots ,X_n$ are independent random variables, we study the distributions, and the properties, of the sums $\sum _{i=1}^lX_i-t$ given that $\sum _{i=1}^kX_i>t$ , where $t\in \mathbb R $ , and $1\le k\le l\le n$ . Various stochastic orders, among convolution residuals based on observations from either one or two samples, are derived. As a consequence computable bounds on the survival functions and on the expected values of convolution residuals are obtained. Some applications in reliability theory and queueing theory are described.     

Conditions for a CAPM equilibrium with positive prices

This paper examines the conditions required to guarantee positive prices in the CAPM. Positive prices imply an upper bound on the equity premium. This upper bound depends on the degree of diversity of firms’ fundamentals, and it is independent of investors’ preferences. In economies with realistically diverse assets the only positive-price CAPM equilibrium theoretically possible is a degenerate one, with zero equity premium. Furthermore, when specific standard investors’ preferences are assumed, the CAPM equilibrium with positive prices may be altogether impossible. A possible solution to these fundamental problems may be offered by the segmented-market version of the model.     

Congestion games with load-dependent failures: Identical resources

We define a new class of games, congestion games with load-dependent failures (CGLFs). In a CGLF each player can choose a subset of a set of available resources in order to try and perform his task. We assume that the resources are identical but that players' benefits from successful completion of their tasks may differ. Each resource is associated with a cost of use and a failure probability which are load-dependent. Although CGLFs in general do not have a pure strategy Nash equilibrium, we prove the existence of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium in every CGLF with nondecreasing cost functions. Moreover, we present a polynomial time algorithm for computing such an equilibrium.     

Auctions with a random number of identical bidders

We examine and compare the (normally, mixed) symmetric equilibrium bidding strategies in first-price and all-pay common value multiple item auctions with a random number of bidders, who only seek one of the identical items and have the same budget.     

The religious factor in private education

We quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by calibrating a political economy model of school choice—among public, private-nonsectarian and subsidized religious schools—in which parents differ in their incomes and in their preferences for religious education. This shows strong latent demand for religious schooling, conditioned on current subsidized tuition levels in parochial schools, which is suppressed by the need to “pay twice” for private education. Applying the results of the calibration to gauge the effect of means-tested school voucher programs on religious and nonsectarian private enrollment, we find that when the amount of the voucher is relatively small, including subsidized religious schools in such programs is necessary for providing low-income families effective access to private education.