Does Mandating Nondiscrimination in Hiring Practices Influence Women's Employment? Evidence Using Firm-Level Data

This study explores the relationship between mandating a nondiscrimination clause in hiring practices along gender lines and the employment of women versus men in fifty-eight developing countries. Using data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys (2006–10 World Bank. 2006–10. “Enterprise Surveys.” www.enterprisesurveys.org. [Google Scholar]), the study finds a strong positive relationship between the nondiscrimination clause and women's relative to men's employment. The relationship is robust to a large number of controls at the firm and country level. Results also show sharp heterogeneity in the relationship between the nondiscrimination clause and women's versus men's employment, with the relationship being much bigger in richer countries and in countries with more women in the population as well as among relatively smaller firms.     

New Technology and Career Progression in Financial Institutions

A recent study by the Institute of Manpower Studies has found that technology has had an influence on career progression within financial institutions resulting in an expansion of the ‘professional’ tier. The clerical tier has changed to become a non-career sector characterised by predominantly a female and often part-time work-force. This has resulted in a diamondshaped employment structure rather than the traditional pyramid.     

Strategic compliments in sales

Salespersons often spend time and money giving prospective buyers compliments such as kind words, meals and gifts. Though prior research has shown that compliments will influence a prospective buyer’s decision, it is unknown the extent to which salespersons should make these investments. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to examine how seller and buyer characteristics affect the equilibrium provision of compliments by the seller. We establish that the optimal magnitude of compliments is non-monotonic in the buyer’s sensitivity to compliments. We identify conditions for when a seller of a high-quality product will offer greater (or lesser) compliments than a seller of a lower quality product. We show that, under certain conditions, an uninformed buyer earns greater utility than a buyer who knows the quality of the seller’s product. The findings have implications for sellers in their choice of compliments and buyers in the inferences they draw from the compliments received.     

Bursting the dot.com "Bubble': A Case Study in Investor Behaviour

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter considered innovation to be the driving force of economic growth and argued that innovations were also the main cause of cyclical fluctuations in the economy, an idea now well established in the economic literature. In this paper, the authors attempt to gain insights into the behaviour exhibited by investors before and after the market correction of the newly established Internet sector--a technology with revolutionary potential--in the Spring of 2000 by structuring their analysis around the psychological themes of heuristic-driven bias, frame dependence, and inefficient prices. Linear regression models are constructed using data collected on publicly traded Internet companies, market performance both before and after the collapse of the Internet sector stock prices in an attempt to assess whether or not market returns were correlated with certain specific measures of corporate internet performance. Finally, the authors draw inferences relating to the psychology of investor behaviour during this period based upon their empirical analysis, and conclude by summarizing the managerial implications of their findings.     

Continuity with change: A review of Zimbabwe's public sector urban low‐income housing production system

This article reviews Zimbabwe's public sector urban low‐income housing production system, in over one hundred years of urbanisation marked by changes in governments, political economies, ideologies and urban systems. By examining important features in organisation, construction, costing, finance and allocation, the study reveals that in essence. Zimbabwe's public sector housing production system has not changed significantly since the early years of urbanisation. The consistency and resilience of the more important features, both in the colonial and post‐colonial eras, overshadow what changes there have been.     

The quest for affordable urban housing: A study of approaches and results in Harare,Zimbabwe

Approaches aimed at achieving housing affordability have long emphasised the housing unit. Conventional wisdom prescribes that affordability will be enhanced if the unit cost of a house is reduced. Classic solutions include the reduction of standards, use of indigenous technologies and materials, adopting self-help modes of delivery and addressing market imperfections. This study shows that while it is not unwise to reduce the cost of housing, there is a limit to this approach. Unit costs cannot be reduced indefinitely and non-cost-reducing strategies are therefore called for. The approaches hinge on improving the economic status of low-income groups by implementing measures that reduce household expenditure and/or boost their incomes.     

Helpful governments

Using data on firm perceptions of how helpful the government is for doing business, we find strong evidence for the theory of legal origins: common law fares better than civil law. Advantages of using firm perceptions are discussed in detail.     

Economic Liberalization and Productivity Growth: Further Evidence From Bangladesh

The impact of economic liberalization reforms on the productive performances of manufacturing firms remains a contentious issue in the literature. This paper attempts to contribute to the debate by empirically estimating productivity growth of Bangladesh food manufacturing using firm level data before and after reform. Empirical results show that the share of output growth was accounted for by input growth in most sectors of this industry. In some sectors, the estimated rate of total factor productivity (TFP) growth is negligible or even negative. Decomposition of the TFP growth shows that technological progress plays a significant role in TFP growth across firms within the sub-sectors of this industry. Empirical results also show that the relative contribution of capacity realization to TFP growth is not substantial in inhibiting the industry's high and sustained growth. These dismal performances indicate that the industries responded a little to the implementation of economic reforms.