Attracting responsible employees: Green production as labor market screening

Corporate social responsibility can improve firms’ ability to recruit highly motivated employees. This can secure socially responsible firms’ survival even in a highly competitive environment. We show that if both socially responsible (green) and non-responsible (brown) firms exist in equilibrium, workers with high moral motivation, who shirk less than others, will self-select into the green firms. If unobservable effort is sufficiently important for firm productivity, this can drive every brown firm out of business—even in the case where many workers have no moral motivation whatsoever.     

The Anatomy of Income Distribution in Urban Ethiopia

Poverty is gradually spreading to the urban areas of Ethiopia, although it remains more extensive in the rural areas. This paper presents the first substantial analysis, since the 1960s, of the distribution of urban incomes and their determinants. It uses data for 1994 for an analysis of the economic well-being of urban households; it shows that income diversification is a typical characteristic of the poor, while those who are better off derive more than 75 per cent of their income from wage employment. Multiple activity remains less common in urban Ethiopia than in comparable countries, which is not surprising, since the two-decade socialist rule ruined the private sector. — La pauvreté, déjà généralisée dans les régions rurales de l’Ethiopie, se répand progressivement dans les zones urbaines de ce pays. Cet article présente la première analyse approfondie relative à la distribution des revenus dans les villes et aux déterminants de ces revenus, depuis les années 60. Les données pour 1994 sont utilisées pour analyser les conditions de vie des ménages urbains; l’article montre que la diversification du revenu est une caractéristique des pauvres tandis que les couches de la population mieux nanties tirent plus de 75 pour cent de leurs revenus d’un emploi salarié. Par rapport à d’autres pays analogues, la multiplicité de l’activité reste peu courante dans les zones urbaines d’Ethiopie, ce qui n’est guère surprenant étant donné que les deux décennies de régime socialiste ont ruiné le secteur privé.     

The distinction between commercial and non-commercial bus services in Germany: Given by nature?

German public transport services by bus are characterized by a regulatory framework that distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial services. Contrary to the apparent views of legislators, this paper shows that costs and revenues are not the only parameters determining whether or not operators are able to provide services in a commercially viable way.Apart from the local characteristics of the specific service, we show that the classification of services as commercial versus non-commercial is determined in large part by the public transport authorities that set minimum quality standards to be provided by operators. Our analysis shows that the authorities awarding the contracts in some cases affect market organization significantly depending on how they make use of this power. Furthermore, market organization differs substantially with respect to the awarding structure and the contractual relationships, thus creating a challenge for operators and authorities in an embryonic market.     

Market Constellations and Macroeconomic Policymaking: Institutional Impacts on Economic Performance

The following article presents a broad outline of a market participation theory of economic policy and attempts to determine how macroeconomic demand management can be used to influence market constellations. On that basis it then inquires into how far macroeconomic governance can be used to explain the different growth and employment performances of selected EU countries.

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The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Hans B?ckler foundation. This paper is part of a larger project on “Employment systems in international comparison”. The author’s thanks also go to Andrew Watt, Hansj?rg Herr and Carol Hogg for fruitful comments. However, the usual caveats apply.     

Natural Resources and Internal Conflict

We present a model of conflict in which each group decides to claim the country’s income and invest in arms or to accept a group neutral allocation of income and not invest in arms. Apart from the usual cooperative or conflictual societies, their strategic choice can result in hierarchically stratified societies in which one group is dominant. We show how the presence and exploitation of certain types of resources matters for the occurrence of conflict or social hierarchical stratification and for the possible effects of trust manipulation. In particular we find that, first, robust (encompassing point and lootable) resource rich economies tend to be conflictual, plantation economies hierarchically stratified and diversified economies cooperative. Second, foreign intervention, aimed at changing the balance of power in the case of conflict, is most effective in robust and diffuse resource rich economies. Third, trust manipulation (as a means to counter conflict) is most effective in subsistence and diffuse resource rich economies. Throughout the article, we cite ample case study and econometric evidence to support our model.     

In-store Marketing as a Mode of Discipline

Although the idea of the self-governing consumer has been widely disputed, modern shopping spaces and supermarkets are considered as the key arenas of the sovereign and empowered consumer. Yet, purchasing patterns, which seem predictable over time, can be explained as resulting from consumer routines and habits. Inspired by Foucault’s general thesis that the emergence of individual freedom coincides with new techniques of discipline, this paper explores consumer routines as an outcome of governance structures embedded in modern retail marketing techniques. First, the term embodiment of consumer choice is introduced to describe how shopping in modern supermarkets hinges on various techniques of bodily discipline. Second, by relying on a study of in-store marketing in Norwegian retailing, these promotional activities are examined as techniques normalizing purchasing behaviour. We conclude by saying that power and discipline are underestimated as explanations to the formation of shopping behaviour and consumer routines.     

Optimal Public Debts, Sustainable Deficits, and Budgetary Consolidation

It is hardly surprising that government budgets have always been widely debated inboth the political and academic arenas as public finances in general, and the budgetin particular, reflect the political and ideological colour of the government whichruns the state. No less inevitable are academic debates on budgetary issues giventhat economics is a multi-paradigmatic science. This background makes all the moremysterious the current complete consensus on the need for budgetary consolidationand the overwhelming acceptance of the `balanced budget' principle in politics as wellas in academic economics. In the paper, this position is questioned by producing a simple model of optimal public debt, sustainable deficits and optimal budgetary consolidation. Different possible trajectories of fiscal restriction and expansion – based on a Post-Keynesian and Rational Expectations paradigm alternatively – are then being empirically tested by comparing the German and British historical accounts of public finances over the past three decades.