Disagreement over the emergence of private property rights: alternative meanings, alternative explanations

This paper is an exercise in the history of thought, which compares Austrian and neoclassical theories of the emergence of private property rights, and examines, in part, the extent to which Austrians can be said to offer a commonly-agreed upon explanation that parallels Carl Menger's exemplary story of the emergence of money. We address the sources of disagreement (and apparent conflict) among emergence theorists in both schools. We try to show that some of the disagreement hinges on an unclear meaning of the term “emergence,” which is resolvable, while other sources of disagreement are fundamental at the methodological level. JEL Code B25, E40, E53     

Why Skew Selection, a Model of Parental Exploitation, Should Replace Kin Selection

Synopsis In his 1964 paper, William Hamilton wrote that inclusive fitness trumps direct fitness if, and only if, the effect of interactions among siblings on their parent’s fitness is ‘zero’. Kin selection models have succeeded only because they have ignored the fact that, if an altruist dies saving two siblings, the ‘zero impact on their parent’s fitness’ constraint is violated. Imagine a parent with three offspring. If two offspring drown, parental fitness is 1. On the other hand, if one altruistic offspring dies saving its two drowning siblings, parental fitness doubles to 2. Thus, direct fitness trumps inclusive fitness as an explanation for the evolution of altruism. In other words, parents that produce some portion of altruistic offspring willing to die to save some of their siblings (who would die without the intervention of the altruist) will realize greater fitness than parents producing no altruists. Skew selection, a bioeconomic extension of Michael Ghiselin’s (1974) parental exploitation model, is presented to explain the evolution of altruism from a direct fitness point of view.     

Good News and Bad News: Search from Unknown Wage Offer Distributions

The largest market in national economies is the labor market. Labor market contracting is characterized by job search, often from unknown wage offer distributions. This paper reports experimental tests of finite horizon models of job search in which the wage offer distribution is unknown. Theoretically-optimal search from an unknown wage offer distribution can have the seemingly paradoxical property that some offers will be accepted that are lower than other offers that will be rejected in the same period of the search horizon. Thus the reservation wage property (or lowest acceptable wage path) may not exist. This can occur because an offer that is a priori relatively high (good news) can imply that it is highly probable that search is from a favorable distribution, and such an offer can look unattractive when it is an a posteriori relatively low offer from a favorable distribution (bad news). This paper reports results from experimental treatments for search from unknown distributions in which the reservation wage property does exist and treatments in which it does not exist. We find that the consistency of search behavior with search theory reported in earlier papers is robust to the presence or absence of the reservation wage property and to whether the draws come from known or unknown distributions.     

Hospitals and material management in the coming decade

The 1990s will be a decade of increasing dramatic and traumatic change for hospitals. Reimbursement, technology, and consumers, either alone or in concert, will be the forces that will shape hospitals in the future. At the end of the 1990s we will have hospitals that offer technology to the critically ill, outpatient surgical services, and comforting care for those in the late years of life. Material management will be important to hospitals because expense control will be as important as ever. However, I believe the role of a material manager will diminish as the services provided change and as the role is folded into the responsibilities of those who manage one of the three critical business areas hospitals will be in. This new hybrid of today's manager will still apply all of the concepts to the distribution of supplies in a hospital as today's material managers do but will use them as only a part of their overall management responsibility.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture and Reshaping Capabilities on Change Implementation Success: The Mediating Role of Readiness for Change

abstract    It was hypothesized that employees' perceptions of an organizational culture strong in human relations values and open systems values would be associated with heightened levels of readiness for change which, in turn, would be predictive of change implementation success. Similarly, it was predicted that reshaping capabilities would lead to change implementation success, via its effects on employees' perceptions of readiness for change. Using a temporal research design, these propositions were tested for 67 employees working in a state government department who were about to undergo the implementation of a new end-user computing system in their workplace. Change implementation success was operationalized as user satisfaction and system usage. There was evidence to suggest that employees who perceived strong human relations values in their division at Time 1 reported higher levels of readiness for change at pre-implementation which, in turn, predicted system usage at Time 2. In addition, readiness for change mediated the relationship between reshaping capabilities and system usage. Analyses also revealed that pre-implementation levels of readiness for change exerted a positive main effect on employees' satisfaction with the system's accuracy, user friendliness, and formatting functions at post-implementation. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the readiness for change literature, and in relation to the practical importance of developing positive change attitudes among employees if change initiatives are to be successful.     

Experimental evidence of gender effects in arbitration decisions

The study investigates arbitrator gender and arbitrator-grievant gender effects on the decisions of 146 arbitrators rendered on a hypothetical sexual harassment case. Gender was not found to have a statistically significant effect on the decisions examined. However, other characteristics of the arbitrator—level of experience and level of education—were found to influence the arbitral decision.     

Productive behavior through the life course: An essay on the quality of life

Present patterns of productive activity are neither well recognized, optimal for society, nor in accordance with individual prefence. Although a great deal of attention has been given to meeting people's needs for income, medical care, and other services, the quality of their lives must also be defined by what they do for themselves and for others. In discovering present patterns of productive activity throughout the life course and optimizing those patterns, we will raise the quality of American life. To accomplish this task, two great changes are needed: we must recognize the full range of productive activities throughout the life course and give people the opportunity to modify the allocation of paid employment.