An efficiency wage approach to reconciling the wage curve and the Phillips curve

This study develops an efficiency wage model that generates a wage curve at the regional level and a Phillips curve at the national level, under the assumption that workers' efficiency depends on both regional and aggregate labor market conditions. An equation relating wages to unemployment and lagged wages is derived from the profit-maximizing behavior of firms, and it is demonstrated that the coefficient on lagged wages is less than 1 with regional data but equals 1 with aggregate data. In addition, there is an equilibrium relationship between unemployment and wages at the regional level, but not at the aggregate level.     

A behavioural model of investor sentiment in limit order markets

By incorporating behavioural sentiment in a model of a limit order market, we show that behavioural sentiment not only helps to replicate most of the stylized facts in limit order markets simultaneously, but it also plays a unique role in explaining those stylized facts that cannot be explained by noise trading, such as fat tails in the return distribution, long memory in the trading volume, an increasing and non-linear relationship between trade imbalance and mid-price returns, as well as the diagonal effect, or event clustering, in order submission types. The results show that behavioural sentiment is an important driving force behind many of the well-documented stylized facts in limit order markets.     

Hospital resource use of patients receiving isavuconazole vs voriconazole for invasive mold infections in the phase III SECURE trial

Objective: In the phase III SECURE trial, isavuconazole was non-inferior to voriconazole for all-cause mortality for the primary treatment of invasive mold disease (IMD) caused by Aspergillus spp. and other filamentous fungi. This analysis assessed whether hospital resource utilization was different between patients treated with isavuconazole vs voriconazole in SECURE. Methods: The analysis population comprised adults with proven/probable/possible IMD enrolled in SECURE. The primary endpoint was hospital length of stay (LOS) in the overall trial population. Patients were also stratified by estimated glomerular filtration rate-modification of diet in renal disease category (< 60?mL/min/1.73 m² [moderate-to-severe impairment] and ≥60?mL/min/1.73 m² [mild or no impairment]), body mass index (BMI; <25, ≥25–<30, and ≥30?kg/m²), and age (≤45, >45–≤65, and >65 years). Results: Data from 516 patients (258 per arm) were evaluated. Overall, median LOS was not statistically significantly different between the isavuconazole (15.0 days) and voriconazole (16.0 days; p?=?0.607) arms. Median LOS was statistically significantly shorter in patients with moderate-to-severe renal impairment treated with isavuconazole (9.0 days) vs voriconazole (19.0 days; hazard ratio [HR]: 3.44; 95% confidence interval [CI]?=?1.51–7.83). Median LOS was shorter, but not significantly, in patients with a BMI ≥30?kg/m² (isavuconazole 13.5 days vs voriconazole 22 days; HR?=?1.57; 95% CI?=?0.70–3.52) or aged >65 years (isavuconazole 15.0 days vs voriconazole 20.0 days; HR?=?1.37; 95% CI?=?0.87–2.16). Limitations: As the patient subgroups analyzed were small, sub-group findings should be interpreted with caution in light of the lack of statistical significance for each sub-group-by-treatment interaction. Conclusions: Isavuconazole may reduce hospital LOS in certain subgroups of patients with IMD, especially those with moderate-to-severe renal impairment.     

Internationalization of Blue-Chip versus Mid-Cap Stock Indices: an Empirical Analysis for France,Germany, and the UK

The paper analyzes the question whether blue-chip stock indices provide a larger degree of internationalization than mid-cap stock indices. Specific focus lies on internationalization of indices in France, Germany, and the UK. Additionally, we analyze whether the degree of internationalization differs between industries. The dataset covers the CAC40, the DAX30 and the 30 largest firms in the FTSE100 as blue-chip indices and the CAC Next 20 and CAC Mid 60, the MDAX and TecDAX, and the remaining 70 companies in the FTSE100 as mid-cap indices. The comparison of blue-chip and mid-cap indices is based on three indicators of internationalization: percentages of employees based outside the firms’ home country, percentages of foreign sales, and percentages of foreign corporate tax payments. Blue-chip and mid-cap indices exhibit high levels of internationalization. Internationalization is stronger in German and UK blue-chip indices than in these countries’ mid-cap indices, whereas internationalization in French mid-cap and blue-chip indices is similar. Blue-chip and mid-cap firms in the energy/materials/utilities and industrials sectors exhibit similar levels of internationalization, whereas blue-chip firms in the consumer and health sectors exhibit higher levels than corresponding mid-cap firms. The research question and results are of particular importance for retail and institutional investors, because investing in indices typically represents a low cost alternative to individual stock picking. The question whether stock index characteristics, such as market capitalization and industry, influence the degree of international diversification within the index is largely unanswered in the literature. The paper addresses this question.     

Public Sympathy for O. J. Simpson

ABSTRACT This paper examines those factors affecting public attitudes about the O. J. Simpson trial and the American criminal justice system. The separate and combined effects of these factors–which include race, age, gender, income, and education–were estimated using a logit model. It was found that blacks were more likely than whites to be sympathetic to Simpson and to believe he was innocent of the crimes he was charged with. Older individuals, males, those with higher incomes, and those with more education were less likely to be sympathetic to Simpson and more likely to think he was guilty. Finally, it was found that blacks were more likely than whites to perceive that the criminal justice system is biased against blacks.     

Technological Threat and Opportunity Assessment

One of the major challenges in the management of innovation is a practical and useful implementation of technology forecasting. This article proposes the concept of aniticpating the technological future, and that a structured approach to this concept could be an invaluable aid to technical decision-making. The notion of technological threat and opportunity assessment is presented as a useful framework for anticipating technological change. This notion is based on a dual approach.Firstly, a rapidly changing global technological landscape necessitates keeping track of technological developments. However, since we are dealing with innovation (rather than mere invention), the market implications are as important as the technological ones and have to be accounted for as such. Secondly, any organisation could be considered to be technology-based to some or other degree, implying that technologies have the ability to affect the bottom line of the organisation in some way. It is thus required to assess the business impact of such technologies, typically through a technology or innovation audit.Having assessed specific technological threats and opportunities facing the organisation, an innovation strategy needs to be developed in response to the identified threats and opportunities. Various possible offensive and/or defensive responses should be considered, culminating in the selection and implementation of an optimal strategy.     

Management heterogeneity,competitive interaction groups,and firm performance

One of the fundamental problems in strategic management is to map a heterogeneous set of firms in an industry into subsets of firms within which firms are homogeneous in their conduct and performance. The strategic group concept provides an answer to this intriguing question. Researchers in strategic group theory argue that firms within the same strategic group are behaviorally similar and thus tend to compete more fiercely within the group than across groups. In this paper, we focus on the question whether firms within the same group show similar decision‐making characteristics. Strategic‐choice theorists argue that top management teams in firms have substantial discretion in determining the future strategic contour of firms. Upper‐echelon theorists also argue that top managers are the strategists who set the direction of firms and the pace of competition in the industry. Further, they argue that top management team characteristics are an important element that determines the market niche in which a firm competes and the strategic direction a firm follows. Based on these arguments, we expect that there will be a significant link between grouping of firms by the patterns of competitive interactions and grouping of firms by top management team heterogeneity. Moreover, we argue that the closer the TMT heterogeneity of a firm is to the dominant heterogeneity in the competitive interaction group, the better it performs. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.