Men of Steel Meet the Market: Interpreting Firm Behavior in Russia’s Metallurgy Industry

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty (2014) explains growing income inequality via the difference between the rate of return on capital and the growth rate of the economy: the “r > g” inequality. Even if it is true that r > g leads to increasing inequality, nearly every school of economic thought predicts that r will fall as the economy grows. Thus, for Capital (2014) to be a comprehensive theory of inequality, a more adequate theory of r is required. I term this the “Piketty Problem.” I offer a solution to this problem from an institutionalist perspective.     

Automatic extraction of 1D barcodes from video scans for drone-assisted inventory management in warehousing applications

The widespread use of barcodes has significantly contributed to accurate, efficient and economic inventory management in warehouses and distribution centres. However, its efficiency has always been limited by the primary method of reading barcodes with a handheld laser scanner. Compared with this reading by line-of-sight at close proximity, vision-based barcode reading algorithms can further improve efficiency, particularly if accompanied by automated data collection platforms such as drones. This paper introduces algorithms that are able to automatically extract barcodes from video data, and verifies their feasibility and promise for inventory management in warehousing applications. Three key techniques corresponding to different recognition levels are proposed: For a known barcode region, a Harris corner detector and Hough transform-based algorithm is applied to quickly estimate the angle by which the frame area needs to rotate to orient the bars vertically for information extraction. Then, the idea of exploiting connectivity and geometry property of barcode areas is proposed to directly recognise multiple barcode regions in a single video frame to eliminate reading difficulties resulting from interactive influence of multiple juxtaposed barcodes, and to save computation time by only processing frame areas of interest for valid barcodes. In addition, a histogram difference-based fast extraction strategy is designed to further improve efficiency by reducing duplicate information processing. Finally, the performance of each technique is evaluated by analysing video data from a large logistics warehouse, demonstrating satisfactory performance in inventory management applications.     

Nursing career fulfillment: statistics and statements from registered nurses

A state-level survey of registered nurses confirmed national findings and raised new issues. Findings revealed that while nurses love the intrinsic reward of nursing, they report workplace, relationship, and stress issues which contribute to frustration and exhaustion. These issues may prevent registered nurses from giving the nursing care they desire to deliver, hastening preventable retirement and costly turnover decisions.     

Bidding for brains: Intellectual property rights and the international migration of knowledge workers

We introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of Nash equilibrium IPR policy choice among countries. We show that governments have incentives to use IPRs in a bidding war for global talent, resulting in Nash equilibrium IPRs that can be too high, rather than too low, from a global welfare perspective. These incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth, thus allowing them to prevent the ‘poaching’ of their ‘brains’ by larger, wealthier markets.     

Incentives and targets in hospital care: Evidence from a natural experiment

Performance targets are commonly used in the public sector, despite their well known problems when organisations have multiple objectives and performance is difficult to measure. It is possible that such targets may work where there is considerable consensus that performance needs to be improved. We investigate this possibility by examining the response of the English National Health Service to high profile waiting time targets. We exploit a natural policy experiment between two countries of the UK (England and Scotland) to establish the global effectiveness of the targets. We then use a within-England hospital analysis to confirm that responses vary by treatment intensity and to control for differences in resources which may accompany targets. We find that targets met their goals of reducing waiting times without diverting activity from other less well monitored aspects of health care and without decreasing patient health on exit from hospital.     

INTANGIBLE CAPITAL AND U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH

Published macroeconomic data traditionally exclude most intangible investment from measured GDP. This situation is beginning to change, but our estimates suggest that as much as $800 billion is still excluded from U.S. published data (as of 2003), and that this leads to the exclusion of more than $3 trillion of business intangible capital stock. To assess the importance of this omission, we add intangible capital to the standard sources-of-growth framework used by the BLS, and find that the inclusion of our list of intangible assets makes a significant difference in the observed patterns of U.S. economic growth. The rate of change of output per worker increases more rapidly when intangibles are counted as capital, and capital deepening becomes the unambiguously dominant source of growth in labor productivity. The role of multifactor productivity is correspondingly diminished, and labor's income share is found to have decreased significantly over the last 50 years.     

Sense‐giving in health care: the relationship between the HR roles of line managers and employee commitment

In this article, we examine line manager prioritisation of HR roles and the consequences for employee commitment in a health‐care setting. Our analysis is based on a quantitative, multi‐actor study (509 employees and 67 line managers) in four Dutch hospitals. Using sense‐giving as a theoretical lens, we demonstrate that, in addition to the effects of high commitment HRM, prioritising the Employee Champion role alone and the Employee Champion and Strategic Partner roles in combination is associated with higher employee commitment. We argue that through performing roles that are evocative of deep‐seated values, such as excellent patient care and concern for others, line managers can have a positive effect on staff attitudes. In a sector often beleaguered by staff turnover, exhaustion and burnout, we offer an important, empirically based framework that has the potential to improve employee commitment and, from there, enhance performance.