Managing absence in an NHS hospital

Absence studies often pay little attention to institutional settings. This study of a large hospital looks at factors affecting absence, and worker attitudes to time off. It reveals a highly committed workforce, but one with low morale, deeply distrustful of a management initiating rapid changes.     

When it comes to the crunch: What are the drivers of the US banking crisis?

This article considers how permissive regulatory conditions helped change the size and scope of the US mortgage market. Asset backed securitization facilitated an expansion of the US mortgage market and modified the structure of the value chain within which financial assets, risk and liquidity were managed. New sophisticated mortgage products, indulgent lending practices, loose credit assessment and flimsy documentation increased the probability of mortgage default in an economic downturn. US banks were not in a position to absorb mark-to-market losses on mortgage assets and goodwill impairment resulting from a credit crunch because they operate with narrow profit margins and a limited equity cushion in the balance sheet. This article questions the viability and sustainability of this banking business model.     

INDUCED INNOVATION IN UNITED STATES FIELD CROPS, 1939-78

During the past four decades, United States field crop production has been transformed by the mechanical and fertiliser revolutions. In this study crop-specific estimates of the technical progress parameters that represent these changes are used to test the microeconomic theory of induced innovation. Tests based on the land/labour ratio, derived from a reformulation of the Hayami and Ruttan model, entirely support the inducement hypothesis and suggest that the partial failure of previous empirical investigations resulted from specification problems.     

Services, growth poles and advanced economies

In the twenty-first century, nearly 70% of new jobs in the US have been in services, matching worldwide expansion of the services sector. This paper discusses the role of services in advanced economies internationally as a vehicle for ongoing growth and prosperity. The discussion will be frames through pole theory. Contributions of private, profit driven service activity is assessed. Services provide stability while contributing to the growth process, and may constitute growth poles on their own as in money markets and insurance. Services facilitate business and business change, both in domestic and international markets.     

What labelling policy for consumer choice? The case of genetically modified food in Canada and Europe

Abstract. Faced with divergent opinions among consumers on the use of genetically modified (GM) foods, Canada has adopted a voluntary labelling approach for non‐GM foods, whereas the European Union has a mandatory labelling policy for GM foods. Interestingly, both labelling systems have resulted in very little, if any, additional consumer choice. Using an analytical model, we show that the coexistence of GM and non‐GM products at the retail level depends on the labelling policy, consumer perceptions, and the type of product. Although voluntary labelling tends to favour the use of GM products, it is more likely to provide consumer choice.     

Social-Self-Interest

This paper is about rational sociality. Retaining rational choice as its basic framework, it aims to enrich it by taking seriously a well-established cultural, social and psychological phenomenon: that some inter-personal relationships have intrinsic value. These are termed primary. Utility maximisation includes the binary choice to enter or not to enter a primary relationship: this on the one hand has a direct impact on utility, and on the other imposes restrictions on consumption choices. The model encompasses standard economic choice theory as a special case, while explicitly recognising that self-interested agents make choices that are sometimes group dependent. The broad scope of this approach is illustrated by a number of extensions and applications, some of which lead to distinctly unorthodox conclusions.     

On Schumpeter, Services and Economic Change

Abstract . Joseph A. Schumpeter, the Austrian-American economist, worried about “Can capitalism survive” a generation ago, and so far it has. But his work poses these questions: How do growth and change take place in a free enterprise economy? Can his model for expansion through innovation and creative destruction through the competitive process be a basis for understanding present day industrial economies? He emphasized that capitalism was an evolutionary system and that the very need for newness or rejuventation should insure continual change in it. With respect to declining industries and firms the task of economics was to turn what might have been a rout into orderly retreat. And so he gave a limited blessing to certain monopoly practices deriving from a broader strategy, risk avoidance. Schumpeter's entrepreneurs have disappeared but innovative ability still is exercised, largely through issue-specific consulting services in the burgeoning service sector, services that foster stability as well as change