Drug testing and the law

This article examines judicial and administrative rulings and legislation involving or related to the issue of drug testing in the workplace. It discusses the rights of employees in the public and private sector: constitutional rights; federal, state, and local statutory rights; rights of unionized employees; and common law rights. It analyzes both the current state of the law and future directions the law may take, as courts and administrative agencies decide more cases and governmental bodies continue to pass drug testing legislation.     

THE MANAGEMENT OF NEW OFFICE TECHNOLOGY: CHOICE, CONTROL AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

Amongst the growing literature on the technical and social aspects of microelectronics in work organizations, a considerable portion has direct or indirect pertinence to the question of managerial practice. That segment of the literature relating to new office technology is perhaps especially conscious of this angle — not least because this sphere of innovation has a clear bearing on the managerial role itself. Drawing both on theoretical issues extracted from this literature, and on empirical studies in three insurance companies, it is argued that while control is of crucial long-term importance in shaping the general direction of organizational change using new technology, there are sound sociological reasons why the path which is beaten out in that direction remains a far from straight one. Moreover, while differences in organizational practice between these organizations are found to exist, these appear to be associated only indirectly with the diverse levels of technological sophistication.     

Remarks on sequential estimation of a linear function of two means: The normal case

Asymptotic normality of the stopping time ofMukhopadhyay [1976] relating to the point estimation problem is proved. Also moderate sample size behaviour of this stopping time has been studied by Monte-Carlo methods.     

Simpler Probabilistic Population Forecasts: Making Scenarios Work

The traditional high-low-medium scenario approach to quantifying uncertainty in population forecasts has been criticized as lacking probabilistic meaning and consistency. This paper shows, under certain assumptions, how appropriately calibrated scenarios can be used to approximate the uncertainty intervals on future population size and age structure obtained with fully stochastic forecasts. As many forecasting organizations already produce scenarios and because dealing with them is familiar territory, the methods presented here offer an attractive intermediate position between probabilistically inconsistent scenario analysis and fully stochastic forecasts.     

Productivity and Welfare

Technical change is generally characterized by a rate and biases, both evaluated for given producer prices. This paper examines the potential discrepancy between this rate and the corresponding rate of consumer welfare change as measured by Allais distributable surplus. We postulate a general equilibrium context with various market failures (taxes, quotas, imperfect competition, and “poorly priced” commodities), and use comparative statics to express the rate of welfare change in terms of the rate and biases of the technical change. An elementary simulation model of a taxed economy suggests that the rate of welfare change may differ from the rate of technical change by as much as 50% under plausible circumstances.     

Bank mergers and components of risk: An evaluation

The present study empirically examines the contribution of the acquired banks in only the nonconglomerate types of mergers (i.e., banks with banks), where the bulk of the payment is in the form of equity to the acquiring bank and finds overwhelmingly statistically significant evidence that nonconglomerate types of mergers definitely reduce the total as well as the unsystematic risk while having no statistically significant effect on systematic risk. Therefore, it seems that diversification may be a possible motive for bank mergers.     

Airport infrastructure spillovers in a network system

Airports in the US air transport network have become increasingly congested, leading to delays for business travelers and freight shipments. Since disruptions in one part of the network exacerbate problems throughout the system, airport infrastructure expansions to enhance air traffic flows confer travel-time savings and reliability benefits, and thus increased worker productivity and shipping efficiency for manufacturing firms. We evaluate such spillovers, and find that higher own-state airport infrastructure implies lower manufacturing costs from both labor- and materials-savings. Airport expansion in connected states has a comparable effect for states with hub airports, and an even greater impact for other states.     

Job satisfaction and gender: Why are women so happy at work?

By most objective standards, women's jobs are worse than men's, yet women report higher levels of job satisfaction than do men. This paper uses a recent large-scale British survey to document the extent of this gender differential for eight measures of job satisfaction and to evaluate the proposition that identical men and women in identical jobs should be equally satisfied. Neither the different jobs that men and women do, their different work values, nor sample selection account for the gender satisfaction differential. The paper's proposed explanation appeals to the notion of relative well-being, especially relative to workers' expectations. An identical man and woman with the same jobs and expectations would indeed report identical job satisfaction, but women's expectations are argued to be lower than men's. This hypothesis is supported by the finding that the gender satisfaction differential disappears for the young, the higher-educated, professionals and those in male-dominated workplaces, for all of whom there is less likely to be a gender difference in job expectations.