Reflections from Employers on the Disabled Workforce: Focus Groups with Healthcare,Hospitality and Retail Administrators

Historically, employment rates for people with disabilities have been low. Despite legislation that prohibits the discrimination of this group in work settings, employers are reluctant to hire people with disabilities. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of employers with workers with disabilities. Three focus groups were conducted with 21 administrators from three business sectors (i.e., healthcare, hospitality, and retail). Content analysis indicated five primary themes: (1) importance of disability employment agencies and disability advocates; (2) persistence of manager bias; (3) lack of promotion opportunities; (4) costs associated with having workers with disabilities; and (5) benefits associated with having workers with disabilities. Implications include the need for intervention studies that address the challenges experienced by individuals with disabilities, particularly during hiring and promoting phases of employment, and educational efforts to inform administrators and managers of the few costs and numerous benefits associated with having workers with disabilities.     

Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment

Employer health insurance mandates form the basis of many health care reform proposals. Proponents make the case that they will increase insurance, while opponents raise the concern that low-wage workers will see offsetting reductions in their wages and that in the presence of minimum wage laws some of the lowest wage workers will become unemployed. We construct an estimate of the number of workers whose wages are so close to the minimum wage that they cannot be lowered to absorb the cost of health insurance, using detailed data on wages, health insurance, and demographics from the Current Population Survey (CPS). We find that 33 percent of uninsured workers earn within $3 of the minimum wage, putting them at risk of unemployment if their employers were required to offer insurance. Assuming an elasticity of employment with respect to minimum wage increase of -0.10, we estimate that 0.2 percent of all full-time workers and 1.4 percent of uninsured full-time workers would lose their jobs because of a health insurance mandate. Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female. This risk of unemployment should be a crucial component in the evaluation of both the effectiveness and distributional implications of these policies relative to alternatives such as tax credits, Medicaid expansions, and individual mandates, and their broader effects on the well-being of low-wage workers.     

Elections and selection: The role of political ideology in selection decisions

Political ideology is a central belief that drives individuals' behavior not just in the voting booth but also in other aspects of life. As political divisiveness in society has increased, the ramifications of this shift may permeate organizations ultimately affecting how individuals interact with one another. Through the lens of social cognition and person-organization fit, this paper considers the effect of political ideology of job applicants in selection decisions by discussing 1) the definition of political ideology and subsequent stereotyping, 2) the increasing divisiveness rooted in political ideology, 3) the implication in selection decisions influenced by political ideology, and 4) the consequences for firm level diversity. Further, a model is provided to illustrate the relationship of political ideology to various phases of the selection process. Propositions to foster further study of these phenomena are provided within.     

Estimating Chinese Trade Relationships with the Silk Road Countries

In this paper we discuss the extent to which countries in the former Silk Road regions are either reaching or failing to reach their trading potential with China. We estimate a gravity model of trade using a Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood estimator, and estimate trade potential using in‐sample, out‐of‐sample and counterfactual approaches. We compare trade potential using these three methods for Silk Road country trades with China. Next, we compare the estimated trade potential to actual trade, and find that most Silk Road countries are underperforming in their trade with China. However, trade performance against potential improved for most countries over the years 1990–2013. Our results suggest that China's former Silk Road trading partners have yet to realize the full potential benefits of China's economic growth but that the gap may be narrowing.     

Integrated Reporting,Stakeholder Engagement,and Balanced Investing at American Electric Power

The policies and practices of American Electric Power (AEP) encompass a number of paradoxes in the domain of sustainability. AEP is a large electric power provider with a predominantly coal‐fired power generation portfolio, which puts the company squarely in the center of national debates about global climate change and national air quality. At the same time, AEP is also a leader on several social and environmental fronts: integrated reporting, stakeholder engagement, technology innovation, and policy solutions for climate change. In this article, the authors describe AEP's rationale for providing leadership in these areas and then explore how the company tries to balance stakeholder interests and financial, environmental, and social concerns in its capital investment decisions. Using these examples, the authors expand on and discuss the limitations of Michael Jensen's theory of “enlightened value maximization.”     

A case study of short-sale constraints and limits to arbitrage

This paper uses a unique data set of trades in a unique pair of securities that enables the precise identification of individual broker activity and the trade direction of that activity. We find direct evidence that the imposition (removal) of short-sale constraints limits (generates) trading activity consistent with brokers exploiting apparent mispricing.     

The Demand for Private Medical Insurance in the UK: A Cohort Analysis

This paper examines the determinants of the demand for private health insurance in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 1996 using a pseudo-cohort panel. The focus is on the impact of public and private sector quality, generational change, and past purchase on demand. The results indicate that there has been generational change in buying behaviour, that the number of senior doctors employed in the public sector impacts upon demand for the private alternative, and that there is limited impact of habit in purchase. Changes to the structure of labour contracts in the NHS may affect demand for the private alternative.     

Class Formation and Localism in an Emerging Bureaucracy: British Bank Workers, 1880–1960

This article uses a case study of the spatial and career mobility of bank workers from Lloyds, a leading British bank, to explore the relationship between class formation and spatial mobility. The article argues against the idea that the large‐scale concentration and bureaucratization of the British banking industry in the early years of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a mobile middle‐class spiralist or cosmopolitan. We use archival data from Lloyds Bank to argue that the emergence of Lloyds as a large‐scale national bank involved a compromise with localized interests rather than a detachment of the bank from local concerns. We use data on the career histories of a representative sample of male bank employees to argue that spatial mobility was organized largely within regions and helped to consolidate the prospects of rural bank workers. We argue that London emerged as a distinctive ‘hub’ for banking careers, with significant amounts of movement to and from London from all regions. We therefore demonstrate how localized and rural cultures were sedimented within a large, national bureaucracy, and that a genuine ‘spiralist’ structure did not emerge. En s’appuyant sur une étude de cas relative à la mobilité géographique et professionnelle du personnel de la Lloyds, l’une des premières banques britanniques, cet article examine le lien entre la formation d’une classe et la mobilité spatiale. Il combat l’idée que la concentration et la bureaucratisation à grande échelle du secteur bancaire britannique au début du XXe siècle a fait na? tre une classe moyenne mobile en spirale ou cosmopolite. Les données d’archives de la Lloyds révèlent que son développement en tant que grande banque nationale s’est accompagné d’un compromis avec les intér? ts locaux plutôt que d’une indifférence à l’égard de ces préoccupations. Les informations sur les carrières d’un échantillon représentatif d’employés de banque masculins permettent d’établir que la mobilité géographique a été organisée largement au plan régional, contribuant à consolider les perspectives des employés en zone rurale. Londres est apparu comme un ‘pôle’ particulier dans les carrières bancaires, avec un nombre considérable de mutations vers et de la capitale à partir de toutes les régions. L’article montre ainsi comment des cultures locales et rurales se sont sédimentées au sein d’une importante bureaucratie nationale et qu’aucune structure ‘en spirale’ pure n’en est issue.