Supply-side effects of strong energy price hikes in German industry and transportation

This article studies the short-term effects of energy price hikes on the supply of industrial goods and transport services including the repercussions on remuneration of input factors. The empirical analysis is based on a theoretical model, which assumes that the output good is produced by capital, labour and energy according to a nested production function framework where capital and energy are combined by a CES function at the intermediate stage. The output responses to energy price changes are derived, using estimates of the elasticity of substitution. While industry suffered more from the oil price shock of the late 1970s than from that of the early 1970s and the 2004?C2008 upsurge, evidence suggests the reverse for transportation. Regarding the impact on income distribution, both sectors share the same pattern, whereby in the recent episode, rising energy costs were more than compensated by falling unit labour costs, while in the 1970s, cost structures had been strained by an expansive wage policy in addition to the oil price shocks.     

Financing Transit Systems Through Value Capture

A bstract .   Much of the literature on value capture reports empirical findings on the incidence of rising land values related to distance from a transit stop following the installation of rail transit improvements. This annotated bibliography shows that the elevated value effects of transit access are well documented. The authors maintain that it is now time for transit/land-use research to move from hypothesis testing to practical applications of value capture . Longitudinal models can help predict land-value increments over a period of time, yielding estimates of the total capturable revenues that would support the debt financing of transit improvement projects.     

Turning Agents into Psychological Principals: Aligning Interests of Non‐Owners through Psychological Ownership

Principals who delegate tasks to agents face the perennial challenge of overcoming agency problems. We investigate whether feelings of ownership among senior managers in the absence of formal ownership can align agents' interests with those of principals, thus turning agents into psychological principals. Using a moderated mediation model, we find that psychological ownership is positively related to company performance through the mediating effect of individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour. We also find that the effect of psychological ownership on individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour and, ultimately, company performance is weaker for high levels of monitoring compared to low levels. These findings offer important contributions to agency, psychological ownership, and entrepreneurship literatures.     

Information management with specific investments and cost-based transfer prices

Abstract

We analyse information flows in a profit-centre organisation with internal trade between two risk-neutral divisions. Prior to production, the divisions make unverifiable investments in intrafirm synergies. After investments are made, the selling division announces a cost-based transfer price which includes a mark-up on variable costs. The buying division then decides what quantity to purchase at that unit cost. From the head office's perspective, the key issues are to influence both, divisional investments and the seller's manipulation of the mark-up. To do so, the head office can fund a pre-decision information system before divisional investments are made. The system produces forward-looking information that can be used to improve the divisions' investment decisions, but which cannot be used in evaluating their performance. Our analytical framework allows us to identify cost and revenue structures for which pre-decision information either supports or destroys intrafirm synergies by motivating or discouraging divisional investments, thereby resulting in an increase in, decrease in or in no impact whatsoever on, firm profit. Among our most interesting findings is the counterintuitive result that pre-decision information can undermine the incentives of risk-neutral agents to invest specifically. Our results add to earlier agency models that found different, albeit equally dysfunctional effects of pre-decision information. Contrary to these studies, our findings are not driven by either risk aversion or rent extraction.     

Examining human resource management outsourcing in Hong Kong

This study explored the state of human resource (HR) outsourcing in the Asian context, a particularly important subject given its rapid proliferation in Europe and North America, the inconsistent and limited evidence from prior research, and its strategic importance to the human resource management (HRM) function. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data and the transaction cost, resource-based, and institutional perspectives, we found that although respondents were generally favourable towards outsourcing, that in practice its adoption and diffusion were in a nascent stage in Hong Kong. Decisions to outsource were, by and large, incremental and experimental and influenced by a range of contextual factors (e.g., availability of in-house expertise, skills and creativity, strategic priorities, legislation (coercive), availability of external service providers, and industry and peer (mimetic) influence). Despite considerable pressure to cut costs, instead of outsourcing in the first instance, firms placed greater emphasis on maximising internal resource utilization (insourcing). Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are also provided.     

Friend or Foe? The effects of contingent employees on standard employees' work attitudes

Using data from a large-scale national survey of employers and employees in Britain, we examine the impact of the presence of contingent employees on work attitudes of standard (full-time, indefinite-term) employees. Drawing on differing explanations for the increased use of contingent employment arrangements, we derive competing hypotheses about how this use affects standard employees' work perceptions and attitudes, and explore the impact of a number of potentially intervening factors. We find that contingent employees have little effect on standard employees' perceptions of work overload, but strongly reduce perceived job security, which in turn, mediates the negative effects of contingent employees on job satisfaction and organizational loyalty.     

Human resources in the German maritime industries: ‘back-sourcing’ and ship management

In today's global shipping industry have management functions often been outsourced to separate companies and to overseas locations. With the appearance of socalled ‘flags of convenience’ the world shipping industry has increasingly registered commercial vessels overseas. Following this trend, human resource management functions have also been relocated, with the opening of recruitment offices and the use of HR agencies outside OECD countries. Recently, new German regulation has sought to attract previously outsourced HRM functions back to Germany. A case study of such a newly established firm, called ‘Reimarus’, will exemplify the impact of the new regulation on HR firms in shipping. The following paper analyses this process based on an empirical study of Germany's commercial shipping industry.     

Swedish economic growth and education since 1800

Abstract.  The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it builds and makes use of long-run data from Sweden on formal education that have never been used to date. Second, it provides a quantitative application of recent theoretical work on the link between demographic changes and economic growth through their effect on education. It concludes that changes in longevity may account for as much as 20% of the observed rise in education over the period from 1800–2000 via a horizon effect, but have little impact on income growth over the period. On the contrary, changes in population density and composition are central, mainly thanks to their effect on productivity. Most income growth over this period would not have materialized if demographic variables had stayed constant since 1800.