Supervisor Support for the Permanent Replacement of Economic Strikers

Sixty-one supervisors were surveyed to examine the importance of organization commitment, union approval, and quality of union-management relationship in explaining supervisor support for hiring permanent replacements in short and long strike situations. Organization commitment and union approval exhibited a unique negative relationship with support for hiring replacements in a short strike, and union approval exhibited a unique negative relationship with support for hiring replacements in a long strike situation.     

Business Sector Production in the Short and Long Run in Israel

Engle-Granger representation theory is used to estimate the secular and cyclical determinants of business output in Israel during 1960–1988. The specification of the secular production function is based on the technique of cointegration, while the cyclical, or short-term, production function is specified in terms of an error correction model. In the preferred model of the secular production function returns to scale are slightly increasing and the productivity of Palestinian workers is approximately 40 percent of Israeli workers. In the short-term production function total factor productivity is pro-cyclical.     

The impact of the WARN Act on firm value

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1989 mandated that at least 60 days advance notice be given to employees. Critics argued that its passage would decrease managerial flexibility in closing plants, subsequently reducing firm values. This study addresses this issue by examining the stock market's reaction to announcements leading to the eventual enactment of the WARN legislation. We find evidence indicating negative effects of the legislation on stock returns of small firms.     

Managerial Efficiency,Managerial Succession and Organizational Performance

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to create a measure of managerial efficiency in an attempt to reassess the conflicting theories concerning the impact of organizational performance on manager succession, and the counter-theories concerning the impact of manager succession on organizational performance. The analysis uses data for 147 college basketball teams from 1984 to 1991. The results indicate that winning, not efficiency, is the key criterion used in determining managerial retention. Yet when managers of losing teams are dismissed the teams tend to do even worse. If, however, the efficiency of the new manager is greater than that of the former, the disruptive effect of succession is minimized. Because administrators appear to focus on winning, not efficiency, they will often select new managers who are less efficient than departed managers. These results are unique to this literature and indicate promise for the use of DEA in analyses of the internal efficiencies of organizations. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sectoral Transformation, Turbulence and Labor Market Dynamics in Germany

Abstract. This paper analyzes the interaction between structural change and labor market dynamics in West Germany, during a period when industrial employment declined by more than 30% and service sector employment more than doubled. Using transition data on individual workers, we document a marked increase in structural change and turbulence, in particular since 1990. Net employment changes resulted partly from an increase in gross flows, but also from an increase in the net transition 'yield' at any given gross worker turnover. In growing sectors, net structural change was driven by accessions from non-participation rather than unemployment; contracting sectors reduced their net employment primarily via lower accessions from non-participation. German reunification and Eastern enlargement appear to have contributed significantly to this accelerated pace of structural change.     

Start-ups, long- and short-term survivors, and their contribution to employment growth

This study documents that the survival of start-ups is central in explaining the relationship between entry and regional employment growth. Distinguishing between start-ups according to the period of their survival shows that the positive effect of new business formation on employment growth is mainly driven by those new businesses that are strong enough to remain in the market for a certain period of time. This result is especially pronounced for the relationship between the surviving start-ups and employment growth in incumbent businesses indicating that there are significantly positive indirect effects of new business formation on regional development. We draw conclusions for policy and make suggestions for further research.     

The returns to general experience,job and occupational tenure: a study using Australian panel data

This article uses Australian panel data for the years 2001–2009 to estimate returns to general experience, job and occupational tenure. We pay particular attention to issues of unobserved heterogeneity bias in our estimations. We find that both general experience and occupational tenure have statistically and numerically significant effects on wage outcomes, even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Job tenure on the other hand only seems to matter in OLS regressions that do not control for heterogeneity biases. Once these biases are controlled for, only a modest effect from job tenure remains. The inclusion of occupational tenure in the estimating equation tends to negate even this modest job tenure effect. The only exception to this is for workers in large organizations. For these workers a small but statistically significant effect from job tenure remains, even once we have controlled for heterogeneity and included occupational tenure in the estimating equation. The results reported in this article have implications for the various theories of the labour market that predict upward-sloping wage-job-tenure profiles.     

The hard shadow of the Greek economy: new estimates of the size of the underground economy and its fiscal impact

This article presents new estimates of the Greek underground economy and explores the link between the underground economy and aggregate debt. We show that the Greek underground economy has been underestimated heavily and has been on a rising trend again since Greece adopted the Euro. We also present evidence that the size of the underground economy is positively related to the debt-to-GDP ratio, implying that fighting the underground economy is also conducive to financial and macroeconomic stability. Our results suggest that for our sample of 11 EMU member countries, the loss of the inflation tax as an economic policy instrument had drastic consequences. While the underground economy did not have a statistically significant impact on aggregate debt before the introduction of the Euro, it has pushed up the debt-to-GDP ratio in our sample since.     

Approval of social security disability appeals: analysis of judges’ decisions

This article is an empirical analysis of decisions by judges regarding requests by individuals for disability benefits. Applicants for disability benefits who are twice denied through the normal process can appeal to one of the Social Security Administration’s administrative law judges, who hold appointed positions. The data for this study are taken from decisions made by approximately 1000 judges for cases heard from 2010 through 2012. Using each judge as a unit of observation, the data reveal the number of cases heard and the number of approvals granted. We augmented the data with additional information on the presiding judge, and with data from the state in which the court resides. The purpose of the study is to determine whether a simple model can explain, first, the volume of decisions rendered at the judge level and, second, the proportion of approvals. Results indicate that the volume of decisions can be explained in part by the judge’s recent record of leniency. Evidence also supports the hypothesis that approval outcomes depend on judges’ professional tenure and economic factors in the state of jurisdiction.     

Identification of technological structures using patent statistics

This paper studies the use of patent statistics in identifying four aspects of technological structure, namely, the potential knowledge pool, cumulativeness, inter-firm homogeneity in technology levels, and the scope of innovations. The firms are sampled from the chemical (CHEM), the computer (COM) and the electrical and electronic (EE) industries worldwide. Using the proxies defined, we find that (i) the contributions of intra-industry spillover are low, at 12%, 10%, and 9% for the three industries respectively; (ii) they can internalize 15%, 19% and 13% of their previous research efforts respectively; and (iii) a positive relationship between knowledge spillover and technology overlap, and between scope of innovation and number of patents being cited in future.