Regime switching and wages in major league baseball under the reserve clause

Over the course of the twentieth century, American wages increased by a factor of about 100, while the wages of professional baseball players increased by a factor of 450, but that increase was neither smooth nor consistent. We use a unique and expansive dataset of salaries and performance variables of Major League Baseball pitchers that spans over 400 players and 60 years during the reserve clause era to identify factors that determine salaries and examine how the importance of various factors have changed over time. We employ a Markov regime-switching regression model borrowed from the macroeconomics literature, which allows regression coefficients to switch exogenously between two or more values as time progresses. This method lets us identify changes in wage determination that may have occurred because of a change in the league’s competitiveness, a change in the relative bargaining power between players and teams, or other factors that may be unknown or unobservable. We find that even though Major League Baseball was a tightly controlled monopsony with the reserve clause, there was a significant shift in salary determination that lasted from the Great Depression until after World War II where players’ salaries were more highly linked to their recent performance.     

Joint Optimization of Product Price, Display Orientation and Shelf-Space Allocation in Retail Category Management

We develop a model that jointly optimizes a retailer's decisions for product prices, display facing areas, display orientations and shelf-space locations in a product category. Unlike the existing shelf-space allocation models that typically consider only the width of display shelves, our model considers both the width and height of each shelf, allowing products to be stacked. Furthermore, as demand is influenced by each product's two-dimensional facing area, we consider multiple product orientations that capture three-dimensional product packaging characteristics. That enables our model to not only treat shelf locations as decision variables, but also retailers’ stacking patterns in terms of product display areas and multiple display orientations. Further, unlike the existing studies which consider a retailer's shelf-space allocation decisions independent of its product pricing decisions, our model allows joint decisions on both and captures cross-product interactions in demand through prices. We show how a branch-and-bound based MINLP algorithm can be used to implement our optimization model in a fast and practical way.     

Renewing Union Narrative Resources: How Union Capabilities Make a Difference

This article explores the role of framing in mobilizing and transforming narrative resources. It draws on in‐depth studies of two different workplace unions within the same multinational company in Canada. We conducted interviews with managers and trade unionists at different levels over a number of years of observation. Each of these workplace unions mobilizes new repertoires of action to enhance its capacity to act. Yet they differ considerably in their capacity to renew their narrative resources. Whereas one of the workplace unions still relies on an exclusive and restrictive narrative, the other union has evolved towards a more encompassing and inclusive narrative. This article argues that strategic capabilities are a key variable in understanding the processes through which narrative resources change and are mobilized.     

The Czechoslovak Reform Movement, 1963–1968, A Study in the Theory of Socialism

This paper examines a fundamental issue in the theory of economic organization: the optimal level of market competition. Answers in neoclassical and new institutional economics are identified and critiqued. The analysis shows that selective assumptions in both fields produce distinctly market-favoring and "more competition is better than less" conclusions. The paper generalizes these assumptions and demonstrates organization-favoring and "less competition is better" positions are equally plausible. The paper also argues that part of the market-favoring bias in these fields stems from failure to distinguish between conditions of market failure and organizational success. Given these problems in extant theory, this paper develops an alternative institutional theory of economic organization, drawing principally on ideas of Walton Hamilton and John Commons. This proposed alternative shows that the optimal level of competition occurs at an intermediate level in the competition/cooperation spectrum (a mixed economy) and varies with five key determinants of the economic order.     

Third sector commissioning and English local government procurement

This article investigates third sector commissioning policy commitments and their relevance to English local government procurement. The conclusion is that there is confusion regarding the differences between commissioning and procurement. Policy commitments are not properly embedded in procurement policy, strategy, procedures and performance management. Other countries with an interest in these policy developments should take note of the issues regarding embedding in order to improve service delivery and commissioning decisions.     

Coordinated employer bargaining and globalisation: a study of the men's clothing industry in Quebec, 1974–2012

This article looks at the political economy of employer coordination of collective bargaining in the clothing or apparel manufacturing industry in Canada over three phases of globalisation: from the Multi‐Fiber Agreement in 1974 to the impact of the entry of China in the WTO. Although prevailing accounts emphasise the force of exogenous change and the likely decentralisation of bargaining structures and demise of bargaining coordination by employers, this case highlights how unions and employers sought to preserve their institutional model. We find that actor strategies and their interrelations are a central part of the explanation of this apparent institutional stability, despite the real force of economic, organisational and public policy factors. However, it is a dynamic stability in which change processes, reflecting shifting power relations, are leading to important shifts in the nature of employer coordination.     

Getting ahead or falling behind: Findings from the second wave of the National Income Dynamics Study

The National Income Dynamics Study is the first national panel study of South African individuals. Its objective is to track these individuals over time to study social mobility. This paper documents the survey design and a successful recontact record in Wave 2 before providing an overview of the key findings from the other papers in this issue of the journal. Those from the top of the income distribution were hardest to recontact. The papers show that average real incomes grew slightly between 2008 and 2010. However, life satisfaction and expectations of future upward mobility declined. Being unemployed and moving into unemployment is associated with the lowest level of life satisfaction. Aggregate employment did not decline much but there was significant labour-market churn. The National Income Dynamics Study data reveal high levels of grade repetition and a slow transition from school to work. Relocating is shown to be an important part of schooling and employment decisions.     

Evidence of short-term household change in South Africa from the National Income Dynamics Study

We use longitudinal data from the National Income Dynamics Study to document the extent of recent short-term residential and household compositional change in South Africa. We analyse the demographic correlates of these transitions, including population group, age, urban/rural status, and income. We examine educational and labour-market transitions among movers and the prevalence of the four major types of compositional change – births, addition of joiners, deaths, and loss of leavers. We find that short-term household change is prevalent in South Africa. During a two-year period from 2008 to 2010, 10.5% of South Africans moved residence and 61.3% experienced change in household composition. We find that moving is more common among blacks and whites, very young children, young adults, urban individuals, and those with higher incomes. Among non-movers, compositional change is more likely for blacks and coloureds, young adults and children, females, urban individuals, and individuals with lower incomes.     

Impact of new product development (NPD) proficiency and NPD entry strategies on product quality and risk

This research explores the variation of new product quality and risk associated with New Product Development (NPD) entry strategies (e.g. in‐house developments and joint ventures). Our first two research questions examine the quality of new products and the variation of risk across five NPD entry strategies. Our third and fourth research questions investigate the association of the proficiency with which NPD technical activities are performed with new product quality and the risk involved in developing new products. Our final two research questions explore whether the type of NPD entry strategy mediates the association between the proficiency with which NPD technical activities are performed and the quality and risk associated with the development of new products. Our study focuses on new products developed by three major industries, namely medical devices, electrical equipment, and heavy construction equipment. Our research suggests that there is no difference in the quality or the risk associated with the development of new products across NPD entry strategies. We also found that new product quality was associated with the proficient performance of many NPD technical activities whereas risk was associated with the proficient performance of fewer NPD technical activities. We found that choice of NPD entry strategy mediates the relationship between new product quality and NPD technical activity proficiency. Unlike product quality, NPD entry strategy selection appears to mediate NPD risk minimally. Our study contributes to NPD knowledge and managerial decision making by pointing out that the technical activities performed during the early stages of the NPD process are important to the attainment of a quality product and positively, not negatively, associated with perceived NPD risk. Additionally, our study extends knowledge of the association between proficiently performed NPD technical activities and the resultant product quality and perceived risk felt when individual NPD entry strategies are implemented.