Discrimination Against Prounion Job Applicants

This study analyzes 95 unfair labor practices involving pre-employment discrimination against union adherents. The cases were heard either by the National Labor Relations Board or U.S. Court of Appeals between 1976 and 1986. Nonsupervisory, unskilled applicants who suffer preemployment discrimination by employers that display antiunion sentiments during union organizing campaigns have a lower probability of winning their cases than to skilled applicants. Pre-employment screening of job applications with prounion backgrounds or attitudes is often part of a larger pattern of unfair labor practices by management. The Dotson administration also supported management's rejection of prounion applicants at a significantly higher rate than did other NLRB administrations.     

book reviews

WOMEN FOR HIRE, A STUDY OF THE FEMALE OFFICE WORKER London School of Economics and Political Science A HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS PRACTICE Personnel Director British Aluminium VOTES, VIRTUES AND VICES: TRADE UNION POWER THE TROJAN HORSE: UNION POWER IN BRITISH POLITICS School of Industrial & Business Studies University of Warwick WHITE COLLAR UNIONISM: THE REBELLIOUS SALARIAT Manchester Business School THE INTERNATIONAL YEARBOOK OF ORGANIZATION STUDIES Centre for European Industrial Studies University of Bath     

Learning and the Effectiveness of Central Bank Forward Guidance

This paper examines the link between expectations formation and the effectiveness of central bank forward guidance. A standard New Keynesian model is extended to include forward guidance shocks in the monetary policy rule. Agents form expectations about future macro‐economic variables via either the standard rational expectations hypothesis or an adaptive learning model. The results show that the assumption of rational expectations overstates the effects of forward guidance relative to adaptive learning during an economic crisis. Thus, if monetary policy is based on a model with rational expectations, the results of forward guidance could be potentially  misleading.     

Responding to a Shadow Banking Crisis: The Lessons of 1763

In August 1763, northern Europe experienced a financial crisis with numerous parallels to the 2008 Lehman episode. The crisis affected merchant banks that were funded by short‐term credit instead of deposits. We use archival data to show that these “shadow” banks suffered a sudden loss of funding after the failure of a major bank. The central bank at the hub of the crisis, the Bank of Amsterdam, responded by broadening the range of collateral it accepted. The data also show how this emergency liquidity helped to contain the crisis, by preventing the collapse of at least two other major banks.     

ROBUST RATIONALIZABILITY UNDER ALMOST COMMON CERTAINTY OF PAYOFFS

An action is robustly rationalizable if it is rationalizable for every type who has almost common certainty of payoffs. We illustrate by means of an example that an action may not be robustly rationalizable even if it is weakly dominant, and argue that robust rationalizability is a very stringent refinement of rationalizability. Nonetheless, we show that every strictly rationalizable action is robustly rationalizable. We also investigate how permissive robust rationalizability becomes if we require that players be fully certain of their own payoffs.     

Accounting for Intangible Assets: There is Also an Income Statement

Accounting is often criticized for omitting intangible assets from the balance sheet. This paper points out that the omission is not necessarily a deficiency. There is also an income statement, and the value of intangible (and other) assets can be ascertained from the income statement. Thus, calls for the recognition of 'intangible assets' on the balance sheet may be misconceived. The paper lays out the property whereby the income statement corrects for deficiencies in the balance sheet. It then explores the case where the income statement perfectly corrects for a deficient balance sheet and the case where it does so imperfectly. In the latter case, the paper then asks whether accounting in the balance sheet—by capitalization and amortization of intangible assets or carrying them at fair value—could remedy the deficiency in the income statement (or makes it worse). The investigation involves an analysis and valuation of Microsoft Corporation and Dell Inc., two companies presumed to posses a good deal of 'intangibles assets'. The paper is instructive, not only to those concerned with accounting issues but also to analysts attempting to value firms, like Microsoft and Dell, with assets missing from the balance sheet.     

Consumer Attitudes Toward Health and Health Care: A Differential Perspective

Measures of attitudes of health care consumers toward their own health behaviors and health care institutions reveal the overall pattern of their views as well as their segmented views. Results suggest that some consumers may take a more scientific approach to health care and prevention than others and that demographics, health status, and health consciousness are partial predictors of that consumer approach. Policy makers for health care should formulate and target programs with different segments of the population in mind.