Teamworking: a new dynamic in the pursuit of management control

This article examines the introduction of teamworking in the pharmaceutical industry. It was found that the organisation of work contained a mix of benefits and costs. The balance between the two was not random; employees' response was influenced by and connected to prior experiences and expectations, management's business strategies and approach to industrial relations and HRM. The article argues that there was a new dynamic, but one cast within the familiar terrain of management seeking to maintain control and generate consent.     

Evaluating the state of competition of the Greek banking industry

The present paper uses three different New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) approaches (Panzar–Rosse, Bresnahan–Lau and Hall–Roeger models) to investigate competitive conditions in the Greek banking sector over the period 1995–2004. One important event which has taken place in the Greek banking industry, especially after 1998, is a wave of mergers and acquisitions. This study also measures and compares the degree of banking competition in two sub-periods, 1995–1998 and 1999–2004, in order to investigate the effect of mergers and acquisitions on the competitive structure of Greek banking. The empirical results of the three models indicate a shift from competitive to non-competitive conditions when moving from the first to the second sub-period. This finding suggests that mergers and acquisitions have affected the level of completion of Greek banking, rendering the industry less competitive. Furthermore, taking into consideration the negative effects of mergers and acquisitions on technical efficiency and the total factor productivity of Greek banking (Rezitis, 2008), the empirical findings of the present study provide some indications that one of the outcomes of the Greek banks’ merging activities, at least in the short run, might be to attain market power and thus higher profits, rather than higher efficiency and lower costs.     

Daily price adjustments in the U.S. market for natural gas

A daily model of cash market for natural gas in the U.S. is presented and estimated over 1997. The model develops the notion that the expected rather than the actual amount of gas in storage (along with weather) and storage changes impact the current daily cash price. These notions are supported by the estimations presented. At the daily observation level, reported changes in storage levels are signals that actual consumption or production are either as expected and result in no price pressure or are not as expected and do result in price pressures.     

Violence: the disease and the vaccine

With the rise of political correctness has come a condemnation of all violence. Individuals have been discouraged from deterring violence by threatening violence. Thus society's spontaneous reactions to violent attacks on the civil order have been repressed and official law enforcement is unable to cope with the consequences.     

Has Australia's floating exchange rate regime been optimal?

This paper develops a straightforward theoretical framework for evaluating exchange rate regime choice for small economies. It proposes that a floating exchange rate minimises national income and employment variation when real macroeconomic shocks predominate, whereas a pegged exchange rate achieves this goal should monetary shocks predominate. It then shows econometrically that, in the case of Australia, a floating exchange rate best suited the economy for the period 1985 to 2010, because real shocks were more significant than monetary shocks. Moreover, consistent with the theory, further results showing that a stronger (weaker) exchange rate correlated with positive (negative) deviations from trend GDP affirm that a floating exchange rate regime was optimal for Australia over this time.