Collective Bargaining in the Canadian Public Sector, 1978–2008: The Consequences of Restraint and Structural Change

We study public‐sector bargaining and contract outcomes using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. We have a number of interesting results, but our principal findings are from our analysis of wage settlements. We find that the essential services designation, which only allows non‐essential members of a bargain unit to strike, is associated with decreases in wages. Our estimates also suggest that there is an arbitration wage premium and that making adjustments to the ability to pay criterion used by arbitrators to determine awards does not affect this premium. We also discuss the implications of our estimates.     

Implications of CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions trading for short-run electricity market outcomes in northwest Europe

We examine the short-run implications of CO₂ trading for power production, prices, emissions, and generator profits in northwest Europe in 2005. Simulation results from a transmission-constrained oligopoly model are compared with theoretical analyses to quantify price increases and windfall profits earned by generators. The analyses indicate that the rates at which CO₂ costs are passed through to wholesale prices are affected by market competitiveness, merit order changes, and elasticities of demand and supply. Emissions trading results in large windfall profits, much but not all of which is due to free allocation of allowances. Profits also increase for some generators because their generation mix has low emissions, and so they benefit from electricity price increases. Most emission reductions appear to be due to demand response not generation redispatch.      

Pro-poor growth and social protection in South Africa: Exploring the interactions

This study evaluates the impact of South Africa's long-term economic growth on household poverty and inequality between 1995 and 2005. We find a decline in aggregate levels of poverty, but increasing levels of inequality. The evidence suggests that the growth model provides substantial redistributive income support to the poor through the social grant programme, whilst offering few returns to those in the middle of the distribution.     

RIGID PRICES: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. SCANNER DATA

This article uses weekly scanner data from two small U.S. cities to characterize time and state dependence of grocers' pricing decisions. In these data, the probability of a nominal adjustment declines with the time since the last price change. A store's price for a particular product typically goes through several price changes in rapid succession before settling down. We also detect state dependence: The probability of a nominal adjustment is highest when a store's price substantially differs from the average of other stores' prices. However, extreme relative prices typically reflect the store's recent changes instead of changes in average prices.     

The effect of culture on perception and cognition: A conceptual framework

Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role of culture as a source of variation in many phenomena of central importance to consumer research. This review addresses a gap in cross-cultural consumer behavior literature by providing a review and conceptual analysis of the effects of culture on pre-behavioral processes (perception and cognition). The article highlights a series of important perceptual and cognitive differences across cultures and offers a new perspective of framing these differences among cultures—that of “culturally conditioned” perceptual and cognitive orientations. The article addresses several theoretical issues and suggests directions for future research as well as managerial implications.     

Is Your Banker Leaking Your Personal Information? The Roles of Ethics and Individual-Level Cultural Characteristics in Predicting Organizational Computer Abuse

Computer abuse (CA) by employees is a critical concern for managers. Misuse of an organization’s information assets leads to costly damage to an organization’s reputation, decreases in sales, and impositions of fines. We use this opportunity to introduce and expand the theoretic framework proffered by Thong and Yap (1998) to better understand the factors that lead individuals to commit CA in organizations. The study uses a survey of 449 respondents from the banking, financial, and insurance industries. Our results indicate that individuals who adhere to a formalist ethical perspective are significantly less likely to engage in CA activities than those following a utilitarian ethical framework. In addition, the results provide evidence that employees with individualistic natures are linked to increased CA incidents, whereas collectivist tendencies are associated with decreases in CA behaviors. Our results also show that collectivism acts as a strong moderator that further decreases the relationships between formalism and CA, and utilitarianism and CA. Finally, we offer detailed suggestions on how organizations and researchers can leverage our findings to decrease CA occurrences.     

Banking Regulation and Collateral Screening in a Model of Information Asymmetry

Journal of Financial Services Research - This paper explores the impact of banking regulation on a competitive credit market with ex-ante asymmetric information and aggregate uncertainty. I...     

Human capital and youth emigration in the “new normal”

Every society's future lies in its youth, which can be considered a critical milestone for a nation's sociopolitical development. This research examines the young population attempting to identify and explores the students' perceptions about migration, their postulates, and the reasoning why so many students ultimately choose to emigrate. Data were collected in a questionnaire survey of 206 randomly selected students from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some different multivariate analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. Other results were further discussed. Results show that the country's legal framework is a key reason for the prevailing poor living standard. This has resulted in a large number of youths leaving the country. Overall, both the legal framework (for both young entrepreneurs and women) and the overall standard of living (quality of life, well-being, salary, retirement, and education) are correlated with people choosing to emigrate. Furthermore, theoretical and practical implications are discussed. As far as we know, this is the first empirical study on this particular region that investigates the youth migration trends considered an important milestone for human capital development.     

The impact of lay beliefs about AI on adoption of algorithmic advice

Marketing Letters - There is little research on how consumers decide whether they want to use algorithmic advice or not. In this research, we show that consumers’ lay beliefs about artificial...     

Employer risk-adjustment transitions with inertial consumers: Evidence from CalPERS

Risk-adjustment policies, which transfer money from insurers with healthy consumers to those with sick consumers, are an important tool to contend with adverse selection in health insurance markets. While the steady-state properties of risk-adjustment have been studied extensively, there is less evidence on the transition phase of policy implementation. We study the introduction and removal of risk-adjustment at California Public Employees' Retirement System and show that these changes meaningfully impact premiums via plan differences in enrollee health status. Despite these premium differences, there is limited consumer resorting due to consumer inertia, though new active enrollees respond more fluidly. We show that, with inertial consumers, risk-adjustment changes have substantial distributional consequences, leading to worse outcomes for sicker consumers when removed and vice-versa when implemented. We estimate a model of plan choice with premium sensitivity, brand preferences, and inertia and use these estimates to study the interaction between risk-adjustment policies and the strength of inertia.