Religion and the reception of marginalism in Britain

Did their religious beliefs play any role in the interest British economists took in marginal utility theory in the final third of the Nineteenth Century? I contrast the beliefs of the leading economists—Mill and his followers—who were unsympathetic to marginalism with the beliefs of those economists who embraced it. Mill’s followers were themselves sharply divided on key methodological questions, and I ask whether or not this division, too, may owe something to differing religious beliefs. I conclude, provisionally, that religion may indeed have played a significant role in determining the methodological predisposition of British economists between 1860 and 1900.     

Pay progression in routinised service sector work: navigating the internal labour market in a fast food multinational company

The United Kingdom's widespread use of low-skill, low-paid employment has been well documented. It has been argued internal labour markets (ILMs) benefit such workers, affording them with opportunities for progression. Relatively little is known, however, about the impact of ILMs on entry level workers undertaking routinised service sector work. Drawing on qualitative data, this article explores the prospects on offer in a market leading, fast food multinational company. Potential enabling features include on-the-job training, a transparent and integrated pay structure and a professed culture of progression . Occupational movements to positions above the low-pay threshold are, however, relatively rare. We conjecture this contradiction is the result of the business context in which the firm operates. The findings suggest that in sectors where price leadership strategies dominate, escape from low pay is likely to be exceptional, even within large organisations featuring some of the classic characteristics of ‘pure’ or strong ILMs.     

The Ex‐Day Price Behavior of REITs: Taxes or Ticks?

Taxes and microstructure constraints are often cited as possible explanations for why stock prices drop by less than the dividend on their ex‐dates. Using a sample of real estate investment trusts, which have no significant correlation between dividend size and yield, we find that close‐to‐open ex‐dividend price drops are related to dividend size as suggested by the microstructure models, but close‐to‐close price drops are related to dividend yield as predicted by the tax theory. These results imply that overnight price drops are primarily determined by microstructure, but that trading during the ex‐day causes prices to adjust to reflect individual tax preferences.     

Evaluating the employability paradox: When does organizational investment in human capital pay off?

Abstract

The paper explores the notion of the employability paradox which notes that while organizations investing in the career and competency development of their workforce can benefit from higher performance, they also risk losing more employable staff to competitors. Building on contributions from social exchange theory and signalling theory, we develop a model exploring the circumstances under which investment in career development benefits employees and organizations. We test our model in a longitudinal study following graduates entering the labour market. Our results show that when organizations signal that they care about employees by investing in their career development and individuals are receptive to such signals and proactively seek to manage their careers, investment in career development has a positive impact on organizational commitment and intention to stay with one’s employer. Our findings indicate that the idea of the employability paradox is simplistic and lacks theoretical and empirical support.     

Neuro‐fuzzy time‐series analysis of large‐volume data

This paper describes a framework that utilizes an adaptive‐network‐based fuzzy inference system to perform user‐constrained pattern recognition on time‐series data. Using a customizable fuzzy logic grammar, the architecture allows an analyst to capture domain expertise in a context‐relevant manner. Fuzzy logic rules constructed by the analyst are used to perform feature extraction and influence the training of a neural network to perform pattern recognition. We demonstrate that the architecture is capable of performing noise‐tolerant searches across multiple features on large volumes of time‐series data. The experiments presented here are from the domain of stock analysis. We are able to create simple rule sets automatically to search a data warehouse of stocks to select stocks that exhibit desirable behaviours. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

REIT Characteristics and the Sensitivity of REIT Returns

Previous research on the returns to real estate investment trusts (REITs) has considered whether REITs are systematically exposed to general stock-market risk and interest-rate risk. This study examines how the sensitivity of REIT returns to these factors may be influenced by various REIT characteristics. Using a sample of publicly traded REITs, we estimate the sensitivity of REIT returns to stock market and interest-rate changes. We then propose and implement a model for testing whether differences in asset structure, financial leverage, management strategy, and degree of specialization in the REIT portfolios are related to their sensitivity to interest rate and market risk. Our results permit us to offer some inferences about how REITs can alter their risk exposure by managing these characteristics.     

Trading Halts and Price Discovery

Trading halts have their proponents and opponents. Recent literature has examined the benefits of halts, if any, by studying the consequences of halts on order flow and price volatility. This study complements existing literature by examining the consequences of trading halts on price discovery. Our results indicate that stock price adjustments surrounding trading halts are conditioned on the underlying event that caused the halt. The weighted price contributions of all subsamples are concentrated in the halt period and some subsamples show significant price contribution in the pre-halt period as well. We find minimal evidence of price discovery continuing after the halt is removed. In addition, cross-sectional analysis shows that price discovery in the pre-halt and halt periods are more pronounced for larger firms and for firms with specific news events.      

Ethnic and Other Minority Representation in UK Academic Economics

Using a survey questionnaire of academic economists in the United Kingdom, we examine the representation of ethnic and other minorities. We find that nearly 12% of UK-employed academic economists are of ethnic minority origin. However, only 1% of the sample are UK-born ethnic minority. Controlling for individual and workplace characteristics, there is no significant ethnic minority effect on academic rank. However, there is a significant negative earnings effect. Further, 41% of ethnic minority economists feel that they have suffered workplace discrimination.     

Facilitating offshoring with enterprise technologies: Reducing operational friction in the governance and production of services

The development of cheap and robust communications technologies has lowered the cost of conducting business transactions across international boarders and opened up low wage rate global labor markets to firms facing demand for cheap and efficient service delivery. A review of transaction cost theory and operations management models of service process disaggregation reveals parallels between the how firm boundaries are determined and how certain service process elements can be disaggregated from face-to-face customer contact. This theoretical background is used to identify challenges to the effective offshoring of service processes. The competitive capability literature offers suggestions as to how firms might acquire the internal capabilities required to manage offshore service processes. Propositions are developed on how the standardized transactional infrastructure of enterprise technologies (and the organizational competencies developed by successful enterprise system adopters) may help mitigate the challenges of offshore governance.