Team up to meet child-care needs

Recognizing the importance of child care is not the same as providing it. The options for many employees are limited, but some employers are trying to assist employees with their child-care needs. One option that benefits many small to medium-sized companies is a child-care consortium.     

A vision for excellence

One hospital integrates employee relations, customer service and commitment to quality into one successful, award-winning program. Employees at AMI Palmetto General are motivated to constantly consider the hospital's goals and strive for excellence.     

Discriminating Among Alternative Theories of the Multinational Enterprise

Recent theoretical developments have incorporated endogenous multinational firms into the general–equilibrium model of trade. One simple taxonomy separates the theory into "vertical" models, in which firms geographically separate activities by stages of production, and "horizontal" models, in which multiplant firms duplicate roughly the same activities in many countries. The authors nest a horizontal and a vertical model within a hybrid (unrestricted) "knowledge–capital model" and estimate the specifications with data on US foreign direct investment activity. In the nested econometric tests, the data sample cannot distinguish statistically between the unrestricted model and the restricted horizontal model, indicating that the latter captures virtually all of the determinants of FDI. The tests overwhelmingly reject the vertical model.     

Multi-Dimensional Procurement Auctions for Power Reserves: Robust Incentive-Compatible Scoring and Settlement Rules

System operators in the electricity industry purchase reserve capacity in a procurement auction in which suppliers offer two-part bids, one part for making capacity available and another part for supplying incremental energy when called. Key ingredients of an efficient auction design are the scoring rule for comparing bids, and the settlement rule for paying accepted bids. We use the principle of incentive compatibility to establish that very simple rules suffice. In particular, the scoring rule uses only the capacity part of the bid, and energy supplies are paid the spot price. This is the design adopted in California.     

A Stochastic Frontier Production Function with Flexible Risk Properties

This paper considers a stochastic frontier production function which has additive, heteroscedastic error structure. The model allows for negative or positive marginal production risks of inputs, as originally proposed by Just and Pope (1978). The technical efficiencies of individual firms in the sample are a function of the levels of the input variables in the stochastic frontier, in addition to the technical inefficiency effects. These are two features of the model which are not exhibited by the commonly used stochastic frontiers with multiplicative error structures.An empirical application is presented using cross-sectional data on Ethiopian peasant farmers. The null hypothesis of no technical inefficiencies of production among these farmers is accepted. Further, the flexible risk models do not fit the data on peasant farmers as well as the traditional stochastic frontier model with multiplicative error structure.     

Law without justice: The dilemmas of formalization and fairness in the legalistic organization

There is growing evidence of a litigation mentality rampant in organizations, which has created a legalistic mindset in many managers. Increasingly, managerial decisions are becoming dominated by a concern for what is legally defensible at the expense of broader social considerations such as justice and fairness. The papers in this special issue explore how this legalistic mindset has created new organizational and social dilemmas, and situations of law whithout justice.     

Learning-by-doing and the sources of productivity growth: A dynamic model with application to U.S. agriculture

The significance of learning to productivity growth is formulated within a dynamic adjustment-cost framework. Explicitly treating the acquisition of knowledge as a firm-specific capital good entering the production function along with other conventional inputs, the dynamic optimization model integrates the learning-by-doing hypothesis with technical change, scale, and disequilibrium input use effects in the aggregate productivity analysis. The theoretical framework is applied to examining the dynamic components accounting for the growth of U.S. production agriculture over the 1950–82 period. The results imply a less important role for technical change and assign a substantial role to the previously unmeasured contribution of learning-by-doing to the growth of aggregate agriculture industry.The editor for this paper was Melvyn Fuss.     

Botswana's Macroeconomic Management of Its Mineral-Based Growth: It Used Mining Revenues for Development and Services but Must Now Broaden the Beneficiaries

Abstract . The economic performance and the political history of Botswana during 1974-84 contrasted significantly with the experience of virtually every other African country. The South African republic, immediately north of the Republic of South Africa, achieved steady real economic growth with improved social services and provision for its people's basic needs. This was achieved in spite of world recession and drought because its mineral wealth Was reserved for the people and mining companies had to pay for the privilege of extracting that wealth through a tax program limited to appropriating its surplus, while assuring the investors and entrepreneurs an adequate long-term return on capital and enterprise. But sound macroeconomic policies failed to provide even reasonably equitable benefits for the majority of the people. Sound micropolicies are needed to widen access to employment and earned income and to asset accumulation.