Employment Discrimination Based on Immigration Status: Recent Cases Involving H-1B Visas

The worldwide economic downturn has seen a reversal in previous trends toward offshore staffing and an increase in protectionism toward home country labor. However, employers in the U.S. face potential legal liability if they favor American citizens over authorized foreign guest workers in layoffs, pay decisions, and other such actions. Thus far, employers have succeeded in defending most discrimination claims involving citizenship or immigration status—which often are made by out-of-work plaintiffs unable to afford legal representation—on technical grounds such as faulty pleading, failure to exhaust administrative remedies, filing with the wrong administrative agency, or mischaracterizing immigration claims as ones involving national origin status. These results notwithstanding, a closer reading of the cases suggests that substantive liability may be a matter of growing concern as plaintiffs or their counsel learn to correct such errors. The issues are important to both sides of the employment relationship in today’s global labor market; foreign guest workers will want to better understand their responsibilities and rights, while businesses will want to better manage their legal risks. Because little if any scholarly research has addressed these matters, an exploratory case law review is presented in an effort to identify trends in fact patterns that have generated such issues. Based on the results, practical recommendations are offered for improving the management of U.S. employment relationships that involve foreign guest workers.     

Tourism and internet adoption: a developing world perspective

This paper provides a new perspective of the realities faced by small tourism enterprises in the developing world. Given the well‐recognised value of the Internet in tourism, we sought to identify how entrepreneurs mitigate Internet adoption obstacles such as the inadequate and unreliable telecommunications infrastructure, the cost of the technology, and a lack of knowledge and skills that characterise developing nations. A qualitative study was performed on small tourism enterprises in rural and metropolitan areas of Malaysia and Ecuador. We found that entrepreneurs established ways to overcome obstacles, with some applying quite innovative solutions. This paper helps to understand the role of entrepreneurs in innovation adoption and improve knowledge of Internet appropriation among small tourism enterprises in developing nations. A number of transferable lessons are identified. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dollar-Deutschemark Polarisation: Comparing The Pound And Franc

The extent to which movements in the sterling and franc bilateral exchange rates are associated with changes in the dollar‐deutschemark exchange rate is measured. In the case of the pound we find, in contrast to the impression that might be gained from previous studies, that its linkage to the dollar has been, since the late 1990s, as high as it was in the late 1970s. In the case of the franc, we find that it has for some time been a powerfully deutschemark‐linked currency. This calls into question the view that there has been significant ‘dollar‐deutschemark polarity’ with respect to the franc in the recent past. We suggest that policymaker guidance and market rules of thumb may partially explain the developments we observe.     

COINTEGRATION AND DYNAMIC TIME SERIES MODELS

ABSTRACT. This paper provides a survey of some of the recent developments in the field of econometric modelling with cointegrated time series. In particular, we describe the testing and estimation procedures which have become increasingly popular in the recent applied literature. In addition to the 'two-stage' procedure proposed by Engle and Granger, we consider extensions to the modelling of dynamic models with cointegrated variables, such as the estimation of models with multiple cointegration vectors, simultaneous systems, models with seasonally integrated and cointegrated variables. Furthermore, we illustrate the practical application of the techniques describes in the paper by means of a tutorial data set.     

Measuring Attitudes Towards Inequality

Individuals' attitudes to inequality aversion are measured using survey data, based on the leaky-bucket experiment, for several groups of students in Australia and Israel. Three forms of social welfare function are estimated. It is found that measures of inequality aversion can be obtained with some precision and that these estimates are substantially lower than the values typically used by those measuring inequality and examining optimal tax structures. Furthermore, a welfare function based on the Gini inequality measure is generally found to give a better fit than forms based on constant relative or constant absolute inequality aversion.
JEL Classification : C 91; D 63     

Constant-collateral pyramiding trading strategies in futures markets

This paper introduces constant-collateral pyramiding trading strategies, which can be implemented in the futures markets. For these strategies, expressions are derived for effective constraints on the number of futures contracts in the trader’s portfolio and on the trader’s wealth. Implications of the results are drawn regarding the degree of pyramiding adopted by a subgroup of noise traders who underestimate the probability of receiving a margin call when they engage in positive feedback strategies. Suggestions are made regarding how market regulators can use margin requirements to encourage these traders to adopt less aggressive pyramiding strategies.