Housing and Health

Deprived housing is recognized as a source of poor health, but there is still little evidence of a causal relationship between housing and health. While existing literature identifies neighborhood effects and the individual dwelling as factors which affect health, it does not offer a joint examination of these factors. Moreover, endogeneity is a concern in analyses of both problems. Thus far, studies addressing endogeneity have done so through experimental design or instrumental variables. The first approach suffers from problems of external validity and the latter from the lack of reliable instruments. We therefore adopt an alternative strategy which considers both sources of endogeneity in order to identify the effects of housing on health by estimating fixed‐effect models. We reveal how housing problems affect health depending on living conditions and socioeconomic status. Our results therefore indicate that living in poor housing is an important short‐term socioeconomic determinant that directly affects health.     

Effects of global trade liberalization on softwood lumber markets

This study develops a world spatial equilibrium softwood lumber model comprised of the major importing and exporting countries/regions to analyse the impacts of global trade reform on the world softwood lumber market. The results show that free trade leads to an increase in lumber trade, and Canadian producers and US consumers are the biggest beneficiaries. Trade liberalization improves the overall world welfare as world producer and consumer surpluses increase. The result highlights the importance of moving towards free trade in the global softwood lumber market.     

Economic growth as a function of human capital,internet and work

The World Bank has suggested the need to enhance Information and Communication Technology skills in all sectors because a 10% increase in internet connectivity was found to boost GDP growth by 1.38%. Simultaneously, the OECD argued that high internet access rates generate a 2% increase in GDP. Because the internet positively affects economic growth, we investigated the relationship between an economically active population, human capital and technology to evaluate these effects in Mexico. A data series from 1991 to 2010 was analysed in three stages according to the least-squares method. A Cobb–Douglas function under the Solow model was considered. Technology and internet access were found to positively affect top-level students and graduate students and thus contribute to the global innovation index.     

Transportation in disaster response operations

Disasters are extraordinary situations that require significant logistical deployment to transport equipment and humanitarian goods in order to help and provide relief to victims. An efficient response helps to reduce the social, economic and environmental impacts. In this paper, we define and formulate a practical transportation problem often encountered by crisis managers in emergency situations. Since optimal solutions to such a formulation may be achieved only for very small-size instances, we developed an efficient genetic algorithm to deal with realistic situations. This algorithm produces near optimal solutions in relatively short computation times and is fast enough to be used interactively in a decision-support system, providing high-quality transportation plans to emergency managers.     

The quality of service desired by public transport users

This article describes the methodology used to study the quality of service desired by users of a public transport system. The desired quality is different from the perceived quality because it does not represent the daily experiences of the users, but rather what they desire, hope for or expect from their public transport system. This is why it is important to study the desired quality, knowledge of which gives local authorities the background information for personalised marketing policies based on the user’s requirements rather than their daily perceptions. The methodology goes through several stages, such as the use of focus groups to choose the most important variables for the users, the design and use of unlabelled stated preferences surveys and the calibration of discrete choice models. All of these help determine the weight of the most relevant variables. The analysis is carried out with different categories of users and potential users (those people not currently using public transport).Waiting time, cleanliness and comfort are shown to be the public transport variables that users most valued, but the degree to which they are valued varies according to the category of user. Variables such as driver kindness, bus occupancy and journey time are generally given less weight. The first two vary little by user category, but some variability appears for journey time.For potential users the more important variables when defining expected quality from public transport are waiting time, journey time and above all, level of occupancy. They consider the other variables to be of little importance when defining an efficient public transport service.In order to improve service quality and attract more passengers to public transport in general, the application of this methodology provides the authorities and operating companies with useful information to plan personalised marketing policies specifically directed at different categories of users and potential users of public transport.     

The Dynamics of Labour Flexibility: Relationships between Employment Type and Innovativeness

This paper investigates the relationship between flexible human resource (HR) practices and innovativeness. Testing the research model in a sample of first‐tier automotive suppliers indicates that internal flexibility practices are positively related to innovativeness. Regarding external flexibility, the association depends on the type of contingent employee: negative association for ‘short‐term hires’ and positive association for ‘consulting/contracting firms’. The relationships to innovativeness for practices associated with knowledge transfer are moderated by environmental dynamism, but the non‐knowledge related practices are not. Firms in highly dynamic environments can benefit more from flexible HR practices than firms in less dynamic environments.     

Asian development pathways and sustainable socio-technical regimes

Rapid industrialisation in Asia is generating a significant new demand for raw materials and pressure on local, regional and global environments. In the future these demands and pressures are expected to increase markedly. These concerns are models of development that assume that economic growth follows a pattern leading to a convergence between the structure, growth and productivity of economies over the long run. In these models, the structure of industries and sectors, technological capabilities and consumer preferences are regarded as converging towards patterns established in more advanced economies. By extension, convergence is also assumed to hold for the resource intensity and environmental pressure associated with growth in industrialising countries. This paper argues for greater attention to the resource and environmental quality of development. It argues that by applying ideas from an emerging literature on ‘systems innovation’ it becomes possible to envisage the emergence of new, more resource-efficient socio-technical systems as the basis of more sustainable development pathways in developing Asia. Such sustainable socio-technical systems will emerge in the context of interaction between domestic and globalised markets, knowledge flows and governance. Key issues for a research agenda are set out.     

Human resources audit

Human resource management (HRM) has experienced a strong evolution. In order to provide useful information to managers, it is necessary to evaluate the results generated by the design and implementation of personnel policies. This is the goal of the HR audit that includes two different analyses and valuations: the HR policies and their level of fit with the strategy of the firm, and the characteristics of human capital. Several criteria have been used to assess different HR policies. Nevertheless, the measurement of the value that human capital brings to the firm is a very complex topic. Consequently, different models are being presented that aim to properly solve this challenge. This paper will analyze the HR function from two perspectives: the evaluation of the implemented policies and the quality of human capital in relation to real competencies, and the capability to learn and develop new skills.