Employers' Flexibility and Employment Volatility

A bstract .   Previous analyses of the strong secular growth in personnel supply employment have focused primarily on the relative impacts of demand and supply factors. This industry's dramatic growth has tended to mask its high degree of volatility, which may be more useful in understanding employers' motivations for hiring temporary employees. This article examines alternative explanations for the volatility of employment in the temporary supply industry from 1972 to 2000. Using a seemingly unrelated time-series estimator, we compare the volatility of temporary employment to that of regular full-time employment. We find that quarterly changes in temporary employment are more sensitive to the business cycle than regular full-time employment are and argue that temporary employment is likely to have a number of disadvantages as a reemployment strategy during a recession, since temporary employment typically declines during that time. Additionally, employment growth during this period is better explained by employers' efforts to achieve numerical rather than wage flexibility.     

A flexible adaptation of the WIOD database in a virtual laboratory

ABSTRACT

The World Input-Output Database provides a time series of world input–output tables (WIOTs) that have been used for example to understand the manifold effects of the increased integration of markets through international trade. In order to enhance the flexibility of research on global trade issues using WIOD, we implement the WIOT workflow in a collaborative, cloud-based virtual laboratory environment. We demonstrate that a lab-based adaptation of WIOD is able (a) to continuously create and update versions of the WIOTs in a timely, consistent, and cost-effective way, (b) to enhance original information with accompanying information on standard deviations, and (c) to enable flexible re-casting of the entire WIOT time series into user-specific geographical and sectoral classifications.     

Das adaptierte deutsche Arbeitsbeziehungsmodell im Vergleich

Zusammenfassung  Das deutsche Modell der Beziehungen zwischen Arbeitgebern und Arbeitnehmern innerhalb eines Unternehmens — vor allem die betriebliche Mitbestimmung — stand lange Zeit in der Kritik, w?hrend das anglo-amerikanische Modell als überlegen angesehen wurde. Welches Arbeitsbeziehungsmodell w?hlen deutsche und amerikanische Unternehmen in einem in Hinblick auf die Ausgestaltung der Arbeitsbeziehungen freizügigen Umfeld, wie es in Gro?britannien herrscht? Wie wirkt sich die Wahl des Modells auf Arbeitsproduktivit?t und Profi tabilit?t der Tochterunternehmen aus? Prof. Dr. Arne Heise, 48, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universit?t Hamburg und an der Izmir Economics University, Türkei; Prof. Dr. Heinz Tüselmann, 49, lehrt International Business an der Manchester Metropolitan University; Prof. Dr. Frank McDonald, 58, lehrt International Business an der University of Bradford; und Matthew Allen, 38, ist Lecturer an der Manchester Business School. Prof. Dr. Arne Heise, 48, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universit?t Hamburg und an der Izmir Economics University, Türkei; Prof. Dr. Heinz Tüselmann, 49, lehrt International Business an der Manchester Metropolitan University; Prof. Dr. Frank McDonald, 58, lehrt International Business an der University of Bradford; und Matthew Allen, 38, ist Lecturer an der Manchester Business School. Dieser Aufsatz fasst die Ergebnisse eines von der Hans-B?ckler-Stiftung gef?rderten Projektes „Employee Relations and Firm Performance: A Comparison of German and US Multinational Companies in the United Kingdom“ zusammen.     

The diversification cost of large,concentrated equity stakes. How big is it? Is it justified?

While the hypothesis that ownership concentration can affect the value of a company has seen a lot of empirical study, little light has been shed on a complementary problem, that these concentrated owners have a cost of their position due to an undiversified portfolio. Using a unique data set of the actual diversification of all Norwegian equity owners, we show that the largest owners of a corporation in fact have very undiversified equity portfolios, and that such owners have significant costs to their concentrated portfolios. At the level of risk of a benchmark portfolio, if they were to move from their present portfolio composition in risky assets to a well diversified portfolio, their returns would have increased by about 13 percentage points in annual terms. We ask whether this cost can be explained by estimated benefits of ownership concentration (private benefits), and show that extant estimates of private benefits are too low to offset our cost estimates.     

The structure of occupational inequality

Quality & Quantity - By examining the interrelationships among the requirements, resources, and rewards associated with occupational positions, we have attempted to construct a preliminary...     

Forecasting the demand for an employee Park and Ride service using commuters' stated choices

This paper uses Stated Choice (SC) data to forecast the demand for an employee Park and Ride service. Since it is well known that SC data contain sources of variation not present in Revealed Preference data we pay special attention to the scaling of the SC model. The results show that the modal shift away from parking-on site will be small unless the new service is accompanied by measures aimed at making parking on-site less attractive such as introducing parking charges.     

On the economics of the longevity risk transfer market

We present a model of a longevity risk transfer market with different market players (primary insurers, reinsurers, and capital market investors) and investigate how market dynamics and the market players' roles evolve with progressing market saturation. We find that reinsurers' appetite for longevity risk is the key driver in the early stage of market development. Since diversification benefits with other businesses decrease with every transaction, the reinsurance market is intrinsically antimonopolistic. With the increasing saturation of the reinsurance sector as a whole, its competitiveness shrinks leading to rising expected risk-adjusted returns for capital market investors. We show that in a saturated market, reinsurers should assume the entire longevity risk from primary insurers, diversify it within their business mix, and subsequently pass on only specific (nondiversifiable) components of the longevity risk to the capital markets. Our findings provide valuable suggestions on how to make the best use of the market's limited risk absorption capacity.     

Cross‐hedging and forward‐contract pricing of electricity in the Pacific Northwest

This paper develops a linear regression model for using actively traded NYMEX natural gas futures as a cross‐hedge against electricity spot‐price risk in the Pacific Northwest and for pricing the forward contracts in the presence of temperature and hydro risks. Our approach comports with reality and provides power purchasers with an effective instrument through which they can hedge their electricity bets through natural gas futures. It also demonstrates the sharp month‐to‐month variations in the natural gas futures' optimal hedge ratios and hedge effectiveness. Finally, it finds significant risk premiums in the Pacific Northwest forward prices, supporting the hypothesis that forward‐contract buyers are relatively more risk‐averse than sellers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.