Counterproductive work behavior as protest

We suggest that counterproductive work behaviors can be viewed as a form of protest in which organizational members express dissatisfaction with or attempt to resolve injustice within the organization. Incorporating the three key predictors (injustice, identity and instrumentality, [Klandermans, B., (1997). The social psychology of protest. Oxford: Blackwell.]) from the protest literature leads us to propose that counterproductive behaviors can be both individual and collective. Crossing this dimension with concepts of organizational and individual deviance leads to a fourfold classification of counterproductive work behaviors.     

No Mangoes in the Tundra: Spatial Heterogeneity in Agricultural Productivity Analysis*

In line with the wider macro productivity literature existing studies of agricultural production largely neglect technology heterogeneity, variable time‐series properties and the potential for heterogeneous but correlated total factor productivity (TFP) across countries. Our empirical approach accommodates these difficulties and seeks to model the nature of the cross‐section dependence in a sample of 128 countries (1961–2002). Our results suggest that agro‐climatic environment drives similarity in TFP evolution across countries with heterogeneous production technology. This provides a possible explanation for the failure of technology transfer from advanced countries of the temperate ‘North’ to arid and/or equatorial developing countries of the ‘South’.     

Employee involvement,the quality of training and the learning environment: an individual level analysis

Theories such as human capital theory, the metaphors of learning and the high involvement work paradigm all suggest that the quality of training and learning varies along a number of axes. This article shows how these theoretical insights have been translated into questions used in a UK survey of 6829 employees carried out in 2006. We find that the qualities of both the training experience and on-the-job learning are strongly associated with the extent and nature of employee involvement. This suggests that employee involvement is likely to play an important role in the process of upskilling the workforce, which has been accorded a central role in the economic strategies of many nation states as well as supra-national organizations such as the European Union.     

Asset price bubbles in Arrow-Debreu and sequential equilibrium

Summary. Price bubbles in an Arrow-Debreu equilibrium in an infinite-time economy are a manifestation of lack of countable additivity of valuation of assets. In contrast, the known examples of price bubbles in a sequential equilibrium in infinite time cannot be attributed to the lack of countable additivity of valuation. In this paper we develop a theory of valuation of assets in sequential markets (with no uncertainty) and study the nature of price bubbles in light of this theory. We define a payoff pricing operator that maps a sequence of payoffs to the minimum cost of an asset holding strategy that generates it. We show that the payoff pricing functional is linear and countably additive on the set of positive payoffs if and only if there is no Ponzi scheme, provided that there is no restriction on long positions in the assets. In the known examples of equilibrium price bubbles in sequential markets valuation is linear and countably additive. The presence of a price bubble means that the dividends of an asset can be purchased in sequential markets at a cost lower than the asset's price. We present further examples of equilibrium price bubbles in which valuation is nonlinear, or linear but not countably additive.     

An analysis of asymmetric demand response to price changes: The case of local telephone calls

Asymmetric demand responses to price changes are not an observable implication of classical demand theory, which predicts that consumers will react to a small price increase in much the same way as they do to a small price decrease. Yet applied researchers have long speculated that consumers are more sensitive to price increases than they are to price decreases. In addition, recent empirical studies generally support the theory of asymmetric demand responses. We construct a dynamic model based on data gathered from monthly telephone bills for 128 New York Telephone customers over a five-year period. Our results support the conclusion that customers react more quickly and strongly when prices go up than they do when prices go down.We would like to thank Manny Haas and Bernie Reddy for their comments and suggestions.     

Burden of illness for super-refractory status epilepticus patients

Objective: To provide an estimate of the annual number of super-refractory status epilepticus (SRSE) cases in the US and to evaluate utilization of hospital resources by these patients.

Methods: The Premier Hospital Database was utilized to estimate the number of SRSE cases based on hospital discharges during 2012. Discharges were classified as SRSE cases based on an algorithm using seizure-related International Classification of Diseases-9 (ICD-9) codes, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS), and treatment protocols (e.g. benzodiazepines, anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs), and ventilator use). Secondary analyses were conducted using more restrictive algorithms for SRSE.

Results: A total of 6,325 hospital discharges were classified as SRSE cases from a total of 5,300,000 hospital discharges. Applying a weighting based on hospital characteristics and 2012?US demographics, this projected to an estimated 41,156 cases of SRSE in the US during 2012, an estimated incidence rate of ～13/100,000 annually for SRSE in the US. Secondary analyses using stricter SRSE algorithms resulted in estimated incidence rates of ～11/100,000 and 8/100,000 annually. The mean LOS for SRSE hospitalizations was 16.5 days (median =11; interquartile range [IQR]?=?6–20), and the mean ICU LOS was 9.3 days (median =6; IQR =3–12). The mean cost of an SRSE hospitalization was $51,247 (median = $33,294; 95% CI = $49,634–$52,861).

Limitations: The analysis uses ICD-9 diagnostic codes and claims information, and there are inherent limitations in any methodology based on treatment protocol, which created challenges in distinguishing with complete accuracy between SRSE, RSE, and SE on the basis of care patterns in the database.

Conclusion: SRSE is associated with high mortality and morbidity, which place a high burden on healthcare resources. Projections based upon the findings of this study suggest an estimated 25,821–41,959 cases of SRSE may occur in the US each year, but more in-depth studies are required.     

Increasing returns and unsynchronized wage adjustment in sunspot models of the business cycle

A challenge to models of equilibrium indeterminacy based on increasing returns is that required increasing returns for generating indeterminacy can be implausibly large and rise quickly with the relative risk aversion in labor. We show that unsynchronized wage adjustment via a relative wage effect can both lower the required degree of increasing returns for indeterminacy to a plausible level and make it invariant to the relative risk aversion in labor. Consequently, indeterminacy and sunspot-driven fluctuations can emerge for plausible increasing returns regardless of the relative risk aversion in labor. Our model generates reasonable dynamics in terms of matching the business cycle, and sunspot shocks become more important with labor market friction.     

Random Effects Misspecification Can Have Severe Consequences for Random Effects Inference in Linear Mixed Models

There has been considerable and controversial research over the past two decades into how successfully random effects misspecification in mixed models (i.e. assuming normality for the random effects when the true distribution is non‐normal) can be diagnosed and what its impacts are on estimation and inference. However, much of this research has focused on fixed effects inference in generalised linear mixed models. In this article, motivated by the increasing number of applications of mixed models where interest is on the variance components, we study the effects of random effects misspecification on random effects inference in linear mixed models, for which there is considerably less literature. Our findings are surprising and contrary to general belief: for point estimation, maximum likelihood estimation of the variance components under misspecification is consistent, although in finite samples, both the bias and mean squared error can be substantial. For inference, we show through theory and simulation that under misspecification, standard likelihood ratio tests of truly non‐zero variance components can suffer from severely inflated type I errors, and confidence intervals for the variance components can exhibit considerable under coverage. Furthermore, neither of these problems vanish asymptotically with increasing the number of clusters or cluster size. These results have major implications for random effects inference, especially if the true random effects distribution is heavier tailed than the normal. Fortunately, simple graphical and goodness‐of‐fit measures of the random effects predictions appear to have reasonable power at detecting misspecification. We apply linear mixed models to a survey of more than 4 000 high school students within 100 schools and analyse how mathematics achievement scores vary with student attributes and across different schools. The application demonstrates the sensitivity of mixed model inference to the true but unknown random effects distribution.     

Assessing economic convergence in the EU: is there a perspective for the ‘cohesion countries’?

This article analyses the stochastic income convergence within the EU-15. The empirical analysis uses per capita GDP, in PPP and in constant prices of 2005 for the period 1950 to 2010. Apart from the traditional DF type tests we also account for possible structural changes. In this direction, we employ the Zivot-Andrews (1992) and the Lee-Strazicich (1999, 2003) testing procedures, for one and two breaks, endogenously determined. Furthermore, we apply the Carlino and Mills (1993) methodology proposed for the detection of β-convergence. The overall evidence supports the existence of two discrete clubs, the first by the ‘cohesion countries’ (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and the second by the remaining members. In particular, there is a clear evidence of convergence within each club, whereas between clubs there is a luck of catching-up effects. Furthermore, investigation of correlation between relative per capita GDP of each country and several factors that are often identified as growth stimulants, namely Total Factor Productivity, FDI, investment and openness confirm, with the exception of Greece, a strong association between these factors and the convergence process. However, progress in the convergence has not been uniform across countries and over time, reflecting the specific interactions between domestic and international factors and their impact on the convergence process of individual countries.