The gender wage gap in Austria: eppur si muove!

We examine the change of the gender wage gap in Austria between 2002 and 2007 using Juhn et al. (Workers and their wages, AEI Press, Washington DC, pp 107–143, 1991) decomposition. We analyze data from Austrian tax records which we merge with social security records and Austrian micro-censuses of the years 2002 and 2007. We find that the gender wage gap declined from 21 % in 2002 to 18 % in 2007. The main determinant of this decline is the relative improvement of women’s unobserved characteristics. The decline of the gender wage gap is also due to women having attained more formal education and to a convergence of men’s and women’s returns to education. Women’s improved educational attainments were partly offset by a shift in the demand for skilled workers that disadvantaged unskilled workers, most of whom are women, resulting in a moderate decrease of the gender pay gap over these years. Robustness checks confirm our results.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

Appropriate technology for developing countries: Some issues

Major problems in forecasting and identifying the appropriate technologies, especially in developing countries, have been presented. A set of criteria has been suggested for the objective evaluation of appropriate technologies. A conceptual analysis on appropriate technosystems with special reference to forecasting and planning has been carried out to show that it may be very difficult to attain self-organizing systems without huge inputs of energy and information.     

An analytical study of participating policies with minimum rate guarantee and surrender option

Finance and Stochastics - We perform a detailed theoretical study of the value of a class of participating policies with four key features: (i) the policyholder is guaranteed a minimum interest...     

Small is beautiful: Implications of reliability and statistical power for testing the efficacy of HR interventions

The development of optimal human resource practices is often contingent on the accurate statistical testing of potential interventions. Testing the efficacy of HR interventions can be enhanced by taking additional measures to improve statistical power, but the traditional means of increasing power through sample size are often beyond the cost and ability of HR professionals to pursue. This article, therefore, focuses on measurement procedures as an alternative way to increase statistical power for detecting HR intervention effects. Selection of reliable and appropriate measures and subsequent instrumentation are examined as efficacious and cost‐beneficial techniques that can be employed during the planning and designing stage of a study for augmenting statistical power to optimize business decision making. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Emotional intelligence and resilience as predictors of leadership in school administrators

This mixed‐method study of 48 P–12 school administrators across three southeastern states was done to begin investigation of the impact of nontraditional leadership factors. As evidenced by the results, there is a strong correlation between the factors of emotional intelligence and resilience and leadership success.     

An approximation of the relative real per capita GDP of the People's Republic of China

This paper presents a rough estimate of the real per capita GDP of the People's Republic of China, relative to that of the U. S. and other countries, with a 1975 reference date.     

Why do diners tip: rule-of-thumb or valuation of service?

When diners decide how much to tip, is the decision based on social convention or on conscientious appraisal of server productivity? Previous researchers in economics and social psychology are generally inconclusive on this question. A common finding in the literature is that tip size and service quality are unrelated, a result usually obtained from OLS regressions. OLS is only appropriate if service quality is exogenous. It is argued that service quality is very likely endogenous in any regression of tip size; good quality encourages good tips, but server expectations of good tips encourage good quality. This simultaneity is accounted for by jointly estimating percentage tips and customer rankings of service quality on a sample of 247 diners in a Central Minnesota restaurant. Included are explanatory variables consistent with both the social psychology and economic views of tipping. In contrast to previous studies, it is found that service quality significantly affects tip size and when servers expect higher tips, customers rank service quality higher. Also it is found that patronage frequency and coupon redemption have no effect on percentage tips, but server gender influences quality significantly. It is concluded that the results are generally supportive of an economic hypothesis of tipping.