Patterns of white-collar unionization in the steel industry

In the steel industry the influence of the employers and the steel workers' unions has probably played a more significant role in defining the direction and growth of white-collar unionism than the attitudes of the white-collar workers themselves.     

Multiproduct Firms' Pricing Behaviour in the Italian Grocery Trade

This paper investigates the determinants of price dispersion between different goods in grocery retailing, as the result of pricing decisions of multiproduct retailers. Demand parameters are generated using the LES system. These are then used to test theoretical predictions about the nature of supermarkets' pricing and consumers' shopping behaviour using disaggregated data from the Italian grocery trade. The empirical results concerning the supply function provide evidence for the existence, in all types of retail organisation, of a monopolistic form of price discrimination. The results are consistent with discrimination due to the exploitation of customers' switching costs.     

Bank ownership and performance. Does politics matter?

This paper uses a new dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance, providing separate estimations for developing and industrial countries. It finds that state-owned banks located in developing countries tend to have lower profitability and higher costs than their private counterparts, and that the opposite is true for foreign-owned banks. The paper finds no strong correlation between ownership and performance for banks located in industrial countries. Next, in order to test whether the differential in performance between public and private banks is driven by political considerations, the paper checks whether this differential widens during election years; it finds strong support for this hypothesis.     

Influences on the supply of accounting graduates in Australia: a focus on international students

This paper examines the influences on the potential supply of accounting graduates in Australia with reference to the personal and social influences on the decision to major in accounting using the Theory of Reasoned Action and focusing on differences between local and international students. Responses from 437 accounting majors’ found that personal attitudes linked to ‘intrinsic interest’ and ‘extrinsic interest’ was influential in choice of major. ‘Reference groups’ were an important social influence for international students. The findings have implications for government policy and the accounting profession in terms of attracting students and particularly international students, who are sufficiently interested in accounting as a career choice to address the skill shortage in Australia.     

Traffic fatalities: does income inequality create an externality?

Abstract .  Responsible for 20 million severe injuries and/or deaths annually, few epidemics receive less attention than traffic accidents. Going beyond confirming an inverted U-shaped relationship between mean income and fatalities, we show theoretically that income inequality can positively affect fatalities in two ways. Each operates through heterogeneity between road users, and while the direct effect can be expected to evaporate with rising income, the indirect effect may prove to be an externality in that the relationship remains regardless of the level of income. Our model is supported by evidence from 79 countries between 1970 and 2000.     

Dramaturgical performances and work-leisure dynamics in rural-to-urban domestic migrations

Situated against the backdrop of the dramatic socio-economic transformation of the Chinese society that propelled mass rural-to-urban migrations, this study focused on a group of female migrant workers who worked in the city as paid live-in-caregivers. The research explored how their work and leisure lives were related to their self-perceptions, self-expressions and social interactions. A total of 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews with female migrant workers who had moved from rural areas of China to the capital city of Beijing and worked as home caregivers were conducted. By adopting Goffman’s front stage and back stage model and bridging the literature in the fields of migration, caregiving, and leisure, the study examined the experiences and personal meanings of being a migrant caregiver and the strategies and practices migrant caregivers used to present and assert themselves in the everyday life of migration.     

Are (active) entrepreneurs a different breed?

We present data from an incentivized online experiment and responses from a set of validated psychological questionnaires to measure entrepreneurs' risk and time preferences and to identify entrepreneurs' personality characteristics. The analyses of the data suggest that intrinsic motivation positively relates to the likelihood of owning a business (i.e., being an active entrepreneur). We also found that subjects who scored higher on drive were relatively more risk seeking while those who scored higher on pessimism were more patient. The results of our study highlight the importance of studying personality traits to better understand what drives people to own a business.     

Tourism in multi-ethnic districts: the case of Porta Palazzo market in Torino

More and more often, cities compete with each other focusing on tourist attractions based on multi-ethnicity. Some of them, with a growing success, are street and food markets. This paper is focused on Porta Palazzo, the largest existing street market in Europe, located in Torino (Italy), which is becoming, from 2006 on, a tourist attraction, without losing its popular character. Our goal is to identify the characteristics of this touristification process and show how it has averted those aspects of ‘retail gentrification’ which often affect street and food markets: it has happened thanks to the role played not only by the economic stakeholders of the market but also by social and religious stakeholders, that everyday work in order to integrate the different social components of the area concomitant with new waves of migrants.