Internalization v. Decentralization: An Analysis of Recent Developments in Pay Bargaining

It is commonly assumed, particularly within the human resource management literature, that decentralized bargaining, performance-related pay and individualized wage-setting arrangements represent a further extension of the internal labour market and a source of efficiency gains in production. Drawing on new data on company pay policies, this paper advances an alternative interpretation of recent innovations in pay and bargaining. It is argued that moves to fragment bargaining and reward systems threaten to undermine the organizational principles of internal labour markets and may, therefore, raise the costs of managing the employment relationship.     

Vertical disintegration and the life-cycle of firms and industries

T0he degree of vertical integration experienced by a firm is an important managerial decision variable. It is an issue where there is a distinct lack of unanimity in studies on the economics of organizations. Moreover, studies have tended to ignore the complementary feature of vertical disintegration. This study examines the basic Stigler hypothesis that vertical disintegration is the typical development in growing industries. Using UK data on divestments, the results initially indicated some positive relationship between industry growth and vertical divestment activity; however, when different categories of asset transfer were examined, the Stigler view was rejected in favour of a null hypothesis.     

Cost - effectiveness analysis in practice: A case study of domestic water supplies in an African country

British aid policy calls for a large proportion of the programme to go to the poorest people in the poorest countries. This case study illustrates ways in which project selection and appraisal can aid this aim for projects whose output is non-tradeable and non-marketed but which may often be important to a poverty-focused programme. It attempts to demonstrate a framework by which such projects can consistently be examined paying particular attention to their objectives, the nature of their beneficiaries, and the recurrent budgetary implications for the host Government.     

Informal boundary-spanning communication in the innovation process: an empirical study

The sources of ideas embodied uithln successful technological innovation have been a subject of interest in many studies since the 1950s. This research suggests that sources external to the innovating organization account for between 34% and 65% of the inputs important to the development of successful innovation. In addition, studies have long highlighted personal boundary-spanning communication as an important mechanism for the transference of such ideas. Despite this recognition, there has been little systematic evaluation of the role and importance of informal boundary-spanning communication in the innovation process. This paper provides the results of an empirical study, of the role and source of infomally derived inputs into the development products of 35 commercially successful innovations. It was found that inormal mechanisms were often enlployad to transfer ideas and information, as well as other resources, during the idea-generation, ,problem-solving and field-testing phases of these innovation projects. Indeed, the research indicates that the mobilization of informal boundary-spanning contacts and networks my ofen be an important, and sometimes critival, factor in successful innovation.     

Leveraged Acquisitions and the Market for Corporate Control

What is the function of the market for corporate control? Mike Wright and two colleagues outline the advantages of an active market in corporate control and review the consequences of leveraged buyouts.     

Britain,EMU and the European economy

In January 1999, 11 member countries of the European Union ‘irrevocably’ locked the foreign exchange values of their currencies to the euro, and they committed themselves to abandon their currencies in favour of the euro in 2002. As a result, these countries ceased to operate independent monetary policies. Monetary policy for the whole euro‐zone became the responsibility of the European Central Bank (ECB), whose primary objective is to maintain a low and stable rate of price inflation for the euro currency. The rules governing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) were laid down in the treaty of Maastricht in 1992. As conditions for entry to EMU, the treaty specified ‘convergence criteria’ which consisted of upper limits for several macroeconomic aggregates including, notably, a 3 per cent maximum for the ratio of the public sector deficit to GDP and 60 per cent for the ratio of public debt to GDP.1 In February 1998 the 11 applicant countries submitted statistical analyses relating to their satisfaction of these conditions. Despite doubts as to whether some of them had strictly met the conditions, the European Commission deemed them all eligible, and the euro was launched.2 The British government, though more clearly eligible than most other EU countries on the basis of the convergence criteria, decided to defer its decision on entry. In this paper we consider the arguments for and against Economic and Monetary Union, and in particular whether it would be in Britain’s interest to join. We begin with a brief review of the state of the European economy and an analysis of the first year performance of the new Euro currency. 1 Upper limits were also set on the rate of inflation, at 1.5 percentage points above the average inflation rate of the three countries whose inflation was the lowest, and on long term interest rates, at 2 percentage points above the average of the rates prevailing in the three low inflation countries. An additional condition applied to exchange rate stability relative to the EU average for the two years prior to entry.
1 Notable cases were Belgium and Italy with debt to GDP ratios of 122.2 per cent and 121.6 per cent, respectively. Presumably, these countries were allowed membership under Article 104c(2) of the treaty which allows the debt to GDP ratio to be exceeded if ‘. . . the ratio is sufficiently diminishing and approaching 60 per cent at a satisfactory pace’. The reader is left to judge whether Belgium and Italy fell within the ‘spirit’ of this article.
     

Key lessons learned from recent experience with Flexible Transport Services

Many local authorities and public transport operators throughout Europe are experimenting with or considering flexibly delivered public transport systems, mainly with a view to improving social inclusion in areas difficult to cover by conventional public transport. Many such initiatives have been in response to recent developments in transport telematics.The objective of this paper is to provide accessible and user friendly guidelines for the implementation or development of flexible services identifying key issues that need to be considered at a policy level. These follow an analysis of the provision of telematics-based flexible transport schemes showcasing examples of recent practical experience from the US and Europe.     

School Performance in Australia: Is There a Role for Quasi‐Markets?

Recent changes to the organisation of Australia's education system have raised the possibility of implementing wide‐ranging market reforms. In this article we discuss the scope for introducing reforms similar to the United Kingdom's ‘quasi‐market’ model. We discuss the role of school league tables in providing signals and incentives in a quasi‐market. Specifically, we compare a range of unadjusted and model‐based league tables of primary school performance in Queensland's public education system. These comparisons indicate that model‐based tables which account for socio‐economic status and student intake quality vary significantly from the unadjusted tables.     

Applications of a multivariate Hawkes process to joint modeling of sentiment and market return events

To investigate the complex interactions between market events and investor sentiment, we employ a multivariate Hawkes process to evaluate dynamic effects among four types of distinct events: positive returns, negative returns, positive sentiment, and negative sentiment. Using both intraday S&P 500 return data and Thomson Reuters News sentiment data from 2008 to 2014, we find: (a) self-excitation is strong for all four types of events at 15 min time scale; (b) there is a significant mutual-excitation between positive returns and positive sentiment and negative returns and negative sentiment; (c) decay of return events is almost twice as fast as sentiment events, which means market prices move faster than investor sentiment changes; (d) positive sentiment shocks tend to generate negative price jumps; and (e) the cross-excitation between positive and negative sentiments is stronger than their self-excitation. These findings provide further understanding of investor sentiment and its intricate interactions with market returns.