Employers' attitudes,practices and policies towards older workers

Despite policy emphasis on the importance of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and above) to current and future labour markets, relatively little is known about the ways in which employers' attitudes, policies and practices influence their recruitment and retention. Drawing upon previous work by Taylor and Walker, this article reports qualitative research among employers across Scotland, which sought to investigate further the relationships between employers' policies, practices and attitudes towards older workers. The findings indicate a complex set of relationships, and challenge the simplistic causal link between attitudes and practice. The conclusions discuss the implications of these findings for the future employment of older workers, and assess the extent to which the forthcoming age discrimination legislation in the UK is likely to tackle discriminatory attitudes, practices and policies.     

Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil

This paper analyses the attempt to create an 'imagined community' among members of the MST (Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Movement of Rural Landless Workers ) as a way of maintaining high levels of participation. As one of the most active rural movements in Brazilian history, MST owes much of its success to high levels of involvement among members who have already achieved their initial goal of access to land. Movement leaders and activists encourage participation by creating a community through ideas and practices and distilled into symbols, slogans and ritual. The lived experiences of community differ from the imaginings, however, and in this paper I show how MST members negotiate the movement's expression of community in ways that reflect historical experiences of economy and society. Ultimately, MST's imagined community is effective because the movement has established itself as a successful mediator between the settlers and the Brazilian State.     

Determinants and Effects of Small Chilli Farmers’ Participation in Supermarket Channels in Indonesia

The number of supermarkets in Indonesia is increasing, but small-scale farmers may be at risk of being excluded from these emerging marketing channels. Drawing on data from our survey of 600 small-scale chilli farmers in West Java, we examine the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to participate in supermarket channels. We use a treatment-effect model to examine the effect of supermarket participation on income, while controlling for the possibility of selectivity bias. Our results indicate that participation in the supermarket channel significantly increases farm income, even after we controlled for differences in education, chilli-farming experience, storage-house ownership, and the distance from the farmer's house to a bitumen road.     

A New Look at Constructed Choice Processes

Normative models of choice assert axiomatically that preferences are consistent, coherent, and determined only by relevant alternatives. In contrast to this classical economic perspective, behavioral models derived from research in psychology and consumer behavior assert that preferences are not guided by an internal, stable utility function but are constructed during the choice process. The current paper is based on a session on constructed choice processes (CCP) at the 2004 Choice Symposium that focused on how the standard CCP model can be enriched by bringing theories and tools from modern research in social cognition to bear on choice phenomenon. The richer conceptual framework presented by new, currently unpublished empirical work provides a novel perspective on choice construction by integrating the roles of subjective construal, experiential information, attribution, goals, and satisfaction in understanding preference construction processes in choice.     

Corporate governance and the informativeness of disclosures in Australia: a re‐examination

We re‐examine the association between corporate governance and disclosures reported by Beekes and Brown (2006), using an extended time series of Australian data. Since the ASX corporate governance guidelines were introduced in 2003, firms generally have increased their disclosure frequency and demonstrated an improvement in the timeliness of bad news relative to good news, indicating a levelling of disclosure practices and greater transparency. Better governed firms have become more cautious in their disclosure practices. However, they continue to be more balanced with respect to good and bad news timeliness. Changes to disclosure laws have also influenced company practices.     

The need to change pedagogies in science and technology subjects: a European perspective

This paper evolves out of a consultancy that was carried out with the European Commission over a two year period between 2001 and 2003. A working group, set within the European Commission and comprising representatives from 15 member states, as well as associated and accession countries, stakeholders and social partners involved in maths, science and technology education, was formed. Its remit was to identify good practice in maths, science and technology education across Europe and to make recommendations for policy makers in the area. One important theme which emerged during the analysis of good practice was the need to develop the type of pedagogies which would encourage the active involvement of pupils in authentic and meaningful learning experiences within these subject domains. A series of questions relating specifically to this area was therefore incorporated into the second phase of the investigation and sent out to all participating countries. Qualitative analysis of these questionnaires was carried out. Using the results of these analyses, along with information from discussions, this paper considers the situation in Europe in respect of the introduction of what are essentially social constructivist pedagogies in the field of technology and science education. It explores some of the attempts which have been made to implement such pedagogies and more importantly the barriers to their introduction which have been identified in most countries across Europe. A consideration of research literature in the field is then used to promote the argument that teacher beliefs or theories are a crucial factor in preventing change. The role of these theories in presenting barriers to change are discussed and the implications for both policy makers and for initial teacher education are analysed.     

Where Are They Now? Tracking the Ph.D. Class of 1997

We report early career outcomes of economics Ph.D.s by tracking the U.S. class of 1996-1997. We examine employment outcomes, work activities, salaries, and graduates' attitudes toward their jobs. By 2003, all of the respondents were employed, although almost half changed employers during the six years. Salaries of the cohort increased at an average annual rate of 8.2% from 1997 through 2003. Academic-year salaries rose about 5.7% per year, whereas private sector salaries skyrocketed at 15% per year. Finally, the median salaries of first-year full-time permanent 9- to 10-month academic economists hired in 2002-2003 actually exceed the median 2003 salaries of their counterparts initially hired in 1997-1998. Some of this apparent salary inversion reflects a different mix of employers and departments between the two cohorts, with the younger group securing relatively more jobs at higher-paying institutions.     

Do Better‐Governed Australian Firms Make More Informative Disclosures?

Abstract:   We investigate whether and if so, how, corporate governance 'quality' ¹ is related to the information flows from a company and how the share market and its agents respond. Specifically, we study links between the 'quality' of a firm's corporate governance (CGQ) and the informativeness of its disclosures. We employ six indicators of informativeness. They include document counts, properties of analysts' forecasts and a 'timeliness' metric, in the spirit of Ball and Brown (1968) , that reflects the average speed of price discovery throughout the year. Our results suggest the answer to our question is 'Yes': better‐governed firms do make more informative disclosures.     

Risk-based pricing of interest rates for consumer loans

By focusing on observable default risk's role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior, this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk-based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid-1990s. It tests three resulting predictions: First, the premium paid per unit of risk should have increased over this period. Second, debt levels should have reacted accordingly. Third, fewer high-risk households should have been denied credit, further contributing to the interest rate spread between the highest- and lowest-risk borrowers.For people obtaining loans, the premium paid per unit of risk did indeed become significantly larger after the mid-1990s. For example, for a 0.01 increase in the probability of bankruptcy, the corresponding interest-rate increase tripled for first mortgages, doubled for automobile loans and rose nearly six-fold for second mortgages. Additionally, changes in borrowing levels and debt access reflected these new pricing practices, particularly for secured debt. Borrowing increased most for the low-risk households who saw their relative borrowing costs fall. Furthermore, while very high-risk households gained expanded access to credit, the increases in their risk premiums implied that their borrowing as a whole either rose less or, sometimes, fell.