Working Time as Gendered Time

Household-labor time and market-labor time are organized in part through the social structure of unequal gender relations. Generally, women do more household work than men, women's market work is undervalued, and the greatest rewards for market work accrue to men. The career model of employment is biased in favor of men who have few household responsibilities. Even noncareer seniority-sensitive job paths assume male incumbency with limited competition from household responsibilities. In this article we discuss the gendered underpinnings of the organization of time in contemporary Western society by critically examining household-labor time and the masculine models of career and noncareer employment. In addition to the important feminist goal of pay equity, we argue for a feminist politics of time that promotes alternative work-time arrangements for women and men to foster gender equality in the market and at home.     

Pay dispersion among the top management team and outside directors: Its impact on firm risk and firm performance

Two key groups central to improving firm performance are the top management team (TMT) and the board of directors. Executives undertake strategic actions, whereas board members fulfill their resource provision and monitoring roles. Drawing on tournament theory and equity theory, we propose that high pay dispersion among outside directors and the TMT is positively associated with strategic risk, whereas high (low) TMT pay dispersion and low (high) outside director pay dispersion are positively associated with firm performance. Our predictor is the unexplained component of horizontal pay dispersion, or the residual of pay dispersion resulting from regressing pay on observable firm, industry, period, and individual characteristics. Our results highlight the importance of unexplained pay dispersion for TMTs, but not for boards of directors, in improving firm performance.     

US deficit sustainability revisited: a multiple structural change approach

In this article we re-examine the long-run sustainability of US budget deficits, using Bai and Perron's multiple structural change approach. While the deficit would have been weakly sustainable over the full sample (1947:1–2005:3), strong sustainability would appear only between January 1982 and February 1996.     

Consumption smoothing and vulnerability in Russia

Applying bootstrapped quantile regression to the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) data, we examine the channels through which individuals experience and seek to cope with changes in consumption. We find that married individuals living in small households, with educated heads in urban areas are better equipped to smooth consumption. Investigating the impact of idiosyncratic shocks, we find that the labour market is an important transmission mechanism allowing households to smooth their consumption but also exposing them to risk, mainly through job loss. Outside of pension payments, the formal social safety net does not facilitate consumption smoothing, thus heightening the importance of informal coping institutions. It transpires that both support from relatives/friends and home production act as important insurance mechanisms for the most vulnerable. In contrast with previous findings, it would seem that regardless of its historical, political and social roots, the garden plots and dachas, often romanticized in Russian literature, do provide a means by which ‘urban’ Russians are able to cope with economic fluctuations. We finish by stressing the important policy lessons for Russia's developing market economy.     

The effects of macroeconomic stability on foreign trade. An analysis for Spain, 1986–2000

Two main factors underlie the rebirth of interest in the study of the influence of the real exchange rate on trade, the reduction of its volatility and the current trend towards price stability. The objective of this study is to analyse the effects of the process of nominal convergence, required of the European member states for the fulfilment of monetary integration, on foreign trade flows. The case of Spain, which is especially interesting in this context, is studied for the period 1986 to 2000. The results of estimating the aggregate functions of the export and import of goods shows how macroeconomic stability has altered the behaviour of trade with respect to the two basic determinants – income and prices – how it has caused a significant structural change in the real exchange rate and, finally, how it has laid the explanatory bases for transactions in the twenty-first century with the single currency – the euro.     

Reconciling sustainability and discounting in Cost–Benefit Analysis: A methodological proposal

The incorporation of the intergenerational equity objective has rendered the traditional Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) approach obsolete for the evaluation of projects presenting an important number of environmental externalities and for those whose impacts extend throughout a long period of time.Based on the assumption that applying a discount rate rewards current consumption and, therefore, that it is only possible to introduce a certain intergenerational equity in a Cost–Benefit Analysis, in this work we propose an approach to discounting based on a different rationale for tangible and intangible effects. We designed two indicators of environmental profitability: a) the Intergenerational Transfer Amount (ITA), which quantifies in monetary units what the current generation is willing to pass on future generations when an environmental restoration project is carried out, and b) the Critical Environmental Rate (CER), measures the implicit environmental profitability.These concepts were tested through an empirical case study pertaining to the assessment of an Erosion Control Project in the southeast of Spain. The results yield traditional profitability indicators that are higher — and probably closer — to the real values set by the contemporary society. The information provided by the environmental profitability indicators proposed renders more transparency to the quantification of the levels of intergenerational equity applied, thereby facilitating the difficult reconciliation of the CBA technique with the objective of sustainability.     

REVISITING GLOBALIZATION CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COOPERATIVES

Cooperatives have gained prominent attention in recent years as strategic elements to achieve sustainable economic development and greater social cohesion in the context of neoliberal globalization. This article explores, theoretically, the current challenges and opportunities for cooperatives to develop successfully in the globalizing economy. To this end, we provide an analytical, critical review of the key bibliography concerning some fundamental aspects that shape the relationship between economic globalization and cooperatives, an issue that has been generally neglected by previous literature. Three key fields are addressed: 1) the viability of cooperatives, based on their strengths and possible weaknesses, under current globalization; 2) the role of these organizations in promoting the local development and stability of local communities; and 3) the tensions and potentialities that internationalization entails for cooperatives. Based on the analytical review and the organization of the literature, we propose an agenda for further research. This includes some hypotheses and strategies for testing them that would be essential to assess the role of cooperatives in economic globalization, and sheds light on key areas for future research that could provide a better understanding of the complexity surrounding the relationship between globalization and cooperatives.     

Economic mechanisms for environmental protection: Business versus market transaction costs

This study presents theoretical arguments and evidence that attempt to show the contribution of economic mechanisms typical of a business for resolving problems of environmental protection. Firstly, a brief synopsis is given of the classic solutions that environmental economics proposes for correcting environmental externalities. Next, the benefit of expanding these two mechanisms is discussed so that they include those intermediate mechanisms for which it is not possible to clearly establish if they are developed within the domain of the market or the business. The study's focus resides in the fact that the explicit expansion of the range of solutions proposed from a macroeconomic point of view establishes a connecting point between environmental economics and business economics, an area in which academic attention to environmental matters has been significantly less. The present work forms part of research project SEC2002-00835, financed by MCYT-FEDER.     

The debt-equity financing decisions of U.S. startup firms

We examine the debt-equity decisions of startup firms using the Kauffman Firm Survey, the largest database of U.S. startups launched in 2004. To control for sample selection bias and the correlation among financing decisions, we employ a Bivariate Probit-Tobit model. Our results show that several firm characteristics such as growth prospects, firm size, tangible assets, and selling products, as well as owner characteristics such as net worth, experience, education and ethnicity explain the debt-equity decisions in the startup year. In addition, for firms that use debt, we document traits that explain the use of a particular type of business versus personal debt. Larger firms use more business debt, whereas home-based and growth firms use more personal sources of debt. Immigrants, owners who lack work experience and those who invest more time in the business tend to rely more on personal sources of debt.     

HR managers in five countries: what do they do and why does it matter?

The 1980s saw the need for change in the organizational role of human resource (HR) professionals, from the traditional employee champion and administrative expert to strategic business partner and change agent. The argument posited was that a more challenging environment compels organizations to turn to managing their HRs as a source of competitive advantage and that means an increasing business partnership for HR professionals. However, very few studies examine the execution of these multiple, sometimes contradictory roles, despite the risk that neglecting traditional roles endanger organizational performance in the long term. This five-country comparative study finds that multiple roles are at least moderately executed, and that these HR roles have different impact depending on the aspect of organizational performance. As well, a more challenging environment, defined here as legal constraints and industry challenges, generally does not have a significant moderating effect on the impact of the different HR roles on organizational performance.