This article provides new evidence on the effect of changes in employment protection on worker absence. We use novel multi‐organization data to examine changes in worker absence as workers move from temporary to permanent employment contracts. We demonstrate a robust positive effect of employment protection on sickness absence. It has also been suggested that the impact of employment protection on absence and effort is due to a fear of dismissal. We also provide evidence that suggests that temporary workers' absence is influenced by incentives to attain jobs with protection that is unrelated to threat of dismissal. This has not been considered in earlier research. This channel of employment protection effects has important policy implications. 相似文献
This paper is a summary of the behaviour of food commodity prices in 2007–2008 and a review of the causes of the price increases, extracted from a report to the Chief Scientific Advisor to Her Majesty’s Government [Thirtle, C., Piesse, J., 2008. An Explanatory Review of the World Food Commodity Price Events of 2007–2008. A Report to the Chief Scientific Advisor. Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, London]. The historical background shows that the price spike was much less severe than in the 1970s. The conventional wisdom that prices of the main food commodities were falling prior to 2006 is questioned. Most ceased falling and were quite stable from the 1980s. The paper separates the causes of the spike from the underlying changes driving the long run trends. The literature on the causes of the spike is critically reviewed and summarised. There is a reasonably broad consensus on most of the causes, but much less on the impact of the depreciation of the US Dollar. There are also concluding speculations on the future. 相似文献
The conjuncture that ushered in the era of shareholder value served to embed capital market expectations into corporate governance aligning management and shareholder interests. Market arbitrage focussed on modifying contractual relations with stakeholders to extract a (higher) return on invested capital. In this article we focus on cash earnings on capital employed generated by the S&P 500 survivor group of firms covering the period 1990–2008. We use this financial data to construct three complementary perspectives on corporate financial performance: firm, firm-relative and macro. Within this framework the financial numbers and perspectives are analogous to a ‘hall of mirrors’ where ambiguity and contradiction are in play frustrating straightforward performative narratives that connect purpose with financial transformation an era of shareholder value. 相似文献
We develop a model of competition between shopping centers, comparing competitive outcomes in three alternative modes of retail organization, namely: streets (in which neither developers or retailers internalize agglomeration effects between products); malls (in which developers internalize); and supermarkets (in which both developers and retailers internalize). For a fixed number of centers: (i) converting streets to malls intensifies developer (but not retailer) competition, which increases product range (i.e., the number of shops built by the developers) and consumer surplus, reduces profits, and has ambiguous effects on welfare; (ii) converting streets to supermarkets intensifies retailer and developer competition, has ambiguous effects on product range (number of shops), reduces profits, and increases social welfare. With free entry both conversions reduce the number of centers and, if there is excess entry, conversion to supermarkets (but not malls) unambiguously increases welfare. 相似文献
To advance understanding of informal sector entrepreneurship, the aim of this paper is to evaluate and explain the cross-country variations in the prevalence of informal sector competitors. To do so, World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data is reported from 142 countries. This reveals that 27% of formal enterprises view competition from the informal sector as a major constraint on their operations, although this varies from 72% of formal enterprises in Chad to no formal enterprises in El Salvador. To explain these cross-country variations, four competing theories are evaluated which variously view informal sector entrepreneurship and enterprise to be more prevalent when there is either: economic under-development (modernisation theory); high taxes and state over-interference (neo-liberal theory); too little state intervention (political economy theory), or an asymmetry between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions (institutional theory). A multilevel probit regression analysis confirms the modernisation and institutional theories, but not the neo-liberal and political theories. Beyond economic under-development, therefore, it is not too much or too little state intervention that is associated with the prevalence of informal sector competition but rather, whether the laws and regulations developed by governments are in symmetry with the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.
In recent years, it has become common to represent entrepreneurs as either necessity- or opportunity-driven. Drawing upon
face-to-face interviews in England with 70 entrepreneurs trading wholly or partially off-the-books, this paper evaluates critically
this dichotomous representation. The finding is that squeezing the motives of off-the-books entrepreneurs into one side or
the other of this dichotomy not only over-simplifies their rationales since both necessity and opportunity motives are often
involved but also obfuscates how their motives change over time. The outcome is a call to replace this either/or depiction
with a richer and more nuanced both/and understanding of off-the-books entrepreneurs that recognises their diverse and dynamic
motives.
This article evaluates critically the contrasting explanations for the cross‐national variations in the prevalence and nature of informal employment, which variously view such work as more prevalent in poorer, under‐developed economies; driven by high taxes, corruption and state interference that lead workers to exit formal employment; or driven by inadequate state intervention leading to the exclusion of workers from formal employment and state welfare provision. By analysing cross‐national variations across the European Union in the size of informal employment using indirect measurement methods and in its varying character using evidence from a 2007 Eurobarometer survey, it was found that wealthier, less corrupt and more equal economies with higher levels of labour market intervention, social protection and redistribution via social transfers have lower levels of informal employment, much of which is conducted to exit formal employment. The paper concludes by exploring the theoretical and policy implications. 相似文献
In 1987–8 a large attitudinal survey covering all twelve Member States of the European Community was carried out by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in Dublin which focused on various aspects of participation by employee representatives in new information technology. This paper presents evidence on one of the central trade union concerns about technological change – that of work organization. The paper first sets out an explanatory framework which is based on much of the literature, surveys and case-study evidence on the impact of new technology on work and employment. Second, the explanatory factors are used to explain the wide diversity in the levels of participation in work organization across the Community. The paper concludes that there is a significant North/South divide, with the northern EC Member States, particularly Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium having much higher levels of participation in work organization than their Mediterranean partners. 相似文献
Despite the wealth of literature on HRM and employee involvement, now there has been a remarkable lack of large-scale survey evidence on the diffusion employee involvement in work organizations in Europe. This gap in large-scale survey evidence on the diffusion of direct employee participation has now been filled representative sample of workplaces in ten major European Union countries which commissioned by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in Dublin (the EPOC project). It is by far the most comprehensive overview of the implementation and effects of direct employee participation of its kind. The paper shows that, on the basis of the EPOC survey results, there appears to considerable gap between the rhetoric and reality of direct participation. The paper shows that while the incidence of different forms of direct participation was widespread ten countries, the scope, in terms of number of issues involved and the number of given to employees, was relatively limited for most direct participation forms. The survey also showed that the introduction of direct participation posed little threat to trade representatives. Indeed, works councils and union representatives were in most 'agents of change' rather than barriers to the development of the more intensive practice of direct participation. 相似文献