How 'modern' is the modern apprenticeship?

Despite the fact that some sectors of industry are facing major skills shortages, the Scottish labour market continues to be characterised by occupational segregation and a large disparity between the wages of women and men. The concentration of individuals in occupations and training based on their gender effectively restricts the pool of potential recruits to industry and is unlikely to make the best use of human capital. Moreover, it obstructs the pursuit of gender equality by reinforcing the gender pay gap and restricting individual career choices. This paper reports on the government's flagship training policy, the Modern Apprenticeship programme, from a gender perspective. It concludes that, ten years on from its introduction, the scheme represents something of a 'missed opportunity' to tackle occupational segregation and its deleterious effects in the wider economy and in society at large. It is recommended that the government and organisations involved in the development and delivery of Modern Apprenticeships adopt a more conscious and cohesive approach to promoting non-traditional choices at the vocational level.     

Testing subgame perfection apart from fairness in ultimatum games

We present an experiment designed to separate the two commonplace explanations for behavior in ultimatum games—subjects’ concern for fairness versus the failure of subgame perfection as an equilibrium refinement. We employ a tournament structure of the bargaining interaction to eliminate the potential for fairness to influence behavior. Comparing the results of the tournament game with two control treatments affords us a clean test of subgame perfection as well as a measure fairness-induced play. We find after 10 iterations of play that about half of all non-subgame-perfect demands are due to fairness, and the rest to imperfect learning. However, as suggested by models of learning, we also confirm that the ultimatum game presents an especially difficult environment for learning subgame perfection. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, D64, J52     

An Econometric Model of the Colombian Beef Sector: 1950–1970

Recent theoretical and empirical studies of beef cattle producers by Barros, Jarvis, Nores, Reutlinger, and Yver have focused on producers' supply response assuming cattle represent consumption goods and capital goods. To differentiate producer price response for cattle sold as consumption goods and cattle retained as capital goods requires data on herd and slaughter age-sex structure. This has limited the range of econometric work which could be carried out in many developing countries. This study utilizes a time series of the Colombian cattle herd which was recently constructed by Rivas and Valdes and which has the necessary age-sex and slaughter data to develop a complete system of structural equations representing the simultaneous determination of demand and supply for Colombian cattle over the 1950–1970 period.     

Comparative labor supply of black and white women

Conclusions The presence of young children decreases women’s labor supply as shown by the LFPRs for women with young children (which are always considerably lower than those for women without young children). Also, the number of young children is almost always negatively related to annual hours of labor supplied (significantly so in half the regressions). Black and white women are found to have an inelastic labor supply, but with increasing elasticity from 1969 to 1974. There is a statistically significant difference in the estimated regression coefficients of the labor supply model for black and white married women in 1969 and 1974 in both the arithmetic and logarithmic forms. The husband’s earnings are significantly negatively related to white married women’s annual hours of work in 1974, while the relationship is not significant for black married women. Crosselasticity terms show that white married women decrease their annual hours of work in response to an increase in husband’s earnings to a greater extent than black married women in 1971 and 1974. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that black women do not rely on their husband’s earnings to as great an extent as white women.     

The recent worldwide economic crisis and the welfare of children: The case of Cuba

As a consequence of the deeply interdependent nature of today's world, Cuba has been affected by the world recession and by the critical roles of international trade and finance. However, the Cuban government has maintained a constant commitment to the protection of the poor and the children through increasing allocations of resources to education and health and through the promotion of increased levels of popular participation. This paper describes the improvements in the areas of nutrition, health and education and the persistent problems in the area of housing. It shows that the improvements observed have reached the majority of the population, eliminating great disparities.     

The path dependence of organizational reputation: how social judgment influences assessments of capability and character

Drawing upon theory on social judgments and impression formation from social psychology, this paper explores the socio‐cognitive processes that shape the formation of favorable and unfavorable organizational reputations. Specifically, we suggest that stakeholders make distinctions between an organization's capabilities and its character. We explain the nature and function of each and articulate the manner in which judgment heuristics and biases manifest in the development of capability and character reputations. In doing so, this research explores both the positive and negative sides of organizational reputation by examining the manner in which different types of reputations are built or damaged, and how these processes influence the ability of managers to enhance and protect these reputations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Will We Ever Meet Again? The Relationship between Inter-Firm Managerial Migration and the Circulation of Client Ties

A large body of research shows that the migration of managers from one professional service firm to another weakens the old employer’s relationship with its clients, because migrating managers remove their relationship-specific knowledge and expertise – i.e., human and social capital – from their old employers, redeploying it to their new employers. This study extends this research by introducing a bi-directional perspective of social capital in which both firms and managers may exploit these relationship-specific resources. We use theory on social capital to build arguments about how one form of manager mobility, manager migration between two service providers in a single market, can both lead and lag the movement of client ties between those providers, and signaling theory to hypothesize the conditions under which this is likely to occur. Analyses using longitudinal data on New York City advertising agencies generally support our arguments. Our findings contribute to theory and research on manager migration, social capital, and signaling, and raise new questions for how the portability of relationship-specific social capital shapes markets.     

App service: How do consumers perceive the quality of financial service apps on smart devices?

Apps on smart devices such as phones and tablets have enabled financial services firms not only to provide greater convenience and flexibility to customers, but also to get them to do a lot of the work entailed in these services. This has changed the character of service in many ways, including the nature of service quality where service is no longer delivered by people, but by means of technology. The study reported here used an amended version of the SERVQUAL instrument to assess consumers’ perception of the quality of the service delivered by the apps of their financial services providers. Three dimensions of app service quality emerge: reliability, personal and visibles. Generally, consumers are reasonable satisfied with the quality of service provided by their financial apps and prefer them to visits to service providers physical locations and rate them as highly as online service provision on PCs or laptops. Limitations are acknowledged, managerial implications drawn and avenues for future research are identified.