Organizing College Athletes Utilizing the Civil Rights Unionism Model

In January 2014, Northwestern University (NU) football players filed a certification election petition with the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Chicago regional office. After the NLRB ruled that they were employees having the legal right to unionize, the football players voted at the end of April 2014 with NU immediately appealing the regional director’s ruling after the balloting. In mid-August 2015, the Washington D.C. NLRB declined jurisdiction in this case, ending the football players’ unionization attempt. Because of the NLRB’s appellate ruling, however, unionization of college athletes remains a distinct possibility. Since a majority of U.S. collegiate basketball and football players are black, this paper argues that the model of unionism that should be adopted in any unionization attempt of these college athletes is civil rights unionism which represents a continuation of the historic, collective struggle of Black athletes to obtain their rights on athletic fields and in classrooms.     

Measuring input-specific productivity change based on the principle of least action

In for-profit organizations, efficiency and productivity measurement with reference to the potential for input-specific reductions is particularly important and has been the focus of interest in the recent literature. Different approaches can be formulated to measure and decompose input-specific productivity change over time. In this paper, we highlight some problems within existing approaches and propose a new methodology based on the Principle of Least Action. In particular, this model is operationalized in the form of a non-radial Luenberger productivity indicator based on the determination of the least distance to the strongly efficient frontier of the considered production possibility sets, which are estimated by non-parametric techniques based upon Data Envelopment Analysis. In our approach, overall productivity change is the sum of input-specific productivity changes. Overall productivity change and input-specific changes are broken up into indicators of efficiency change and technical change. This decomposition enables the researcher to quantify the contributions of each production factor to productivity change and its components. In this way, the drivers of productivity development are revealed. For illustration purposes the new approach is applied to a recent dataset of Polish dairy processing firms.     

Regional energy efficiency and its determinants in China during 2001–2010: a slacks-based measure and spatial econometric analysis

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are largely driven by fossil fuels. To reduce CO₂ emissions in China, it is important to determine influential factors of energy efficiency. This paper introduces a slacks-based measure window analysis approach to evaluate regional dynamic energy efficiency during 2001–2010, and then explores energy efficiency determinants by considering spatial effects, which is conducted based on spatial econometric models. The empirical results show that there exist evident spatial correlations between regional energy efficiencies in China. We find that, there exist evident disparities in cumulative effects of energy efficiency among the eastern, central and western areas. Interestingly, significant energy efficiency spatial spillovers can be clearly found between regions within the western area and across the eastern and western areas. It is found that, energy structure, energy price, railway transportation development and R&D stock are significant at national level. However, energy structure and railway transportation development are insignificant in the central and western areas, while energy price and R&D stock are insignificant in the eastern and central areas, respectively. Industrial structure and urbanization level are found to be insignificant at national level, but industrial structure is significant in the eastern and western areas, and urbanization level is significant in the central and western areas. Surprisingly, industrial structure and urbanization level are found to have positive impacts on energy efficiency in the western area. In addition to regional disparities and local conditions, policies making should take efficiency spatial spillovers into consideration. Several interesting policy implications are achieved.     

Minority owned banks and efficiency revisited

U.S. Government support for minority owned banks (MOBs) dates to the late 1960s. Evidence through the early 1990s suggested these banks are relatively inefficient. This study updates that research, using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and panel data from 2003 to 2014 on minority owned banks and other banks. It is, as far as we know, the first such study to exclude outliers in SFA estimation, while recovering the outliers for efficiency estimation. Initial results identify a disruption in cost efficiency during 2008, with statistically distinct regimes for 2003–2007 and 2009–2014. Including recovered observations alters the patterns of MOB efficiency in significant ways, and leads us to conclude that current MOB inefficiency is mainly limited to Asian American owned and Multi-racial and minority serving banks. Tests for the effects of government deposits under a U.S. Treasury program suggest these did not adversely effect efficiency among covered MOBs, but may have improved survival rates for those MOBs subsequent to the financial collapse.     

A superlative index number formula for the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index

The Malmquist and Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indexes are the two most widely used theoretical indexes for measuring productivity growth. Since these productivity indexes are defined by unknown distance functions, it is necessary to estimate the distance functions to compute them in principle. On the other hand, the Törnqvist productivity index is an empirical index number formula that is directly computable from the prices and quantities of the inputs and outputs alone. Caves et al. (1982) imply that the Malmquist index coincides with the Törnqvist index under profit maximizing behaviour and constant returns to scale technology. The purpose of the present paper is to point out that the Hicks-Moorsteen productivity index coincides with the Törnqvist productivity index under the same condition. We emphasize that the condition of constant returns to scale is indispensable for deriving the equivalence between the two indexes. Moreover, even when this condition is relaxed to the α returns to scale, the equivalence between the Hicks-Moorsteen and Törnqvist productivity indexes is shown to hold true.     

Productivity and efficiency at bank holding companies in the U.S.: a time-varying heterogeneity approach

This paper investigates the productivity and efficiency of large bank holding companies (BHCs) in the United States over the period 2004–2013, by estimating a translog stochastic distance frontier (SDF) model with time-varying heterogeneity. The main feature of this model is that a multi-factor structure is used to disentangle time-varying unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency. Our empirical results strongly suggest that unobserved heterogeneity is not only present in the U.S. banking industry, but also varies over time. Our results from the translog SDF model with time-varying heterogeneity show that the majority of large BHCs in the U.S. exhibit increasing returns to scale, a small percentage exhibit constant returns to scale, and an even smaller percentage exhibit decreasing returns to scale. Our results also show that on average the BHCs have experienced small positive or even negative technical change and productivity growth.     

Causal complexity for passengers’ intentions to re-ride

This study explores the relationship among service range, ride convenience, motivation to ride, satisfaction with facilities, service satisfaction, and intention to re-ride. The conveyance of interest is the Puyuma Express because its transport service last year carries out the overall electrified era in eastern Taiwan and its vast passenger capacity breaks the record over the past 128 years. The very high passenger capacity includes passengers who are on their first ride but, to a much greater extent, passengers who are re-riding. This fact motivates this research. This work involves a carefully designed questionnaire, and uses both web-based and paper-based questionnaire surveys to collect data. The number of valid samples thus obtained was 228. Multiple regression analysis (MRA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) are utilized to test proposed research framework. The two methods yield completely different results. MRA reveals that satisfaction with facilities, service satisfaction, ride convenience, and service range are together responsible for the strong intentions of passengers to re-ride. FsQCA identifies seven complex antecedent paths that are responsible for strong intentions to re-ride. The latter explains outcome more comprehensively than the former. The motivation to ride is an important condition in fsQCA and should not be eliminated as MRA suggests. This empirical study elucidates the causal complexity for passengers’ intentions to re-ride, and contributes to theory and practice in the domains of both transportation marketing and consumer behavior.     

Barriers to women entrepreneurship. Different methods,different results?

Building on research by Akehurst et al. (Serv Ind J 32:2489–2505, 2012), this study analysed internal and external factors in women entrepreneurship and linked these factors to the barriers that women face when starting businesses. To do so, two contrasting statistical techniques were used: PLS and QCA. After analysing results from each of these techniques, we observed that family duties and difficulties in obtaining financing (both internal and external) were the main factors related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs.