The Temporary Staffing Industry and Workforce Development: Assessing a System of Local Experiments

Local workforce authorities in liberal market states are increasingly charged with mitigating long-term unemployment rooted in macroeconomic forces beyond their immediate control. In the US, and now elsewhere, these authorities have begun to establish partnerships with the temporary staffing industry as a means of extending their limited resources and improving job placement outcomes. Such partnerships are especially prominent in the US, where the Department of Labor has sanctioned policy experiments between local workforce authorities and the temporary staffing industry. In order to appraise these experiments, we present case-study evaluations of three diverse and highly touted employment schemes undertaken by American workforce authorities in conjunction with temporary staffing agencies. We find that under even the most favourable circumstances, the modest mechanisms of these programmes are unable to produce appreciable impacts within local labour markets.     

The evolution and performance of biotechnology regional systems of innovation

The paper maintains that biotechnology regions develop as complexsystems: they start with star scientists in research universities,generating knowledge spillovers, then move progressively towardsregional technology markets. In the process they attract venturecapital (or modify the behaviour of existing venture capitalfirms with the addition of biotechnology portfolios). The routinesof universities are also modified with the addition of intellectualproperty and technology transfer offices intervening as sellersin the newly created knowledge markets. The paper also considerswhether companies located in regional agglomerations grow fasterthan isolated ones, and whether companies spun-off from universitieshave a better performance than start-ups. The study is basedon about 90 Canadian-based publicly quoted biotechnology companies.     

Relational quality and innovative performance in R&D based science and technology firms

The knowledge‐based view of the firm implies that the innovative performance of R&D based organisations is strongly influenced by the quality of their relational capital. However, the quality of the employment relationship has been underplayed in this perspective. A model is developed that tests the quality of three dimensions of the employment relationship – the psychological contract, affective commitment and knowledge‐sharing behaviours – and their consequences for innovative performance amongst 429 R&D employees in six different science and technology based firms. Analysis found that affective commitment plays an important role in mediating psychological contract fulfilment on knowledge‐sharing behaviour, which in turn is strongly related to innovative performance. More specifically, fulfilment of the job design dimension of the psychological contract has an independent positive association with innovative performance, whereas fulfilment of the performance pay dimension is negatively associated.     

Welfare‐ranking ad valorem and specific tariffs under monopolistic competition

Abstract.  Actual trade and tariff policy prefers ad valorem tariffs to specific tariffs. Yet in this paper we show that, in a setting of monopolistic competition, realizing a given restriction on imports via a specific tariff would generate more consumer utility than obtaining the same restriction via an ad valorem tariff. JEL classification: F12     

The Entry Draft in the National Hockey League

A BSTRACT . The study shows that French Canadians continue to suffer from entry discrimination in the National Hockey League. At the time of the draft, the future offensive performance of French Canadian (and European) players is underestimated. The addition of various measures of robustness and defensive play makes no difference. This study also takes into account the location of the teams that drafted the players. It seems that American teams discriminate against French Canadian players, while English Canada teams discriminate against Europeans. The teams from the Province of Quebec did not appear to discriminate in favour of French Canadians.     

Replacement rates and labour market behaviour

This paper studies how the replacement rate, defined as the ratio of disposable income when unemployed to expected disposable income if beginning to work, affects individuals’ transition rate from unemployment. Linked register data, representing a local Finnish labour market in 1996, are analysed with piece-wise constant exponential hazard models. Results suggest that the effect of the replacement rate and, thus, of “unemployment traps”, is fairly modest. It does not seem to change with time spent unemployed. The impact on the transition rate into employment is lower than on the transition rate out of the labour force. Unemployment insurance recipients are found to be less sensitive to changes in the replacement rate than are unemployment assistance recipients.     

The effectiveness of randomized complete block design

This paper examines the relative efficiency of randomized complete block design as compared with that of completely randomized design. The most widely used measure of relative efficiency considers only the error variances of the two designs, therefore it does not provide the complete information concerning the sensitivity of the experiment in the final results. We study three alternative criteria related to the sensitivity issue and design planning consideration. The proposed relative measures employ the p -value, Scheffé confidence interval estimation and power of both designs. The distinct feature of this study is the focus on the estimated relative efficiency measures and their relation with the coefficient of partial determination between responses and block effects, given that treatment effects are present in the models. Furthermore, informative visual representations and numerical assessments of various aspects of their properties are also presented.     

To Be or Not Be …'Too Late': The Case of the Belgian Semi-annual Earnings Announcements

In this study, we demonstrate that the average reporting lag of Belgian interim reports is large but has decreased slightly over the years 1991–1998. Contrary to US findings, we show that the disclosure of interim reports containing bad (good) news is not systematically delayed (speeded up). Interim reports are value relevant since good (bad) news, according to a naïve earnings expectations model, induces positive (negative) abnormal returns. The 'short term' timeliness of the information disclosure, however, seems not to matter at all.