The judicious use and management of humor in the workplace

Everybody loves humor. In the workplace, it can provide such benefits as stress relief, team unification, employee motivation, idea generation, and frustration diffusion through venting. Despite these positives, it should be stressed that humor in this context has downsides, as well. For example, humor can distract us from the job at hand, hurt our credibility, or cause offense in increasingly diverse work settings. In the midst of this complicated situation stand managers, who occupy a position of responsibility for both the good and bad effects of humor in the workplace. It is the intention of this article to use existing humor theory and a simple model to generate a more analytical understanding of humorous interaction. Suggestions are then offered as to how to use humor and manage the use of humor in such a way as to maximize its benefits, while minimizing its dangers.     

评估“正确”的风险

正董事会会议中经常会传来这样的声音:我们所要冒的险值得吗?尤其是在战略对话中,这个问题看似简单、常见,但答案却不简单无论管理层和董事会是否意识到,风险隐藏于任何组织的战略里,潜伏在你所做的一切决定中:拓展新市场;引进新产品;购买生产线;筹建新厂房;投资未知的研发活动等。一个公司的战略方向和执行战略方向的能力是这次冒险之旅能否成功的关键。因此,风险评估应该是战略制定过程中不可或缺的一部分。     

Price transmission and volatility spillovers in Asian rice markets: Evidence from MGARCH and panel GARCH models

ABSTRACT

This article examines world rice price transmission and volatility spillovers across six major Asian rice markets over the period 2005-13. In addition to the conventional GARCH models, we use a panel GARCH framework to estimate the spillover effects along with the consideration of heterogeneity and interdependence among countries. Empirical results suggest that changes in the world rice price affected not only the price levels of domestic rice markets but also their conditional variances. Moreover, interdependence across rice markets contributed to a strong spillover of a price shock in one country to another within the region.     

Relationships between family communication and consumer activities of adolescents: An exploratory study

This study uses a multitrait, multi-informant approach to examine the relationships between family communication and adolescent involvement in consumer activity using two measures of family communication, one that measures the general quality of communication between parents and adolescents, and another that measures the frequency of consumption-specific communication between parents and adolescents. In addition, the perceptions of mothers, fathers, and adolescents are used in the analysis. Findings show that the two communication constructs are conceptually distinct. Positive relationships between the communication constructs and adolescents’ consumer activities are found; however, the presence of significant relationships depends on which individual family members’ or family member dyads’ perceptions are used in the analysis. On the basis of the findings, several suggestions for future research are discussed. Kay M. Palan is an assistant professor of marketing at the College of Business at Iowa State University. The received her Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. Her research interests include consumer decision-making, adolescent influence in family decision-making, gender effects on consumption and advertising, and philosophy-of-science issues. Her work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, andPsychology & Marketing.     

Delaying the Normal and Early Retirement Ages in Spain: Behavioural and Welfare Consequences for Employed and Unemployed Workers

In this paper, we explore the links between pension reform, early retirement, and the use of unemployment as an alternative pathway to retirement. We use a dynamic rational expectations model to analyze the search and retirement behaviour of employed and unemployed workers aged 50 or over. The model is calibrated to reproduce the main reemployment and retirement patterns observed between 2002 and 2008 in Spain. It is subsequently used to analyze the effects of the 2011 pension reform in Spain, characterized by 2-year delays in both the early and the normal retirement ages. We find that this reform generates large increases in labour supply and sizable cuts in pension costs, but these are achieved at the expense of very large welfare losses, especially among unemployed workers. As an alternative, we propose leaving the early retirement age unchanged, but penalizing the minimum pension (reducing its generosity in parallel to the cuts imposed on individual pension benefits, and making it more actuarially fair with age). This alternative reform strikes a better balance between individual welfare and labour supply stimulus.     

Looking for Europe from the outside

This essay looks at the nature of the new Europe and outlines a number of future trends, focusing on Europe's role in world politics as seen from an American perspective.     

Inference for large financial systems

We treat the parameter estimation problem for mean‐field models of large interacting financial systems such as the banking system and a pool of assets held by an institution or backing a security. We develop an asymptotic inference approach that addresses the scale and complexity of such systems. Harnessing the weak convergence results developed for mean‐field financial systems in the literature, we construct an approximate likelihood for large systems. The approximate likelihood has a conditionally Gaussian structure, enabling us to design an efficient numerical method for its evaluation. We provide a representation of the corresponding approximate estimator in terms of a weighted least‐squares estimator, and use it to analyze the large‐system and large‐sample behavior of the estimator. Numerical results for a mean‐field model of systemic financial risk highlight the efficiency and accuracy of our estimator.     

Hercules and Penrose

Penrose's The Theory of the Growth of the Firm is one of mostimportant modern contributions to the theory of the firm. Inthis paper we are concerned with her analysis of the HerculesPowder Company published separately in Business History Review.The Hercules paper is important because it provides a uniquecase analysis of Penrosean growth processes, and indeed becausethere is reason to believe that it may have had a strong influenceon the development of the book itself. Since Hercules is stilloperating today, it also constitutes an interesting living laboratorythat may allow us to explore whether it has continued to pursuePenrosean growth processes over the intervening years.