A city of trades: Spanish and Italian immigrants in late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires,Argentina

The city of Buenos Aires in the 1890s is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers accounted for less than one-third of the labour force. In this paper, we look at the labour market performance of Argentineans vis-à-vis the largest two immigrant groups, Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed higher wages, but workers specialised in particular occupations by nationality. Immigrants clustered in occupations with lower salaries. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians in earnings. Ethnic networks facilitated the integration of immigrants into the host society and played a role in the occupation selection of immigrants. Our results suggest that Italian prosperity in Buenos Aires was not based on superior earnings or skills but on older and powerful networks.     

Combining “real effort” with induced effort costs: the ball-catching task

We introduce the “ball-catching task”, a novel computerized task, which combines a tangible action (“catching balls”) with induced material cost of effort. The central feature of the ball-catching task is that it allows researchers to manipulate the cost of effort function as well as the production function, which permits quantitative predictions on effort provision. In an experiment with piece-rate incentives we find that the comparative static and the point predictions on effort provision are remarkably accurate. We also present experimental findings from three classic experiments, namely, team production, gift exchange and tournament, using the task. All of the results are closely in line with the stylized facts from experiments using purely induced values. We conclude that the ball-catching task combines the advantages of real effort tasks with the use of induced values, which is useful for theory-testing purposes as well as for applications.     

Offshoring and the Elasticity of Labour Demand

This paper examines the impact of offshoring on labour demand and labour demand elasticities for a sample of 40 countries over the period 1995–2009 using the World Input–output Database (WIOD). Estimating the conditional labour demand model we find that offshoring impacts negatively labour demand, and in particular the demand for low- and medium-educated labour, with some evidence indicating that offshoring has tended to increase labour demand elasticities. Of particular interest are results for the subsamples of developed and developing countries. Most notably, we find that the negative effects of offshoring in developed countries are largest for high-educated labour, an outcome which we show is due to the offshoring of developed countries with other developed countries.     

Employee share ownership in a unionised duopoly

Profit sharing schemes have been analysed assuming Cournot competition and decentralised wage negotiations, and it has been found that firms share profits in equilibrium. This paper analyses a different remuneration system: employee share ownership. We find that whether firms choose to share ownership or not depends on both the type of competition in the product market and the way in which workers organise to negotiate wages. If wage setting is decentralised, under duopolistic Cournot competition both firms share ownership. If wage setting is centralised, only one firm shares ownership if the degree to which goods are substitutes takes an intermediate value; otherwise, the two firms share ownership. In this case, if the union sets the same wage for all workers neither firm shares ownership. Therefore, centralised wage setting discourages share ownership. Finally, under Bertrand competition neither firm shares ownership regardless of how workers are organised to negotiate wages.     

Activity of the Russian monetary and banking sector in conditions of adverse external factors of 2014–2015 affecting the economy

This article represents a discussion on how the adverse external factors of 2014–2015 affected the banking system and financial conditions of the real economy sector. The analysis is based on the data of bank accounting statements. The work also uses statistical data on the turnover and concentration obtained by aggregating the accounting statements available online on the Russian Central Bank’s official website.     

The role of the workplace in ethnic wage differentials

Using linked employer–employee data for Britain, we examine ethnic wage differentials among full-time employees. We find substantial ethnic segregation across workplaces. However, this inter-workplace segregation does not contribute to the aggregate wage penalty in Britain. Instead, most of the ethnic wage gap exists within the workplace, between observationally-equivalent co-workers. Lower pay satisfaction and higher levels of skill mismatch among ethnic minority workers are consistent with discrimination in wage-setting on the part of employers. The presence of recognized trade unions and the use of job evaluation schemes within the workplace are associated with a smaller ethnic wage gap. These findings indicate that more attention should be placed on ensuring fairness in wage determination.     

The future of technology and marketing: a multidisciplinary perspective

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science -     

Semitractability of optimal stopping problems via a weighted stochastic mesh algorithm

In this paper, we propose a Weighted Stochastic Mesh (WSM) algorithm for approximating the value of discrete‐ and continuous‐time optimal stopping problems. In this context, we consider tractability of such problems via a useful notion of semitractability and the introduction of a tractability index for a particular numerical solution algorithm. It is shown that in the discrete‐time case the WSM algorithm leads to semitractability of the corresponding optimal stopping problem in the sense that its complexity is bounded in order by with being the dimension of the underlying Markov chain. Furthermore, we study the WSM approach in the context of continuous‐time optimal stopping problems and derive the corresponding complexity bounds. Although we cannot prove semitractability in this case, our bounds turn out to be the tightest ones among the complexity bounds known in the literature. We illustrate our theoretical findings by a numerical example.     

Packaging,business, and society

The objective of this paper is to present the impact of packaging material on sustainability. The article analyzes the size of the problem that arises from the use of packaging and the effect of various types of packaging material on waste management. The data on solid waste from the United States and the European Union reinforce that the problem is not only huge but also requires immediate attention. The research found that paying attention to packaging has the potential to improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Reducing packaging in supply chains improves profitability for organizations, reduces environmental impact, and helps societies in lowering the cost of disposal. The cost of packaging materials and the costs of disposal and landfill, are borne by the end consumers. Suggested approaches to minimizing the generation of packaging waste include concerted efforts for reducing packaging throughout supply chains where elimination of packaging is not feasible, the formation of a global policy on the use and disposal of packaging materials, and educating consumers.