Alienation in corporate America: Fact or fable?

Using NORC annual survey data, the authors selected 21 questions describing respondent attitudes toward job, life in general, and financial status. Respondents were catigorized as management, white collar, blue collar, and those not affiliated with business organizations. Attitudes were compared across the four occupational groups. Little dissatisfaction was found in any but the blue collar group. Management as a group, and men as well as women managers showed high levels of satisfaction, with few significant differences found in responses by men and women. This study does not support the earlier finding of widespread alienation in business firms.Charles B. Sannders is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Connecticut. He has written numerous articles which have been published in various management journals.Hugh M. O'Neill and Oscar W. Jensen are Assistant Professors of Business Administration at the University of Connecticut and the Fairfield University, respectively. Both have written several articles, published in management journals.     

Scale-independent North-South trade effects on the technological-knowledge bias and on wage inequality

This paper develops a general equilibrium endogenous growth model that highlights the scale-independent mechanisms through which trade-induced North-South technological-knowledge diffusion affects the technological-knowledge bias and, thus, the paths of intra-country wage inequality. In contrast with the market-size effect, stressed in the previous literature on skill-biased technological change, the operation of the emphasized price channel following openness predicts, in line with the recent trends in developed and developing countries, an increasing skilled technological-knowledge bias, which, in turn, rises wage inequality in favor of skilled labor.     

The importance of seasonal variability and tactical responses to risk on estimating the economic benefits of integrated weed management

Seasonal variability is an important source of risk faced by farmers and, regardless of an individual's attitude to risk, there are options to tactically adjust production strategies as the outcomes of risk become known. The objective of this article is to measure the economic benefits of alternative approaches to managing weeds, one of the most serious production problems in Australian cropping systems. A bioeconomic model that combines weed biology, crop growth and economics is developed to value the effects of seasonal variability and the role of tactical responses and sequential decision making in determining an optimal integrated weed management strategy. This shows that there are substantial differences in the measured long‐term benefits from deterministic and stochastic simulations. It is concluded that, for research evaluation of technologies that involve complex biological and dynamic systems, ignoring the impacts of seasonal variability, responses to risk and sequential decision making can lead to an incorrect estimate of the economic benefits of a technology. In this case study of optimal weed management strategies in Australia, the size of the error is high.     

Real options with unknown-date events

The real options literature has provided new insights on how to manage irreversible capital investments whose payoffs are uncertain. Two of the most important predictions from such theory are: (i) greater risk delays a firm’s investment timing, and (ii) greater risk increases the option value of waiting. This paper challenges such conclusions in a setting in which the relevant random variable is the arrival time of an unfavorable event. In particular, we model situations in which a firm must choose the time at which to invest in a project whose profit grows at a known rate until a random date is reached and decays thereafter, which may be representative of stochastic product or industry life cycles. This is a novel framework in which a firm can update its beliefs about the profitability of an investment opportunity by simply waiting to invest. Thus, a wait-and-see approach allows the firm to capitalize on favorable market evolutions and avoid adverse ones to some extent. Our framework is simple and does not require using stochastic calculus, which allows for an economic interpretation of optimal investment policies for the cases of one-time and sequential investments.     

中国房地产业重见曙光

2007年4季度以来，由于政府的严厉措施、尤其是货币供应的收紧，大多数城市的住房成交量有所下降。市场对于2008年过度紧缩的忧虑导致了近几个月房地产股的大跌。然而，近期的迹象表明，住房部门受到的约束正在放松。这种情况下，上海市场开始回暖，出现了量价齐升的局面。     

Henry George and His Philosophy: He Sought Equality of Opportunity to Use the Earth's Resources as Well as the End of Land Monopoly

Abstract . The George scholars today appear to be interesting the academic community in re-evaluating Henry George and his ideas. George, the 19th century American economist and social philosopher, dedicated himself to ending poverty by giving everyone equal access to the earth and its resources. He believed that land monopoly could be ended by taking the economic rent of all land and natural resources to meet the costs of government in lieu of taxes on labor and capital. George's writings revived interest in the ethos of the early settlers a time when sight was being lost of Pioneer America's contribution to the world's march toward freedom.     

FDA Regulation of Product Risk and Its Impact Upon Young Biomedical Firms

Data gathered on 62 products from 26 biomedical firms founded in Massachusetts between 1968 and 1975 show a positive relationship between the level of technological sophistication of a firm's products and the risk associated with the use of those products. Oscar Hauptman and Edward Roberts report the results of their study of the impact of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval process on these firms' resources and time. They found that young firms dealing with medical devices and pharmaceuticals were more sensitive to this regulatory process than those producing medical auxiliary products. Enactment of the 1976 FDA regulations amendment affecting medical devices apparently created a precarious environment for the marketing of new products. The amendment was found to have significant impact beyond its target product area, medical devices and supplies. It also challenged the management of firms producing drugs and Pharmaceuticals.     

The impact of public regulation on housing quality and on structural changes

This paper represents a theoretical investigation of profit maximizing behavior of a landlord under rent control. The situation envisioned is one that the landlord owns, free and clear, either two housing units ready to merge or one large one ready to convert into two small ones; in each case the units are already in place, such that capital costs are sunk and treated as bygones. Each unit has a technology of production of housing services with a fixed input of quantity of space (shelter) and a variable input of quality, that is affected by physical ageing (non-controllable) and by maintenance (controllable). At starting time t₀, we have a state of quality and a historical state of initial quality Q?_i, at the time the building was built, with the implicit constraint that Q_i(t) < Q?_i, for all t> t₀. The analysis addresses the general question of housing structural changes—conversion or merger—and how these changes are being accelerated under the threat of rent control.     

The social cost of through traffic: Contribution to the suburban-central city exploitation thesis

This paper deals with the conflict between local and through traffic when allocating land for transportation at the expense of residential consumption. The model developed in this paper gives the optimal allocation of land between both uses, via Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, and shows the impact of through traffic on the urban structure, on local transportation costs and on the cost of housing supply. The cost functionals are used to measure the total burden to the inner city and a connection is made to the ongoing discussion of the ‘exploitation’ thesis.