Onboarding: delivering on the promise

The nursing workforce continues to age and exit the workplace. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies indicate as many as 40% will retire or are considering retirement. Fewer qualified graduates are in place to replace aging baby boomers, leading to a knowledge and skills gap as well as a numbers gap. Globalization of the nursing workforce has increased competition for all employers to find, hire, and retain good employees.     

Unemployment,wages and pensions

Empirical evidence has shown the existence of a negative relationship between the rates of unemployment and real wages. If pensions are computed according to the wages that workers have contributed, then the unemployment rates during working life may also influence the pensions to which they are entitled. Using data from 2005 to 2012 for the Spanish social security system, we estimate that the unemployment elasticity of real pension is ?0.135. A 1% increase in unemployment rate is associated with a reduction in pension equal to 0.135%. In ‘normal times’, this value could be considered modest, but the Great Recession has increased dramatically the rate of unemployment. In 2012, the rate of unemployment in Spain had increased to 25.7% and in 2015, it had diminished to 20.9%. It is estimated that unemployment rate will not be returned to figures existing before the crisis until middle of the next decade. Moreover, the current reforms in social security systems could interact with the future effects of the current rates of unemployment and cause future pensions to be significantly lower than those estimated by individuals. The economic welfare of the future cohorts of retirees would then be significantly worsened.     

Why do trade costs vary?

As tariffs have fallen, it is apparent that trade costs are a significant obstacle to international trade and that they vary from country to country. The gap between the cif and fob value of a trade flow is a useful measure of aggregate trade costs, but only if the measure is based on a consistent volume of trade; mirror statistics are unsuitable. Using high quality Australian import data disaggregated at the HS 6-digit level, we find large country-by-country variations in trade costs. Distance, weight and size account for part of the variation in trade costs. Indicators of institutional quality pick up some of the variation in trade costs, but the relationship is not uniform across mode of transport and commodities; exporting countries’ institutional quality is more strongly related to trade costs for air freight than sea freight, and the relationship is commodity-specific and strongest for manufactured goods. Country-specific characteristics influencing trade costs provide a link between institutions and economic development.     

Job preferences of students and new graduates in nursing

This article investigates the preferences of student and newly graduated nurses for pecuniary and nonpecuniary aspects of nursing jobs. It is the first study applying methods based on discrete choice experiments to a developed country nursing workforce. It is also the first to focus on the transition through university training and into work. This is particularly important as junior nurses have the lowest retention levels in the profession. We sample 526 individuals from nursing programmes in two Australian universities. Flexible and newly developed models combining heteroscedasticity with unobserved heterogeneity in scale and preference weights are estimated. Overall, salary remains the most important feature in increasing the probability that a job will be selected. ‘Supportive management/staff’ and ‘quality of care’ follow as the most important attributes from a list of 11 nonpecuniary characteristics. However, the subset of new graduates rank ‘supportive management/staff’ above salary increases, emphasizing the importance of a supportive workplace in the transition from university to the workplace. We find substantial preference heterogeneity and some attributes, such as the opportunity for clinical rotations, are found to be attractive to some nurses while seen as negative by others. Nursing retention could be improved by designing different employment packages to appeal to these different tastes.     

Sanac Inc.: From ABC to time-driven ABC (TDABC) – An instructional case

This case deals with the decision of Sanac Inc., a Belgian wholesale company, on whether to proceed with the implementation of an activity-based costing (ABC) system or switch to time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC). As a business consultant, you are hired to decide about the appropriate costing method. Your task is to decide which system the company should implement, given the desire of the president of the company to calculate profitability at the order and the customer level.