The “I quit” syndrome

Managements, unions, and arbitrators have been plagued by a very simple but long-standing problem involving what might be termed a routine human resource action. The problem stated simply is: When is a quit a quit? Where employees are represented by a bargaining agent, the company cannot always be sure that a “quit is a quit.” It is clear that employers who do not understand the “I quit” syndrome are in an uncertain position with respect to handling such problems. The authors have also discovered that unions do not understand the “I quit” syndrome either and at times go to arbitration with all of its attendant costs when the employee has actually “quit.” The purposes of this article are to study how arbitrators have ruled, to establish the principles involved in this little-known area of union/management relations and to provide parties to such cases with information to guide them. Arbitrators have upheld grievances and reversed company actions often enough that there is a need to clarify what is a “quit” as well as a need to clarify what the rights are of both parties under the collective bargaining agreement. The authors found that many managements use the “I quit” syndrome as a substitute for disciplinary action. It is clear from arbitral decisions that it is best from the company point of view to allow the disciplinary system to handle problem employees. The authors also found that reasonable resignations by employees were upheld by arbitrators. If employers carefully handle and document employee resignations, the resignations will stand. Further, it is clear that employers must issue clear policy statements concerning resignations; this includes avoiding resignations under duress. Finally, parties to collective bargaining agreements need contract language defining a quit.     

Meta‐Regression Analysis: A Quantitative Method of Literature Surveys

Abstract.  Pedagogically, literature reviews are instrumental. They summarize the large literature written on a particular topic, give coherence to the complex, often disparate, views expressed about an issue, and serve as a springboard for new ideas. However, literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus. Ironically, this is just as true for the empirical economic literature. To harmonize this dissonance, we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature. Meta‐regression analysis (MRA) is the regression analysis of regression analyses. MRA tends to objectify the review process. It studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon. MRA provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification. In this brief essay, we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature, MRA, and discuss its potential.     

From Experience: Demystify Creativity, Enhance Innovation

Creativity need not be a chance occurrence. The authors of this article believe there is a technology that facilitates creativity. It is a technology that can be learned and applied and managed. They describe the specific steps that they followed in helping a group of R&D professionals learn, apply, and manage the creative processes in the lab. It is a story of practical steps that dealt with the everyday realities of managing in a large corporation.     

THE IMPACT OF THE INSIDER TRADING SCANDAL ON THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S “HEARD ON THE STREET” COLUMN

We examine the impact of a scandal on the information content in the “Heard on the Street” column of the Wall Street Journal. Following the scandal in 1984, the column is found to have a reduced impact on stock prices for both buy and sell recommendations. However, the stock price response to information later published in the column before the publication day is smaller for the post-scandal period. This result suggests that after the scandal, editors and authors may have become more cautious in guarding against information leaks in the column. The scandal does not appear to have changed the impact of the column on trading volume.     

Stochastic innovation and product market organization

Summary This paper analyzes how different types of product market organization affect firms' R&D investments in a stochastic innovation framework. Product market competition determines payoffs to successful and unsuccessful firms. Restrictions on the research project success probability distribution are identified that yield an invariance result for expenditure per R&D project. The impact of the number of firms (n) on the amount of market R&D is shown to be sensitive to product market organization. For a major process innovation, firms undertake more R&D projects under Cournot product market competition than under Bertrand competition, forn sufficiently large. A numerical example is used to illustrate welfare tradeoffs.Tom Lyon, Herman Quirmbach, Ferenc Szidarovszky, Mark Walker and two anonymous referees gave us helpful comments and suggestions on prior versions of this paper. Lucy Atkinson provided expert research assistance on numerical computations. Special thanks to Ted Bergstrom who gave us valuable suggestions about the first proposition.     

The Shifting of FHA Discount Points: Actual Vs. Expectations

This study extends the earlier studies by Zerbst and Brueggeman (Z&B) and Colwell, Guntermann and Sirmans (CGS) with regard to the shifting of FHA discount points by the seller to the buyer in the form of a higher selling price. The study extends the earlier studies by reducing the estimation problems of the CGS model and further developing the Z&B model to incorporate expected discount points built into the asking price. The results presented indicate that 100% of the points are not being shifted. Reasons for the less-than-full shifting are given.