Employment protection and productivity: evidence from firm-level panel data in Japan

Recent developments in the literature on Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) have revealed that changing the stringency of employment protection can lead to extensive consequences outside the labour market, by affecting firms’ production decisions or workers’ commitment levels. This article provides the first empirical evaluation of the comprehensive effect of restrictions on firing employees in Japan, by exploiting the variations in court decisions. We find that judgements lenient to workers significantly reduce firms’ total-factor productivity growth rate. The effect on capital is mixed and inconclusive, although we obtain modest evidence that an increase in firing costs induces a negative scale effect on capital inputs.     

Towards Reducing the Harm: Workplace Bullying as Workplace Corruption—A Critical Review

Workplace bullying and workplace corruption are both disturbing workplace phenomena. However, despite considerable research into both, there remains insufficient understanding of either, including scant recognition that, at times, they may intersect. A critical review of what have been hitherto quite separate literatures is undertaken for the purpose of developing a research agenda that recognises the potential areas of overlap. Rather than isolating and distinguishing the two constructs, or attempting to link or explain their complex causes, secondary analysis of the respective literatures is critically undertaken to showcase the possible overlaps that can exist. What is presented is evidence from the literature that, sometimes, acts of workplace bullying are also acts of corruption, and have rarely been recognised as such previously. Recognising this overlap is intended to encourage the emergence of a new, and much needed, research agenda. Increased understanding of both these harmful workplace phenomena can then emerge to make our workplaces safer—for employees, employers, and the organisations that employ them.     

University education in future studies— a Mark III critique: Part I

In 1970 an initial survey was made of futures courses at university level based on forty courses that could be located in the United States and Canada (Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 2: 133–148 [1970]. This was replicated during 1970–1972 on approximately 200 North American courses and reported changes in the field at the Third World Future Research Conference in Bucharest, September 1972 (Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change, 4:387–407 [1973]). A third iteration was funded by the World Institute Council and published in abstracted form with their permission here. The conclusions to be drawn from some six years of analysis of such courses, and drawn especially from the specifics of the 300 courses in the third iteration, can be lumped under five main headings: (1) All disciplines are to some degree finally alerted to the future implications of both their research and their teaching. (2) There remains still much “froth and nonsense” in futures courses. How to control this and encourage lively creativity is a complex problem–especially since the intellectual image of futurism today is not that high! (3) There appears to be no reliable sociocultural change theory backing future studies and there is precious little solid theory in the field itself–offset by some progress in methodology. (4) Despite these strictures, if all future-oriented courses in American/Canadian universities were lumped together (future studies per se; technology forecasting/assessment; policy sciences; peace studies; demography; environmental/ecology courses; general systems theory/system analysis/ system dynamics; mathematical modelling and game theory; eschatology; utopian literature and science fiction; even black studies and women's courses) the total might approach 5000 and it is still growing, as is popular and academic understanding of the necessity “to plan ahead” in this period of human malaise. (5) Informal education of varied worth, from free swinging communes to middle management cram courses conducted by think-tanks, may turn out to be more useful in future- oriented advanced education than that which takes place in formal “walled” traditional institutions.     

Fixed versus flexible election terms: explaining innovation in the timing of Canada’s election cycle

This paper argues that there is an efficiency gain underlying the recent adoption of legislation calling for a fixed 4-year governing term by the federal and most provincial governments in Canada. The efficiency gain arises from foreclosing an externality produced by the Canadian constitutional provision that sets a maximum length for a legislative term (5 years) while allowing the governing party (through the Governor General) to dissolve the House early. Because the opportunistic use of surprise can improve the governing party’s probability of winning, strategic choice can lead to elections being held at times that most disadvantage the incumbent’s rivals. Evidence from Canada is introduced suggesting that federal elections became less predictable through successive reductions in the campaign time given to competitors, thus raising the cost of this externality. The same reasoning suggests that the party most likely to propose this legislative innovation will be the party in opposition rather than in power and/or the new leader of an established party facing loss in the upcoming election. By fulfilling the fixed term even when it could benefit by calling the election early, the party establishes a precedent that raises the political cost to others of cancelling the fixed term legislation.     

R&D Activities In a Peripheral Region: an Empirical Study with Special Reference to the North East Region of the UK

This study examines the incidence of research and development (R&D) activities, type of R&D undertaken and the incidence of R&D co-operation among manufacturing firms located in a key urban area of the North East England, a peripheral region of the UK. We have found that over 62% of manufacturing firms in this urban growth area to be R&D active, suggesting that R&D active firms tend to be concentrated in urban area s in a peripheral region, as it is the case in the leading regions. However, the incidence of R&D co-operation was found to be relatively low among R&D active firms. It is also found that the key determinants of undertaking R&D to be the existence of a core competence/product and exporting activities. These findings might be of interest to policy makers promoting economic growth via firm’s R&D activities.     

Designs for estimating an extremal point of quadratic regression models in a hyperball

This paper is devoted to studying optimal designs for estimating an extremal point of a multivariate quadratic regression model in the unit hyperball. The problem of estimating an extremal point is reduced to that of estimating certain parameters of a corresponding nonlinear (in parameters) regression model. For this reduced problem truncated locally D-optimal designs are found in an explicit form. The result is a generalization of the results of Fedorov and Müller (1997) for onedimensional quadratic regression function in the unit segment. Received February 2002     

Commonalities in the order book

This paper uses data from one of the most important European stock markets and shows that, in line with predictions from theoretical market microstructure, a small number of latent factors captures most of the variation in stock specific order books. We show that these order book commonalities are much stronger than liquidity commonality across stocks. The result that bid and ask side as well as the visible and hidden parts of the order book exhibit quite specific dynamics is interpreted as evidence that open order book markets attract a heterogeneous trader population in terms of asset valuations and impatience. Quantifying the informational content of the extracted factors with respect to the evolution of the asset price, we find that the factor information shares are highest (about 10%) for less frequently traded stocks. We also show that the informational content of hidden orders is limited.

Social networks,mass media and public opinions

Our opinions and ideas are shaped by what our friends said and what we read or watched on mass media. In this paper, we propose a concise and analyzable model to study the effects of mass media modeled as an applied external field, and social networks on public opinions based on the multi-state voter model, and a tuned parameter can control the relative intensity of the effects of mass media and social networks. We consider a generalized scenario where there exist committed or stubborn agents in the networks whose opinions are not affected by their friends or mass media. We find that the fraction of each opinion will converge to a value which only relates to the fractions and degrees of stubborn agents, and the relative intensity between media and network effects. The final agents with media opinion, except the stubborn agents, also include the increment produced by the internal impact of social networks and that caused by the external impact of media. Interestingly the second increment is composed of two parts, one is from the media effect when there are no interactions between agents and the other is from the influence of media on agent opinions caused by social network structure. That is the interactions among agents within social networks can amplify media influence. Finally we also discuss several extensions to the dynamics model which consider more realistic scenarios.