The Discriminating Beta: Prices and Capacity with Correlated Demands

Uniform customer‐class pricing can do much of the work of congestion‐based or time‐of‐day pricing in communication or wireless networks. A monopolist exploits differences in the stochastic characteristics of demands. If demands are correlated and the firm faces a capacity constraint, then it can set prices to reduce the variability of aggregate demand, thereby reducing the probability of excess demand and the associated service quality deterioration. Demands that covary negatively with aggregate demand are valuable to the firm in much the same way that securities that covary negatively with the market are valuable in a stock portfolio. Customer classes that exhibit low covariance with aggregate demand realize lower optimal prices. Optimal capacity is also affected by these covariances. As long as demands are not perfectly positively correlated, expected costs of joint production are less than expected costs of serving demands separately.     

Economic Development Indicators as Determinants of Medal Winning at the Sydney Olympics: An Extreme Bounds Analysis

This paper examines the variables that determine the performance of countries at the Olympic Games as measured by a weighted sum of the medals won at the Sydney 2000 Games. While previous studies have identified the importance of a country's economic size and the resources available to sport, this paper examines nine more variables including the number of athletes representing each nation and some development indicators. Based on 2310 regressions, both traditional and restricted extreme bounds analysis show that only two variables are robust: the number of athletes and national expenditure on health. Thus, the final model recognises four explanatory variables that include these two as well as GDP and population.     

Complementarity and the Measurement of Individual Risk Tradeoffs: Accounting for Quantity and Quality of Life Effects

This paper considers the factors responsible for differences with age in estimates of the wage compensation an individual requires to accept increased occupational fatality risk. We derive a relationship between the value of a statistical life (VSL) and the degree of complementarity between consumption and labor supplied when health status serves as a potential source of variation in this relationship. Our empirical analysis finds that variations in an individual’s health status or quality of life and anticipated longevity threats lead to significant differences in the estimated wage/risk tradeoffs. We describe how extensions to the specification of hedonic wage models, including measures for quality of life and anticipated longevity threats, help to explain the diversity in past studies examining how the estimated wage–risk tradeoff changes with age.      

Employee satisfaction trajectories and their effect on customer satisfaction and repatronage intentions

Does improving employee happiness affect customer outcomes? The current study attempts to answer this question by examining the impact of employee satisfaction trajectories (i.e., systematic changes in employee satisfaction) on customer outcomes. After accounting for employees’ initial satisfaction levels, the analyses demonstrate the importance of employee satisfaction trajectories for customer satisfaction and repatronage intentions, as well as identify customer-employee contact as a necessary conduit for their effect. From a macro perspective, employee satisfaction trajectories strongly impact customer satisfaction for companies with significant employee–customer interaction, but not for companies without such interaction. From a micro perspective, employee satisfaction trajectories influence customer repatronage intentions for frequent customers, but not for infrequent customers. These effects are robust to controlling for previous customer evaluations and recent employee evaluations. Overall, these findings extend the dominant view of examining static, employee satisfaction levels and offer important implications for the management of the organizational frontline.

     

‘Nothing gets done and no one knows why’: PCS and workplace control of Lean in HM Revenue and Customs

This article examines the willingness and capacity of public sector unions to mobilise action against changes in the labour process in order to maintain some measure of control at the point of production. Taking as an instance an extended dispute in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over the introduction and impact of Lean processes, it marshals evidence gathered from documentary sources, branch representatives and national lay full‐time officers to engage with the notion of a trade union bureaucracy. In taking a union with a left‐wing leadership and a section with 80 per cent membership with an expressed willingness to escalate industrial action, the article tests Hyman's 1979 contention that, rather than a concentration on a bureaucratic caste, a much better explanation for conservatism centres on the nature of social relations within the union that encompass a wider layer of representatives.     

OPPORTUNISTIC MATCHING IN THE HOUSING MARKET*

We construct a model of the housing market in which agents differ in their flow values while searching. Agents enter the market relaxed (with high flow values) but move to a desperate state (low flow values) at a Poisson rate if they have not already transacted. We characterize the equilibrium steady‐state matching pattern and the joint distribution of price and time to sale (for sellers). The expected price conditional on time to sale falls with time spent on the market, whereas the conditional variance of price first rises and then falls with time on the market.     

A framework to measure integrated risk

A framework underlying various models that measure the credit risk of a portfolio is extended in this paper to allow the integration of credit risk with a range of market risks using Monte Carlo simulation. A structural model is proposed that allows interest rates to be stochastic and provides closed-form expressions for the market value of a firm's equity and its probability of default. This model is embedded within the integrated framework and the general approach illustrated by measuring the risk of a foreign exchange forward when there is a significant probability of default by the counterparty. For this example moving from a market risk calculation to an integrated risk calculation reduces the expected future value of the instrument by an amount that could not be calculated using the common pre-settlement exposure technique for estimating the credit risk of a derivative.     

The legislative reform of union government 1979–94

This article outlines Conservative legislation on union government, documenting extensive regulation in place by 1994. It looks at the major objectives of government policy, including the twin themes of encouraging individualism and reducing union power. The degree of success achieved is examined and a framework in terms of competing rationalities outlined.     

中国自由贸易协定揭开隐藏的成本节约的秘密

当今的全球经济中,“中国价格”正在不断影响产品的生产区域和方式。中国具有丰富的劳动力资源以及低成本的生产结构。仅仅使用在其他国家生产产品的一小部分成本,就可以在中国生产出“中国制造”的产品。全世界的消费者当然希望能够获得更低的价格。