Research note and communication. The impact of environmental uncertainty on long-range planning practices of the U.S. savings and loan industry

This paper examines the effects of extreme degrees of environmental uncertainty on strategic planning in the U.S. Savings and Loan industry. Results suggest that top management's interpretation of the environment is a strong moderator of the link between environmental uncertainty and the extent of long-range planning.     

Work–family conflict/family–work conflict,job stress,burnout and intention to leave in the hotel industry in Quebec (Canada): moderating role of need for family friendly practices as “resource passageways”

Abstract

This study examines how the need for family friendly practices contribute in increasing the effects of work–family conflict (WFC) and family–work conflict (FWC) on job stress, burnout, and intention to leave in the hotel industry in Quebce (258 staff). The essential results indicate that the perception of a need for childcare moderates the relationship between FWC, job stress, and burnout. Also, employees wanting to have a compressed workweek and part time measures are exposed to more stress related to WFC/FWC. Finally, the four measures can constitute resources passageways in order to reduce the work-family interference, job stress, burnout and therefore the intention to leave. Theoretically, he results extend this line of theorizing by highlighting the importance of subjective needs for family friendly policies, as ‘resource caravan passageways’, in the work–family interface and job outcome processes. The perception of a desire or need for these measures offers a new understanding of these practices. Practically, identifying who is more sensitive to family friendly measures would enable organizations or employers to allocate supportive resources more adequately by targeting those employees who are most in need of such practices.     

The effects of labor supply shocks on labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Since September 2000, as a result of mobility restrictions, the supply of Palestinian workers competing for local jobs in the West Bank has increased by about fifty percent. This paper takes advantage of this unique natural experiment to study the effects of labor supply shocks on labor market outcomes. Using quarterly information on wages and employment in each city in the West Bank, the paper analyzes the short-run adjustment of labor markets to a large inflow of workers separately from the effects of political instability. The results suggest that low-skilled wages are adversely affected by an increase in the supply of low- and high-skilled workers, while high-skilled wages are only weakly negatively related to an increase in their own supply. This is consistent with a scenario in which high-skilled workers compete for low-skilled jobs, pushing the low-skilled into unemployment. This latter hypothesis is confirmed by analyzing the effects of changes in labor supply on unemployment.     

Small firms,bigger changes: health insurance coverage take-up rates in small firms after the ACA

Measuring the impact of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) on employer-sponsored health insurance is essential in an era of constant changes to health policy. Using data from the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Survey, we focus on firms with fewer than 50 employees in order to isolate the effect of the ACA on small firms. We utilize a differences‐in‐differences approach with a time fixed effect structure to provide analysis for a treatment group of small firms and a control group of large firms. After excluding firms with grandfathered plans, we find that the ACA provisions reduced health insurance coverage take-up rates in small firms by 1.96 to 2.67 percentage points (compared to large firms).     

Do corporations overinvest？ Evidence from Tunisia

The authors study the positive relationship existing between internal net worth and investment. This relationship has been interpreted in the financial literature as evidence showing that the management overinvests the free cash flow available to them in poorly-performing, sub-optimal investment projects. In this paper, the authors empirically tackle this problem in the case of the manufacturing and industrial Tunisian corporations and show that our empirical regularities do not stand for this interpretation. The authors conversely prove that overinvestment does not seem to occur on the basis of the grouping results. Hereby, there do not corroborate the empirical regularities documented in Lamont （1997）.     

Energy Price Shocks and Economic Activity in Texas Cities

It is not known how exogenous shocks in oil price impact city economies. This study examines unemployment rates in Texas cities in relation to oil price movements during the period 1995–2008. We find that unemployment in the bigger cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston, is not related to oil prices in a significant way when compared to unemployment in the smaller border cites, especially in Laredo. Although the Texas economy has become more diversified and less vulnerable to oil price movements in the last two decades, smaller border cities still experience the effect of oil price shocks, possibly through the neighboring economy of Mexico. Our data indicate significant variations in the unemployment rate in Laredo due to movements in oil price. We observe improvements in the unemployment rates in Laredo as oil price increases.     

Armed conflict and birth weight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada

No previous study has estimated the effect of intrauterine exposure to armed conflict on pregnancy outcomes. Drawing on data from the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, which was conducted approximately 4 years after the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada, we find that an additional conflict-related fatality 9–6 months before birth is associated with a modest increase in the probability of having a child who weighed less than 2500 g. There is also evidence, albeit less consistent, of a positive relationship between fatalities in late pregnancy and low birth weight.     

Strong equilibrium in cost sharing connection games

We study network games in which each player wishes to connect his source and sink, and the cost of each edge is shared among its users either equally (in Fair Connection Games—FCG's) or arbitrarily (in General Connection Games—GCG's). We study the existence and quality of strong equilibria (SE)—strategy profiles from which no coalition can improve the cost of each of its members—in these settings. We show that SE always exist in the following games: (1) Single source and sink FCG's and GCG's. (2) Single source multiple sinks FCG's and GCG's on series parallel graphs. (3) Multi source and sink FCG's on extension parallel graphs. As for the quality of the SE, in any FCG with n players, the cost of any SE is bounded by H(n) (i.e., the harmonic sum), contrasted with the Θ(n) price of anarchy. For any GCG, any SE is optimal.