The enterprise response to industrial relations legislation

The authors report a study into the impact of the former Labour Government's industrial relations legislation, much of which remains on the statute book. They focus on joint health and safety committees and provide a useful starting point for further research concerned to develop a model of firm response to industrial relations legislation in any particular subject area.     

Two is not too many for monopoly

Many research contributions have investigated the identity of the leader in oligopolistic markets. As a general rule, this literature points to the leader being either the most efficient, the largest or the best informed player. However, there tend to be exceptions to this rule and it is unclear who will become the leader when firms at the same time are different in size, efficiency of production and/or the quality of the information they have. The present paper reveals insights regarding this last question. As such, it points to the elements that really matter to explain for leadership when firms are different from each other in more than one respect. It turns out that the most efficient firm becomes the leader, regardless whether or not its rival has invested in more capacity. While this result tends to be in line with the previous findings regarding the identity of the leader being the relatively more efficient firm, it contradicts the dominant firm scenario regarding price leadership. This is the result of enlarging the strategy space of the players, by including a buyout option. As such, the paper provides the foundations and hence a theoretical justification for price leadership out of a collusive motive. Since a priori the model also does not exclude a barometric price leadership outcome, it is appropriate to conclude that the buyout option truly is a collusive device strong enough to suppress other reasons for price leadership. Therefore, the arrangements observed in reality aiming at the implementation of buyout possibilities have to be watched very closely from an antitrust perspective.     

The contagion externality of a superspreading event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID‐19

Large in‐person gatherings of travelers who do not socially distance are classified as the “highest risk” for COVID‐19 spread by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From August 7–16, 2020, nearly 500,000 motorcycle enthusiasts converged on Sturgis, South Dakota for its annual rally in an environment without mask‐wearing requirements or other mitigating policies. This study is the first to explore this event's public health impacts. First, using anonymized cell phone data, we document that foot traffic at restaurants/bars, retail establishments, and entertainment venues rose substantially at event locations. Stay‐at‐home behavior among local residents fell. Second, using a synthetic control approach, we find that the COVID‐19 case rate increased substantially in Meade County and in the state of South Dakota in the month following the Rally. Finally, using a difference‐in‐differences model to assess nationwide spread, we find that following the Sturgis event, counties outside of South Dakota that contributed the highest inflows of rally attendees experienced a 6.4–12.5% increase in COVID‐19 cases relative to counties without inflows. Our findings highlight that local policy decisions assessing the tradeoff between local economic benefits and COVID‐19 health costs will not be socially optimal in the presence of large contagion externalities.     

Lower bounds of various discrepancies on combined designs

The foldover is a useful technique in construction of two-level factorial designs. A foldover design is the follow-up experiment generated by reversing the sign(s) of one or more factors in the initial design. The full design obtained by joining the runs in the foldover design to those of the initial design is called the combined design. In this paper, some lower bounds of various discrepancies of combined designs, such as centered L ₂-discrepancy, symmetric L ₂-discrepancy and wrap-around L ₂-discrepancy, under a general foldover plan are obtained, which can be used as a benchmark for searching optimal foldover plans. Our results provide a theoretical justification for optimal foldover plans in terms of uniformity criterion.     

Extending Business Education Beyond Traditional Boundaries: A Case Study in Negotiated Problem Resolution in a Remote Regional Indigenous Community in Australia

It is widely accepted that the concepts and practices of management can only be of benefit when they are anchored to the contextual architecture of people, processes, structures, and technologies. The challenge of establishing a bridging program for providing managerial competencies to Australian Indigenous people has become a serious one for multinational mining companies. As the wings of globalization interact with the long-ignored reality of marginalized local milieu, a need for an innovative management education system has become a major imperative compelling multinational mining companies to work collaboratively with the government, educational institutions, and Indigenous communities. The article outlines a specific decision-making dilemma in an Indigenous context, while explaining the imperatives for educators, who have the challenging task of instructing potential graduates how to manage the unique contextuality of rural Australian Aboriginal communities. The article presents implications for large-scale modern multinationals as they move to geographically remote regions of the world where large number of marginalized local people need to be drawn into the workforce not only as an act of a social responsibility imperative, but also as sound business pragmatism.     

纤维的供给与需求:涤纶和锦纶价值链的结构转变

石化产品高昂的价格推动化纤产业链结构转变 随着世界经济表现出明显的上升势头,经济学家们开始用一种悲观的态度密切关注全球原油的情况.与此同时,由于一系列情节原料标准和规定的出台,美国汽油的价格正承受着很大的压力,使得汽油和供应系统都受到了很大影响.但是,正如基础能源和汽油价格上涨一样,基本芳香族和化学原料价格也有所增长.涤纶和腈纶原料价格增长背后的玄机其实和所有市场化的商品一样--中国需求的增长和最近几年经济下滑阶段投资不足导致生产和物流对每一个细节的微小变化都十分敏感.这种状况看起来暂时不会缓解,当市场期待纤维价格出现缓和趋势的时候,生产应该遵从一定规划,否则毫无计划的储运损耗将继续造成不稳定的上升趋势,同时,纤维交易价格会继续削弱纤维和纺织领域的利润空间.     

Human resource competencies: An empirical assessment

With data from 12,689 associates of human resource (HR) professionals in 1500 businesses in 109 firms, this research represents an extensive assessment of HR competencies. It extends current HR theory and practice in two ways. First, it proposes specific competencies HR professionals may demonstrate to add value to a business. Second, it offers an empirical assessment of how these competencies affect the performance of HR professionals as perceived by their Associates. The results indicate that when HR professionals demonstrate competencies in business knowledge, delivery of HR, and management of change, then HR professionals are perceived by their associates as more effective. © 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

European Agricultural Biotechnology Preferences and Policy: Growth and Trade Implications

European Union policies effectively prohibit the production and consumption of genetically modified agricultural products. This paper examines the prohibition's effects on research and development, innovation, trade flows, and economic growth using a Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson trade model with a neo‐ Schumpeterian approach. Restrictive European Union policies on biotechnology production and consumption result in: an effective export subsidy of capital to the South; changing trade flows; North America being the dominant producer of biotechnology research and development; the South being a dominant producer of biotechnology products; and the European Union being the dominant producer of traditional agricultural products.     

Financing Public Investment through Foreign Aid: Consequences for Economic Growth and Welfare*

The paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanism through which foreign aid affects macroeconomic performance. The authors find that the long‐run impact of an aid program and the nature of the transitional dynamics it generates depend crucially on (i) the elasticity of substitution in production, (ii) whether the aid flow is tied to investment activity or not, (iii) how the recipient government chooses to react to the flow of external assistance, and (iv) whether the aid program is permanent or temporary. Structural characteristics of the recipient are important in determining the extent to which external assistance can aid growth and welfare.