Characterization of the Row Geometric Mean Ranking with a Group Consensus Axiom

An axiomatic approach is applied to the problem of extracting a ranking of the alternatives from a pairwise comparison ratio matrix. The ordering induced by row geometric mean method is proved to be uniquely determined by three independent axioms, anonymity (independence of the labelling of alternatives), responsiveness (a kind of monotonicity property) and aggregation invariance, which requires the preservation of group consensus, that is, the pairwise ranking between two alternatives should remain unchanged if unanimous individual preferences are combined by geometric mean.     

Fixed-Term Contracts and Labor Market Duality in France

The French labor market is segmented between permanent and temporary workers. The second category has difficulty in getting an open-ended contract. This paper aims at depicting workers on short-term contracts and shows the consequences on their professional career are negative and significant. A large part of the wage gap between permanent and temporary workers remains unexplained by observable characteristics. They receive less on-the-job training and their likelihood of obtaining a stable job is lower than 30% after 1 year and a half. They have also a higher probability of being the adjustment variable in case of an economic negative shock. These different findings show the importance of using public policies to encourage transitions from fixed-term to permanent employment and reducing labor-market duality.     

Social media affordances in entry‐level employees’ socialization: employee agency in the management of their professional impressions and vulnerability during early stages of socialization

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization, job applicants realized visibility and persistence in relation to institutional and individualized socialization. During encounter, new employees managed personal and professional life boundaries carefully against the association and visibility affordances. Although some participants used both public and enterprise social media for obtaining job‐related information and understanding coworkers and company culture, during metamorphosis, most interviewees adopted passive information seeking strategies and experienced a paradoxical tension between the enabling and constraining affordances of social media. Findings are discussed with regards to employees’ exertion of agency in managing their professional impressions and coping with high levels of uncertainty and vulnerability during early stages of socialization.     

A New Regulatory Paradigm for the Digital Sector in Europe

The new regulatory framework in the digital sector in Europe is likely to fall short of expectations. A fragmented digital market with insuffi cient incentives for investment is the probable outcome. European regulators should abandon their approach in favour of a new and more flexible set of ideas discussed in this paper.     

Integrated bio-economic models as tools to support land-use decision making: a review of potential and limitations

Bio-economic modelling has become a useful tool for anticipating the outcomes of policies and technologies before their implementation. Advances in mathematical programming have made it possible to build more comprehensive models. In an overview of recent studies about bio-economic models applied to land-use problems in agriculture and forestry, we evaluated how aspects such as uncertainty, multiple objective functions, system dynamics and time have been incorporated into models. We found that single objective models were more frequently applied at the farm level, while multiple objective modelling has been applied to meet concerns at the landscape level. Among the objectives, social aspects are seldom represented in all models, when being compared to economic and environmental aspects. The integration of uncertainty is occasionally a topic, while stochastic approaches are more frequently applied than non-stochastic robust methods. Most multiple-objective models do not integrate uncertainty or sequential decision making. Static approaches continue to be more recurrent than truly dynamic models. Even though integrating multiple aspects may enhance our understanding of a system; it involves a tradeoff between complexity and robustness of the results obtained. Land-use models have to address this balance between complexity and robustness in order to evolve towards robust multiple-objective spatial optimization as a prerequisite to achieve sustainability goals.     

A conceptual model and research agenda for bidding,planning and delivering Major sport events that lever human rights

In this conceptual article, the authors propose a framework for how progressive human rights outcomes may be obtained in the context of bidding, planning and implementing major sport events (MSEs) through the implementation of four pathways, including good governance, the democratic participation of stakeholders, the formalisation of human rights agendas and the deployment of sensitive urban development. The authors argue that there is a need for adherence to internationally recognised standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights if rhetorical statements from MSE awarding bodies and host organisers are to be accountable to a wider set of actors. If researchers and practitioners want to address some of the critical issues related to human rights and MSEs, it is imperative that key actors working in the rights sphere are involved in shaping the research agenda and monitoring its implementation. Academics need to take a proactive approach aimed at achieving both theoretically grounded and practically relevant solutions, with engagement occurring over an extended period of time. This approach, avowedly political and concerned with genuine action, is a key way in which MSE stakeholders can be held to account for their actions in regard to human rights.     

Firm age and performance

Amid increasing interest in firm age and its effects on firm performance, this special issue offers an exhaustive review of the literature and a novel collection of evidence on the effects of firm age on performance, including a special focus of interest on innovation performance, financial performance, exports, survival and growth. This editorial positions the theme in the extant literature, and provides key definitions and challenges ahead in the field of evolutionary economics. It introduces the collection of articles composing the special issue. The papers offer a diversity of country contexts, as well as analytical approaches and methods. They include an exhaustive review of the literature on age and firms’ performance, and present original empirical studies focusing on the effects of age on firms’ economic outcomes on the one hand, and on innovation outcomes on the other hand. While most of the papers use econometric analysis, the level of analysis ranges from firm to individual.     

Terror per Capita

Studies on the correlates of terrorism usually analyze total numbers of attacks or victims per country. However, what we may ultimately care about in terms of policy recommendations is the likelihood of any individual being subject to the respective phenomenon. Thus, we propose and explore a simple alternative measure of terrorism: terror per capita. Studying terror per capita across 162 countries from 1970–2015, the associated correlates differ substantially in terms of sign, levels of statistical significance, and magnitude from those when analyzing total terror. We illustrate two cases in point, serving as proof of concept. First, democracy, often associated with more total terror, emerges as a marginally negative predictor of terror per capita. Second, a larger share of Muslims in society is associated with a positive and statistically significant link to total terror, but emerges as a negative predictor of terror per capita. We find similar changes in sign and statistical relevance for GDP per capita and language fractionalization as correlates of terrorism. Depending on the policy question, studying terror per capita can greatly enhance our understanding of terrorism drivers, especially when analyzing data across countries with vastly differing population sizes.     

Sweatshop Regulation and Workers’ Choices

The choice argument against sweatshop regulations states that public officials should not prohibit workers from accepting jobs that require long hours, low pay, and poor working conditions, because enforcing such regulations would be disrespectful to the workers who choose to work in sweatshops. Critics of the choice argument reply that these regulations can be justified when workers only choose to work in sweatshops because they lack acceptable alternatives and are unable to coordinate to achieve better conditions for all workers. My thesis is that the presence of unacceptable alternatives to sweatshop labor or barriers to coordination cannot justify sweatshop regulations such as minimum wage and maximum hour laws. Although officials should promote alternatives to difficult and dangerous sweatshop labor, they should not do so by limiting workers’ and employers’ options through coercive regulation. And the fact that sweatshop workers may face coordination problems does not undermine the claim that sweatshop workers choose to work in sweatshops, just as other workers face coordination problems but nevertheless make occupational choices. Furthermore, efforts to restrict sweatshop workers’ choices are morally risky and may not promote workers’ wellbeing or wellbeing in general.     

LEADERSHIP IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION: CONSEQUENCES AND INCENTIVES

Initiatives in favor of unilateral action on climate change are frequently challenged by concerns over free riding. Nevertheless, we observe an increasing number of unilateral efforts at different administrative levels and in different parts of the world. Previous academic literature described various individual mechanisms where emissions abroad may increase or decrease as a reaction to unilateral emission reductions. In this paper, we collect a comprehensive set of both positive and negative reactions and analyze them in stylized models. This allows us to identify the most important characteristics that determine the potential of a leader to boost mitigation efforts abroad. We find that this potential depends on (i) a strong ability to generate knowledge through leadership, (ii) a high degree of credibility in the international community, and (iii) a similar economic structure to the most important emitters. While most effects are difficult to quantify, this comprehensive assessment suggests that leakage effects resulting from unilateral mitigation may well be outweighed by positive reactions.