Work–Life Imbalance in Call Centres and Software Development

The paper evaluates the centrality of work to employees in two growing employment sectors, call‐centres and software development. It then examines evidence for extensions of work into household and family life in these two sectors. Extensions are identified as tangible, such as unpaid overtime, or intangible, represented by incursions imported from work, such as exhaustion and stress. The study finds that organizational pressures, combined with lack of work centrality, result in work intruding into non‐work areas of employee lives, though intrusions manifest themselves in different ways according to type of work, levels of worker autonomy and organizational support.     

Planning the summer vacation : An Adaptable Process

This paper presents a contextualized study of vacation planning starting from a naturalistic perspective. Series of indepth interviews have been conducted during the period of a year on 25 Belgian households in order to follow their decision-making process for summer vacation. Data were analyzed and interpreted following the grounded theory approach. Findings show that vacation planning is an ongoing process, which entails a lot of adaptability and opportunism. Fantasy and emotions also play an important role in shaping vacation and destination choices. This departs from existing decision-making models that propose a (bounded) rational, problem-solving vacationer.     

Introducing cable television into Hong Kong : Political and economic implications

This paper seeks to evaluate and predict the impact of the introduction of cable television into Hong Kong, a densely populated and highly dynamic Asian metropolis currently under British administration. The discussion will focus on how the coming of cable communication will impact on the ownership and economic structure of the broadcasting industry, with particular reference to international participation; public policy issues concerning economic structure and programming of the cable system; and the implications for the period of Hong Kong's political transition from the UK to China.     

Using stochastic growth models to understand unit roots and breaking trends

This paper provides economic underpinnings for some recent econometric models of unit roots and breaking trends. It shows that in an endogenous growth model, difference stationarity is present in every growing variable; and this phenomenon is generated by the propagation mechanism of the model. For an exogenous growth model, either difference stationarity or trend stationarity may be present, depending on the nature of external impulses. Regarding long-run growth rates, permanent changes in economic fundamentals lead to segmented trends in endogenous growth models, but only shifting trends in exogenous growth models.     

What's wrong with executive compensation? A roundtable moderated by Charles Elson

The value that many superpaid CEO superstars supposedly created has largely disappeared, and the likelihood that it will be recovered anytime soon seems remote. On top of that, a good number of top executives treated their companies like ATMs, awarding themselves millions of dollars in corporate perks. It's hard to dispute the idea that executives were corrupted by the sums of money dangled in front of them. What's wrong with executive compensation, and what can we do about it? HBR and the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance convened a round-table of compensation experts last October on the university's campus in Newark, Delaware. The 12 panelists, from CEOs to investors, from the professionals who advise them to a chief justice who rules on their disputes, provided an extraordinary diversity of viewpoints. The panelist began by debating ways to align the interests of the senior executives with the long-term interests of the company-weighing the relative benefits of stock options versus stock grants, for instance. But the discussion expanded to cover broader questions of corporate governance and company values. "The main reason compensation increases every year is that most boards want their CEO to be in the top half of the CEO peer group," said Ed Woolard,Jr., a former CEO of DuPont. And compensation lawyer Joe Bachelder pointed out the danger of structuring pay in such a way that it dampens risk taking among executives. It was a lively and wide-ranging discussion of one business's most pressing issues.     

Comparing inequality aversion across countries when labor supply responses differ

We analyze to which extent social inequality aversion differs across nations when controlling for actual country differences in labor supply responses. Towards this aim, we estimate labor supply elasticities at both extensive and intensive margins for 17 EU countries and the US. Using the same data, inequality aversion is measured as the degree of redistribution implicit in current tax-benefit systems, when these systems are deemed optimal. We find relatively small differences in labor supply elasticities across countries. However, this changes the cross-country ranking in inequality aversion compared to scenarios following the standard approach of using uniform elasticities. Differences in redistributive views are significant between three groups of nations. Labor supply responses are systematically larger at the extensive margin and often larger for the lowest earnings groups, exacerbating the implicit Rawlsian views for countries with traditional social assistance programs. Given the possibility that labor supply responsiveness was underestimated at the time these programs were implemented, we show that such wrong perceptions would lead to less pronounced and much more similar levels of inequality aversion.     

Cap and Trade für die Fläche: Ein Irrweg?

In der Diskussion um die Entkoppelung von Fl?chennutzung und Wachstum gewinnen handelbare Fl?chenausweisungskontingente als marktkonformes Instrument zur Verringerung der Fl?cheninanspruchnahme an Bedeutung. Wie funktionieren die handelbaren Fl?chenkontingente? Wie sind ihre Auswirkungen zu beurteilen? Wie k?nnte eine alternatives Fl?chenausweisungsmodell aussehen?