Commitment to a friend,a service provider,or a service company—are they distinctions worth making?

In two studies, the authors examine three targets of commitment in service provider–consumer relationships and their effects on customer loyalty. The results indicate that service consumers distinguish between commitment to a service company, commitment to an individual in the role of service employee, and commitment to an individual outside of the role of service employee (e.g., a personal commitment such as a friendship). In addition, these three targets of commitment are hierarchically related and have differential effects on various customer responses. The results have implications for both customer relationship managers and researchers studying such relationships.

Cognitive skill and technology diffusion: An empirical test

Cognitive skills are robustly associated with good national economic performance. How much of this is due to high-skill countries doing a better job of absorbing total factor productivity from the world's technology leader? Following Benhabib and Spiegel (Handbook of Economic Growth, 2005), who estimated the Nelson–Phelps technology diffusion model, I use the database of IQ tests assembled by Lynn and Vanhanen, 2002, Lynn and Vanhanen, 2006 and find a robust relationship between national average IQ and total factor productivity growth. Controlling for IQ, years of education is of modest statistical significance. If IQ gaps between countries persist and model parameters remain stable, TFP levels are forecasted to sharply diverge, creating a “twin peaks” result. After controlling for IQ, few other growth variables are statistically significant.     

Making water competition a reality

Following a decade since privatisation during which attempts at introducing competition for water services have been slow and somewhat ineffective, the government is now carrying out a review. Large-volume users have a thirst for water competition brought about by competition in other utilities. The economic regulator needs to allow a new contestable market for industrial water services to develop whilst major structural and legislative changes to facilitate competition are contemplated.     

Estimating the Costs of Protecting Native Species from Invasive Animal Pests in New South Wales,Australia

Invasive animal pests reduce crop and livestock output, require management and control measures, and threaten native plants, animals and their habitat. The agricultural and management costs are often directly measurable. But the costs to protect threatened native plants and animals are harder to assess. The Rural Lands Protection Boards were the government agency in New South Wales that managed invasive animals. An analysis of their decisions provided the opportunity to estimate the costs of protecting native species. The number of native plants and animals threatened by invasive pests was modelled against the expenditure, area, pest abundance, climate and location of 38 Board districts. There was a strong negative relationship between the number of threatened native species and Board expenditure. This relationship was interpreted to estimate the marginal cost of protecting a threatened native species, the downward shift in the supply curve necessary to protect all threatened native species, and the gains from the shift in the form of cost savings in the continued protection of non-threatened native species. These results value some of the costs that invasive animal pests impose on the environment.     

The politics of Europe 2004: solidarity and integration

The process of European integration has reached the limits of European solidarity—both within the member states and between them. Increasingly, Europeans are demonstrating reluctance to accept common rules, to recognise common values, to protect common interests, or to promote common objectives. Instead, Europeans appear to be expressing many different and yet interrelated forms of disaffection. Voter abstention is high, security cooperation is weak, economic confidence is low, and support for either European enlargement or institutional reform is vanishing. To respond to this crisis, European politicians need to manage expectations better, they need to accept responsibility for public policy problems, they need to explain the limits of what Europe can do, and they need to search for new formulas to meet different national challenges with common European institutions.     

Health effects on labour market exits and entries

This paper analyses the role of health on exits out of and entries into employment using data from the first twelve waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–2002). We use discrete-time duration models to estimate the effect of health on the hazard of becoming non-employed and on the hazard of becoming employed. The results show that general health, measured by a variable that captures health limitations and by a constructed latent health index, affects entries into and exits out of employment; the effects being higher for men than for women. The results are robust to different definitions of employment, and to the exclusion of older workers from the analysis.     

Behavioral agency and corporate entrepreneurship: CEO equity incentives & competitive behavior

Scholars have long studied drivers of entrepreneurial behavior among established firms. Yet little is known about how individual factors shape a firm’s choice to pursue entrepreneurship. We draw on behavioral agency theory to explore the role of equity incentives in driving corporate entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest CEOs avoid corporate entrepreneurial behaviors as their option wealth increases. However industry dynamics also prove to be an important contingency when predicting the effects of both restricted stock and stock options on the likelihood that the CEO engages in corporate entrepreneurship. Our findings provide a theoretical platform for predicting dimensions of entrepreneurial behavior and highlight effects of CEO equity ownership.

     

Combining forecasts: An application to elections

We summarize the literature on the effectiveness of combining forecasts by assessing the conditions under which combining is most valuable. Using data on the six US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, we report the reductions in error obtained by averaging forecasts within and across four election forecasting methods: poll projections, expert judgment, quantitative models, and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Across the six elections, the resulting combined forecasts were more accurate than any individual component method, on average. The gains in accuracy from combining increased with the numbers of forecasts used, especially when these forecasts were based on different methods and different data, and in situations involving high levels of uncertainty. Such combining yielded error reductions of between 16% and 59%, compared to the average errors of the individual forecasts. This improvement is substantially greater than the 12% reduction in error that had been reported previously for combining forecasts.     

Let’s Not Go Down that Path Again: Lessons from the Past Applied to Immigrant-Targeted Discrimination

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a staple of the modern United States workplace. While much of the discussion of this fact centers on negative consequences for the U.S., far less attention has been paid to the detrimental impact on immigrants resulting from their workplace experiences, particularly relating to being targets of discrimination. In this article, we outline: a) a variety of types of workplace discrimination potentially relating to immigrant status; b) potential negative outcomes arising from said discrimination for both immigrant employees and their employers, and; c) how existing and predicted employment law standards place organizations in a legally vulnerable position when such discrimination goes unchecked. We further discuss implications of immigrant-targeted discrimination (ITD) for organizations and managers, and plausible extensions of workplace discrimination laws to specifically include ITD.     

Public sector health insurance trusts

Public sector associations have successfully developed and run employee health insurance pools for almost 30 years, providing members with savings and flexibility not available from commercial health insurance carriers. This article looks at the models, technical tools and governance philosophy that have contributed to their success in a very challenging business environment.