Does Employing Older Workers Affect Workplace Performance?

Using a panel of workplaces in Britain, we investigate the implications for businesses of employing older workers. Workplace labor productivity falls where the proportion of older or younger workers rises. These raw associations are attenuated somewhat after controlling for aspects of human capital. In contrast, there is no significant association between age shares and workplace financial performance, suggesting that any reluctance by employers to employ greater numbers of older workers may be misplaced.     

Economic restructuring and demographic growth: demystifying growth and development in Northern Song China, 960–1127

The Northern Song period (960–1127) has been recognized as one of the most important eras in China's economic and demographic history. This study investigates the key factors and mechanisms that led to economic restructuring and wealth generating to support a growing population. By revealing state‐led changes in the economy, it challenges some commonly circulated interpretations of the remarkable economic development and population growth in Northern Song China.     

Stepping out of the Twilight? Assessing the Governance Implications of Land Titling and Regularization Programmes

This article engages with the discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of land titling programmes that seek to regularize informal urban settlements in developing countries. It is based on fieldwork in two neighbourhoods of Maputo, Mozambique, that are currently part of a municipal government regularization programme supported by the World Bank. The fieldwork explored an informal titling system administrated by the neighbourhood authorities upon which local residents rely to prevent land conflicts and to provide proof of residence. The findings add to the literature that demonstrates growing unease with a strictly dyadic formal/informal analysis of land occupation, and further queries the assumption that the state and the informal settler are diametrically opposed, with the former granting formal rights to the latter. In the process of these discussions, the article highlights the limited scholarly attention that has been granted to the governance implications of land titling programmes.     

Export promotion agencies: Do they work?

The number of national export promotion agencies (EPAs) has tripled over the last two decades. While more countries made them part of their export strategy, studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries. EPAs were retooled, partly in response to these critiques. This paper studies the impact of today's EPAs and their strategies, based on new survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries. Results suggest that on average they have a statistically significant effect on exports. Our identification strategies highlight the importance of EPA services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of heterogeneous goods. There are also strong diminishing returns, suggesting that as far as EPAs are concerned, small is beautiful.     

Is There a Link Between Money Illusion and Homeowners’ Expectations of Housing Prices?

Money illusion is a behavioral bias in which a person thinks in terms of nominal rather than real values. This article reports homeowners’ responses to a survey designed to measure the extent of money illusion as well as homeowners’ expectations regarding home valuations. Our survey respondents suffer from money illusion, yet they have reasonable expectations of home prices. Our analysis did not identify any unique individual characteristic that correlates with homeowners’ choices and suggests that the relationship between money illusion and mispricing is subtle and multifaceted.     

年度评估管用吗

工作评估就是两人之间签订的一种契约，通常带有尴尬的情绪、虚假的乐观主义和令人厌烦的责任。     

GOOGLE一下自己吧

大规模的Google搜索使职场上每个人的情况都变糟了。对雇员而言，这意味着没有隐私，而且无法逃避过去的尴尬：对雇主而言，这意味着他们不仅要担心自己的名誉，也要担心所雇用的每个人的名誉。     

A NEW LOOK AT THE WEALTH ADEQUACY OF OLDER U.S. HOUSEHOLDS

We examine the current wealth adequacy of older U.S. households using the 1998–2006 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We find that the median older U.S. household is reasonably well situated, with a ratio of comprehensive net wealth to present value poverty‐line wealth of about 3.9 in 2006. About 18 percent of households, however, have less wealth than would be needed to generate 150 percent of poverty‐line income over their expected future lifetimes. We see similar patterns of wealth adequacy when we examine ratios of annualized comprehensive wealth to pre‐retirement earnings. Comparing the leading edge of the baby boomers in 2006 to households of the same age in 1998, we find that the baby boomers show slightly less wealth, in real terms, than their elders did, but still appear to have adequate resources at the median. Moreover, we find a rising age profile of annualized wealth, even within households over time and after controlling for other factors, suggesting that older households are not spending their wealth as quickly as their survival probabilities are falling.     

Institutional Investors, Analyst Following, and the January Anomaly

Average stock returns for small, low stock price firms are higher in January than for the rest of the year. Two explanations have received a great deal of attention: tax-loss selling and gamesmanship. This paper documents that seasonality in returns is not a phenomenon observed only for small firms' stock or those with low prices. Strong seasonality in excess returns is reported for a sample of widely followed firms. Sample firms have unusually low excess returns in January and returns adjust upward over the year. These results are consistent with the gamesmanship hypothesis, but not the tax-loss-selling hypothesis.     

Retail revolution and the village shop,c. 1660–1860

Village shops have been largely overlooked in the recent literature on British retailing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which has sought to redefine the parameters and timing of retail transformation. While urban shops have been explored in detail, often in ways that highlight their role in a parallel transformation in consumption patterns, little attempt has been made to look inside village shops or examine the character and practices of rural retailers. This article addresses this lacuna and offers fresh insights into the shifting position of village shops in these broader economic, business, and social changes. Taking a long view of the period c. 1660–1860, it draws on a wide range of sources to examine the stock sold and the degree of specialization exhibited by village shops, and the changing trading practices of village shopkeepers, including the provision of credit, the pricing of goods, and marketing activities. In doing so, the article highlights both long‐term continuities and important innovations of the type that also characterize urban shops, and argues that village shops, while central to rural social and economic networks, were also intimately bound into broader retail systems.