Human resource strategies and contingent workers: The case of safety and health in the petrochemical industry

One of the most important economic developments in recent years is the growth in the number of temporary and contract employees. Little is known, however, about the implications these contingent employees have for human resource practices. This paper presents the results of a study of one group of contingent workers, contract workers in the petrochemical industry. The primary concern of this study is the consequences contract workers have for safety, a hotly debated and politically charged issue in an industry where safety mishaps can have catastrophic consequences. We find that contract employees offer petrochemical firms an important degree of flexibility in meeting rapid fluctuations in their demand for labor. Contract employment relationships also create stresses with potentially severe adverse effects on workplace safety. Overcoming these threats to safety while maintaining flexibility will require a high level of coordination among human resource professionals, line managers, corporate executives, unions, and government agencies.     

On dynamics in a Keynesian model of monetary and fiscal stabilization policy mix with twin debt accumulation

In this paper, a six‐dimensional model of flexible prices with the monetary and fiscal policy mix, describing the development of the firms’ private debt, the output, the expected rate of inflation, the rate of interest, government expenditure, and government bonds are analyzed. The stress put on the “twin debt accumulation” means that in our model both private debt accumulation and the public debt (government bond) accumulation are explicitly introduced. Questions concerning the existence of limit cycles around its normal equilibrium point are investigated. The bifurcation equation is found. The formulae for the calculation of its coefficients are gained. Numerical example illustrating the results attained is presented by means of numerical simulations.     

Identification of Asset Price Misalignments on Financial Markets With Extreme Value Theory

This article examines the potential for concurrence of crises and asset price misalignments from equilibrium in the foreign exchange, stock, and government bond markets of three Central European countries and the euro area. Concurrence is understood as the joint occurrence of extreme asset changes and is assessed with a measure of asymptotic tail dependence in the distributions studied. The results reveal a significant potential for the co-alignment of crises in the examined markets. Evidence for co-movements in misalignments from equilibrium is found among all examined stock and exchange rate markets; although it is not apparent in some government bond markets.     

Probability and Mode of Acquisition Effects on Choices Between Hedonic and Utilitarian Options

We examine the effects of probability and mode of acquisition on choices between hedonic and utilitarian alternatives. The results suggest that the lower the probability of receiving the selected item, the more likely individuals will be to choose the more hedonic alternative in a choice set. Mode of acquisition (i.e., whether subjects are choosing in a windfall or a standard purchase situation) is also found to affect preferences, even when probability of acquisition is held constant. Hedonic options appear to be more popular as prizes than as purchases, whereas utilitarian options appear to be more popular as purchases than as prizes.     

What brings your subjects to the lab? A field experiment

This paper reports a field experiment involving manipulation of invitations to register in an experimental economics subject database. Two types of invitations were sent out: one emphasizing pecuniary and the other non-pecuniary benefits of participation. The former resulted in higher response rate and the strength of this treatment effect was comparable in different groups defined by gender and academic major. In a follow-up test conducted about a year later it was found that individuals recruited by invitations emphasizing monetary benefits were less willing to make an effort to participate in a non-paid survey. The very same survey also showed that they were marginally less altruistic in general.     

Unified GIS database on cycle tourism infrastructure

Bicycles are used in the Czech Republic for commuting to work and for leisure time activities. This is reflected in the cycle trail administrators' offer to make the existing network denser, design new routes, mark their courses and install a complementary cycle infrastructure.     

Relative Risk Aversion and Power‐Law Distribution of Macroeconomic Disasters

The coefficient of relative risk aversion is notoriously difficult to estimate. Recently, Barro and Jin (On the size distribution of macroeconomic disasters, Econometrica 2011; 79 (3): 434–455) have come up with a new estimation approach that fits a power‐law model to the tail of distribution of macroeconomic disasters. We show that their results can be successfully replicated using a more refined power‐law fitting methodology and a more comprehensive dataset. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.