Outsourcing,Occupational Restructuring,and Employee Well‐Being: Is There a Silver Lining?

This study examines the relationship between outsourcing and various aspects of employee well‐being by devoting special attention to the role of occupational restructuring as a conveying mechanism. Using linked employer–employee data, we find that offshoring involves job destruction, especially when the destination is a low‐wage country. In such circumstances, staying employees’ job satisfaction is reduced. However, the relationship between outsourcing and employee well‐being is not entirely negative. Our evidence also shows that offshoring to high‐wage countries stimulates the vertical mobility of employees in affected firms in a manner that improves perceived well‐being, particularly in terms of better prospects for promotion.     

The Effects of Tolerance for Ambiguity and Task Uncertainty on the Balanced and Combined Use of Project Controls

This study contributes to the literature by examining antecedents to different combinations of management control systems. These combinations include combined use, focusing on the absolute magnitude of the project manager's organic and mechanistic control activities, and the balanced use, that is their relative magnitude. It is proposed that project managers' perceived task uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity have direct and interaction effects on their balanced and combined use of different combinations of project control. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results show negative relationships between high tolerance for ambiguity and balanced and combined use of organic and mechanistic controls. Further, task uncertainty appears to have a direct, significant negative effect on balanced use, but not on combined use. Furthermore, as proposed, a negative significant interaction effect was found. The results were controlled for project size, project type and level of innovativeness.     

A multi-division efficiency evaluation of U.S. electric power companies using a weighted slacks-based measure

Prior to the 1990s, the electric power industry was highly regulated across the world. Under a liberalization policy to open markets and to grow competition commenced in the early 1990s, efficient management has become a necessity for companies in this industry. The current study examines the divisional efficiencies of multi-functional, vertically integrated companies seeking to optimize their overall management efficiency. For this purpose, divisional cost data are used as input into a slacks-based measure (SBM) model. This provides divisional efficiency indices based on slacks, as well as one for the larger firm-level management function. Further, given the important role of cost structure, we introduce a modified SBM, named the weighted SBM (WSBM), which directly incorporates division-specific weights into the objective function. Results reveal that the power generation divisions of the companies studied have significant influence on the overall cost, whereas the impact of the other four divisions - transmission, distribution, sales and general administrative - is limited.     

Uncovering procedural knowledge in craft,design, and technology education: a case of hands-on activities in electronics

Different knowledge types have their own specific features and tasks in the learning process. Procedural knowledge is used in craft and technology education when students solve problems individually and share their working knowledge with others. This study presents a detailed analysis of a one student’s learning process in technology education and the procedural knowledge used during learning tasks. Thus, procedural knowledge is mainly produced when acting, and includes students’ goal-directed actions related to the craft, design and technology processes and their learning content. These knowledge practices also include multiple interactions with teachers and other students. The findings show six different knowledge practices: observing, checking and asking, revising, guided representative action, self-directed representative action, and comprehended action. These knowledge practices actively relate to each other, and, in concert, they constitute chains of actions that constitute two different types of procedural knowledge: proactive knowledge and executive knowledge. We conclude by discussing how these knowledge practices can be used to develop our understanding of the teaching and learning of craft, design and technology.     

Trading firms in the services sectors: comparable evidence from four EU countries

We establish a set of stylised facts for trade and trading firms in five market services sectors using comparable firm- and activity-level data from four EU countries. Our analysis shows that exports account for much lower shares of overall sales in the services sectors than in manufacturing. This is because fewer firms are engaged in trade in the services sectors and also because within particular sectors firms trade a lower share of their sales on average. Services producers trade mostly goods, but in terms of value, trade in services is much more important to them than to manufacturers. Larger and more productive firms are more likely to be two-way traders and to engage in both goods and services trade. Trade by services firms is somewhat less dominated by firms that both export and import than trade by manufacturing firms. Few firms export many services or to many countries. The value of services exports is increasing in the number of markets served but not necessarily in the number of services traded.     

Using Choice Experiments to Value the Natura 2000 Nature Conservation Programs in Finland

This paper is concerned with the preferences of the Finnish households for a controversial nature conservation program – the European Union's Natura 2000 Network. Since the program was mainly based on biological considerations, it met strong public opinions from different interest groups in Finland. Using the choice experimental method, we attempt to estimate the values that the Finnish households would place on different preservation levels. It is found that the mean willingness to accept for a decrease in the nature preservation area is much greater than the mean willingness to pay for an increase by the same amount. Also, the marginal willingness to pay becomes zero after an initial increase in the natural preservation area, which is consistent with our earlier findings in a binary choice valuation study. Policy implications of these results are also discussed in relation to different decision criteria.     

Eco-efficiency analysis of consumer durables using absolute shadow prices

We develop a method for eco-efficiency analysis of consumer durables that is based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). In contrast to previous product efficiency studies, we consider the measurement problem from the policy perspective. The innovation of the paper is to measure efficiency in terms of absolute shadow prices that are optimized endogenously within the model to maximize efficiency of the good. Thus, the efficiency measure has a direct economic interpretation as a monetary loss due to inefficiency, expressed in some currency unit. The advantages as well as technical differences between the proposed approach and the traditional production-side methods are discussed in detail. We illustrate the approach by an application to eco-efficiency evaluation of Sport Utility Vehicles.     

The Roles of Employer and Employee Characteristics for Plant Productivity

The relationships of worker characteristics and productivity are examined using a matched worker-plant data set from Finnish manufacturing. The panel data are used for estimating productivity and wage profiles according to average age, seniority, and education. We measure productivity using the multilateral total factor productivity index. We find that the wage returns to plant-specific seniority exceed productivity returns when seniority is high. This result supports the hypothesis that human capital is not firm specific, and seniority related wages are used for incentive reasons, but may also be a symptom of sorting or insider influences on wage formation. Plant average age improves productivity more than it increases wage when average age is low, but for higher ages the productivity and wage returns to age are fairly similar. The returns to education in terms of wage and productivity are fairly close to each other for higher levels of education, but mid-level education is underpaid.     

Fiscal Forecasting: Lessons from the Literature and Challenges*

While fiscal forecasting and monitoring has its roots in the accountability of governments for the use of public funds in democracies, the Stability and Growth Pact has significantly increased interest in budgetary forecasts in Europe, where they play a key role in EU multilateral budgetary surveillance. In view of the increased prominence and sensitivity of budgetary forecasts, which may lead to them being influenced by strategic and political factors, this paper discusses the main issues and challenges in the field of fiscal forecasting from a practitioner's perspective and places them in the context of the related literature.