Promotion signaling,discrimination, and positive discrimination policies

This article studies discrimination in a model in which promotions are used as signals of worker ability. The model can account for statistical and taste‐based discrimination. In the short run, a positive discrimination policy is beneficial for workers in the middle of the ability distribution, because these workers are promoted if and only if the policy is in place. Instead, workers of either high or low ability suffer from the policy. In the long run, the policy benefits all targeted workers. The model can explain empirical findings about the effects of a gender quota on the boards of Norwegian companies.     

Towards an attention‐based view of technology decisions

The importance of technology decisions is widely acknowledged in both research and practice. However, we know little about how companies structure technology decisions from an organizational point of view and how attention is distributed in the course of the decision process in order to identify, process, and transfer information between the organizational units involved. Using the attention‐based view of the firm and 14 qualitative case studies, we present five approaches for organizing technology decisions: (1) centralized decision‐making, (2) busy information bee, (3) double‐blind analysis, (4) moderated expert panel, and (5) coterie approach. On this ground, this paper introduces a new, attention‐based view on technology decisions, which improves the theoretical understanding of organizations and provides guidelines for practitioners in choosing an appropriate organizational configuration in this regard.     

Foreign aid and domestic output in the long run

The principal argument of this paper is that the effect of aid on GDP depends on a trade-off that is country specific: aid has a direct positive effect through financing investment but an indirect effect through aggregate productivity that can be negative if aid exacerbates growth-retarding factors such as poor governance. Data for 59 developing countries over 1971–2003 are analysed to explore the trade-off and highlight the heterogeneous nature of the relationship between aid and output. We show that output, aid and investment comprise a cointegrated relation, and derive country specific estimates of the long run association between aid and output. These aid-output coefficients are, on average, negative but smaller than the positive investment-output coefficients. Insofar as aid is used to finance investment, the overall effect on output may therefore be positive. We also show that cross-country differences in the estimated long run aid-output coefficients can be explained mainly by cross-country differences in law and order, religious tensions and government size.     

Aging,Factor Returns,and Immigration Policy

Immigration has various economic and non‐economic effects on the destination country's inhabitants. In this paper, we focus on the impact of immigration on factor returns and analyze how aging affects immigration policy, employing a dynamic political‐economy model of representative democracy. Aging, that is, a decline in the growth rate of the native population, has an expansionary effect on immigration in this framework. This immigration effect may even overcompensate the initial contraction of the labor force. We show that the immigration rate in the representative democracy equilibrium exceeds the immigration rate that would maximize welfare of current and future generations, and we also discuss the influence of social security on immigration policy.     

Regelgebundene Fiskalpolitik und Schuldenkommissionen

Die Staatsschuldenkrise im Euroraum kann kurzfristig nicht gel?st werden: Die finanzielle Unterstützung für die Schuldnerstaaten reicht nicht aus, deren Austerit?tsprogramme wirken zu restriktiv und die Mitgliedsl?nder sind nicht bereit, auf Fiskalkompetenz zu verzichten. Die Autoren stellen hier ein Konzept vor, das zu h?heren sWachstumsraten und niedrigeren Schuldenquoten in den betroffenen L?ndern führt.     

Double Standards in Educational Standards – Do Schools with a Disadvantaged Student Body Grade More Leniently?

A simple model of decentralized graduation standards is presented. It is shown that a school whose students are disadvantaged on the labor market applies less demanding standards because such students have lower ability or less incentives to graduate. The model's predictions are tested using Dutch school‐level data. Since students in the Netherlands have to participate in both a central and a school specific examination, we can identify the grading policy of individual schools. We find that schools which harbor greater shares of disadvantaged students tend to set lower standards. This association is most pronounced in the track of secondary schooling that prepares for university.     

Alignment of Divergent Organizational Cultures in IT Public-Private Partnerships

The cooperation of public and private sector organizations is a viable option for decision makers in the public sector for improving information technology (IT) infrastructures, acquiring innovation, and increasing management know-how. Effective partnering in public-private partnerships (PPP) is difficult though, because the involved stakeholder groups have divergent interests and organizational cultures. Using institutional logics as meta-theoretical lens, this exploratory, interpretive case study analyzes an IT PPP in Germany. The results reveal public- and private-side organizational culture differences and how the partners aligned their cultural differences by the development and legitimization of a partnership norm as well as the necessary partnership practices. The case analysis also illustrates how public sector and private sector organizations succeeded with the transition of public sector and private sector employees into a partnership organization and the management of different organizational cultures.     

Union membership among young graduate workers in Australia: using the experience good model to explain the role of student employment

Using panel data from a survey of 319 university graduates, this article shows that positive experiences of union membership during the student employment phase increase the likelihood of university graduates becoming union members. These results are consistent with the ‘experience good’ model of union membership.     

Die heimlichen Entscheider

Facing the spread and importance of information technology, the lack of empirical studies of IT journalists must be considered a research gap. The small group of IT journalists includes important gatekeepers in the IT market, who play a major part in determining the success and failure of IT products. To examine the powerful position derived from this role is the central aim of this study: How do IT journalists in Germany perceive their influence on buyers and users of IT products? How do they perceive their influence on the IT industry? Based on an online survey of 102 IT journalists in Germany, the study measures subjective perceptions of effects on the general audience and the industry. The findings indicate that IT journalists view themselves as influencing consumer decisions of the general audience as well as corporations’ decisions in product development. However, these perceptions of effects are not related to (1) the audience size of the IT medium, or to journalists’ images of (2) the audience and (3) the IT industry. The perception of their own influence seem to be commonplace among IT journalists, independent of the power of media outlets and particular professional perceptions. The accuracy of journalists’ perceptions of effects and their normative implications are discussed.