Optimization of size and timing of base salary increases

Salary administration research mostly examines the compensation guides in a subjective manner and lacks quantitative approaches. Recent failure instances of salary administration demonstrate the exiguity and/or inapplicability of scientific research in this area. This research considers the core aspects of theoretical salary administration while complying with the recent competitive working environment. In this article, a mathematical optimization approach that recognizes the significance of performance and potential to future promotions of employees is proposed to find the optimal salary increase amounts and to set an advantageous schedule for salary increases. The two objectives are combined with a weight, and a sensitivity analysis shows the impact of the weight on both objectives to provide managerial guidance. The resulting raise amounts satisfy both internal alignment and external competitiveness conditions and represent employee performance and potential for promotion. The proposed mixed integer programming problem can be solved with commercial solvers quickly, even for rather large instances. The short computational time directly addresses the challenge raised by the current trend that more enterprises hire a large number of exempt employees. Additionally, two cases are presented with detailed data collection to illustrate the applications and limitations of the proposed model.     

A Digital Picture of the Actuarial Research Community

The evolution of publication patterns in actuarial research is described through a survey of the contents of four peer-reviewed journals identified in several studies as the most influential in the field, including the North American Actuarial Journal. The research output of countries and institutions is compared over the 30-year period 1982–2011 on the basis of the number of articles and pages published, adjusted for journal page size. While simple counts such as these are only a cursory measure of productivity, and certainly not a measure of quality, they lead to rankings that broadly reflect the level of activity in actuarial research worldwide. Countries and institutions that are most active in the field are easily identified from these rankings. Such information is valuable to governmental funding agencies and administrators in academia or industry responsible for the quantitative assessment of research performance. Young researchers and prospective graduate students may also find it useful to acquaint themselves with the breadth of the actuarial research community.     

Trading and enforcing patent rights

We study how the market for innovation affects enforcement of patent rights. We show that patent transactions arising from comparative advantages in commercialization increase litigation, but trades driven by advantages in patent enforcement reduce it. Using data on trade and litigation of individually owned patents in the United States, we exploit variation in capital gains tax rates across states as an instrument to identify the causal effect of trade on litigation. We find that taxes strongly affect patent transactions, and that trade reduces litigation on average, but the impact is heterogeneous. Patents with larger potential gains from trade are more likely to change ownership, and the impact depends critically on transaction characteristics.     

Patent thickets,courts, and the market for innovation

We study how fragmentation of patent rights and the formation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affected the duration of patent disputes, and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing. We develop a model of patent litigation which predicts faster settlement when patent rights are fragmented and when there is less uncertainty about court outcomes, as was associated with the “pro‐patent shift” of the CAFC. We confirm these predictions empirically using a data set that covers patent suits in U.S. district courts during the period 1975–2000. Finally, we analyze how fragmentation affects total settlement delay, considering both the reduction in dispute duration and the increase in the number of patent negotiations.     

Inferring market power under the threat of entry: the case of the Brazilian cement industry

Consider a setting where threatened rather than actual import competition restrains a domestic oligopoly's prices. I show that not modelling the entry threat may underestimate the true degree of market power, as incumbents' blunted price responses to demand shocks resemble perfectly competitive behavior. Evidence from Brazilian cement markets points to an important role for imports in determining domestic cement prices, despite the near absence of imports. On assuming autarky, models with market power are rejected in favor of competition among incumbents. However, allowing a role for imports rejects the autarky assumption and precludes one from rejecting the presence of market power.     

Economic Research in a Financial Group in Mexico

Business Economics - A look at the workings of the Research Department at Banamex. The article is part of a series “Economics at Work”     

Technological Complexity, Wage Differentials and Unemployment

A model is developed to analyse the relation between wages and technological complexity, as characterised by the "O–ring" theory of production. In equilibrium, the adoption of a relatively complex technology induces the employer to pay higher wages. We argue that the model can explain increased within–group wage inequality as a consequence of increased technological heterogeneity among firms.
JEL classification : J 31; O 33     

Imports versus Domestic Production: A Demand System Analysis of the U.S. Red Wine Market

The U.S. wine market experienced rapid growth in all facets—production, consumption, exports, and imports—over the past decade. Red wine imports more than tripled while consumption of domestically produced red wines doubled. This research estimates demand elasticities of U.S. red wine imports from five countries accounting for over 90% of imports—Italy, France, Spain, Australia, and Chile—using the first-difference version of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS). These elasticities are compared with those for domestically produced red wine. Results for conditional expenditure elasticities indicate that the U.S. red wine industry gains over imports when U.S. consumers' total expenditures on red wine increase. However, comparing own- and cross-price elasticities reveals an increase in the price of U.S. red wine results in a decline in quantity demanded six times greater than for French and Italian red wines and over 20 times greater than other import countries, thus harming the U.S. red wine industry. Empirical results suggest that U.S. red-wine producers could increase their total revenue by decreasing prices, while Italian and French producers can increase total revenues by increasing them.     

Long-Run Economic Performance and the Labor Market

This article uses a simple variation of the Solow model to study the interrelations between economic growth and the labor market. We show, both analytically and empirically, that income and capital per worker in the steady state depend positively on flexibility of the labor market; that the steady-state unemployment rate depends positively on the rate of population growth and the productivity growth rate and negatively on the savings rate and flexibility of the labor market; and, finally, that labor market flexibility affects convergence toward steady state.