Wage and Nonwage Discrimination in Professional Basketball: Do Fans Affect It?

A bstract . Recent research suggests there is substantial wage discrimination against blacks in professional basketball , and that fans are the source of this discrimination. The use of multiple regression analysis does indicate a salary shortfall for black players of fourteen to sixteen percent compared with salaries of white players with comparable on-court performance. To see whether this shortfall is likely to be due to fan discrimination as the relatively scarce white talent is bid into cities with many white fans, the racial composition of teams is related to the proportion of black residents among the populations of franchise cities. There is statistically significant evidence of geographical sorting by race. Evidence of racial bias is less obvious in contexts where a team's performance would be jeopardized, however. Thus, no evidence is found that fan attendance moves inversely with the percentage of playing time accorded black players, and only weak evidence is found that black players have to be better than white players to enter the National Basketball Association (NBA).     

Evaluation of a client care delivery model, Part 2: Variability in client outcomes in community home nursing

Using similar variables, Part II explores variation in client outcomes such as OMAHA knowledge, behavior, and SF-36 scores. Medical and nursing diagnoses explained large variations in client outcomes. Clients cared for by degree-prepared nurses improved knowledge and behavior scores. Unanticipated case complexity was negatively associated with client outcome even with nursing intervention. The study revealed that "for every unit increase in assignment of baccalaureate-prepared nurses, clients will on average demonstrate an 80% greater likelihood of improvement in knowledge scores and a 120% greater likelihood of improvement in behavior scores in relation to their health condition at discharge." This two-part study has offered insight into the controllable variables influencing the cost and quality of home care services.     

How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project Star

In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K–3—as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores—have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.     

从零开始——新建一个质量体系的路线图和工具箱

虽然各种质量体系、方法和设计工具之间的不同并不十分清楚--这是所有质量文献面临的共同问题--旦识别出这些质量方法的关键联系,就可了解各体系之间相互关联的概况.     

The impact of patient choice and waiting time on the demand for health care: results from the London Patient Choice project

In a number of countries where health care is publicly funded, policies to introduce greater patient choice are being implemented. In most cases patient choice is seen as an instrument to reduce waiting times for elective (non-emergency) hospital services. An important issue is whether facilitating greater patient choice will increase the demand for health care and thereby undermine the achievement of reduced waiting times. A large scale pilot of choice in the London metropolitan area permits a test of the hypothesis that choice will affect demand. This paper estimates a model of the demand for elective surgery using a panel of 150 English acute hospitals over the period 1995 to 2004 for three surgical specialties. It examines whether demand shifted following the introduction of the London Patient Choice Project in 2002. The results suggest that the choice project only shifted NHS inpatient demand in orthopaedics and that this shift was inwards.     

‘Australian sailors wanted’: Labour supply and Australian shipping,c. 1870–c. 1914

In the pre-1914 era Australia did not develop an ocean-going merchant navy. The problem is well recognised in previous studies that assumed that it was high Australian wages that made the operational cost of deep-sea vessels uncompetitive on a global scale. This article reconstructs historical shifts in the Australian market for a seagoing workforce and demonstrates there was low recruitment of Australian labour. Drawing on new sources and inspired by efficiency wage theory the article argues that it was this shortage of a domestic labour supply that constrained the development of a national deep-sea shipping industry.     

LIFE IN THE CELL: SUPERVISION AND TEAMWORK IN A ‘MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS ENGINEERING’ ENVIRONMENT

David Buchanan, Professor of Human Resource Management and Diane Preston, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, at the University of Loughborough Business School present the findings of a case study which explores the implications of manufacturing systems engineering (MSE) for the role of foremen and for shopfloor autonomy in an engineering company, Moore Components. MSE is a currently fashionable socio-technical systems approach to production facility design, combining aspects of group technology, cell autonomy, ‘facilitative’ supervision, and just-in-time workflow. The case is used to identify key aspects of emerging new manufacturing methods, to indicate the potential of these methods for developments in work organisation and management practice, and to demonstrate how specific HRM policies can inhibit or facilitate the changes in supervision and teamwork which MSE ostensibly encourages.     

The Transformation of Work on the Family Farm

The family farm is not simply a structure — it is also an adjustment and negotiation process that has varying degrees of success. In our society, formal training is becoming a prerequisite — many believe one needs a diploma to become a competent farmer. However, the denigration of “on-the-job training” undermines an essential facet of learning to be a farmer and debases the acquired skills of many farmer “artisans”. With the strong swing to link formal training and identity, many farmers create negative identities for themselves because they feel forced to define themselves socially on the basis of their level of formal schooling. The challenge for the future is to recognize, to integrate and to valorize formal abstract knowledge and the know-how that is acquired and passed to the next generation through practice.