Explaining Eastern Germany's Wage Gap: The Impact of Structural Change

Since Eastern Germany's conversion to a market economy wages have remained considerably below the West German wage level. This article looks at the role of establishment-specific factors—such as sectoral affiliation and size of the labour force—in this process. A non-parametric decomposition that has played a prominent role in the gender wage gap literature is applied to breakdown the East–West wage gap into its constituent components. Using establishment data from German employment statistics, the article demonstrates that the catching-up process of Eastern Germany's wage level is hindered by the shift in its economic structure towards lower-paying types of companies, which has caused the lagging behind in the adjustment of wages.     

Working Hours in Supply Chain Chinese and Thai Factories: Evidence from the Fair Labor Association's ‘Soccer Project’

This article examines the determinants of working excessive hours, defined as working in excess of 60 hours per week or for more than six consecutive days, in Chinese and Thai supply chain factories. We use a matched employer–employee dataset collected from 15 Chinese and Thai footwear and sporting apparel supply chain factories, which supply international brands. Matched employer–employee data allow us to examine the effect of worker and firm characteristics on hours worked. We find that in addition to the demographic and human capital characteristics of workers, firm‐level characteristics and worker awareness of how to refuse overtime are important in explaining variation in hours worked.     

The stability of the Turkish Phillips curve and alternative regime shifting models

This article, presents empirical evidence supporting instability of the Phillips curve in Turkey. We employ the multiple structural break models and the Markov-switching models and then evaluate the performance of the two models. The data pertain to the monthly inflation rate in Turkey for the period of 1987 to 2004. The results show that the Turkish Phillips curve is not linear. There exists no evidence on the asymmetry in the inflation response to output gap. The persistence of inflation is found to be much lower than in linear models. After 2001, slight decline in persistence of inflation is observed. There exits weaker support for the Phillips curve for the periods where the policymakers attempt to take the advantage of the tradeoff between output and inflation relationship.     

Security in a sea of insecurity: job security and intention to stay among service sector employees in Turkey

This article examines the association between job security and intention to stay for those who are employed in Turkey. There is a high level of unemployment in the country and many workers there are concerned about their job security. Job security refers to the objective dimensions of continuous contract, working full-time hours and paid and unpaid overtime. Job security also refers to the subjective dimension of perceived job security. We surveyed 407 employees in banking and related sectors' call centres, five-star hotel front-line staff and airline cabin crews. Results show that objective dimensions of job security are not associated with intention to stay. However, perceived job security is significantly and positively associated with intention to stay. We recommend that human resource managers focus on the perceived job security aspect of employment to keep valuable employees with the company.     

A relational framework for international transfer of diversity management practices

The aim of this paper is to propose that a relational framework, which is underpinned by a contextual and multilevel conceptualisation of diversity management, can help international transfer of diversity management policies and practices. We argue that the mainstream single-level conceptualisations of diversity management within the territory of legal or organisational policy fail to capture the relational interplay of structural- and agentic-level concerns of equality. Consequently, individual choices, organisational processes, and structural conditions – all of which collectively account for unrelenting power disparity and disadvantage within social and employment contexts – remain generally under explored. The paper proposes a relational framework that bridges the divide between macro-national, meso-organisational and micro-individual levels of analyses to arrive at a more comprehensive, realistic and context-specific framing of diversity management, which can overcome the difficulties of international transfer.     

A New Approach to Gravity Anomaly Separation: Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF)

In this paper the authors introduce a novel approach to stochastic image processing, denoted as Differential Markov Random Field (DMRF), which has been applied to gravity anomaly separation problems. The advantages of the method are that it introduces only little distortion into the shape of the original image and that it is not affected significantly by factors such as the overlap power spectra of regional and residual fields. Testing of the proposed meth using synthetic examples gave excellent results.     

The Ottoman dissolution and the İstanbul bourse between war and peace: a foreign exchange market perspective on the Great War

The participation of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War caused economic disruptions, huge budget deficits, surmounted inflation rates and excessive depreciation of Lira, the Ottoman currency. Based on the value of Lira against the currencies of Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden that were not in the war, we focus on the effects of news about the war on the foreign exchange rates at the ?stanbul bourse from 1918 to 1919. Our results signify some dates, which match the announcements of the armistices and peace meetings, heralding continuous depreciation of Lira. Thus, the findings support the presence of an expectation on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire with the peace, marked by the escalation of the loss in trust for the Lira and the power of the state in foreign exchange interventions.     

Reviews

“URBAN ECONOMIC CHANGE” Victor A. Hausner and members of the ESRC Inner Cities Research Programme, 1987: Urban Economic Change: Five City Studies. Clarendon Press, Oxford, £25.00.

“ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY” Robinson, F., Wren, C. and Goddard, J., 1987: Economic Development Policies-An Evaluative Study of the Newcastle Metropolitan Region. Oxford: Clarendon Press, £8.95 paper.

'URBAN REGENERATION ISSUES” London Strategic Policy Unit, 1987: Land for Industry: The need for industrial land in London until 1990. London: LSPU, no price stated.

Department of the Environment, 1987: Re-using Redundant Buildings: Case Studies of Good Practice in Urban Regeneration. HMSO £11.95.

Department of the Environment, 1987: Managing Workspaces: Case Studies of Good Practice in Urban Regeneration. HMSO £11.95.

Department of the Environment, 1987: Greening Crty Sites: Case Studies in Good Practice in Urban Re-generation. HMSO £11.95.

“VIEWS FROM THE DISTRICTS” Association of District Councils, 1987: A Blueprint for Urban Areas, Volumes 1 and 2. London: £12.00.

Association of District Councils, 1987: Economic Development Initiatives and Innovations: Best Practice Paper No. 6 (Revised). London: £4.00.     

Determinants of Saving-Borrowing Decisions and Financial Inclusion in a High Middle Income Country: The Turkish Case

We use a representative survey of the Turkish household sector and investigate factors impinging on saving-borrowing behavior. We run four probit regressions to elucidate (i) the saving decision, (ii) asset choice or portfolio composition for those who save, (iii) the bank loan decision and lastly (iv) the formal versus informal borrowing decision. We find income, education, marital status and region within country strongly correlate with those decisions. We offer some insights regarding the influence of variables like rural to urban migrant status and religious belief on saving and borrowing decisions. We discuss the long-term implications of our findings on the Turkish household savings performance.     

The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures during the Recent Financial Crisis

We analyze the roles of bank ownership, management, and compensation structures in bank failures during the recent financial crisis. Our results suggest that failures are strongly influenced by ownership structure: high shareholdings of lower‐level management and non‐chief executive officer (non‐CEO) higher‐level management increase failure risk significantly. In contrast, shareholdings of banks’ CEOs do not have a direct impact on bank failure. These findings suggest that high stakes in the bank induce non‐CEO managers to take high risks due to moral hazard incentives, which may result in bank failure. We identify tail risk in noninterest income as a primary risk‐taking channel of lower‐level managers.