High involvement management,high-performance work systems and well-being

Studies on the impact of high-performance work systems on employees' well-being are emerging but the underlying theory remains weak. This paper attempts to develop theory of the effects on well-being of four dimensions of high-performance work systems: enriched jobs, high involvement management, employee voice, and motivational supports. Hypothesized associations are tested using multilevel models and data from Britain's Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004 (WERS2004). Results show that enriched jobs are positively associated with both measures of well-being: job satisfaction and anxiety–contentment. Voice is positively associated with job satisfaction, and motivational supports with neither measure. The results for high involvement management are not as predicted because it increases anxiety and is independent of job satisfaction.     

International assignments: is there a role for gender and race in decisions?

The authors argue that international managers and researchers need to avoid an ostrich-like attitude of ‘gender and race blindness’ when dealing with diversity in the workforce. This issue is addressed specifically in the case of international assignments. The paper draws on previous studies investigating gender, race and international assignment, and considers a sample of regulations pertaining to gender and race in the context of international assignment decisions. The authors present the results of a preliminary study focusing specifically on the interplay of these variables. Based on the issues discussed, the authors examine selection, preparation and support activities as important avenues for meaningfully incorporating gender and race into the international assignment process.     

Pushing the limit? Fiscal policy in the European Monetary Union

Governments are confronted with the growing realization that they face fiscal limits on the size of debt and deficits relative to GDP. These fiscal limits invalidate Bohn's criterion for fiscal sustainability, which allows explosive debt relative to GDP, eventually violating any fiscal limit. We derive restrictions on a fiscal rule, necessary for the government to eliminate explosive behavior. These restrictions require that the response of the primary surplus to debt be relatively strong, and that the primary surplus be cointegrated with both debt and output. We test these empirical implications for a panel of eleven EMU countries, and find that they are satisfied, implying that fiscal policy does not create explosive behavior.     

“You can try to press different emotional buttons”: The conflicts and strategies of eliciting emotions for fundraisers

In a competitive climate in which charities must increasingly rely on fundraising with the public, emotions such as hope, guilt, and fear are powerful tools that can be used strategically to secure donations or participation. This paper explores data from interviews with 23 fundraisers and voluntary sector workers, managers, and officials, to argue that decisions around how, why, and when to invest in the elicitation of emotion in fundraising are often difficult and conflicted, with some identifying a battle between ethics and effectiveness. We identify 3 key levels of conflict that must be negotiated: at the level of the charity sector, where the emotional ethics particularly of larger charities have been met with some resistance from the public and press; at the level of the organisation itself, where the ethics of representation are often a subject of conflict between fundraising and other departments such as policy; and, finally, at the experiential level of individual fundraisers themselves, who report being routinely internally conflicted around the rights and wrongs of using emotion in their work. A strategic approach to eliciting emotion emerges in the data as a useful way to address some of these areas of conflict, with fundraisers making careful “balancing” decisions about how and with whom to mobilise certain emotions at specific times.     

The Gold at Fort Knox

When explaining that U.S. currency is not backed by gold or other precious metals, economic educators frequently are asked about the gold at Fort Knox, Kentucky. This note explains the content and role of the depository at Fort Knox.     

POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN LATIN AMERICA DURING THE 1980s

On average, poverty and income inequality increased in Latin America during the 1980s. Forty-six percent of the increase in poverty took place in the cities of Brazil alone, though part of this reflects the migration of poor rural inhabitants to urban areas. There is strong evidence that both income inequality and poverty mirrored the economic cycle, rising during recession and falling during recovery. Economies that grew (e.g. Colombia, Costa Rica) performed better with respect to poverty and income inequality than those that stagnated. In particular, countries that failed to stabilize effectively (e.g. Brazil, Peru) experienced substantial increases in poverty. Educational attainment has the greatest correlation with both income inequality and the probability of being poor. From a policy standpoint, there is a clear association between the provision of education, lessening of income inequality, and poverty reduction.     

Analyst forecasts and price discovery in futures markets: The case of natural gas storage

We investigate analyst forecasts in a unique setting, the natural gas storage market, and study the contribution of analysts in facilitating price discovery in futures markets. Using a high‐frequency database of analyst storage forecasts, we show that the market appears to condition expectations regarding a weekly storage release on the analyst forecasts and beyond that of various statistical‐based models. Further, we find that the market looks through the reported consensus analyst forecast and places differential emphasis on the individual forecasts of analysts according to their prior accuracy. Also, the market appears to place greater emphasis on analysts' long‐term accuracy than on their recent accuracy. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:451–477, 2009     

Opportunities for Air Pollutant and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction through Local Transport Planning

This paper has three main objectives: firstly, to provide quantitative information on the potential greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions reductions resulting from a number of future road transport scenarios; secondly, to illustrate the emission reduction measures available to local transport planners; and thirdly, to highlight the potential for these measures to be integrated into strategies that deliver other transport priorities. The results are drawn from a case study of Norfolk in the UK. We conclude that while technology can play a large part in reducing emissions of air pollutants, demand management is crucial to the delivery of long term greenhouse gas emission reduction and ultimately of air pollutant emissions too.     

Why effective spreads on NASDAQ were higher than on the New York stock exchange in the 1990s

Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain why spreads on NASDAQ were substantially higher than those on the NYSE in the 1990s: “collusion” and “preferencing and payment for order flow.” We present data on all actively traded stocks in these markets of relative effective spreads (RES), aggregated monthly over 1987–1999 and advance a third hypothesis: NASDAQ “SOES-day-trading.” We estimate NASDAQ and NYSE informed-trade losses and gains to market makers and other liquidity providers on six trade sizes, and find that losses on trades we ascribe to SOES day traders were substantially greater than those on other trades, offset somewhat by gains from small-trade-size investors. NASDAQ market makers' response to these losses and additional operations costs incurred to reduce the losses resulted in greater RES and increased trading within the best quotes, predominantly on larger trade sizes. The data are consistent with the “SOES-day-trading” hypotheses, but not with the other two. Furthermore, the mandatory SOES “experiment” provides insights into the negative effects of automated trading systems (such as ECNs, which now dominate NASDAQ) when their design does not adequately consider opportunistic traders.