Regulation and the cost of childcare

Female labour market choices depend on the availability, affordability and quality of childcare. In this article, we evaluate different regulatory measures and their effect on both the quality and the cost of childcare. First, we analyse data on regulations and costs to estimate the effect of regulatory measures on the cost of childcare. Next, we summarize the existing literature on the effect of regulation on childcare quality. We find that regulation intended to improve quality often focuses on easily observable measures of the care environment that do not necessarily affect the quality of care but that do increase the cost. Thus, we find that the regulatory environment could be improved by eliminating costly measures that do not affect quality of care.     

Once more, with feeling: Empathy and technology in customer care

Information technology is reshaping relationships between companies and customers, often bringing benefits to both. The unfettered use of technology, however, can erode customer care. For a company to care for customers, its managers and front-line employees must listen empathetically to what they have to say. But a rash of ‘innovations’ aimed primarily at reducing costs has made many companies opaque to their customers, who are—as a consequence—inadequately served and increasingly frustrated. Equally damaging is the resulting estrangement of employees from customers, a separation that dampens the empathy upon which true care for customers depends. As a number of innovative companies have shown, though, technology need not necessarily sour relations between businesses and those they serve. Indeed, technology can actually enrich them if senior managers (1) affirm their commitment to active, empathetic involvement with customers; (2) understand the ways in which current procedures and systems mediate interactions with customers; and (3) promote the deployment of social networks and other technologies to help customers tell their stories, and to enable workers and managers alike to hear them. Only when employees can step into their customers’ shoes can companies add authenticity to the claim: “We care for you.”     

Guns,laws and public shootings in the United States

Since the late 1990s, there have been increasing numbers of public shootings carried out with firearms in the United States. These tragedies continually renew the regulatory debate concerning public safety while considering civil liberties. Using a unique data set, we investigate whether laws correspond to whether an event occurs and the effects of event-specific characteristics on public shooting outcomes. In particular, we analyse how state-specific gun laws, the types of firearms, the shooting venues and the mental health of the gunman impact the outcomes of public shootings. Results show that most gun laws are unrelated to whether an event occurs. In addition, common state and federal gun laws that outlaw assault weapons are unrelated to the likelihood of an assault weapon being used during a public shooting event. Moreover, results show that the use of assault weapons is not related to more victims or fatalities than other types of guns. However, the use of hand guns, shot guns and high-capacity magazines is directly related to the number of victims and fatalities in a public shooting event. Finally, the gunman’s reported mental illness is often associated with an increase in the number of victims and fatalities.     

LEARNING AND LIFE CYCLE PATTERNS OF OCCUPATIONAL TRANSITIONS

Individuals experience frequent occupational switches during their lifetime, and initial worker characteristics are predictive of future patterns of occupational switching. We construct a quantitative model of occupational choices with worker learning and occupation‐specific productivity shocks to match life cycle patterns of occupational transitions and quantify the value of occupational mobility and learning. For the average 18‐year‐old worker, the value of being able to switch occupations is about 67 months of the maximum wage he or she could earn in the model, and the value of a worker learning his or her type is about 32 months of this maximum wage.     

Optimal taxation over the life cycle

We derive the optimal labor income tax schedule for a life cycle model with deterministic productivity variation and complete asset markets. An individual chooses whether and how much to work at each date. The government must finance a given expenditure and does not have access to lump sum taxation. We develop a solution method that uses the primal approach to solve for the optimal non-linear tax function. The average tax rate determines when an individual will work while the marginal tax rate determines how much she will work. Even in the absence of redistributive concerns, the optimal tax schedule has an increasing average tax rate at low levels of income to encourage labor market participation. The marginal tax rate at the top is strictly positive. Finally, the model is used to assess the effects of changing the current tax schedule to the optimal one. Under the preferred parameters, this delivers a welfare gain equivalent to 0.67 percent of lifetime consumption.     

A NOTE ON THE NONLINEAR EFFECT OF MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES

We use a labor search model with worker experience to assess the effects of minimum wage increases. Minimum wages can have nonlinear effects on unemployment as higher minimum wages become binding for larger portions of the underlying productivity distribution. The model is used to assess the increases proposed by the Obama Administration from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 and then to $10.10 per hour. We find that minimum wage increases have large effects on youth unemployment. These large effects cast doubt on using past empirical estimates of the effects of minimum wages that do not account for potential nonlinearities. (JEL E24, J08, J24, J64)     

Can you hear me now? Learning from customer stories

A large business generally knows its customers through quantitative analyses and summary reports, which are staples of market research and corporate reporting. Too often, the voices of individual customers are muffled by a torrent of numbers, and the stories they would tell are garbled. Few managers and even fewer executives hear customers speak, in their own words and ways, about the company's products and services. Yet, as we discuss, these stories may suggest enhanced customer service, better products, and organizational innovation; indeed, a number of companies have shown that the value of attentiveness to customer stories can be great. Herein, we describe a controlled, exploratory approach a company might take to develop its own engagement with customer storytelling—one that encompasses not only its interactions with customers along the front line, but also conversations ongoing in social media. Our proposal demands sustained commitment from senior management. We counsel senior executives to lead by example, to listen to customer stories, to learn from them, and to share them with others in the executive suite. By truly caring about storytelling, business leaders can better serve their customers and their companies.     

Oral history and information technology: Human voices of assessment

Dramatic advances in technology for acquiring, managing, and sharing information promise to reshape the workplace by eliciting new behaviors and introducing new organizational patterns. For academic medical centers, the integration of information technology into programs of education, research, and patient care is essential for increased organizational effectiveness.

At Baylor College of Medicine, we have developed information‐sharing and management tools, collectively called the Virtual Notebook System (VNS). The VNS is a multiuser, workstation‐based hypermedia system that serves as a technologically extended analog of the laboratory notebook used in biomedical research. We are deploying the VNS in scientific groups at Baylor, and are applying oral history techniques to assess its impact.

This article shows how oral history captures the “human voices”; of Baylor's experience and helps us understand the effects of information technology on the processes of biomedical research.