THE EFFECTS OF COMPANY TRAINING,FURTHER EDUCATION AND THE YOUTH TRAINING SCHEME ON THE EARNINGS OF YOUNG EMPLOYEES*

Abstract This paper provides evidence on the impact of company training, of post-compulsory education and of the UK Youth Training Scheme in the late 1980's on the earnings of 21-year-old employees in England and Wales. Earnings equations are estimated for each of seven groups of employees who have followed alternative routes from compulsory education into employment, allowing for selectivity into these routes. There are several findings, including: both high parental social class and better school qualifications help to channel people into higher status routes, while high local unemployment has the opposite effect; participation in company training in long spells substantially raises wages but short spells do not; YTS participation fails to raise, and possibly substantially lowers, wages even three years after graduation compared to those who left school at 16 and went to work and received no training; there is weak evidence that, even for those that do not enter higher education, it is better to stay on at school after 16 than go into YTS.     

The voice of the loyal manager: Distinguishing attachment from commitment

The purpose of this article is to use Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework to analyze the extent to which corporate employees are merely attached to the firm rather than committed. A model of managerial loyalty is developed where loyalty is defined as the percentage pay increase that an employee would require to leave the current firm for alternative employment. Independent variables in the model include barriers to exit and voice. This model was tested on three data sets from North American airlines. This model received empirical support during a stable environment but was not strongly supported during a more turbulent environment. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Assessing Voluntary Programs to Improve Environmental Quality

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the use of voluntaryapproaches (VAs) to environmental protection, which has spurned agrowing literature on the relative merits of voluntary vs. mandatoryapproaches. This paper draws on that literature to discuss both thetheoretical and empirical issues that arise in the evaluation orassessment of a particular VA. We consider both the environmentaleffectiveness and the efficiency of this policy approach. Our aim is toaid policymakers in evaluating a specific program or in thinking aboutthe use and design of a VA. We identify some key features that arelikely to increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency of VAs.     

Stochastic Demand for Hospitals and Optimizing "Excess" Bed Capacity

This paper addresses the issue of hospital bed capacity by considering the stochastic demand for United States hospitals. An equilibrium condition for the optimal number of "excess" beds is derived and applied using a cost function estimated with a panel data model for the period 1987-1992. Results indicate that it may be difficult to justify the costliness of existing levels of empty hospital beds. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission should be cognizant of the potential effects of hospital mergers on undesirable excess bed capacity.     

Measuring market response to regulation of the cable TV industry

During the 1988–1990 period, the cable television industry was subject to a number of regulatory events. These centered on possible reregulation of rates for basic service and reduction of entry barriers for potential competitors. Using the event study methodology on a portfolio of cable firms, we find evidence that news of no reregulation caused significant positive abnormal returns. News of reregulation caused insignificant negative abnormal returns. These findings provide some support for the traditional consumer protection theory of regulation. News related to entry barriers generally had no significant effect on returns, which suggests that elements of natural monopoly may exist in the industry.     

A Reexamination of the Corporate Demand for Reinsurance

This study examines the effect of the state of the international reinsurance market on the demand for reinsurance by U.S. insurers using data from the years 1993 through 2000. Both the overall demand for reinsurance and the utilization of foreign reinsurance by U.S. insurers are explored. In addition to supporting the findings of prior literature related to the traditional motives for the corporate demand for insurance, evidence indicates that the state of the U.S. reinsurance industry impacts the amount of reinsurance demanded by U.S. insurers. The study also investigates reasons why U.S. insurers utilize a reinsurance program composed of both U.S. and foreign reinsurers. The results indicate that the decision to utilize some percentage of foreign reinsurance is driven primarily by the financial and operational characteristics of the ceding company such as firm size, group affiliation, and organizational form. However, no support is found for the hypothesis that possible differences between the foreign and U.S. reinsurance markets impact the decision to utilize foreign reinsurance.     

Are services advertised differently? An analysis of the relationship between product and service types and the informational content of their advertisements

This study examines the informational content of service and product advertisements and analyses the relationship between the amount and type of information in an advertisement and the type of product or service being advertised. The influence that service characteristics have on advertising strategy is still not well understood. One theory is that services need to be more tangible in order to assist in the consumer decision-making process and advertising can assist with this by providing factual information. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether this theory is recognized and adopted in advertising practice. This is achieved by performing a content analysis. The results indicate that product advertisements contain more information than services, which indicates a discrepancy between advertising theory and practice. The results also prove that there are variances in the amount and type of information included in product and service advertisements. The paper examines these variances and applies existing classification frameworks to explain them. Areas for further research are also identified.     

Search reduction in hierarchical distributed problem solving

Knoblock and Korf have determined that abstraction can reduce search at a single agent from exponential to linear complexity (Knoblock 1991; Korf 1987). We extend their results by showing how concurrent problem solving among multiple agents using abstraction can further reduce search to logarithmic complexity. We empirically validate our formal analysis by showing that it correctly predicts performance for the Towers of Hanoi problem (which meets all of the assumptions of the analysis). Furthermore, a powerful form of abstraction for large multiagent systems is to group agents into teams, and teams of agents into larger teams, to form an organizational pyramid. We apply our analysis to such an organization of agents and demonstrate the results in a delivery task domain. Our predictions about abstraction's benefits can also be met in this more realistic domain, even though assumptions made in our analysis are violated. Our analytical results thus hold the promise for explaining in general terms many experimental observations made in specific distributed AI systems, and we demonstrate this ability with examples from prior research.This research has been sponsored, in part, by the National Science Foundation under grants IRI-9015423 and IRI-9010645, by the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, and by a Bell Northern Research Postgraduate Award.     

The CNO/CFO partnership: navigating the changing landscape

With increasing pressure to cut costs, both real and immediate, and those forecasted and anticipated, the partnership and collaboration between nursing and finance will continue to take on new challenges. This partnership has historically been strained and does not always come easy due to differences in focus, different priorities, and inadequate communication, listening, and hearing. That needs to change and a strong CNO-CFO partnership is needed. Nursing leaders need to understand and appreciate the financial constraints and balance them with expected outcomes, and financial leaders need to understand and appreciate the core clinical business and what gaps in care mean to the financial viability of the organization and to patient outcomes. One health system developed a platform for change and is dedicated to the hard work involved in continuously working on those partnerships so when it comes to patient quality, safety, and financial performance, nursing and finance leaders are well positioned for future health care challenges.