Individual-Level Determinants of the Propensity to Shirk

Employee shirking, where workers give less than full effort on the job, has typically been investigated as a construct subject to group and organization-level influences. Neglected are individual differences that might explain why individuals in the same organization or work-group might shirk. The present study sought to address these limitations by investigating subjective well-being (a dispositional construct), job satisfaction, as well as other individual-level determinants of shirking behavior. Results identified several individual-level determinants of shirking. Implications of the results are discussed

Systematic variation of the 12CO/13CO ratio as a function of star-formation rate surface density

We show that the12CO/13CO intensity ratio in nearby galaxies varies systematically as a function of the star formation rate surface density and gas surface density. The same effect is observed in different transitions, and in the 12CO/C18O ratio, while the 13CO/C18O ratio appears to remain constant as a function of the star formation rate surface density. We discuss the cause of these variations, considering both changes in the physical state of the gas, and chemical changes that lead to abundance variations. We used the observed correlations with C18O to suggest that abundance variations are unlikely to be causing the systematic trend observed with the star formation rate surface density, and thus that the mean gas temperature and/or velocity dispersion are systematically higher in higher star-formation rate surface density regions. We present the best fitting relations between the star formation rate surface density and the 12CO/13CO and 12CO/C18O ratios, and discuss how this effect can help us predict CO isotope emission from galaxies across the known universe.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted to MNRA

Simplified Neural Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) is the task of modifying a statistical model trained on labeled data from a source domain to achieve better performance on data from a target domain, with access to only unlabeled data in the target domain. Existing state-of-the-art UDA approaches use neural networks to learn representations that can predict the values of subset of important features called "pivot features." In this work, we show that it is possible to improve on these methods by jointly training the representation learner with the task learner, and examine the importance of existing pivot selection methods.Comment: To be presented at NAACL 201

Variance Analysis of Basis Weight Variation on the Pilot Machine

The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of the variations of the pilot machine of the Department of Paper Science and Engineering at Western Michigan University by variance analysis conducted on basis weight profiles obtained from the Industrial Nucleonics scanning basis weight gauge. The profiles obtained from the basis weight gauge were subjected to a computer program which computed the cross-direction, machine-direction, and random component variations and determined F-ratios. The F-ratio shows the significance of the component variation. Cross-direction variation was found to decrease with speed. Machine-direction variation showed no significant trend and the random variation decreased with speed. It was found that the F-ratio comparing the machine-direction component to the random component was significant at the one per cent confidence level and should be lessened if better operational efficiency for the pilot machine is desired

Measures of New Constructs or Old Ones? The Case of Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction

The construct validity of organizational commitment has recently been investigated in several studies. The authors of these studies have concluded that organizational commitment is a valid construct, sufficiently distinct from job satisfaction. Our re-analysis of data reported in these studies, however, suggests that the construct validity evidence is unconvincing. Analysis of meta-analytic results cast further doubt on the discriminant validity of organizational commitment as typically measured. Based on these findings, suggestions for future research are offered

Evaluating Labor Productivity in Food Retailing

Competition from new store formats including supercenters, warehouse clubs, and mass merchandisers has emerged as a major threat to traditional grocery chains. A primary objective of this paper is to understand how the store-level performance is related to the workforce composition of full-time and part-time employees chosen by the food retailer along with benefits and incentives provided to employees. The elasticity of complementarity for food retailers measures how changes in store size affect use of full-time and part-time employees. Larger store size increases the marginal value of labor, and firm hiring decisions shift to expanded use of part-time employees.elasticity of complementarity, employee compensation, food retailing, inverse price elasticities, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Labor and Human Capital, Productivity Analysis,

09-08 "Agricultural Dumping Under NAFTA: Estimating the Costs of U.S. Agricultural Policies to Mexican Producers"

With the opening of the Mexican economy under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexican agriculture came under new competitive pressures from U.S. exports. It was widely recognized at the beginning of NAFTA that Mexico had geographically-based comparative advantages in supplying off-season fruits and vegetables to a hungry U.S. market. NAFTA’s liberalization of agricultural trade produced the expected results, with more staple crops and meats flowing south and more seasonal fruits and vegetables flowing north. In agriculture, tariffs and quotas have now mostly been eliminated. Not so agricultural subsidies, which were left largely undisciplined by NAFTA. High U.S. farm subsidies for exported crops, which compete with Mexican products, have prompted charges that the level playing field NAFTA was supposed to create is in fact tilted heavily in favor of the United States. This paper assesses the costs of U.S. agricultural policies to Mexican producers by examining the extent to which the United States exported agricultural products to Mexico at prices below their costs of production, one of the definitions of “dumping” in the WTO. We study eight agricultural goods – corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, beef, pork, and poultry – all of which are heavily supported by the U.S. government, were produced in Mexico in significant volumes before NAFTA, and experienced dramatic increases in U.S. exports to Mexico after the agreement. We look at the years 1997-2005 because the beginning year follows both the implementation of NAFTA and the enactment of the 1996 U.S. Farm Bill, which significantly changed the nature of U.S. farm support. We estimate “dumping margins” and the costs to Mexican producers of prices driven below production costs by U.S. policies. We estimate Mexican losses for the eight products at $12.8 billion over the nine-year period, more than the value of Mexican tomato exports to the United States. Corn farmers experienced the greatest losses:$6.6 billion, an average of $99 per hectare per year.