A Test of an Efficiency Model of Grievance Activity

Copyright by Cornell University. This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/45/1/3.refs.The authors develop a model in which the extent of use of a grievance system is determined by wage premiums and alternative job opportunities. Specifically, they hypothesize that when workers enjoy comparatively high wages or are faced with poor alternative job opportunities, they are less likely to use withdrawal mechanisms that might lead to dismissal (such as shirking or absenteeism) and more likely to use grievance procedures to address workplace problems. The results of an analysis of data for the year 1982 from a large manufacturing company are consistent with this hypothesis

An Interplant Test of the Efficiency Wage Hypothesis

© 1991 by the President, and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.The analysis that follows tests the shirking model of efficiency wages by examining the relationship between rates of employee discipline and relative wage premiums across plants within the same firm. The structure of this data set controls for many of the problems that confound other tests of efficiency wage arguments, and the results suggest that greater wage premiums are associated with lower levels of shirking as measured by disciplinary dismissals. Shirking and discipline are also lower where conditions in the labor market raise the costs associated with shirking by making it more difficult to find alternative employment. It is less clear, however, whether the wage in this case is necessarily efficient in the sense of generating reductions in discipline sufficient to offset the costs of the wage premium

Gender Earnings Differentials in Total Pay, Base Pay, and Contingent Pay

Copyright by Cornell University. This is the publisher's version, and is also electronically available from http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/47/4/634.abstract.Using data from a 1988 survey of business school graduates, the authors analyze gender differentials in earnings by form of pay—total pay, base pay, and contingent pay—with controls for human capital, occupation, job level, and individual characteristics. The results indicate that within narrowly defined occupations and jobs, most of the unexplained difference in total pay between the men and women in the sample was due to gender differences in the portion of pay that was contingent on job performance. The greater importance of contingent pay in the earnings of the men than of the women may reflect differential treatment of men and women by firms, gender differences in performance, gender differences in risk preferences, or some other sorting mechanism

Accuracy of physician-estimated probability of brain injury in children with minor head trauma

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of physician estimates of the probability of intracranial injury in children with minor head trauma. Methods: This is a subanalysis of a large prospective multicentre cohort study performed from July 2001 to November2005. During data collection for the derivation of a clinical prediction rule for children with minor head trauma, physicians indicated their estimate of the probability of brain injury visible on computed tomography (P-Injury) and the probability of injury requiring intervention (P-Intervention) by choosing one of the following options: 0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100%. We compared observed frequencies to expected frequencies of injury using Pearson’s χ2-test in analyses stratified by the level of each type of predicted probability and by year of age. Results: In 3771 eligible subjects, the mean predicted risk was 4.6% (P-Injury) and 1.4% (P-Intervention). The observed frequency of injury was 4.1% (any injury) and 0.6% (intervention). For all levels of P-Injury from 1% to 40%, the observed frequency of injury was consistent with the expected frequency. The observed frequencies for the 50%, 75%, and 90% levels were lower than expected (p\u3c0.05). For estimates of P-Intervention, the observed frequency was consistently higher than the expected frequency. Physicians underestimated risk for infants (mean P-Intervention 6.2%, actual risk 12.3%, p\u3c0.001). Conclusions: Physician estimates of probability of any brain injury in children were collectively accurate for children with low and moderate degrees of predicted risk. Risk was underestimated in infants

Changes in tenure-earnings profiles and implicit contracts in managerial labor markets

This study looks at recent changes in managerial labor markets in terms of changes in the relationship between tenure and earnings. Many product markets have become less stable during the past decade with the deregulation of several industries and increases in foreign competition. As a result, firms are shifting part of the risk associated with these changes to their workers and managers. Many firms, for example, have introduced innovative compensation practices in an attempt to more closely relate pay to measures of performance at each point in time during the employment relationship. These practices are more prevalent among managers and shift some of the risk of short run fluctuations in productivity from the firm to the managers.This study focuses on changes in the relationship between the tenure and earnings. The empirical fact that years of tenure and earnings positively correlate has received much theoretical and empirical attention in the literature. It is generally accepted that at least part of this correlation is wage growth which occurs with tenure and is caused by compensation schemes which defer the payment of a portion of earned wages from early in the employment relationship until later when the amount deferred is returned to the worker. These schemes are implicit and create incentives for the worker to increase their effort (Lazear-type implicit contracts) and/or to invest in firm-specific human capital.It is argued here that if firms are shifting risks associated with product markets to managers, then the value to managers of deferred-payment compensation schemes decline. Other things equal, the managerial labor market should create pressures to reduce the use of this type of compensation scheme. It is hypothesized that the slope of the tenure-earnings profile decreased for managers in recent years. This hypothesis is tested by estimating the change in the slope of the tenure-earnings profile between 1979 and 1983, by industry, for managers and other workers. The results support the hypothesis for managers in manufacturing industries, where the change in the competitiveness of the environment has been the greatest, but not for managers in other industries, nor for workers in other occupations.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

Costs and Benefits of Privatizing Security Guard Services Currently Provided by the Capitol Area Security Patrol

The purpose of this study was to estimate the costs and benefits that would accrue 1.0 the State of Kansas if the security services currently being provided by CASP were, instead, purchased through contracts with private providers of security. In the first step of this analysis we determined exactly what security personnel do at the Capitol Complex. This part of the analysis is described below in Section II. Next we analyzed the cost to the State of the current services being provided. It is important to note at this point that CASP provides both security guard and police (Capitol Police) services under the Highway Patrols contract with the DoA. This study focused excl.1sively on the services provided by the security guards. The costs of the current services are summarized in Section ill. We estimated the cost of purchasing a similar quantity and quality of security services in the market for security services. These costs are reported in Section IV The difference in the cost of the current services compared to purchasing the services in the marketplace is discussed in Section V. We also consider the possible differences in the quality of services that would be acquired in the marketplace versus the current quality of service. Finally, we report on a competitive bidding approach for the provision of public services that allows public agencies to compete with private providers. This approach is now being used m Phoenix, Arizona

Excited-state spectroscopic investigations of multinuclear complexes based on [Ru(bpy)3]2+ moieties connected to 2,2′-bipyridine and 2,2′;6′,2′′-terpyridine ligands

International audienc