When Piece Rates Work: More Lessons from the Cotton Mills

Workers paid by the piece should in principle cooperate with new techniques that increase their output. In practice, however, firms seem unable to keep piece rates fixed, and when they cut rates workers often respond by restricting output. This paper investigates a case where in fact firms abstained from cutting rates and workers refrained from reducing effort. In Lancashire cotton spinning workers and firms negotiated piece rate lists which fixed standard rates of pay. Both parties had incentives to keep at bay the forces of competition. The lists gave workers a share in the gains of technical change, and they allowed firms to reap the benefits of regional specialisation. The lists were enforced by community standards. Les travailleurs payés à la pièce devraient en principe coopérer avec l'avènement de nouvelles technologies qui augmentent leur production. En pratique toutefois, les firmes semblent incapables de conserver un taux à la pièce fixe et quand elles coupent les taux, les travailleurs répondent souvent en restreignant leur production. Ce texte examine un cas où dans les faits les firmes se sont abstenues de couper les taux et les travailleurs eux, se sont abstenus de réduire leurs efforts. Dans le Lancashire, les ouvriers des filatures de coton et les firmes ont négociés des listes de taux à la pièce qui fixait les taux standards à payer. Les deux parties trouvaient leur avantage à tenir en échec les forces de la compétition. Les listes donnaient aux travailleurs un profit sur les changements technologiques et elles permettaient aux firmes de récolter les bénéfices de la spécialisation régionale. Les listes étaient0501ntenues selon les standards des communautés du Lancashire.Piece rate; Regional specialisation; Technical change, Taux ;a la pièce ; Spécialisation régionale ; Changements technologiques

Shame and Guilt in Lancashire: Enforcing Piece Rate Contracts

The ratchet effect undermines firms' ability to pay workers a steady piece rate. Using examples from the nineteenth-century British textile industry, this paper studies the different strategies firms and workers used to enforce piece rates. The strategies depended upon the emotional responses of workers, especially their relationship with their co-workers and with their employers. Following Lazear (1995), I argue that external or shame-based sanctions were prevalent in communities where workers showed indifference between the welfare of their co-workers and that of their bosses. In these cases, blacklists enforced the piece rate. Where workers felt more guilt about the welfare of their coworkers, internal sanctions were common. In guilt cultures, profit-sharing schemes enforced the established piece rate. En général, les employeurs et les employés ont de la difficulté à0501ntenir un niveau de paiement stable quand le paiement est à la pièce. En citant des exemples de l'industrie du textile britannique du 19e siècle, cet article vise à examiner les différentes approches que les acteurs ont utilisées afin de garder le niveau de paiement. Les stratégies adoptées ont dépendu des réponses émotionnelles des travailleurs et surtout de leurs relations avec leurs homologues et leurs patrons. Suivant le modèle de Lazear (1995), je suggère que les sanctions externes étaient privilégiées dans une culture de honte où les travailleurs étaient indifférents à l'égard du bien-être de leurs homologues et de celui de leurs patrons. Dans ces cultures, les acteurs ont utilisé les listes pour protéger la méthode de paiement. Là où les travailleurs ont valorisé davantage leurs relations avec leurs homologues,c'est-à-dire une culture de culpabilité, les sanctions internes étaient utilisées. Dans cette culture, un système de partage des profits était établi afin de garder la méthode de paiement.Methods of pay, piece rates, profit-sharing, British economic history, Méthodes de paiement, paiement à la pièce, partage des profits, hisoire économique britannique

Bootstrapping the Long Tail in Peer to Peer Systems

We describe an efficient incentive mechanism for P2P systems that generates a wide diversity of content offerings while responding adaptively to customer demand. Files are served and paid for through a parimutuel market similar to that commonly used for betting in horse races. An analysis of the performance of such a system shows that there exists an equilibrium with a long tail in the distribution of content offerings, which guarantees the real time provision of any content regardless of its popularity

Checkpoint-Dependent Regulation of Origin Firing and Replication Fork Movement in Response to DNA Damage in Fission Yeast

To elucidate the checkpoint mechanism responsible for slowing passage through S phase when fission yeast cells are treated with the DNA-damaging agent methyl methanesulfonate (MMS), we carried out two-dimensional gel analyses of replication intermediates in cells synchronized by cdc10 block (in G1) followed by release into synchronous S phase. The results indicated that under these conditions early-firing centromeric origins were partially delayed but late-firing telomeric origins were not delayed. Replication intermediates persisted in MMS-treated cells, suggesting that replication fork movement was inhibited. These effects were dependent on the Cds1 checkpoint kinase and were abolished in cells overexpressing the Cdc25 phosphatase, suggesting a role for the Cdc2 cyclin-dependent kinase. We conclude that both partial inhibition of the firing of a subset of origins and inhibition of replication fork movement contribute to the slowing of S phase in MMS-treated fission yeast cells

Social Structure and Opinion Formation

We present a dynamical theory of opinion formation that takes explicitly into account the structure of the social network in which in- dividuals are embedded. The theory predicts the evolution of a set of opinions through the social network and establishes the existence of a martingale property, i.e. that the expected weighted fraction of the population that holds a given opinion is constant in time. Most importantly, this weighted fraction is not either zero or one, but corresponds to a non-trivial distribution of opinions in the long time limit. This co-existence of opinions within a social network is in agreement with the often observed locality effect, in which an opinion or a fad is localized to given groups without infecting the whole society. We verified these predictions, as well as those concerning the fragility of opinions and the importance of highly connected individuals in opinion formation, by performing computer experiments on a number of social networks