Staggered Wage Setting without Money Illusion: Variations on a Theme of Taylor

In a number of influential recent papers, Taylor (1979a, b; 1980a, b) has analyzed the behaviour of an economy characterized by staggered over-lapping wage contracts and rational expectations. His model has the "Keynesian" feature that the second moment of the distribution function of real output is not invariant under changes in the deterministic (and known) components of monetary policy rules. The reason for this is the inertia in the money wage process induced by the staggered multi-period contracts and the assumption that the wage payments due in any given period under the contract are not "indexed", that is not made contingent on the actually realized values of such nominal variables as the general price level. We retain the crucial assumption of multi-period (staggered) non-contingent contracts but wish to examine the consequences of altering Taylor's assumption that wage bargainers are influenced by relative money wages rather than relative real wages. In Taylor's model money wage contracts are negotiated without reference to past, current and expected future prices. Our suggested modification that wage bargainers are influenced by relative real wages, which we consider somewhat more plausible, has some interesting implications for the empirical estimation of models with staggered wage contracts (see especially Taylor, 1980b).

Governance Reform in Legal Service Markets

This paper discusses proposed governance reforms of legal services markets. The model distinguishes between a status quo position supported by a system of professionally enforced collective reputation and forms of governance based more squarely on market mechanisms. We identify a number of forces which determine the success of reform. Focussing particularly on the rent recapture and relationship substitution effects, we highlight their impact on client welfare and quality of legal services in different types of market according to whether clients are transient or repeated users of the service.incomplete contracts, repeated interactions

Information and Human Capital Managment

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the statistic of worker performance that will be available to outside recruiters. Choosing different statistics affects the extent of regression to the mean which, we show, in turn affects the incidence of adverse selection among retained and released workers. Using this observation, we detail how optimal information management policies vary across firms with different human capital management priorities. This view of human capital management via information management has strong implications for labour market outcomes. We discuss the impact on average wages, wage inequality, wage skewness and labour turnover rates

The Orbit, Mass, and Albedo of Transneptunian Binary 1999 RZ253

We have observed 1999 RZ253 with the Hubble Space Telescope at seven separate epochs and have fit an orbit to the observed relative positions of this binary. Two orbital solutions have been identified that differ primarily in the inclination of the orbit plane. The best fit corresponds to an orbital period, P=46.263 +0.006/-0.074 days, semimajor axis a=4,660 +/-170 km and orbital eccentricity e=0.460 +/-0.013 corresponding to a system mass m=3.7 +/-0.4 x10^18 kg. For a density of rho = 1000 kg m^-3 the albedo at 477 nm is p = 0.12 +/-0.01, significantly higher than has been commonly assumed for objects in the Kuiper Belt. Multicolor, multiepoch photometry shows this pair to have colors typical for the Kuiper belt with a spectral gradient of 0.35 per 100 nm in the range between 475 and 775 nm. Photometric variations at the four epochs we observed were as large as 12 +/-3% but the sampling is insufficient to confirm the existence of a lightcurve

Information and Human Capital Managment

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the statistic of worker performance that will be available to outside recruiters. Choosing different statistics affects the extent of regression to the mean which, we show, in turn affects the incidence of adverse selection among retained and released workers. Using this observation, we detail how optimal information management policies vary across firms with different human capital management priorities. This view of human capital management via information management has strong implications for labour market outcomes. We discuss the impact on average wages, wage inequality, wage skewness and labour turnover rates

Forest and Water Policies. The need to reconcile public and science perceptions

This paper compares and contrasts some of the science and public perceptions of the role of forests in relation to the water environment. It is suggested that the disparity between the two perceptions needs to be addressed before we are in a position to devise and develop land and water policies (whether market or non-market based) which are aimed at either improving the water environment, and by doing so improving the livelihoods of poor people by greater access to water, or conserving and protecting forests. Examples are given of three research projects in South Africa, India and Costa Rica where, through the involvement of stakeholder groups, often with representatives comprising both the science and public perceptions, interactive research programmes were designed not only to derive new research findings with regard to the biophysical processes but also to achieve better "ownership" and acceptance of research findings by the stakeholders. It is concluded that to move towards a reconciliation of the different perceptions and to put in place better policies and management systems, where policy is better connected with science, will require further efforts: a) To understand how the "belief" systems underlying the science and public perceptions have evolved, and how these are affecting land and water policy processes; b) To develop management support tools, ranging from simple dissemination tools, which can demonstrate the impacts of land use decisions on the water environment to institutions and local people, to detailed robust and defensible hydrological models which are needed to help implement the new land and water policies, such as those now being implemented in RSA; and c) To understand better how land and water related policies impact on the poorest in society. It is argued that many present policies may not be significantly benefiting the poor and may even, in some situations, be resulting in perverse outcomes

Domesticating cleaner cookstoves for improved respiratory health: Using approaches from the sanitation sector to explore the adoption and sustained use of improved cooking technologies in Nepal

Drawing on village-based data from Nepal, this paper explores the transferability of the Integrated Behavioural Model for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (IBM-WASH) to the clean cooking sector and its potential to elucidate how barriers to improved cookstove adoption and sustained use intersect at different scales. The paper also explores the potential of IBM-WASH, behaviour settings theory and domestication analysis to collectively inform effective behaviour change techniques and interventions that promote both adoption and sustained use of health-promoting technologies. Information on cookstove use in the community since 2012 enables valuable insights to be gained on how kitchen settings and associated cooking behaviour were re-configured as homes and stoves were re-built following the April 2015 earthquake. The methodological approach comprised of semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, direct observation and household surveys. The findings indicated that the IBM-WASH framework translated well to the improved cookstove sector, capturing key influences on clean cooking transitions across the model's three dimensions (context, psychosocial and technology) at all five levels. Understandings gained from utilising IBM-WASH were enhanced – especially at the individual and habitual levels – by domestication analysis and settings theory which elucidated how different cooking technologies were incorporated (or not) within physical structures, everyday lives and routine behaviour. The paper concludes that this combination of approaches has potential applicability for initiatives seeking to promote improved environmental health at community-wide scales

Planetary dynamics in stellar clusters

We investigate how the formation and evolution of extrasolar planetary systems can be affected by stellar encounters that occur in the crowded conditions of a stellar cluster. Using plausible estimates of cluster evolution, we show how planet formation may be supressed in globular clusters while planets wider than 0.1 AU that do form in such environments can be ejected from their stellar system. Less crowded systems such as open clusters have a much reduced effect on any planetary system. Planet formation is unaffected in open clusters and only the wider planetary systems will be disrupted during the cluster's lifetime. The potential for free-floating planets in these environments is also discussed.Comment: 8, pages, 6 figures. accepted by MNRA