The Moderating Effect of Job Characteristics on Managers' Reactions to Career Plateau

This study analyzes the impact of career plateau and job characteristics on people's attitudes or behaviors, but it also extends the traditional field of research on career plateau by taking into account the influence of factors linked to job characteristics on the relationship between career plateau and work-related attitudes. Our results show that subjective career plateau, job enrichment potential, role ambiguity and participation in decision making are related to various individual attitudes and behaviors. The impact of career plateau on these variables varies according to job enrichment potential, participation in decision making and role ambiguity. Although these direct and moderating effects are only significant for some of the facets of job satisfaction and behavior, it appears that these job characteristics can contribute to limit the negative consequences associated with career plateau. Cette recherche analyse l'impact du plateau de carrière et des caractéristiques de l'emploi sur les attitudes et les comportements,0501s aussi élargie les recherches traditionnelles sur le plateau de carrière en prenant en compte l'influence des facteurs liés aux caractéristiques des emplois sur la relation entre le plateau de carrière et les attitudes reliées au travail. Nos résultats montrent que le plateau subjectif , le potentiel d'enrichissement du travail, l'ambiguité de rôle et la participation à la prise de décisions sont reliés aux diverses attitudes et comportements. L'impact du plateau de carrière sur ces attitudes est modéré par le potentiel d'enrichissement de l'emploi, la participation à la prise de décision et l'ambiguité de rôle. Quoi que les effets directs et modérateurs sont significatifs pour seulement quelques facettes de la satisfaction au travail, il apparaît que ces caractéristiques de l'emploi peuvent contribuer à limiter les conséquences négatives associées au plateau de carrière.Career plateau, role ambiguity, job enrichment, participation in decision making, job satisfaction, Plateau de carrière, ambiguïté de rôle, enrichissement de l'emploi, participation à la prise de décision, satisfaction de l'emploi

Ecological intuition versus economic "reason"

This article discusses the discount rate to be used in projects that aimed at improving the environment. The model has two different goods, one is the usual consumption good whose production may increase exponentially, the other is an environmental good whose quality remains limited. The stylized world we describe is fully determined by four parameters, reflecting basic preferences "ecological" and intergenerational concerns and feasibility constraints. We define an ecological discount rate and examine its connections with the usual interest rate and the optimized growth rate. We discuss, in this simple world, a variety of forms of the precautionary principle.discount rate ; ecological discount rate ; environmental goods ; relative prices ; irreversible damage ; precautionnary principle

Risk aggregation, dependence structure and diversification benefit

Insurance and reinsurance live and die from the diversification benefits or lack of it in their risk portfolio. The new solvency regulations allow companies to include them in their computation of risk-based capital (RBC). The question is how to really evaluate those benefits. To compute the total risk of a portfolio, it is important to establish the rules for aggregating the various risks that compose it. This can only be done through modelling of their dependence. It is a well known fact among traders in financial markets that "diversification works the worst when one needs it the most''. In other words, in times of crisis the dependence between risks increases. Experience has shown that very large loss events almost always affect multiple lines of business simultaneously. September 11, 2001, is an example of such an event: when the claims originated simultaneously from lines of business which are usually uncorrelated, such as property and life, at the same time that the assets of the company were depreciated due to the crisis on the stock markets. In this paper, we explore various methods of modelling dependence and their influence on diversification benefits. We show that the latter strongly depend on the chosen method and that rank correlation grossly overestimates diversification. This has consequences on the RBC for the whole portfolio, which is smaller than it should be when correctly accounting for tail correlation. However, the problem remains to calibrate the dependence for extreme events, which are rare by definition. We analyze and propose possible ways to get out of this dilemma and come up with reasonable estimates.Risk-Based Capital, Hierarchical Copula, Dependence, Calibration

Linear diffusion with singular absorption potential and/or unbounded convective flow: the weighted space approach

In this paper we prove the existence and uniqueness of very weak solutions to linear diffusion equations involving a singular absorption potential and/or an unbounded convective flow on a bounded open set of $\mathbb R^N$. In most of the paper we consider homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions but we prove that when the potential function grows faster than the distance to the boundary to the power -2 then no boundary condition is required to get the uniqueness of very weak solutions. This result is new in the literature and must be distinguished from other previous results in which such uniqueness of solutions without any boundary condition was proved for degenerate diffusion operators (which is not our case). Our approach, based on the treatment on some distance to the boundary weighted spaces, uses a suitable regularity of the solution of the associated dual problem which is here established. We also consider the delicate question of the differentiability of the very weak solution and prove that some suitable additional hypothesis on the data is required since otherwise the gradient of the solution may not be integrable on the domain

Contribution à l'étude des rouilles orangée et farineuse du caféier au Cameroun

Etude de la rouille orangée (Hemileia vastatrix) et de la rouille farineuse (H. coffeicola) au Cameroun sur l'Arabica et sur le Robusta. Sur Arabica les auteurs ont particulièrement étudié l'évaluation de l'importance des attaques en basse altitude, l'évaluation de la sensibilité variétale et le comportement de jeunes caféiers afin de mettre au point un test précoce d'évaluation de la sensibilité aux rouilles. Pour le Robusta les travaux ont essentiellement porté sur la sensibilité clonale par observations dans trois zones écologiques différentes du Camerou

DM-PhyClus: A Bayesian phylogenetic algorithm for infectious disease transmission cluster inference

Background. Conventional phylogenetic clustering approaches rely on arbitrary cutpoints applied a posteriori to phylogenetic estimates. Although in practice, Bayesian and bootstrap-based clustering tend to lead to similar estimates, they often produce conflicting measures of confidence in clusters. The current study proposes a new Bayesian phylogenetic clustering algorithm, which we refer to as DM-PhyClus, that identifies sets of sequences resulting from quick transmission chains, thus yielding easily-interpretable clusters, without using any ad hoc distance or confidence requirement. Results. Simulations reveal that DM-PhyClus can outperform conventional clustering methods, as well as the Gap procedure, a pure distance-based algorithm, in terms of mean cluster recovery. We apply DM-PhyClus to a sample of real HIV-1 sequences, producing a set of clusters whose inference is in line with the conclusions of a previous thorough analysis. Conclusions. DM-PhyClus, by eliminating the need for cutpoints and producing sensible inference for cluster configurations, can facilitate transmission cluster detection. Future efforts to reduce incidence of infectious diseases, like HIV-1, will need reliable estimates of transmission clusters. It follows that algorithms like DM-PhyClus could serve to better inform public health strategies