Results of the Bank’s survey of wage-setting in Belgian firms

The analysis presented is the outcome of a survey conducted by the Bank and forming the Belgian component of an initiative launched by the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN), in order to accompany the empirical analysis based on individual employees’ wage data obtained, for instance, from administrative data banks. The survey contains questions on the wage-setting process, the existence of downward rigidity and the reasons for it, the reaction of firms to shocks, and the frequency and timing of wage and price adjustments. The survey reveals that almost all firms in Belgium are covered by a sector agreement, and just over a quarter apply an additional collective wage agreement at the firm level. Such firm-level collective agreements are more common in large firms. The results also show that just over half of firms apply a wage indexation mechanism with a threshold index, while just under half operate in an environment where indexation takes place at fixed intervals. The latter system is more common in large firms, so that the weighted results indicate that this mechanism applies to the majority of employees. The level of wages of new employees depends mainly on what is specified in collective agreements and on the wage level of comparable employees in the firm. However, the wages which the firm actually pays to its staff may deviate from the pay scales specified in the sectoral agreements. In a significant number of firms, especially for white-collar workers and skilled staff, actual wages paid exceed the sectoral pay scales. Such a wage cushion, forming a buffer between the actual wages and the collectively agreed lower limits, is more common in large firms. Overall, firms seldom respond to adverse shocks by cutting basic wages or using alternative ways of reducing labour costs per employee. Certainly in large firms, costs are reduced mainly via the employment channel, i.e. by reducing the number of primarily permanent staff, and to a lesser extent temporary workers. Reductions in non-wage costs are also important, while variable pay components are only cut in a small number of cases. Only a quarter of firms state that they adjust their prices more than once a year. Time-dependent price adjustments, in which the time of the adjustment does not depend on economic conditions (as opposed to state-dependent adjustments), occur in 22 p.c. of firms and are noticeably common in the business service sector. Combined with the low frequency of price adjustments, this indicates price rigidity in that sector. The frequency and timing of wage adjustments are closely linked to the indexation mechanism applied. Most firms adjust their wages no more than once a year. Time-dependent wage adjustments in a specific month apply to 61 p.c. of firms, and – like price adjustments – wage adjustments are concentrated in the month of January. Another peak occurs in July, and there is some concentration at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters, particularly in the case of wage adjustments.Survey, wages, prices, employment

Mathematical modeling of the interaction between two-phase environmental flow and protective hydraulic structures

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. Over a thousand people lost their lives and the total damage was about 108 billion USD. It was the costliest United States hurricane. Two-thirds of the deaths and majority of economical loss were related to the protection system failure. This drives the study of fluid structure interaction to properly design the levees and floodwalls in the future for flooding vulnerable areas. Fluid-structure interaction is the interaction between a deformable structure and the surrounding flow. The fluid causes the deformation of the solid, and the solid reacts to the fluid. This thesis will focus on the interactions between two-phase environmental flow (air and water), and hydraulic structures (e.g. floodwalls, etc.) which are partially submerged in the water to disrupt the flow. Hydrodynamic and hydrostatic forces and impact loads from high water levels and velocities applied to the interface must be carefully monitored, as well as their impact on the structural stability. The main purpose of this work is to give a deeper understanding to the interaction processes and the coupling effects, and to determine the possible deformation or critical values of overturning moments for more robust future designs of floodwalls and levees. There are two main approaches to simulate fluid-solid interactions: the monolithic approach and the partitioned approach. In this work we use the partitioned approach by looking into the separate flow and structure models and simulating the interaction process. For the two-phase flow subproblem, the interface of air and water is treated as a material discontinuity in modeling, and is tracked by the level set method. The coupled system consists of Navier-Stokes Equation, level set method and the volume of fraction method, solved by the splitting method with residual-based variational multi-scale methods for stabilization. The structural mechanics is modeled by linear elasticity. Different types of floodwalls and two factors of safety against sliding and overturning are studied. In the Galveston area, the soil and floodwall properties determine the necessity to include soil as a part of the model. Hyperelastic and plastic models are discussed in simulating the soil behavior. The interaction process is modeled by imposing the matching conditions on the common fluid-structure boundary. Both one-way and two-way interaction models under synthetic waves are discussed and compared. One-way interaction is saving in computation and used widely in engineering design. Two-way interaction is formulated under the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian(ALE) framework. The operator splitting technique is developed for the coupled system to reduce computing cost while remain high accuracy.Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematic

Institutional features of wage bargaining in 23 European countries, the US and Japan.

This paper presents information on wage bargaining institutions, collected using a standardised questionnaire. Our data provide information from 1995 and 2006, for four sectors of activity and the aggregate economy, considering 23 European countries, plus the US and Japan. Main findings include a high degree of regulation in wage setting in most countries. Although union membership is low in many countries, union coverage is high and almost all countries also have some form of national minimum wage. Most countries negotiate wages on several levels, the sectoral level still being the most dominant, with an increasingly important role for bargaining at the firm level. The average length of collective bargaining agreements is found to lie between one and three years. Most agreements are strongly driven by developments in prices and eleven countries have some form of indexation mechanism which affects wages. Cluster analysis identifies three country groupings of wage-setting institutions.Wage Bargaining ; Institutions ; Indexation ; Trade Union Membership, Cluster Analysis

Lessons of the Wage Dynamics Network

The Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) is a temporary research network with the main objective of identifying the characteristics of wage dynamics and drawing conclusions from them in monetary policy terms. The paper presents the main findings of this research work. Notably, the intersectoral wage differential can be partly attributed to differences in profitability and the degree of competition to which the sectors are exposed. Nominal wages are adjusted less frequently than prices and adjustments generally tend to be made at regular intervals rather than in response to the economic climate. Wage rigidity not only affects existing workers, but also new recruits. The euro area, and Belgium in particular, is marked more by rigid real wages than nominal wages. Real wage rigidity implies a low optimal inflation rate and tends to complicate the conduct of monetary policy since it triggers greater fluctuations in output and employment and makes inflation more persistent. Furthermore, in a monetary union, countries with higher real wage rigidity suffer a loss of competitiveness in the event of negative productivity shocks. Institutions underlying wagesetting generally play an important role in the way in which firms and economies react to shocks. The heterogeneity of these institutions within the euro area therefore presents a real challenge for monetary policy.firms’ behavior, wage rigidity, employment, monetary policy, labour market flexibility, labour market institutions, economic shocks

Hydrologic-economic appraisal of life-cycle costs of inter-basin water transfer projects

This article describes research that compares actual water transfers of an inter-basin transfer (IBT) scheme with its original, appraisal stage, prediction. Transfers are shown to be significantly less and also more variable than predicted. Further research reveals that the state of the receiving system has a large bearing on year-to-year decisions regarding water transfers. Past appraisals, following what is called the Incremental Approach, do not adequately consider the stochastic nature of the likely future inter-basin transfer operating regime. Examination of six case studies, four South African, one Chinese and one Australian, shows that the Incremental Approach is still in general use – despite tools available for an improved approach. A new approach, called the Comprehensive Approach, is proposed to upgrade estimations of variable costs associated with water transfers – often substantial life-cycle cost components of IBTs.A demonstration of the Comprehensive Approach, by means of an example of an IBT with significant pumping costs associated with water transfers, is provided. Uncertainty regarding future water transfers and associated variable costs are provided for by stochastic simulation  modelling. The Incremental Approach is shown to be severely biased with respect to variable costs and it is shown that this bias leads to significantly different estimations of likely life-cycle project costs. Such differences conceivably lead to suboptimal decision-making.Keywords: Water resources, inter-basin water transfer, project appraisal, life-cycle costs, stochastic modellin

Unit Reference Value: Application in appraising inter-basin water transfer projects

Unit Reference Value (URV) is a common measure in South Africa to assess the economic efficiency of proposed water projects. This is a companion article to an earlier one establishing that the current approach of appraisal of inter-basin water transfer projects (IBTs) with significant pumping costs overestimates likely future water transfers and thereby variable operational costs. Those findings are taken further and it is established that the URV, as currently applied, fails as a suitable measure to appraise such IBTs. From rooting URVs in fundamental cost effectiveness analysis theory a revised URV approach is proposed that provides for a conceptual separation between water transfers affecting operating costs and water transfers used as a proxy measure for effectiveness. The prominent effect of the revised URV approach is demonstrated by means of the example of the proposed Thukela Water Project in South Africa.Keywords: unit reference value, cost effectiveness analysis, inter-basin water transfers, project appraisa

Influence of engineered particulate lactose on the performance of DPI formulations

Development of dry powder inhaler (DPI) formulations for respiratory diseases, such as Tuberculosis (TB), is challenging. The major limitation of current marketed DPIs is low delivery efficiency. In addition, delivered dose variation is also a challenging problem in the development and design of DPI formulations due to the poor flowability and dispersibility of the powder formulation. Furthermore, antibiotic drugs used in TB or other respiratory infectious diseases have to be administered in a relatively large dose for pulmonary delivery. However, currently there is no high dose conventional lactose based DPI formulations available. Therefore, I propose an innovative approach to solve these problems through the engineering of particulate lactose by wet granulation. Lactose is the commonly used carrier particle for DPI formulations. Although it was widely believed that carrier particles with smaller diameters were preferable to maximize aerosolization efficiency (the ability of the drugs to be delivered to the lung), it was found recently that lactose carriers with large size also can improve aerosol performance, especially when combined with greater surface roughness and an appropriately designed inhaler device. In the first study, after the engineered particulate lactose was manufactured, the relationship between the physico-chemical properties, e.g. size, of the granulated lactose and the DPI aerosol performance was investigated. It was concluded that poorer or enhanced dispersion performance is not an inherent property to the significantly large size of granulated lactose carriers as previously contended. Relatively large granulated lactose has improved flowability and increased surface roughness with increasing size fraction, which were properties for formulating high drug loaded DPI formulations. It was found that the aerosol performance of the high drug loaded DPI formulation depended significantly on the specific APIs and also the inhalation flow rate used in the cascade impactor study. DPI aerosol performance is the interplay of formulation, patient inhalation effort and device design. The device design was therefore modified and optimized to further improve the aerosol performance. In the end, with the optimized device and granulated lactose as the carrier, a high drug loaded rifampicin DPI formulation with improved aerosol performance (fine particle fraction around 70%), better blending uniformity and potential low systemic toxicity was achieved.Pharmaceutical Science

Direct and inverse measurement of thin films magnetostriction

Two techniques of measurements of thin film magnetostriction are compared: direct, when changes of the substrate curvature caused by the film magnetization are controlled, and inverse ("indirect"), when the modification of the magnetic anisotropy induced by the substrate deformation (usually bending) is measured. We demonstrate how both the elastic strength of the substrate and the effective magneto-mechanical coupling between the substrate deformation and magnetic anisotropy of the film depend on different conditions of bending. Equations to be used for magnetostriction value determination in typical cases are given and critical parameters for the corresponding approximations are identified.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, submitted to JMM

Is temperament a key to the success of teaching innovation?

Introduction. A section of the undergraduate curriculum was revised due to consistently poor student evaluation. The chosen didactic method for achieving this change was reciprocal peer teaching. This innovation may have required academic members of staff to adapt to a new teaching style. Method. Staff members determined their Keirsey temperament and were given a report on its interpretation. They participated in training on student-focused teaching techniques and completed the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) of their preferred approach to teaching. Their subsequent sessions with students were videotaped and analysed for features of student-focused, as opposed to teacher-focused, teaching. Results. There was a link between temperament type and apparent delivery of student-focused teaching. Staff members’ perceptions of their approach to teaching did not correspond to their actual teaching behaviour. Discussion. Staff development strategies could take into account individual temperaments in order to direct their professional development for the full spectrum of flexible teaching skills. Alternatively, teaching teams should be created in a way that takes account of different temperament types. Conclusion. Temperament does play a key role in adaptation to innovation