How do sudden large losses in wealth affect labor force participation?

The authors assess whether the sudden large losses in household wealth due to recent declines in stock and home values have significantly affected the U.S. labor market. They find that the overall labor force participation rate would be 0.7 percentage points lower were it not for the declines in the values of stocks and houses over the 2006–10 period.Labor mobility ; Wealth ; Labor market ; Households

What a performance: performance related pay in the public services.

Linking pay to performance is something employers increasingly seek to achieve. This was once seen as an objective which could only be met in the private sector. That is no longer true. In the 1990s the British public services have experienced a revolution which has attracted the interest and concern of public service managers and unions around the world. The days when government officials marched in step up incremental pay scales are gone. Virtually all civil servants are now subject to new forms of performance management, or performance pay. This approach now extends to many other areas of the public services. But are these new systems of financial reward as effective as their creators had hoped? This is one of the questions which prompted the substantial programme of research carried out by David Marsden and Stephen French under the auspices of the Industrial Relations programme of the Centre for Economic Performance (with financial assistance from the Anglo-German Foundation). It is the most extensive study of its kind, looking at performance pay systems in the Inland Revenue and the Employment Service; within the NHS; and in the teaching profession.

Expert system verification and validation study. ES V/V guidelines/workshop conference summary

The intent of the workshop was to start moving research on the verification and validation (V&V) of knowledge based systems (KBSs) in the direction of providing tangible 'products' that a KBS developer could use. In the near term research will focus on identifying the kinds of experiences encountered during KBS development of 'real' KBSs. These will be stored in a repository and will serve as the foundation for the rest of the activities described here. One specific approach to be pursued is 'benchmarking'. With this approach, a KBS developer can use either 'canned' KBSs with seeded errors or existing KBSs with known errors to evaluate a given tool's ability to satisfactorily identify errors

Investigations of a novel pile and anchorage concept

Imperial Users onl

Does Performance Pay De-Motivate, and Does It Matter?

The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes. This study is based on the first large scale survey designed to measure the effects of performance related pay on a) employee motivation and work behaviour across the British public services; and b) workplace performance. The latter uses an index of organisational performance based on line-manager judgements. While there is evidence of a clear incentive effect for those gaining above average PRP, it is likely that it is offset by a more widespread de-motivating effect arising from difficulties of measuring and evaluating performance fairly. These motivational outcomes are found to affect workplace performance. Organisational commitment appears to offset some of the negative effects of PRP. In contrast to the many studies of top executives, sales and sports personnel, our study examines PRP for large numbers of ordinary employees.performance-related-pay, incentives, performance measurement, organisational commitment, public sector.

Is there still an investment overhang, and if so, should we worry about it?

Investments

Why Does Performance Pay De-Motivate: Financial Incentives versus Perfrormance Appraisal

The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes. This study is based on the first large scale survey designed to measure the effects of performance related pay on employee motivation and work behaviour across the British public services. While there is evidence of a clear incentive effect for those gaining above average PRP, it is likely that it is offset by a more widespread demotivating effect arising from difficulties of measuring performance fairly. Organisational commitment appears to offset some of the negative effects of PRP.Performance related pay, incentives, performance measurement, organisational commitment, public sector

Consumption and the Great Recession

We document some key facts about aggregate consumption and its subcomponents over time. We then document the behavior of some important determinants of consumption, such as consumers’ expectations about their future income, and changes in the consumers’ wealth positions. Finally, we use a simple permanent income model to show that the observed drop in consumption during the Great Recession can be explained by the observed drops in wealth and income expectations.