Manufactured housing comes of age: a support network for resident-owned communities

Owners of manufactured homes who cooperatively purchase the park where they live are discovering benefits such as increased value of homes, decreased maintenance costs, faster resale, and willing lenders.Housing - New Hampshire ; Housing - New England

Speculation, Futures Prices, and the U.S. Real Price of Crude Oil

In this study, we examine the relationship between the U.S. real price of oil and factors that affect its movement over time: futures prices, the value of the dollar, exploration, demand, and supply. All of these variables are treated as jointly endogenous and a reduced form vector error correction model, testing for cointegration amongst the variables, is estimated. We find that for model specifications with short-term futures contracts, supply does indeed dominate price movements in the crude oil market. However, for specifications including longer-term contracts that are inherently more speculative, the real price of oil appears to be determined predominantly by the futures price. Moreover, there is empirical evidence of hoarding in the crude oil market: both oil stocks/inventories and futures prices are found to be positively cointegrated/correlated with each other. From a policy perspective, the results of this analysis indicate that if regulators really wanted to limit speculation in the oil market, it should keep the shorter-term futures contracts and eliminate the more speculative six months futures contracts.futures prices, cointegration, speculation, hoarding

Shirking, Standards and the Probability of Detection

Publisher PD

Tenure, Wage Profiles and Monitoring

Efficiency wage theory predicts that firms can induce worker effort by the carrot of high wages and / or the stick of monitoring worker performance. Another option available to firms is to tilt the remuneration package over time such that the lure of high future earnings acts as a deterrent to current shirking. In this paper we undertake the first empirical investigation of this relationship between the slope of the wage-tenure profile and the level of monitoring. On the assumption that firms strive for the optimal trade-off between these various instruments, we hypothesise that increased monitoring leads to a decline in the slope of the wage-tenure profile. Our empirical analysis, using two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data, provides robust support for this prediction.Monitoring, Tenure, Efficiency, Wages.

Wages, Supervision and Sharing:An Analysis of the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey

Instrumental efficiency wage models predict an inverse relationship between wages and supervision with this relationship becoming more pronounced amongst firms that participate in some form of employee sharing. To be sure, our theoretical exposition predicts that an increase in total remuneration will elicit a larger cut in optimal monitoring in ‘sharing’ rather than ‘non sharing’ firms. In this paper, we explore these predictions empirically using the British 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. Our results confirm an inverse relationship between supervision and pay but the trade-off is only heightened by the presence of performance related pay and employee share ownership schemes. We also find that employee share ownership and performance related pay are relatively more successful in alleviating the need to monitor, with the rate of profit sharing impacting insignificantly on the level supervision.Monitoring; supervision; profit sharing; employee share ownership; efficiency wages

Tenure, Wage Profiles and Monitoring

We undertake the first empirical investigation of the relationship between the slope of the wagetenure profile and the level of monitoring. On the assumption that firms strive for the optimal trade-off between these various instruments, we hypothesise that increased monitoring leads to a decline in the slope of the wagetenure profile. Our empirical analysis, using two cross sections of matched employer-employee British data, provides robust support for this prediction.efficiency wages; tenure; monitoring

The Impact of Parental Education on Earnings : New Wine in an Old Bottle?

We examine the impact of parental education on the shape of an individual’s experience-earnings profile. A number of factors suggest that parental education will affect the ability of an individual to translate labor market experience into earnings. Our empirical analysis of US data suggests that this is indeed the case. Higher parental education shifts the earnings profile significantly to the left – the profile of individuals with parents who both have 15 years of education peaks at 16 years of experience when their wages are 52% (24%) greater than those whose parents both have only 5 (10) years of education.earnings; human capital; parental education

The Impact of Parental Education on Earnings: New Wine in an Old Bottle?

We examine the impact of parental education on the shape of an individual's experience-earnings profile. A number of factors suggest that parental education will affect the ability of an individual to translate labor market experience into earnings. Our empirical analysis of US data suggests that this is indeed the case. Higher parental education shifts the earnings profile significantly to the left – the profile of individuals with parents who both have 15 years of education peaks at 16 years of experience when their wages are 52% (24%) greater than those whose parents both have only 5 (10) years of education.parental education, human capital, earnings