Pay growth, fairness and job satisfaction : implications for nominal and real wage rigidity

Theories of wage rigidity often rely on a positive relationship between pay changes and utility, arising from concern for fairness or gift exchange. Supportive evidence has emerged from laboratory experiments, but the link has not yet been established with field data. This paper contributes a first step, using representative British data. Workers care about the level and the growth of earnings. Below-median wage increases lead to an insult effect except when similar workers have real wage reductions or frm production is falling. Nominal pay cuts appear insulting even when the firm is doing badly

\u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Hodges\u3c/em\u3e: Treason, Jury Trials, and the War of 1812

In August 1814 a number of British soldiers were arrested as stragglers or deserters in the town of Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Upon learning of the soldiers’ absences the British military took local physician, Dr. William Beanes, and two other residents into custody and threatened to burn Upper Marlboro if the British soldiers were not returned. John Hodges, a local attorney, arranged the soldiers’ return to the British military. For this, Hodges was charged with high treason for “adhering to [the] enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” The resulting jury trial was presided over by Justice Gabriel Duvall, a Supreme Court Justice and Prince Georges County native, and highlights how the crime of treason was viewed in early American culture and the role of the jury as deciders of the facts and the law in early American jurisprudence. Contextually, Hodges’ trial took place against the backdrop of the War of 1812 and was informed by the 1807 treason trial of Aaron Burr

Pay Cuts

This paper tests the `morale' theory of downward nominal wage rigidity. This theory relies on workers disliking nominal pay cuts: cuts should make workers less happy. We investigate this using panel data on individual employees' pay and satisfaction. We confirm that nominal cuts do make workers less happy than if their pay had not fallen. But we find no difference in the effect on happiness of cuts and pay freezes. This represents important information about the nature of wage rigidity in practice and the applicability of the morale theory. The morale theory may be able to explain generalised downward wage rigidity, but apparently fails to explain downward nominal rigidity.wage rigidity, satisfaction

PAY CUTS AND MORALE : A TEST OF DOWNWARD NOMINAL RIGIDITY

This paper tests the ‘morale’ theory of downward nominal wage rigidity. This theory relies on workers disliking nominal pay cuts : cuts should make workers less happy. We investigate this using panel data on individual employees’ pay and satisfaction. We con…rm that nominal cuts do make workers less happy than if their pay had not fallen. But we find no difference in the effect on happiness of cuts and pay freezes. This represents important information about the nature of wage rigidity in practice and the applicability of the morale theory. The morale theory may be able to explain generalised downward wage rigidity, but apparently fails to explain downward nominal rigidity.Wage rigidity ; Satisfaction JEL Classification: J30 ; E24

DRESS-Down: /ε/-lowering in Apparent Tme in a Rural Scottish Community

This paper presents a sociophonetic investigation of /ɛ/-lowering in apparent time. The data come from 24 speakers, across three generations from Buckie, northeast Scotland (12 males, 12 females). Acoustic analysis of the DRESS-vowel reveals that it is lowering in apparent time. Inspection of the constraints reveals an interaction of internal and external constraints. Analysis of the phonetic context revealed that following-l promoted DRESS lowering. However, this conditioning was only significant for the young females who were shown to be leading the change. The results presented here are related to broader phonological characteristics of the Buckie dialect as well as ongoing changes in a number of different English varietie

Strong late-time circumstellar interaction in the peculiar supernova iPTF14hls

We present a moderate-resolution spectrum of the peculiar Type II supernova iPTF14hls taken on day 1153 after discovery. This spectrum reveals the clear signature of shock interaction with dense circumstellar material (CSM). We suggest that this CSM interaction may be an important clue for understanding the extremely unusual photometric and spectroscopic evolution seen over the first 600 days of iPTF14hls. The late-time spectrum shows a double-peaked intermediate-width H-alpha line indicative of expansion speeds around 1000 km/s, with the double-peaked shape hinting at a disc-like geometry in the CSM. If the CSM was highly asymmetric, perhaps in a disc or torus that was ejected from the star 3-6 years prior to explosion, then the CSM interaction could have been overrun and hidden below the SN ejecta photosphere from a wide range of viewing angles. In that case, CSM interaction luminosity would have been thermalized well below the photosphere, possibly sustaining the high luminosity without exhibiting the traditional observational signatures of strong CSM interaction (narrow H-alpha emission and X-rays). Variations in density structure of the CSM could account for the multiple rebrightenings of the lightcurve. We propose that enveloped CSM interaction as seen in some recent SNe, rather than an entirely new explosion mechanism, may be adequate to explain the peculiar evolution of iPTF14hls.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS with referee respons