Redefining \u27Employee\u27 in the Gig Economy: Shielding Workers from the Uber Model

Increasingly, companies in the gig-economy utilize independent contractors, rather than traditional employees, as a means to cut costs and decrease employment related liability. These companies rely on independent contractors for work and retain control over work typically performed by employees. But there are significant legal distinctions between employees and independent contractors; namely employees are protected in ways that independent contractors are not. Traditionally, employees are defined as workers over whom an employer exerts or retains the right to control the manner and means of the work. While the traditional test to determine whether an individual is an employee is set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Agency, under this framework, courts struggle to characterize many of the non-traditional working arrangements utilized by the gig economy. This Note summarizes the seminal case law addressing the distinctions between independent contractors and employees. This Note then discusses Uber Technologies, a popular ride sharing application, to highlight the inadequacies of the current employment test. Specifically, this Note describes a growing problem where, different courts have analyzed Uber’s employment framework under the traditional test, yet reached opposite conclusions regarding driver’s employment status—even when predominately considering the same facts and circumstances. In light of the ever changing economy, this Note argues that the Restatement’s traditional test is insufficient to determine an individual’s working status. As a solution, this Note proposes both a new five factor test and legislative solution to prevent companies from improperly utilizing the independent contractor type worker. Without a revised standard to determine employment status, companies may be motivated to engage in a race to the bottom on wages and labor costs without the long-standing safeguards in place to protect employees

The sum-capture problem for abelian groups

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group, let $0 < \alpha < 1$, and let $A \subseteq G$ be a random set of size $|G|^\alpha$. We let $$\mu(A) = \max_{B,C:|B|=|C|=|A|}|\{(a,b,c) \in A \times B \times C : a = b + c \}|.$$ The issue is to determine upper bounds on $\mu(A)$ that hold with high probability over the random choice of $A$. Mennink and Preneel \cite{BM} conjecture that $\mu(A)$ should be close to $|A|$ (up to possible logarithmic factors in $|G|$) for $\alpha \leq 1/2$ and that $\mu(A)$ should not much exceed $|A|^{3/2}$ for $\alpha \leq 2/3$. We prove the second half of this conjecture by showing that $$\mu(A) \leq |A|^3/|G| + 4|A|^{3/2}\ln(|G|)^{1/2}$$ with high probability, for all $0 < \alpha < 1$. We note that $3\alpha - 1 \leq (3/2)\alpha$ for $\alpha \leq 2/3$. In previous work, Alon et al$.$ have shown that $\mu(A) \leq O(1)|A|^3/|G|$ with high probability for $\alpha \geq 2/3$ while Kiltz, Pietrzak and Szegedy show that $\mu(A) \leq |A|^{1 + 2\alpha}$ with high probability for $\alpha \leq 1/4$. Current bounds on $\mu(A)$ are essentially sharp for the range $2/3 \leq \alpha \leq 1$. Finding better bounds remains an open problem for the range $0 < \alpha < 2/3$ and especially for the range $1/4 < \alpha < 2/3$ in which the bound of Kiltz et al$.$ doesn't improve on the bound given in this paper (even if that bound applied). Moreover the conjecture of Mennink and Preneel for $\alpha \leq 1/2$ remains open

Pension benefit default risk and welfare effects of funding regulation

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of funding regulation for defined benefit pension plans subject to pension benefit default risk in an incomplete financial markets OLG-setting with aggregate uncertainty and idiosyncratic pension default risk. The financial market incompleteness arises from the inability to trade human capital claims. Using numerical methods to solve for equilibrium, we show first that default-free defined benefit pension plans are welfare-improving even in a dynamically efficient economy. Second, we show that in the presence of default risk funding regulations improve aggregate welfare by making larger size plans more attractive and that full funding is not necessarily the optimal policy. Our results provide a rationale for the widespread underfunding of defined benefit pension plans and might explain the decline of these plans after the introduction of stringent funding regulation in the USgenerations, pension default, funding regulation