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We uniquely study the private provision of price excludable public goods in a duopoly. Simultaneous price competition generates only a mixed strategy equilibrium. Price leadership generates a pure strategy equilibrium with the leader setting a lower price and serving most consumers. This leadership game is the endogenous timing choice and improves welfare relative to monopoly provision. We re-examine these results under production in advance. The leadership game no longer remains a unique timing choice but the profit under production in advance is strictly larger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Premise: In the absence of hawkmoth pollinators, chasmogamous (CH) flowers of Ruellia humilis self‐pollinate by two secondary mechanisms. Other floral visitors might exert selection on CH floral traits to restore outcrossing, but at the same time preferential predation of CH seeds generates selection to increase the allocation of resources to cleistogamous (CL) flowers. Methods: To assess the potential for an evolutionary response to these competing selection pressures, we estimated additive genetic variances (σA2 ${\sigma }_{{\rm{A}}}^{2}$) and covariances for 14 reproductive traits and three fitness components in a Missouri population lacking hawkmoth pollinators. Results: We found significant σA2 ${\sigma }_{{\rm{A}}}^{2}$ for all 11 floral traits and two measures of resource allocation to CL flowers, indicating the potential for a short‐term response to selection on most reproductive traits. Selection generated by seed predators is predicted to increase the percentage of CL flowers by 0.24% per generation, and mean stigma–anther separation is predicted to decrease as a correlated response, increasing the fraction of plants that engage in prior selfing. However, the initial response to this selection is opposed by strong directional dominance. Conclusions: The predicted evolutionary decrease in the number of CH flowers available for potential outcrossing, combined with the apparent preclusion of potential diurnal pollinators by the pollen‐harvesting activities of sweat bees, suggest that 100% cleistogamy is the likely outcome of evolution in the absence of hawkmoths. However, rare mutations with large effects, such as delaying budbreak until after sunrise, could provide pathways for the restoration of outcrossing that are not reachable by gradual quantitative‐genetic evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While performance pay can benefit firms and workers by increasing productivity and wages, it has also been associated with a deterioration of worker health. The transmission mechanisms for this deterioration remain in doubt. We examine the hypothesis that increased stress is one transmission mechanism. Using unique survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find performance pay consistently and importantly associates with greater stress even controlling for a long list of economic, social and personality characteristics. The finding also holds in instrumental variable estimations accounting for the potential endogeneity of performance pay. Moreover, we show that risk tolerance and locus of control moderate the relationship between performance pay and stress. Among workers receiving performance pay, the risk tolerant and those believing they can control their environment suffer to a lesser degree from stress. : J33, I31, J32 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the hypothesis that flexible work organization involves greater skill requirements and, hence, an increased likelihood of receiving employer provided training. The analysis is based on unique linked employer‐employee data from Germany for the years 2012, 2014 and 2016 (12,924 pooled observations from 9,440 employees in 1,903 establishments). Our results confirm that employees are more likely to receive training when their jobs are characterized by greater decision‐making autonomy and task variety, two essential elements of flexibility. Critically, the training associated with workplace flexibility does not simply reflect technology. Skill‐biased organizational change plays its own role. Moreover, we show that the training associated with workplace flexibility is disproportionately oriented toward employees with a greater formal education. We find little evidence of an age or a gender bias of workplace flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines production by two unequal partners and asks if there exist agreed upon ownership shares that generate the joint payoff maximizing efforts. Given the inherent complementarity, we show that for given shares, joint payoff is greater in a sequential rather than a simultaneous effort game. Also, joint payoff is typically higher when the more productive partner exerts effort late and when shares differ by less than productivity. Yet, each partner desires to exert effort late creating an unavoidable chicken game. Given that the partners remain owners with shares, this creates demand for a coordinator (not a full principal) to establish optimizing shares and the leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We test whether increasing gender earning differences are associated with the surprising decline in the share of women working in information science (IS). Methods: We use representative data to estimate the gender earnings differential from 1995 to 2015 for full‐time, private‐sector IS workers in the United States. We decompose the differential within and across years. Time trends isolate the pattern of the unexplained gender differential. Results: None of our decompositions or projections reveal increased gender earnings differentials over the sample period. If anything, the unexplained differentials modestly decline. Conclusion: Despite contentions that the financial treatment of women explains their departure from IS and engineering, we find no evidence of a trend toward larger earnings differentials. Thus, our data argue that the declining share of women in IS likely has its roots elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We argue that increased sensitivity of demand to product quality generates more worker training. • British establishment data confirms in cross section, panel and IV estimates that greater sensitivity associates with more training. • Robustness exercises and a counterfactual examination of price sensitivity confirm this association. Abstract We uniquely examine the relationship between firm-organized training and the sensitivity of consumer demand to product quality. Cross section, panel fixed effect and instrumental variable estimates confirm that British workplaces provide more intensive training when their product demand is more sensitive to product quality. Robustness checks including using alternative key variable definitions and a counterfactual analysis examining the importance of competing on price support this confirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We model a principal‐firm offering training to its agent‐worker under two alternative organizational structures: integration, where the principal retains authority to overrule the investment project recommended by the worker; and delegation, where the principal cannot overrule the worker's preferred investment project. We assume that training reduces the worker's effort cost of assembling information about alternative projects' payoffs and identify the conditions under which delegation increases the profit‐maximizing intensity of training. Empirical estimates from matched employer–employee data show that workplaces delegating authority do provide more worker training. This result persists in two cross sections, in panel fixed‐effect estimates and, critically, in an instrumental variable exercise that also controls for establishment fixed effects. (JEL D21, D22, D23, M53, M54) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that West German workers with an internal locus of control sort into jobs with performance appraisals. Appraisals provide workers who believe they control their environment a tool to demonstrate their value and achieve their goals. We confirm that workers who are risk tolerant also sort into jobs with performance appraisals but explain why the influence of the locus of control and risk tolerance should not be additive. We demonstrate this by estimating a routinely large and significantly negative interaction in our sorting equations. We also show that important patterns of sorting are revealed only when taking into account the interaction of locus of control and risk tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel data set of scientists in the US, we examine the hypothesis that workers in jobs poorly matched to their education are more likely to retire. In pooled estimates, we confirm that the mismatched are more likely to retire and that among retirees, the mismatched retire at younger ages. Hazard function estimates also support the hypothesis. Workers with longer accumulated periods of mismatch are significantly more likely to retire in discrete-time duration models that account for both reasonable controls and worker heterogeneity. These findings suggest that educational mismatch and its consequences are concentrated among late-career employees. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background and Aims The serial homology of floral structures has made it difficult to assess the relative contributions of selection and constraint to floral integration. The interpretation of floral integration may also be clouded by the tacit, but largely untested, assumption that genetic and environmental perturbations affect trait correlations in similar ways. In this study, estimates of both the genetic and environmental correlations between components of the hawkmoth pollination syndrome are presented for chasmogamous flowers of Ruellia humilis, including two levels of control for serial homology. Methods A greenhouse population for quantitative genetic analysis was generated by a partial diallel cross between field-collected plants. An average of 634 chasmogamous flowers were measured for each of eight floral traits that contribute to the hawkmoth syndrome. Genetic correlations (across parents) and environmental correlations (across replicate flowers) were estimated by restricted maximum likelihood. Key Results Stigma height, anther height and floral tube length were very tightly integrated in their responses to both genetic and environmental perturbations. The inclusion of floral disc width as a control for serial homology suggests this integration is an adaptive response to correlational selection imposed by pollinators. In contrast, integration of non-homologous traits was low. Furthermore, when comparisons between the dimensions of serially homologous structures were excluded, the genetic and environmental correlation matrices showed little congruence. Conclusions The results suggest that hawkmoths have imposed strong correlational selection on floral traits involved in the deposition and removal of pollen, and that this is a consequence of stabilizing selection on the relative positions of stigmas and anthers in the face of substantial flower size variation. Low integration of other floral traits, and conflicting patterns of genetic and environmental correlations among these traits, suggest weak or no correlational selection within the range of variability expressed within a population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces strategic delegation into the traditional model of spatial price discrimination. We examine cases of both simultaneous and sequential location and find that delegating location choices to managers causes firms to move towards each other. This movement typically reduces social welfare. While exceptions exist for high cost convexity and for some cases of elastic demand, this reduction reverses the increase in welfare associated with delegation in common quantity games outside the spatial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Legal bar closing times in England and Wales have historically been early and uniform. Recent legislation liberalised closing times with the object of reducing social problems thought associated with drinking to “beat the clock.” Indeed, using both difference in difference and synthetic control approaches we show that one consequence of this liberalisation was a decrease in traffic accidents. This decrease is heavily concentrated among younger drivers. Moreover, we provide evidence that the effect was most pronounced in the hours of the week directly affected by the liberalisation: late nights and early mornings on weekends. This evidence survives a series of robustness checks and suggests at least one socially positive consequence of extending bar hours. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We provide the first experimental test of the consequences of delegation in a mixed duopoly. Such delegation allows a profit maximizing private owner and a welfare maximizing public owner to weight sales in managerial contracts. Theory predicts that such contracts improve welfare. Our evidence indicates that both public and private subject owners do provide a weight on sales consistent with the subgame perfect equilibrium. Critically, however, this emerges in the experiment only when playing with a robot manager and when playing with a human subject manager after the experience of playing with a robot manager. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper demonstrates that it can be optimal for innovators that also produce to license via a fixed fee rather than a royalty in a model of spatial price discrimination. This reversal of the typical result emerges when reduced willingness to pay by consumers limits the competitive location advantage associated with differential production costs. Thus, in our duopoly model the innovator can earn more via the fixed fee than either no licensing or licensing by royalty, even though this requires accepting symmetric locations and the associated equality in production costs. Resumen Este artículo demuestra que bajo un modelo de discriminación de precios espacial el otorgar licencias a cambio de un precio fijo en lugar de un canon por licencia puede ser la estrategia optima para los innovadores que a la vez son fabricantes. Esta inversión del resultado habitual aparece cuando la disminución de la voluntad de pago por los consumidores limita la ventaja competitiva de localización asociada con costos de producción diferenciales. Así, en nuestro modelo de duopolio el innovador puede ganar más mediante un precio fijo que sin otorgar una licencia u otorgándola a cambio de un canon, aunque esto requiera aceptar localizaciones simétricas y la igualdad asociada en los costos de producción. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory suggests that when workers choose between permanent and flexible contracts, their utility should tend to equalize across contract types. New estimates of job satisfaction show the critical role played by unmeasured worker heterogeneity. They reveal that flexible contracts are a strong negative determinant of satisfaction with job security but are often a positive determinant of other dimensions of job satisfaction. As a consequence, flexible contracts have either a weak negative influence or no influence on overall job satisfaction. Moreover, flexible contracts generally have no impact on overall life satisfaction of the employed. These results appear broadly consistent with the presence of equalizing differences. ( JEL J28, J41) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using German establishment data, we examine the relationship between delayed compensation, training, and hiring of older workers. Both those establishments that delay compensation and those with greater human capital requirements are less likely to hire older workers. We demonstrate that the routinely used control for the age of existing workers is endogenous and that instrumenting provides stronger evidence for the role of delayed compensation. Specifically, delayed compensation is simultaneously a negative determinant of hiring older workers but a positive determinant of employing older workers and, thus, more clearly associated with “employing older workers but not hiring them.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a model showing that profit sharing is subject to the 1/N problem in the case of independent worker productivity but not in the case of interdependent worker productivity. This implies the role of firm size on the likelihood of profit sharing will differ by the nature of the underlying technology. We test this implication using German establishment data and using a proxy for interdependent worker productivity. The results conform to the theory showing that firm size is associated with reduced profit sharing use when technology is independent but not when technology is interdependent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is the first to examine the welfare consequences of a public firm in a traditional model of spatial price discrimination. It demonstrates that when a private firm acts as a Stackelberg location leader, the presence of a public firm always improves welfare. Moreover, when three firms locate sequentially, the presence of a public firm improves social welfare unless it locates last. Thus, despite examining a variety of location timings, including simultaneous location, privatization never improves welfare and usually harms welfare. This conclusion differs from several currently in the literature in which privatization often improves welfare. ( JEL L13, L32, L33, L52) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We present a model showing that firms with interdependent worker productivity (team production) have a higher cost of absence and as a consequence will spend additional resources on monitoring absence. As a result, firms with team production should have lower absence rates, all else equal. Using the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (UK), we are the first to estimate each of these related associations showing that absence has a greater cost in the face of team production, that firms with team production engage in greater monitoring and that firms with team production have reduced absence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Theory and evidence on performance-related pay for teaching remain inconclusive. Teachers will respond to rewards, but an appropriate reward structure may not be devised because education is a collaborative endeavor. Here we test three hypotheses: performance-related pay among teachers is more likely to be observed when there are evident indicators of team production; teachers receiving performance pay will earn more in total than otherwise equal teachers without performance pay; and teachers receiving performance pay should have higher job satisfaction. We use the Schools and Staffing Survey (2000) to test each hypothesis. Team production does strongly predict performance-related pay, and that such pay does boost earnings, but that job satisfaction is lower for those who receive such pay awards. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Returning to the contention that convex costs provide a resolution to the merger paradox, we show that for reasonable degrees of convexity, the minimum market share needed for merger to be profitable remains close to that associated with linear costs. Moreover, convex costs do not eliminate the free rider problem identified as part of the merger paradox. Finally, we retain convex costs while modeling a firm-by-firm sequential merger process, showing that the paradox constrains a larger share of potential mergers. These findings help reduce the relevance of convex costs as a resolution to the merger paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the Price equation, I show that the total evolutionary change in mean phenotype that occurs in the presence of fitness variation can be partitioned exactly into five components representing logically distinct processes. One component is the linear response to selection, as represented by the breeder's equation of quantitative genetics, but with heritability defined as the linear regression coefficient of mean offspring phenotype on parent phenotype. The other components are identified as constitutive transmission bias, two types of induced transmission bias, and a spurious response to selection caused by a covariance between parental fitness and offspring phenotype that cannot be predicted from parental phenotypes. The partitioning can be accomplished in two ways, one with heritability measured before (in the absence of) selection, and the other with heritability measured after (in the presence of) selection. Measuring heritability after selection, though unconventional, yields a representation for the linear response to selection that is most consistent with Darwinian evolution by natural selection because the response to selection is determined by the reproductive features of the selected group, not of the parent population as a whole. The analysis of an explicitly Mendelian model shows that the relative contributions of the five terms to the total evolutionary change depends on the level of organization (gene, individual, or mated pair) at which the parent population is divided into phenotypes, with each frame of reference providing unique insight. It is shown that all five components of phenotypic evolution will generally have nonzero values as a result of various combinations of the normal features of Mendelian populations, including biparental sex, allelic dominance, inbreeding, epistasis, linkage disequilibrium. and environmental covariances between traits. Additive genetic variance can be a poor predictor of the adaptive response to selection in these models. The narrow-sense heritability σ²A/σ²P, should be viewed as an approximation to the offspring-parent linear regression rather than the other way around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory presents two channels through which profit sharing can cause workers to increase their coworkers' productivity: greater cooperation and increased peer pressure. This paper argues that these generate opposite influences on coworker relations, and that which dominates varies according to circumstances and type of worker. Using German data, we show that, for non-supervisory men, profit sharing increases cooperation, but that for those who highly value success on the job, it has no influence on cooperation, and for supervisors it reduces cooperation. Moreover, the findings show striking gender differences in the effect of profit sharing. We contend these patterns fit with underlying theoretical expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on spatial price discrimination demonstrates that strategic (off centre) location choices by downstream firms can increase downstream profit and reduce both the profit of an upstream monopoly and social welfare. This article examines exclusive territories as a vertical control mechanism and shows that such territories can force downstream firms to return to the centre of the market. However, exclusive territories cannot completely eliminate the influence of strategic downstream location – the profit maximising exclusive territories are either too small or too large to be socially efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates the determinants of job satisfaction for younger US workers. While age representative data from both the USA and Britain routinely show women reporting greater job satisfaction, this is not true for the younger US cohort in National Longitudinal Survey of Youth sample. Finds no gender satisfaction gap, but does find that the job satisfaction of women is less sensitive to both actual and comparison earnings than that of men. Moreover, estimates an expanded specification showing substantial gender differences in the influence of fringe benefit provision (including childcare) on job satisfaction The expanded specification also demonstrates that while general skills are associated with greater job satisfaction, specific skills are associated with lower job satisfaction, argues that the results are it keeping with human capital theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper directly tests for differences in returns to education between the employed and self-employed in Hong Kong. Using a step-function, we find significantly smaller returns for the self-employed, suggesting that in the highly competitive labor market of Hong Kong education plays a signaling role. This pattern persists for both genders, when accounting for self-selection into employment status and when accounting for self-employed professionals who signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of a demand constraint (low willingness to pay) are examined in a model of merger by spatial price discriminators. The imposition of a demand constraint reduces the extent of inefficiency associated with merger and also eliminates the resolution of the merger paradox obtained in the earlier, unconstrained case. Moreover, with the introduction of a demand constraint, a tax on transport cost can actually improve efficiency, which is never the case in the absence of the demand constraint. Indeed, the optimal tax often eliminates all spatial price competition by creating local monopolies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study which investigated pollination limitation in three Missouri populations of Oenothera Macrocarpa. Methodology; Tests assumptions; Fertilization success.

Using a sample of young employed physicians, the determinants of perceived underpayment are examined for both white and minority workers. The examination confirms the importance of earnings comparisons within racial groups but also finds a substantial role for comparisons between racial groups. Workers apparently perceive racial earnings differences (as measured by economists) and build them into an assessment of the fairness of their labor market treatment. This finding emerges for both whites and minorities and occurs in a sample in which the pattern of earnings indicates a modest minority earnings premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizes the incentives for vertical integration in a spatial model. Choice of downstream transport cost and location; Application of the theory of the second best.

Although most populations of outcrossing plants reveal some microspatial genetic structuring, the magnitude of that structuring is relatively low. Some autogamous species display remarkable levels of local genetic differentiation consistent with theoretical expectations. Low-density populations, with reproductive systems characterized by partial selling, or a mixture of sexual outcrossing and apomixis, are most likely to possess the combination of extensive sexual recombination and localized genetic drift.

Presents information on a study that examined the choice of payment schemes for German establishments using the `Hannover Panel.' Ways to alleviate unemployment in Germany; Hypotheses of the study; Data governing German manufacturing establishments; Categories of workers; Conclusions.

The article examines the gender wage gap in the occupational category of software and related workers from 1975 to 1990. The human capital theory is applied to software workers in order to measure the earnings gap. This theory suggests that one can examine the earnings of various software workers across a variety of firms and employment situations if one control those characteristics that influence the workers' productivity. The use of the human capital model can also be seen as simply normalizing estimates of any gender wage gap for differences in education, on-the-job experience and other relevant characteristics. Moreover, the gender wage gap only imperfectly measure the extent of wage discrimination. This is because the gender wage gap is based on an unexplained residual. The article identifies a large and persistent gender earnings differential that shows no secular decline despite the increasing share of the occupation comprised of female professionals. But, this differential is not a flawless measure of discrimination.

Examines the influence of student mobility on the achievement of stable students in the United States. Role of mobility in academic performance of the students; Investigation on the classroom performance of inner-city elementary school students; Negative correlation between classroom mobility and student achievement.

Using US panel data on young workers, we demonstrate that those who receive performance pay are more likely to consume alcohol and illicit drugs. Recognizing that this likely reflects worker sorting, we first control for risk, ability, and personality proxies. We further mitigate sorting concerns by introducing worker fixed effects, worker-employer match fixed effects, and worker-employer-occupation match fixed effects. Finally, we present fixed effect IV estimates. All of these estimates continue to indicate a greater likelihood of substance use when a worker receives performance pay. The results support conjectures that stress and effort increase with performance pay and that alcohol and drug use is a coping mechanism for workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]