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Background The aim is to develop and test the utility of an event-initiated, team-based check list to optimize the response to bleeding during laparoscopic HPB surgery. Methods To build a checklist for managing bleeding events, we conducted a systematic review. Using nominal group technique (NGT), a checklist consisting of four domains was developed. Following team-based training of anesthesia and surgical staff, the checklist was implemented. HPB cases before and after implementation of the checklist were compared for adverse outcomes, bleeding complications, and transfusions. Results NGT identified four domains: Communicate Control, Expose, and Repair under which the checklist was organized. Supplemental Video for a detailed review of how each domain was applied to a specific case example. We compared 169 HPB cases before to 53 cases after implementation. We found a significant decrease in mean EBL (from 518 ± 852.8 to 151.5 ± 221.7 ml (P = 0.001)) for cases performed after implementation of the checklist and a trends toward less volume of pRBC transfused (2.7 ± 2.5 vs 2.3 ± 1.7 units/per patient, P = 0.611) and transfusion rates (22% vs 11%, P = 0.703). Conclusion An event-initiated, team-based response to an adverse bleeding event during laparoscopic HPB surgery correlates with positive effects on bleeding management, and transfusion rates.

Scientific novelty drives the efforts to invent new vaccines and solutions during the pandemic. First-time collaboration and international collaboration are two pivotal channels to expand teams' search activities for a broader scope of resources required to address the global challenge, which might facilitate the generation of novel ideas. Our analysis of 98,981 coronavirus papers suggests that scientific novelty measured by the BioBERT model that is pre-trained on 29 million PubMed articles, and first-time collaboration increased after the outbreak of COVID-19, and international collaboration witnessed a sudden decrease. During COVID-19, papers with more first-time collaboration were found to be more novel and international collaboration did not hamper novelty as it had done in the normal periods. The findings suggest the necessity of reaching out for distant resources and the importance of maintaining a collaborative scientific community beyond nationalism during a pandemic., Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures

Firms hire workers to undertake tasks and activities associated with particular occupations, which makes occupations a fundamental unit in economic analyses of the labor market. Using a unique dataset on pay in identically defined occupations in developing and advanced countries, we find that in most countries occupational skill premia narrowed substantially from the 1950s to the 1980s, then widened through the 2000s, creating a U-shaped pattern of change. The narrowing was due in part to the huge worldwide increase in the supply of educated workers. The subsequent widening was due in part to the weakening of trade unions and a shift in demand to more skilled workers associated with rising trade. The data indicate that supply, demand, and institutional forces are all drivers of occupational skill premia, ruling out simple single factor explanations of change. The paper concludes with a call for improving the collection of occupational wage data to understand future changes in the world of work.

The relatively few examples of commercially funded condition-specific bundled payments provide insights into how to spread this alternative payment model further in the private insurance market.

In this paper, we examine how two regionally implemented environmental initiatives in China have impacted the innovation ability of Chinese-listed firms. The regional implementation of these policies, with non-policy regions serving as controls, offers researchers the perfect conditions for a natural experiment. Using research and development (R&D) expenditures and patents as a proxy for innovativeness, we compare the record of innovation of firms inside the policy zones with firms outside the policy zones. We use a Difference-In-Difference-In-Differences (DIDID) method to eliminate endogeneity and take the quality of the patents into account by incorporating sub-items. Results show only one of the regulations had a positive effect and that low quality patents account for most of the innovation. We conclude that reasonably designed environmental regulations, when implemented regionally in competitive industries, do improve Chinese firms' innovation ability in line with the Porter Hypothesis. The results help us derive some useful policy implications regarding innovation.

This paper measures aggregate changes in job characteristics in the United States from 2005 to 2015 and decomposes those changes into components representing shifts within occupations and changes in occupational employment shares. Per our title, within-occupation changes dominate, raising doubts about the ability of projections based on expected changes in the occupational composition of employment to capture the likely future of work. Indeed, our data show only weak relationships between automatability, repetitiveness, and other job attributes and changes in occupational employment. The results suggest that analysts give greater attention to within-occupation impacts of technology in assessing the future of work.

Research Summary The flow of knowledge is closely linked to proximity. While extensive works show that long‐term geographic proximity affects work behavior, little is known about the effect of short‐term colocation, such as conferences. Using participant data at Gordon Research Conferences, we estimate difference‐in‐differences and instrumental variable models, which show that attendees who have no prior within‐conference collaborations are more likely to collaborate with other attendees, and that the researchers who have worked previously with other attendees are more likely to continue their collaborations. We also find that researchers who are junior, are located closer to the conference venue, and have established prior ties to the conference draw more collaborative benefits from temporary colocation across organizations. Thus, going to a conference alters the creation of collaborations. Managerial Summary Managers face important decisions with long‐term strategic ramifications regarding where to locate offices, plants, and R&D centers, as well as how to lay out workspaces inside the firm to enhance knowledge spillover and collaboration. Permanent proximity, however, may be difficult and sometimes impossible to attain. One potential way of overcoming the distance disadvantage in knowledge spillover and tie formation is through temporary colocation events that bring together individuals from distant locations in an environment of temporary proximity. We find that individuals who attend temporary colocation events across organizational boundaries are more likely to collaborate with one another subsequently. Hence, managers of firms should pledge substantial funds for employees to participate in these events so as to impact the subsequent direction of R&D activities.

Financial constraints have long existed in China's manufacturing sectors. The growth of the manufacturing sector has been slowing in recent years due to increasingly strict environmental regulations that force factories to cut production. In this study, we discussed whether financial constraints were essential in firms' decision to control pollution, and matched the Annual Surveys of Industrial Firms dataset with the Ministry of Environmental Protection survey data on firms' expenditures in industrial waste gas emission control. The relationship between calculated investment-cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) and the environmental investment ratio (the ratio of firms' expenditures on pollution control to total assets) was analyzed. We found that, overall, financial constraints had a significantly negative effect on firms' efforts to reduce waste gas emission. State-owned enterprises (SOE) relieved financial pressure mainly by seeking external financing sources to reduce emission. On the other hand, private-owned (POE) and foreign-owned enterprises (FOE), if efficiently financed internally, can reduce waste gas emission by increasing investment in waste gas treatment. This study provided a quantitative analysis on firms' financial constraints in environmental protection investment, contributing to the development of effective government policies on related issues in China.

The Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) and the MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) scores were designed to predict the outcome of decompressive therapy for portal hypertension. They were prospectively validated to predict mortality risk in patients with a wide spectrum of liver disease etiology and severity. Unlike the CTP score, the MELD score was derived from prospectively gathered data. Its calculation was based on serum bilirubin, serum creatinine, international normalized ratio (INR) and etiology of liver disease. Instituting a continuous disease severity score that de-emphasizes waiting time resulted in better categorization of waiting patients and enhanced transparency. The US instituted the MELD system in 2002 and soon thereafter, MELD-based liver allocation was adopted throughout the world including Latin America. The most significant impact of MELD-based policies has been the reduction of waiting-list mortality. In the years after implementation of the MELD system, several options have been proposed to improve the MELD score's accuracy. Adding serum sodium (MELD-Na) increased the accuracy of the score in predicting waiting list mortality, thus completing the original MELD score as a prognostic model in liver allocation. On the 20th anniversary of the creation of MELD score we present a brief account of its development, its use to stratify patients on the waiting list for liver transplantation as well as its adoption as liver allocation system .

This article presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macroeconomic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a single market process unleashed by the decline of unionization can account for both the macro- and micro-economic phenomena, and that deunionization can be modeled as an endogenous outcome of competition between high wage firms seeking to raise productive capacity and low productivity firms seeking to cut wages. The model highlights the antipodal competitive dynamics between a “winner-takes-all economy” in which corporate strategies focused on cost reductions lead to divergence in productivity and wages and a “social market economy” in which competition rewards the accumulation of firm-level capabilities and worker skills with a more egalitarian wage structure.

This paper uses U.S. Census Bureau panel data that link firm software investment to worker earnings. We regress the log of earnings of workers by age group on the software investment by their employing firm. To unpack the potential causal factors for differential software effects by age group we extend the AKM framework by including job-spell fixed effects that allow for a correlation between the worker-firm match and age and by including time-varying firm effects that allow for a correlation between wage-enhancing productivity shocks and software investments. Within job-spell, software capital raises earnings at a rate that declines post age 50 to about zero after age 65. By contrast, the effects of non-IT equipment investment on earnings increase for workers post age 50. The difference between the software and non-IT equipment effects suggests that our results are attributable to the technology rather than to age-related bargaining power. Our data further show that software capital increases the earnings of high-wage workers relative to low-wage workers and the earnings in high-wage firms relative to low-wage firms, and may thus widen earnings inequality within and across firms.

This study examines the contribution of Chinese diaspora researchers – those born in China but working outside the country – to China's catching up in global science to become a world leader in research publications and citations. Using a novel name-based way to identify Chinese diaspora authors of scientific papers, we show that these researchers produce a large proportion of global scientific papers of high quality, gaining about twice as many citations as other papers of the same vintage. Our analysis also shows that diaspora researchers are a critical node in the co-authorship and citation networks that connect scientific discovery in China with the rest of the world. In co-authorship, diaspora researchers are over-represented on international collaborations with China-addressed authors. In citations, a paper with a diaspora author is more likely to cite China-addressed papers than a non-China addressed paper without a diaspora author; and, commensurately, China-addressed papers are more likely to cite a non-China addressed paper with a diaspora author than a non-China paper without a diaspora author. Through those pathways, diaspora research contributed to China’s 2000-2015 catch-up in science and to global science writ large, consistent with ethnic network models of knowledge transfer, and contrary to brain drain fears that the emigration of researchers harms the source country.

Firms hire workers to undertake tasks and activities associated with particular occupations, which makes occupations a fundamental unit in economic analyses of the labor market. Using a unique dataset on pay in identically defined occupations in developing and advanced countries, we find that in most countries occupational skill premia narrowed substantially from the 1950s to the 1980s, then widened through the 2000s, creating a U-shaped pattern of change. The narrowing was due in part to the huge worldwide increase in the supply of educated workers. The subsequent widening was due in part to the weakening of trade unions and a shift in demand to more skilled workers associated with rising trade. The data indicate that supply, demand, and institutional forces are all drivers of occupational skill premia, ruling out simple single factor explanations of change. The paper concludes with a call for improving the collection of occupational wage data to understand future changes in the world of work.

The air quality in classrooms is a critical factor that affects students’ daily exposure. Although air filtration units (AFUs) are often used to reduce exposure to air pollution in China, the effectiveness of installing AFUs in Chinese classrooms have not been quantitatively studied. Hence, we carried out concurrent air quality experiments in two identical classrooms where one room was equipped with commercial AFUs and the other one relied on the natural introduction of outside air. Measurements were taken during regular school days in the winter at a primary school in Hangzhou, China. Three AFU ventilation modes, i.e., fresh air, mixed air and recirculation mode were evaluated, respectively. We found that classrooms equipped with AFU showed significant PM2.5 reductions, but this was accompanied by CO2 build-ups. In classroom with AFUs on internal recirculation, nearly 70% of the PM2.5 concentration at the beginning of the class was reduced by the end of a 40-min class. However, the CO2 concentration was observed to reach levels that were six times greater than that of the ambient due to inadequate air change rate (

This paper presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macro-economic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a single market process unleashed by the decline of unionization can account for both the macro and micro economic phenomena, and that deunionization can be modeled as an endogenous outcome of competition between high wage firms seeking to raise productive capacity and low productivity firms seeking to cut wages. The model highlights the antipodal competitive dynamics between a “winner-takes-all economy” in which corporate strategies focused on cost reductions lead to divergence in productivity and wages and a “social market economy” in which competition rewards the accumulation of firm-level capabilities and worker skills with a more egalitarian wage structure.

‘Voice’ is a term that has been widely used in the practitioner and academic literature on human resource management (HRM), organizational behaviour (OB) and industrial relations in recent years. In their seminal work, Freeman and Medoff (1984) associated voice with union monopoly representation and in particular with the role of unions articulating concerns on behalf of the collective. As such, union voice was viewed as an integral part of democratic representation in the workplace, but which also could bring about benefits for employers. With the fall in union density and coverage, analysis of voice in workplaces has shifted to how workers communicate with managers and are able to express their concerns about their work situation without a union, and on the ways in which employees have a say over work tasks and organizational decision-making (Kochan et al., 2019). But researchers from different disciplinary perspectives often use ‘voice’ in different ways. Some refer to involvement, others to participation, while yet others refer to empowerment or engagement, as if they are interchangeable. As Kaufman (Chapter 2 in this volume) makes clear, few appreciate the historical pedigree of employee voice, for instance the importance to which Karl Marx and Adam Smith attached interest in the ways and means through which labour expressed its voice. The deeper antecedents to voice have often been forgotten or eclipsed in a rush towards newer managerial fads, such as engagement, or other equally abstract notions of labour offering discretionary effort.

Organ allocation criteria for liver transplantation focus on tumor size and multifocality while tumor differentiation and existing liver damage are omitted. This study analyzes the impact of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) grade and liver fibrosis comparing resection (SX) to transplantation (LT).The National Cancer Database was queried between 2004 and 2016 for solitary HCC meeting Milan criteria undergoing SX vs LT. Two groups were created: low fibrosis (LF) vs high fibrosis (HF) and stratified by grade. Cox multivariable regression models, Kaplan-Meier survival analyses and log-rank tests were performed.1515 patients were identified; 780 had LT and 735 had SX. Median overall survival (mOS) was 39.7 months; LT mOS was 47.9 months vs SX mOS of 34.9 months (P .001). Multivariate analysis revealed SX, no chemotherapy, longer hospital stays, and age to be associated with worse survival. However, while transplantation conferred survival benefit for well-moderately differentiated tumors, SX vs LT did not impact survival for poorly differentiated HCC in LF patients, independent of tumor size.HCC differentiation and liver fibrosis, but not size, synergistically determine efficacy of SX vs LT. Therefore, current HCC transplantation criteria should incorporate tumor grade or liver fibrosis for optimal organ allocation.

Employee share purchase plans (ESPPs) give free or discounted shares of stock to workers who buy shares in the hope that the greater share ownership will retain workers, build loyalty and raise productivity, as in gift exchange models. Using measures of workers’ organizational loyalty and sense of ownership in a multinational firm that puts the ESPP at the heart of its compensation policy, we find that workers who join the ESPP have lower turnover intentions and do less on‐the‐job search than others, motivated in part by gift exchange reciprocity, and also respond to the group incentive of ownership with greater work effort, longer hours, and lower absence rates. Workers in workplaces with high perceived rates of ESPP participation are more likely to intervene against shirkers. The results appear robust to the selectivity of who joins the ESPP. The mix of gifting shares to workers who buy shares and the group incentive of ownership makes ESPPs a unique dual form of compensation.

Electric, autonomous vehicles promise to address technical consumption inefficiencies associated with gasoline use and reduce emissions. Potential realization of this prospect has prompted considerable interest and investment in the technology. Using publicly available data from a select market, we examine the magnitude of the envisioned benefits and the determinants of the financial payoff of investing in a tripartite innovation in motor vehicle transportation: vehicle electrification, vehicle automation, and vehicle sharing. In contrast to previous work, we document that (a) the technology’s envisioned cost effectiveness may be impeded by previously unconsidered parameters, (b) the inability to achieve cost parity with the status quo does not necessarily preclude net increases in energy consumption and emissions, (c) these increases are driven primarily by induced demand and mode switches away from pooled personal vehicles, and (d) the aforementioned externalities may be mitigated by leveraging a specific set of technological, behavioral and logistical pathways. We quantify—for the first time—the thresholds required for each of these pathways to be effective and demonstrate that pathway stringency is largely influenced by heterogeneity in trip timing behavior. We conclude that enacting these pathways is crucial to fostering environmental stewardship absent impediments in economic mobility.

This paper finds that U.S. employment changed differently relative to output in the Great Recession and recovery than in most other advanced countries or in the United States in earlier recessions. Instead of hoarding labor, U.S. firms reduced employment proportionately more than output in the Great Recession, with establishments that survived the downturn contracting jobs massively. Diverging from the aggregate pattern, U.S. manufacturers reduced employment less than output while the elasticity of employment to gross output varied widely among establishments. In the recovery, growth of employment was dominated by job creation in new establishments. The variegated responses of employment to output challenges extant models of how enterprises adjust employment over the business cycle.

Deceased donor research remains an elusive goal for improving organ utilization and function. Many working in this field have cited the barriers that impede the conduct of such trials. Recent reports from the Academy of Medicine and individual authors provide a general framework on which a National Donor Research Program could be built. This paper provides one observer's viewpoint on how such a program could be operationalized.

Using administrative data from a major Chinese insurance firm that raised its sales targets and rewards for insurance agents in a highly non-linear incentive system, we find that the improvement in productivity far outweighed the costs associated with bunching distortions and other gaming behaviors. Labor turnover decreased, which suggests that the extra pay for workers exceeded the non-pecuniary cost of extra effort by workers, and thus improved their well-being. The firm gained about two-thirds of the higher net output, making the reform profitable. Analysis of non-linear incentive systems should accordingly focus more on the productivity-enhancing than on the distortionary effects.

This chapter will review the major studies undertaken in the twenty-first century to assess the changing nature of employee voice in the Anglo-American context. These studies are predominantly based on employee perceptions but also include employer surveys and multilevel analysis.

Natural ventilation (NV) is a key sustainable solution for reducing the energy use in buildings, improving thermal comfort, and maintaining a healthy indoor environment. However, the energy savings and environmental benefits are affected greatly by ambient air pollution in China. Here we estimate the NV potential of all major Chinese cities based on weather, ambient air quality, building configuration, and newly constructed square footage of office buildings in the year of 2015. In general, little NV potential is observed in northern China during the winter and southern China during the summer. Kunming located in the Southwest China is the most weather-favorable city for natural ventilation, and reveals almost no loss due to air pollution. Building Energy Simulation (BES) is conducted to estimate the energy savings of natural ventilation in which ambient air pollution and total square footage at each city must be taken into account. Beijing, the capital city, displays limited per-square-meter saving potential due to the unfavorable weather and air quality for natural ventilation, but its largest total square footage of office buildings makes it become the city with the greatest energy saving opportunity in China. Our analysis shows that the aggregated energy savings potential of office buildings at 35 major Chinese cities is 112 GWh in 2015, even after allowing for a 43 GWh loss due to China’s serious air pollution issue especially in North China. 8–78% of the cooling energy consumption can be potentially reduced by natural ventilation depending on local weather and air quality. The findings here provide guidelines for improving current energy and environmental policies in China, and a direction for reforming building codes.

This paper analyzes the role of establishments in the upward trend in dispersion of earnings that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. It decomposes changes in the variance of log earnings among individuals into the part due to changes in earnings among establishments and the part due to changes in earnings within establishments. The main finding is that much of the 1970s–2010s increase in earnings inequality results from increased dispersion of the earnings among the establishments where individuals work. Our results direct attention to the role of establishment-level pay setting and economic adjustments in earnings inequality.

From 2000 to 2016 China increased its scientific publications in the international journals indexed by Scopus to become the largest contributor to global science, accounting for about 23% of journal articles adjusted for the Chinese share of addresses or names on publications. Publications with all-China addresses contributed the most to the increase, followed by cross-country collaborations and papers by Chinese-named researchers outside the country. The same period also saw a huge increase in scientific publications in Chinese language journals not indexed in Scopus. We estimate that while Chinese language papers gain about 1/5th as many citations as non-Chinese (largely English) papers in Scopus they are so numerous that even valued as making 1/5th the contribution of a Scopus paper, China accounts for 36% of global scientific papers defined as Scopus papers and China language equivalent papers and for 37% of citations to those papers. China's move to the forefront of scientific inquiry makes it a key driver of the direction of scientific and technological progress and of the knowledge-based economies of the foreseeable future.

We augment standard log earnings equations for workers in US manufacturing with variables reflecting measured and unmeasured attributes of their employer. Using panel employee-establishment data, we find that establishment-level employment, education of coworkers, capital equipment per worker, and firm-level R&D intensity affects earnings substantially. Unobserved characteristics of employers captured by employer fixed effects also contribute to the variance of log earnings, although less than unobserved characteristics of individuals captured by individual fixed effects. The observed and unobserved measures of employers mediate the effects of individual characteristics on earnings and increase earnings inequality through sorting of workers among establishments.

We use a residential sorting model incorporating migration disutility to recover the implicit value of clean air in China. The model is estimated using China Population Census Data along with PM2.5 satellite data. Our study provides new evidence on the willingness to pay for air quality improvements in developing countries and is the first application of an equilibrium sorting model to the valuation of non-market amenities in China. We employ two instrumental variables based on coal-fired electricity generation and wind direction to address the endogeneity of local air pollution. Results suggest important differences between the residential sorting model and a conventional hedonic model, highlighting the role of moving costs and the discreteness of the choice set. Our sorting results indicate that the economic value of air quality improvement associated with a one-unit decline in PM2.5 concentration is up to $8.83 billion for all Chinese households in 2005.

This article analyses the linkages among group incentive methods of compensation (broad-based employee ownership, profit sharing and stock options), labour practices, worker assessments of workplace culture, turnover and firm performance in firms that applied to the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For in America’ competition from 2005 to 2007. Although employers with good labour practices self-select into the 100 Best Companies firms sample, which should bias the analysis against finding strong associations among modes of compensation, labour policies and outcomes, we find that employees in the firms that use group incentive pay more extensively participate more in decisions, have greater information sharing, trust supervisors more and report a more positive workplace culture than in other companies. The combination of group incentive pay with policies that empower employees and create a positive workplace culture reduces voluntary turnover and increases employee intent to stay and raises return on equity.

By examining the ethnic identity of authors in over 2.5 million scientific papers written by US-based authors from 1985 to 2008, we find that persons of similar ethnicity coauthor together more frequently than predicted by their proportion among authors. The greater homophily is associated with publication in lower-impact journals and with fewer citations. Meanwhile, papers with authors in more locations and with longer reference lists get published in higher-impact journals and receive more citations. These findings suggest that diversity in inputs by author ethnicity, location, and references leads to greater contributions to science as measured by impact factors and citations.

The creation of S&T knowledge and development of S&T- based innovation has spread worldwide from traditionally advanced countries to traditionally developing countries, often under the direction of governments. Korea is an exemplar in this new locus. Korea''''''''s burst in Science and Technology during the last three decades has made Korea a substantive player in the global production of S&T knowledge and its application to business. Although Korea still trails the US and other top countries in the quality of research, it has leaped from its 1980s standing as bit player in the knowledge economy to being among the leaders in the early 21st Century. This paper shows that Korea’s advance benefited from its active participation in the global market in higher education, in international research collaborations, and its close ties to the U.S. Korea’s experience offers lessons for other countries who seek to advance by becoming knowledge economies. Korea proves that a developing country can gain comparative advantage in knowledge production and use; that government policy can stimulate such a development; and that openness to the world of higher education and research is the best way to move forward and overcome the middle income trap.

This study analyses the link between student test scores and the school students attend, the policies and practices of the schools, students' family background and their parents' involvement in their education using data from the 2009 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment. We find that (1) a substantial proportion of the variation of test scores within countries is associated with the school students attend; (2) a sizeable proportion of the school fixed effects is associated with school policies and teaching practices beyond national policies or other mechanisms that sort students of differing abilities among schools; (3) school fixed effects are a major pathway for the link between family background and test scores. The implication is that what schools do is important in the level and dispersion of test scores, suggesting the value of further analysis of what goes on in schools to pin down causal links between policies and practices and test score outcomes. — Richard B. Freeman and Martina Viarengo

We show that worker wellbeing is determined not only by the amount of compensation workers receive but also by how compensation is determined. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been preoccupied with individual performance-related pay, we find that the receipt of a range of group-performance schemes (profit shares, group bonuses and share ownership) is associated with higher job satisfaction. This holds conditional on wage levels, so that pay methods are associated with greater job satisfaction in addition to that coming from higher wages. We use a variety of methods to control for unobserved individual and job-specific characteristics. We suggest that half of the share-capitalism effect is accounted for by employees reciprocating for the “gift”; we also show that share capitalism helps dampen the negative wellbeing effects of what we typically think of as “bad” aspects of job quality.

This paper uses linked establishment-firm-employee data to examine the relationship between the scientists and engineers proportion (SEP) of employment, and productivity and labor earnings. We show that: (1) most scientists and engineers in industry are employed in establishments producing goods or services, and do not perform research and development (RD (2) productivity is higher in manufacturing establishments with higher SEP, and increases with increases in SEP; (3) employee earnings are higher in manufacturing establishments with higher SEP, and increase substantially for employees who move to establishments with higher SEP, but only modestly for employees within an establishment when SEP increases in the establishment. The results suggest that the work of scientists and engineers in goods and services producing establishments is an important pathway for increasing productivity and earnings, separate and distinct from the work of scientists and engineers who perform R&D.

Voice is a term that has been widely used in the practitioner and academic literature on human resource management (HRM) and industrial relations in recent years. Freeman and Medoff (1984) associated voice with union representation and in particular with the role of unions in articulating concerns on behalf of the collective. As union density has fallen in recent years, analysis of voice in workplaces has often focused on how workers communicate with managers and are able to express their concerns about their work situation without a union, and on the ways in which employees have a say over work tasks and organizational decision-making. But researchers from different disciplinary perspectives often use voice in different ways. Some refer to involvement, others to participation, while yet others refer to empowerment or engagement as if they are interchangeable. As Kaufman (Chapter 2) makes clear, few appreciate the historical pedigree of employee voice, for instance, where Karl Marx and Adam Smith expressed interest in the ways and means through which labour expressed its voice. The deeper antecedents to voice have often been forgotten or eclipsed in a rush towards newer managerial fads, such as engagement or other equally abstract notions of labour offering discretionary effort. This book presents analysis from various academic streams and disciplines that illuminate our understanding of employee voice from these different perspectives. The following chapters show that research on employee voice has gone beyond union voice and non-union voice to build a wider and deeper knowledge base. As the introduction to the book, this chapter provides a guide to the debates about the different dimensions of employee voice and to the research findings in different areas. We review the meanings and purposes surrounding the definitions of voice; consider the role of key actors in the workplace; and evaluate the different forms and processes of voice in different spheres, contexts and organizational settings. We hope that the book will help the reader understand the debates associated with employee voice and appreciate the contribution of the different approaches to our understanding of what goes on in the workplaces that are at the heart of modern economies.

China's new Labor Contract Law took effect on January 2008 and required firms to give migrant workers written contracts, strengthened labor protections for workers and contained penalties for firms that did not follow the labor code. This paper uses survey data of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta before and after the law and a retrospective question on when workers received their first labor contract to assess the effects of the law on labor outcomes. The evidence shows that the new law increased the percentage of migrant workers with written contracts, which in turn raised social insurance coverage, reduced the likelihood of wage arrears, and raised the likelihood that the worker had a union at their workplace.

The economic position of workers has weakened in much of the advanced world. Over the past 30–40 years the share of national income going to labor has fallen. Labor earnings have become more unequally distributed. The proportion of workers in trade unions has trended downward, accompanied in some countries with commensurate declines in collective bargaining coverage. Union influence on the direction of the economy has diminished even in countries where firms and unions negotiate wage and working conditions for most employees and where left-oriented parties are in government. Increases in government deficits and debt resulting from the Great Recession have induced many governments to introduce austerity policies that are likely to perpetuate high joblessness and inequality into the foreseeable future. Finance's speculative excesses fed market capitalism but much of the costs of the implosion of finance and ensuing Great Recession will fall on labor into the foreseeable future. There is no easy answer to the title question. As the phrase “if anything†indicates, it is unclear whether labor can rejuvenate itself and pressure societies to restore full employment and raise living standards in the face of inequality and pressures for austerity programs. Differences in the labor relations systems among countries, in levels of inequality, in the importance of money in politics, and in the post Great Recession state of economies will undoubtedly produce different responses across countries and labor movements. In this paper I examine the situation in the US, where the ability of trade unions to represent labor's interest has declined more than in any other major economy. Collective bargaining in the US is co-terminus with union density. For over half a century union density has fallen in the private sector. In 2012 6.6% of private sector workers were union members (US BLS, 2013, table 3) – below the 1900 level when total density, then based almost entirely on private sector workers, was 6.8% (Freeman, 1998, p 291). In the 2000s unions gained so few members in National Labor Relations Board representation elections or in other ways that the anti-unionists’ once quixotic dream of a union-free labor market has become a reality in the private sector. American labor law and custom makes it difficult for workers and firms to substitute other forms of workplace labor activity for collective bargaining. The law forbids employer-initiated works councils. There are no mechanisms for extending collective contracts beyond the firm and local unions who negotiate and sign a contract. Employer associations are more interested in undermining collective bargaining than in discussing labor issues with the AFL-CIO or some other union federation. Unionism and collective bargaining have followed a different path in the public sector. Union density increased from the 1960s to the 2000s when about 37% of employees were union members, including teachers, police, firefighters, university professors, graduate student teaching assistants, as well as bus drivers, clerical workers, and so on.1 When recession-induced budget crises hit cities and states in the late 2000s, however, opponents of unions attacked public sector bargaining as a contributing factor to the deficits. In the US federal system, state law governs state and local government collective bargaining. Some states encourage public sector collective bargaining. Other states, largely in the South, make it illegal for public sector employers to bargain with unions. Following the 2008 elections, Republican-dominated legislatures in several states that had encouraged collective bargaining passed bills to restrict bargaining, outlaw dues checkoffs/agency fees (which provide a funding stream to unions), and limit union political activities. Wisconsin, which had pioneered laws favorable to public sector bargaining, added provisions to its budget bill that effectively eliminated collective bargaining for all state and local workers except police and fire. Ohio enacted legislation of a similar kind that targeted all state and local employees including police and fire. Opponents of the Wisconsin legislation forced the state's governor into a recall election but failed to turn him out of office or reverse the legislative decision. Opponents of the Ohio legislation overturned their law in a referendum (Freeman and Han, 2012), which seemed to stem the anti-union movement. But in 2012 the Republican dominated legislature in historically pro-union Michigan passed a bill to weaken unions there. At this writing anti-union groups have bills pending in the legislatures of many other states. Unions have circled their wagons to defend the one part of the labor market where they still hold considerable sway. The experience of the US is extreme but nonetheless informative for other advanced countries where crisis-driven austerity and increased inequality weaken union ability to represent workers and may embolden groups opposed to collective action, welfare state protections of workers and the like to follow the lead of their US counterparts. The failure of US unions to develop alternatives to collective bargaining to advance worker interests as union density fell is a “canary in the mine†warning to labor elsewhere. The new efforts by US labor activists, social entrepreneurs, some unions, and in 2013 the AFL-CIO itself to mobilize citizens to defend workers’ interests without collective bargaining directs attention to innovative ways for labor to develop countervailing power and press for full employment and rising living standards for all. The paper is divided into three sections. Section one reviews the decline in labor as a force determining outcomes in modern capitalism, with particular attention to the collapse of the firm-based collective bargaining model in the US. Section two highlights the need for a strong labor movement to help reform the finance-dominated model of capitalism that underlies the implosion of Wall Street and ensuing economic crisis. Section three examines the ways that labor activists, social entrepreneurs, and unions are developing ways to rejuvenate labor power and improve labor conditions absent collective bargaining. There is a brief conclusion.

Summary As the pressure for providing liver transplantation to more and more candidates increases, transplant programs have begun to consider deceased donor characteristics that were previously considered unacceptable. With this trend, attention has focused on better defining those donor factors that can impact the outcome of liver transplantation. This review examines deceased donor factors that have been associated with patient or graft survival as well as delayed graft function and other liver transplant results.

This paper presents evidence that legal protection of property rights is indeed an important contributor to economic success but that institutional and legal protection of the rights of labor is also associated with economic success, particularly in developing countries. Cross-country analyses show that measures of labor protections have the same relation to economic efficiency, measured by GDP per capita, as measures of protection of property, and that both protection of property rights and protection of labor rights reduce economic inequality. The results suggest that as legal protection of property gives investors the right message about economic activity: invest in productive undertakings and you will gain the fruits of your investments; legal protection of labor gives workers the right message about economic activity: work and you will gain the fruits of your labor., Este artículo muestra evidencia para asegurar que la protección legal a los derechos de propiedad contribuye de manera importante en el éxito económico; asimismo, la protección institucional y legal a los derechos laborales también está ligada a dicho éxito. A través de un análisis de corte transversal para varios países, se muestra que las medidas de protección laboral tienen la misma influencia sobre la eficiencia económica, medida como el PIB per cápita, que la que tienen las medidas de protección a la propiedad privada; además, ambas medidas de protección de derechos tienden a reducir la desigualdad económica. Los resultados sugieren que así como la protección legal a los derechos de propiedad da a los inversionistas este mensaje: inviertan en actividades productivas y recibirán los frutos de su inversión; también la protección legal a los trabajadores les da este mensaje económico: trabajen y ganarán los frutos de su labor.