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An essay is presented on the subject of cigarette smoking among U.S. laborers in factories, corporate spying on workers, and the social culture of shopfloors in the U.S. during the 20th century. It examines the records of Erie, Pennsylvania, paper manufacturer Hammermill Paper Company concerning employee cigarette consumption, how employees attempted to evade corporate surveillance of their smoking, and labor relations in the U.S.

SUMMARY A number of variations of evolutionary operation have been devised since the technique was originally described by G. E. P. Box. One of these variants-Simplex evolutionary operation--is described in this article. The method appears to be particularly suitable for application in the paper industry in which more traditional forms of experimentation are often unsuccessful. Some examples of the use of both the original and Simplex forms of EVOP are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote the integration of the information industry, chain is of great significance for enterprises to improve quality, efficiency cost reduction and high-quality industry development. In this paper, based on the data envelopment analysis method, the efficiency measurement models of series structure, parallel structure and hybrid structure industrial chain are constructed under two different scenarios of central decision-making mechanism and decentralized decision-making mechanism. By quantifying the input and output resources that is in each link of the information industry chain integration process, measuring the input and output efficiency under different industrial chain integration structure; comparing and analyzing the integration efficiency of different regions, different links, discussing the cause of the differences in the integration efficiency of industry chain; thus, providing policy recommendations for the efficiency of industrial chain integration. In addition, taking the actual situation of two industrial parks with the main characteristics of carbon emission in a city of China as an example, the paper analyzes the difference of the integration efficiency of the information industry chain between the two parks. The empirical analysis shows that the information industry chain integration efficiency measurement model based on data envelope analysis theory is feasible and effective. It can not only measure the industry chain efficiency as a whole but also compare and analyze the integration efficiency of enterprises in different links of the industry chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider a specific channel through which trust between parties to an exchange can go on to affect nations' comparative advantage in certain industries. My approach revolves around the autonomy that employers (principals) grant to workers (agents), which is a key feature of workplace organization. I hypothesize that social trust generates a comparative advantage in industries with more autonomous micro production environments. I employ individual-level data on work autonomy to construct a measure of the extent to which industries are characterized by autonomy in the production process. Results of a cross-country cross-industry analysis confirm that countries with higher levels of social trust have a comparative advantage in high-autonomy industries and vice versa. Results are robust to the possibility of reverse causality. The paper's key contribution is to provide a link between the microeconomic literature on workplace organization and the comparative macroeconomic literature on social trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the functionalist approach's dominance in international organization law and proposes the need for other viewpoints. It discusses the shortcomings of the functionalist approach, particularly in terms of accountability to third parties. It mentions the finding of unnoticed innovations by Anne-Marie Leroy, former World Bank legal counsel, who presented a distinct legal risk management approach that deviates from typical techniques based on legal permissiveness.

The article responds to a commentary on worker management and industrial enterprise. The author reemphasizes that the paper owed a great deal to earlier writers. The purpose of his article was simply to put forward a rather different model from that used by previous authors, which is in some respects more suited to examining certain aspects of worker management. The paper failed to make sufficiently clear the relevance of the comparison between the labor-managed and capitalist firms, and I should like to stress that the paper was concerned with comparing behavior and not with making any normative judgments. It was certainly not intended to suggest that large scale or a high growth rate were necessarily desirable.

Empirical studies of corporate governance address potential endogeneity problems, but fail to place endogeneity in the context of a model and ignore the possibility of disparate treatment effects across companies. This paper tackles these defects. The model and analysis in the paper demonstrate that: (1) Valid and positive estimates for the effect of governance can only arise if there is random variation in governance and governance is systematically underproduced, or governance is chosen randomly without bias and the randomness under study concerns a subpopulation with below-average governance. (2) Governance models that correct for endogeneity using subsamples of firms, fixed effects, or instrumental variables estimates focus on subpopulations of companies that may have different responses to a governance treatment than the average firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper adopts a novel career perspective to examine theories of corporate control in the context of executive pay. Detailed career histories of boardroom executives in all FTSE 350 companies between 1996 and 2008 are utilised. The paper highlights the failure of existing arrangements to adjust pay outcomes where career performance is poor. The leading theoretical reasons for this disconnect, namely managerial power and neoinstitutionalism, are not consistent with the data. The paper identifies a settling-up process at work, whereby pay is adjusted in the light of both past pay and past performance. From a policy perspective, a case is made for adopting a cumulative or career-oriented approach to rewarding executive performance through the use of truly long-term incentives in the form of 'career shares'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a rather tired argument in corporate governance circles, that corpo- rate laws only giving rights to stockholders somehow implicitly empower directors to regard other constituencies as equal ends in governance. By continuing to suggest that corporate boards themselves are empowered to treat the best interests of other corporate constituencies as ends in themselves, no less important than stockholders, scholars and commentators obscure the need for legal protections for other constituencies. As a case study, this paper examines what happened when an activist investor came to DuPont, illustrating how its board knew that they were expected to make their end investors' best interests, even if that hurt other constituencies. This isn't a story about bad people, but a reminder to those genuinely concerned for non-shareholder constituencies to face reality and support changes in the power dynamics affecting corporate governance that make regard for non-shareholder constituen- cies an obligation for business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the end of New Labour's first term four central objectives of energy policy had become established: ‘cheap’ energy, the relief of fuel poverty, a major reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and energy security through maintaining a wide diversity of primary fuel supplies, all to be achieved through ‘competition’. After surveying New Labour energy policy documents, the paper argues that New Labour failed to appreciate (i) the extent to which, under such a laissez faire policy regime, these objectives were mutually inconsistent; (ii) that the apparent successes of energy market liberalisation during the preceding Conservative Governments had little to do with ‘competition’; and (iii) that the transaction costs of injecting increasing ‘competition’ into both British and European energy systems are likely to exacerbate the growing threat to energy security. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the implications of transaction cost economics for the organisational structure of the UK energy supply industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effects of tying arrangements on R&D incentives. It shows that tying is a means through which a firm can commit to more aggressive R&D investment in the tied goods market. Tying also has the strategic effect of reducing rivals’ incentives to invest in R&D. The strategy of tying is a profitable one if the gains, via an increased share of dynamic rents in the tied goods market, exceed the losses that result from intensified price competition in the market. The welfare implications of tying, and consequently the appropriate antitrust policy, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bulk of corporate governance theory examines the agency problems that arise from two extreme ownership structures: 100% small shareholders or one large, controlling owner combined with small shareholders. In this paper, we question the empirical validity of this dichotomy. In fact, one-third of publicly listed firms in Europe have multiple large owners, and the market value of firms with multiple blockholders differs from firms with a single large owner and from widely held firms. Moreover, the relationship between corporate valuations and the distribution of cash-flow rights across multiple large owners is consistent with the predictions of recent theoretical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We shall be concerned in this paper with certain properties of equilibria in which firms with increasing returns to scale in production sell their outputs at prices equal to marginal costs. We are in other words concerned with equilibria involving increasing returns and at which the standard first-order or marginal conditions for optimality are met. Figures (1a) to (1c) illustrate such equilibria in a two-good economy. It is not our concern to prove the existence of such equilibria: this we have done elsewhere (Brown and Heal (1976)) and existence is here assumed. Indeed, the paper will focus on examples sufficiently simple that no formal proof of existence is required. Another very complex issue that will not be our concern, is the possibility of supporting and implementing an equilibrium of this sort. There is of course a problem here, because it may require some firms to operate at a loss, which will then have to be covered by non-distortionary levies on other agents if the first-order conditions are to be preserved. Again, this is a matter that we have discussed elsewhere (Brown and Heal (1979)), demonstrating that such an equilibrium can be sustained without the need for conventional lump-sum taxes. Because it is not at present our main concern, we deal with the problem here in a slightly cavalier way, and assume all shareholdings to involve unlimited liability. The owners of a firm therefore share both in its profits and its losses, and losses are covered from shareholders' incomes. In the examples considered below there is a single firm, owned entirely by one of two consumers, and it will become clear that at an efficient equilibrium it would not be in the owner's interest to close it down, even though it makes a loss. This is just a particular example of a more general proposition discussed in Brown and Heal (1979): the point is that the income saving from closure would be outweighed by the loss of consumer surplus otherwise provided by having the goods available at marginal cost. The focus of this paper, then, is not on the existence or decentralization of an equilibrium satisfying the first-order conditions for optimality, but rather on its optimality. It is clear from Figure I that such an equilibrium need not be optimal, for the obvious reason that with non-convex production possibility sets, the first-order conditions are not sufficient to ensure optimality. We shall not in fact be concerned with an analysis of the sufficiency of these conditions (for this, see Brown and Heal (1979)), our concern is rather with the question: is it the case that there is always at least one equilibrium which satisfies the first order conditions and is Pareto optimal? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the topics contained in the November 1985 issue of "Economic Policy." The first article describes the debt and deficit trends in Great Britain and elsewhere by evaluating whether budget deficits necessarily lead to money creation and inflation. The next article takes particular attention to the conflicting pressures of debt repudiation. Fiscal policy lies at the heart of other papers published in the issue. The authors of succeeding articles examine how the policies of industrial countries, particularly their fiscal and trade policies, affect the developing countries and determine whether fiscal deficits in the OECD had played much role in the current plight of the developing countries.

The paper analyzes the problems that arise in estimating the efficiency loss from misallocation of resources in Soviet industry, as revealed by the inequality of marginal rates of substitution among factors in the eight branches of Soviet industry. Econometric estimates of production functions in these branches are utilized to reach estimates of the loss arising from interbranch misallocation of capital and labor deployed in Soviet industry. This loss appears to be nonnegligible, ranging from a low of about 3 to 4 percent to a high of 10 percent of efficient factor use, and to be rising over time. Thus, an added reason for the current deceleration in Soviet industrial (and overall) growth is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a means towards revealing both the strategic and the day-to-day operational practicalities of managing a 'responsible business', this paper reports on research conducted over an extended period in the John Lewis Partnership (JLP). This is a major retail organization based in the UK which operates at scale (90,000 employees and annual sales of £11 billion). It has sustained itself as an employee-owned enterprise for nearly a century, and it makes explicit claims to conduct itself in a 'responsible manner' which differs markedly from the notions of responsibility maintained by many conventional businesses. But what do these commitments mean in practice and what compromises, if any, do they entail or require, and crucially how are these tensions managed? We find that there are many lessons that conventional organizations could learn from this case, and yet we also show that the process of managing in this responsible way is a practical accomplishment that requires considerable conceptual and applied skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point for this paper is the finding that references to a system of self-managed firms as the future social order are quite exceptional in the published literature on Marxist thought. Despite ever more marked deviations of leftist political platforms from the centralised model of the URSS, it is clear that self-management has not taken the place of central planning in Marxist plans for the future. In contrast, the author will come up with evidence that an analysis of the self-managed firm system may offer clues for a critical discussion of major points of Marxian theory, including the labour theory of value, alienation, dialectics or the subject–object inversion in capitalism. Accordingly, in the individual sections of this paper each of these central aspects of Marxian theory will be separately addressed in the light of insights flowing from the economic theory of producer cooperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impact of error cross-sectional dependence (modelled as a factor structure) on a number of widely used IV and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators in the context of a linear dynamic panel data model. It is shown that, under such circumstances, the standard moment conditions used by these estimators are invalid – a result that holds for any lag length of the instruments used. Transforming the data in terms of deviations from time-specific averages helps to reduce the asymptotic bias of the estimators, unless the factor loadings have mean zero. The finite sample behaviour of IV and GMM estimators is investigated by means of Monte Carlo experiments. The results suggest that the bias of these estimators can be severe to the extent that the standard fixed effects estimator is not generally inferior anymore in terms of root median square error. Time-specific demeaning alleviates the problem, although the effectiveness of this transformation decreases when the variance of the factor loadings is large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between the diffusion of new technologies and the decentralization of firms. Centralized control relies on the information of the principal, which we equate with publicly available information. Decentralized control, on the other hand, delegates authority to a manager with superior information. However, the manager can use his informational advantage to make choices that are not in the best interest of the principal. As the available public information about the specific technology increases, the tradeoff shifts in favor of centralization. We show that firms closer to the technological frontier, firms in more heterogeneous environments, and younger firms are more likely to choose decentralization. Using three data sets on French and British firms in the 1990s, we report robust correlations consistent with these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wave of financial irregularity in the USA in 2001-2 culminated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A worldwide stockmarket bubble burst over this same period with the actual market decline being proportionately more severe in Europe. Yet, no corresponding wave of financial scandals involving a similar level of companies occurred in Europe. Given the higher level of public and private enforcement in the USA for securities fraud this contrast seems perplexing. This paper submits that different kinds of scandals characterize different systems of corporate governance. In particular, dispersed ownership systems of governance are prone to the forms of earnings management that erupted in the USA, but concentrated ownership systems are much less vulnerable. Instead, the characteristic scandal in such systems is the appropriation of private benefits of control. This paper suggests that this difference in the likely source of, and motive for, financial misconduct has implications both for the utility of gatekeepers as reputational intermediaries and for design of legal controls to protect public shareholders. The difficulty in achieving auditor independence in a corporation with a controlling shareholder may also imply that minority shareholders in concentrated ownership economies should directly select their own gatekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether and how individual managers affect corporate behavior and performance. We construct a manager-firm matched panel data set which enables us to track the top managers across different firms over time. We find that manager fixed effects matter for a wide range of corporate decisions. A significant extent of the heterogeneity in investment, financial, and organizational practices of firms can be explained by the presence of manager fixed effects. We identify specific patterns in managerial decision-making that appear to indicate general differences in "style" across managers. Moreover, we show that management style is significantly related to manager fixed effects in performance and that managers with higher performance fixed effects receive higher compensation and are more likely to be found in better governed firms. In a final step, we tie back these findings to observable managerial characteristics. We find that executives from earlier birth cohorts appear on average to be more conservative; on the other hand, managers who hold an MBA degree seem to follow on average more aggressive strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the correlations between technological change, organisational change and skill change using a survey on organisational change in manufacturing firms conducted in 1993. Considerable diversity is allowed for in terms of the measure of technological and organisational change, and the analysis shows a positive correlation between technological change and reorganisations, whatever their types. The paper then analyses the relationships between these changes and the employment behaviour of firms. It shows that changes in the required skills and in the occupational structure of firms are more closely connected to organisational than to technological change. Although organisational change affects the work content and skill requirements of blue collar workers, it is mainly indirect workers that are affected in terms of the number employed. Finally, the analysis shows that technology tends to stabilise the workforce whereas the move towards the model of 'flexible enterprise' favours its renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the role played by the 'managerial factor' in conditioning the rhythm and intensity of firms' growth. It argues that growth has to be intended as a measure of the capability of the firm to successfully cope with the problems arising from increasing complexity. According to a Penrosean perspective, such a capability may be bounded at any given time by a lack of those (internal) managerial resources which provide the firm with a set of 'uniquely valuable' services, and which create a differential advantage over its competitors. In a 'dynamic capabilities' view, such advantages need to be continuously modified through a process of search and selection. This has assumed peculiar relevance in the face of the 'hyper-competition' regime characterising the more recent phase of industrial development, asking firms' executives to develop an increasing ability to find creative solutions to continuously moving targets, therefore making the management function a key driver to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational health professionals originate from either the medical or the nursing professions (both traditional areas with their own established codes of practice) and work in an industrial setting alongside, for instance, managers, who also have an established, if different code of practice. Occupational health professionals are therefore confronted with the task of integrating their medical role within a managerial context. This paper aims to explore how occupational health professionals overcome the problems inherent in balancing medical with managerial values. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on a study which examined the effect of competitive market structure on advertising expenditures. Understanding the determinants of the amount spent for advertising and other promotion expenditures is one of the two key topics in the economics of advertising. This article discusses the effects of various costs upon expenditures for promotion and the effect of the competitive market structure on the amounts advertisers spend. The strategy of the paper is to construct various promotion functions that might be appropriate for a particular type of firm in a particular competitive situation.

Using a large sample of bank loans issued to U.S. firms between 1990 and 2004, we find that lower takeover defenses (as proxied by the lower G-index of Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick 2003) significantly increase the cost of loans for a firm. Firms with lowest takeover defense (democracy) pay a 25% higher spread on their bank loans as compared with firms with the highest takeover defense (dictatorship), after controlling for various firm and loan characteristics. Further investigations indicate that banks charge a higher loan spread to firms with higher takeover vulnerability mainly because of their concern about a substantial increase in financial risk after the takeover. Our results have important implications for understanding the link between a firm's governance structure and its Cost of capital. Our study suggests that firms that rely too much on corporate control market as a governance device are punished by costlier bank loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers evidence on the ownership concentration at a representative sample of U.S. public firms. Ninety-six percent of these firms have blockholders: these blockholders in aggregate own an average 39% of the common stock. The ownership of U.S. firms is similar to and by some measures more concentrated than the ownership of firms in other countries. These findings challenge current thinking on a number of issues, ranging from the nature of the agency conflict in domestic corporations to the relationship between ownership concentration and legal protections for investors around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International law prescribes that in a cross-border acquisition of 100% of the target shares, the target firm becomes a national of the country of the acquiror, and consequently subject to its corporate governance system. Therefore, cross-border mergers provide a natural experiment to analyze the effects of changes in corporate governance on firm value. We construct measures of the change in investor protection in a sample of 506 acquisitions from 39 countries. We find that the better the shareholder protection and accounting standards in the acquiror's country, the higher the merger premium in cross-border mergers relative to matching domestic acquisitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author surveys a vast body of literature devoted to evaluating the relationship between corporate governance and performance as measured by valuation, operating performance, or stock returns. Most of the evidence to date suggests a positive association between corporate governance and various measures of performance. However, this line of research suffers from endogeneity problems that are difficult to resolve. There is no consensus yet on the nature of the endogeneity in governance–performance studies and in this survey the author proposes an approach to resolve it. The emerging conclusion is that corporate governance is likely to develop endogenously and depend on specific characteristics of the firm and its environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online labour markets are virtual platforms that solve information problems to enable gains from trade in remote labour services. They make employers and workers aware of each other, and allow them to communicate, contract, and produce remotely. Recent research suggests, however, that organizing production to include remote work remains challenging because employers and workers in these markets continue to lack information that is less easily communicated. Employers appear unable to accurately anticipate the full costs and benefits to them of using the market prior to entry, and continue to have difficulty evaluating worker applications even when experienced in these markets. Information is particularly incomplete when wage arbitrage opportunity is greatest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is assessed in this paper as having a special role in the development of the law of new media, recognising both the importance of its management of the global domain name system and how questions of institutional legitimacy have highlighted the lack of agreement on the role of law in the governance of the global Internet. In order to underline how ICANN's work relates to the regulation of the Internet and new media in particular., two particular issues are considered, both of which have been the subject of major announcements in 2009: (1) the facilitation of Internet multilingualism through internationalised domain names (IDNs) and (2) an attempt to expand the generic top-level domain (gTLD) system including prospect of dedicated gTLDs such as .xxx. In the case of internationalisation, it is argued that the question of internationalised domain names is best understood through its relation to historical processes of engagement between law, language and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why don't all countries converge rapidly to the use of most efficient or best practice technologies? Micro level studies suggest managerial skills play a key role in the adoption of modern technologies. In this paper we model the interactive process between on-the-job managerial skill acquisition and the adoption of modern technology. We use the model to illustrate why some countries develop managerial skills quickly and adopt best practice technologies, while others stay backwards. The model also explains why managers will not migrate from rich countries to poor countries, as would be needed to generate convergence. Finally we show why standard growth accounting exercises will incorrectly attribute a large proportion of managerial skills' contribution to total factor productivity and we quantify the importance of this bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the effects of temporal aggregation on causality and forecasting in multivariate GARCH processes. It is shown that spurious instantaneous causality in variance will only appear in degenerated cases, but that spurious Granger causality will be more common. For forecasting volatility, it is generally advisable to aggregate forecasts of the disaggregate series rather than forecasting the aggregated series directly, and unlike for vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) processes, the advantage does not diminish for large forecast horizons. Results are derived for the distribution of multivariate realized volatility if the high-frequency process follows multivariate GARCH. A numerical example illustrates some of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theory of location choice that draws on insights from the incomplete contracts and investment flexibility (real option) literatures. Our analysis indicates that the choice of locating within rather than away from industry clusters is influenced by the extent to which training costs are borne by firms versus employees. In addition, the uncertainty about future productivity shocks and the ability of firms to modify the scale of their operations also influence location choice. In particular, we show that locating in clusters is preferred when training costs are borne by workers and when firm-specific productivity shocks can potentially be large. However, there is an incentive for firms to choose isolated locations when significant training costs are borne by firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Managing a large number of digital photos is a challenging task for casual users. Personal photos often don’t have rich metadata, or additional information associated with them. However, available metadata can play a crucial role in managing photos. Labeling the semantic content of photos (i.e., annotating them), can increase the amount of metadata and facilitate efficient management. However, manual annotation is tedious and labor intensive while automatic metadata extraction techniques often generate inaccurate and irrelevant results. This paper describes a semi-automatic annotation strategy that takes advantage of human and computer strengths. The semi-automatic approach enables users to efficiently update automatically obtained metadata interactively and incrementally. Even though automatically identified metadata are compromised with inaccurate recognition errors, the process of correcting inaccurate information can be faster and easier than manually adding new metadata from scratch. In this paper, we introduce two photo clustering algorithms for generating meaningful photo groups: (1) Hierarchical event clustering; and (2) Clothing based person recognition, which assumes that people who wear similar clothing and appear in photos taken in one day are very likely to be the same person. To explore our semi-automatic strategies, we designed and implemented a prototype called SAPHARI (Semi-Automatic PHoto Annotation and Recognition Interface). The prototype provides an annotation framework which focuses on making bulk annotations on automatically identified photo groups. The prototype automatically creates photo clusters based on events, people, and file metadata so that users can easily bulk annotation photos. We performed a series of user studies to investigate the effectiveness and usability of the semi-automatic annotation techniques when applied to personal photo collections. The results show that users were able to make annotations significantly faster with event clustering using SAPHARI. We also found that users clearly preferred the semi-automatic approaches. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper concerns the prospective implementation of the proposed ‘corporate killing’ offence. These proposals suggested that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)—the body currently responsible for regulating work-related health and safety issues—should handle cases in which a ‘corporate killing’ charge is a possibility. Relatively little attention has been paid to this issue of implementation. An empirical investigation was undertaken to assess the compatibility of the HSE's methodology and enforcement philosophy with the new offence. It was found that inspectors categorize themselves as enforcers of criminal law, see enforcement action as valuable and support the new offence, but disagree over its use. They also broadly supported the HSE taking responsibility for the new offence. This suggests that ‘corporate killing’ may not necessarily be incompatible with the HSE's modus operandi, and there may be positive reasons for giving the HSE this responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplace performance measurement of respiratory protective equipment (RPE) is fundamental to the understanding of how well wearers are protected. It forms the basis for guidance on which the selection of appropriate equipment is based. However, the measurement of this performance is open to many sources of interference and inaccuracy, reducing the value and relevance of the results, and is most difficult for devices providing the highest levels of protection. In this paper, a method for critically assessing collected workplace protection factor (WPF) data is validated. This method rejects unreliable data, using criteria based on the detection limits of the analytical measurement system. An iterative approach is also described which arrives at a supportable estimate of given non-parametric percentiles of the distribution of measured WPFs [such as the fifth percentile, conventionally taken to be the assigned protection factor (APF)]. Further pragmatic criteria, based on a combination of experimental experience and consideration from first principles, are suggested as the basis for any future studies of RPE performance. These will maximize the chances of valid measurements being made, and also provide insight into the level of confidence which can be placed on any of the results. A consequence of these criteria is that typical working environments and measurement methods are incapable of generating WPF data which can be considered reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to outline the social history of cheerfulness using the constructivist perspective on emotions. The role of cheerfulness in American society grew in relation to modern ideological frameworks and various economic and social factors. Embraced by the middle class since the eighteenth century for reasons of social identity and philosophical outlook, cheerfulness became a national emotional standard perceived by outsiders of the culture as part of the American character. It was fostered by a tradition of optimism, self-reliance and self-centeredness. Being socially and individually beneficial, it was cultivated in the Victorian family. In the industrial age, cheerfulness was found to be economically productive and was administered in the workplace by the managerial leadership. The lower classes engaged in it through the job market and other social pressures. Cheerfulness escalated in business and corporate culture with competition. Thus, it proved to be the most useful of emotions in an increasingly rational culture and was individually sought and socially encouraged until it became the emotional highlight of the American social landscape. In late capitalism cheerfulness has been commodified, commercialized and recycled by media, possibly with some repercussions on depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the activities of the Athens Design Centre (ADC), a largely ignored aspect of Greek design history. The ADC was founded in the early 1960s by a group of industrialists, architects, economists and other professionals, in conjunction with a scientific body, the Greek Society of Industrial Morphology (GSIM). Although the ADC was a purely private initiative, it was modelled on public institutions which were operating abroad as national agencies for the promotion of industrial design, especially the British Council of Industrial Design. The ADC was basically a commercial undertaking, whose aim was to educate producers is well as consumers on what constitutes 'good design'. The people who conceived of this body had hoped that its operation could boost product sales and empower Greek firms in the new environment of the European Common Market. Despite high expectations, the ADC was unsuccessful and short-lived. Its private nature and the commercial stigma it bore prevented it from attracting a wider range of supporters, especially from the public sector and academia. In general, it was an over-ambitious and in a sense heroic venture, which tried to imitate too closely its international counterparts and finally played a marginal role in the Greek design scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that supervision with soft information is valuable whenever supervisors and supervises collude under asymmetric information and proceeds then to derive an Equivalence Principle between organizational forms of supervisory and productive activities. We consider an organization with an agent privately informed on his productivity and a risk averse supervisor getting signals on the agent's type. In a centralized organization, the principal can communicate and contract with both the supervisor and the agent. However, these two agents can collude against the principal. In a decentralized organization, the principal only communicates and contracts with the supervisor who in turn sub-contracts with the agent. We show that the two organizations achieve the same outcome. We discuss this equivalence and provide various comparative statics results to assess the efficiency of supervisory structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of a fume cupboard is determined by a complex interaction of factors which are time consuming and expensive to determine. This paper describes a simple and practical means of ranking, and assessing fume cupboard installations that can help to discharge managerial responsibility for a ‘safe’ environment. The method also gives an economically viable and technically defensible system for assessing fume cupboard performance as part of upgrading exercises or performance audits. The assessment strategy uses flow visualisation techniques and measurements of inflow air velocity as well as overall condition evaluation to rank performance and identify poor performing cupboards. The method has been used to carry out a condition and performance survey of 199 fume cupboards, both aerodynamic and box-type designs, in an academic institution. The results of this survey are presented which not only highlight performance characteristics but also provide insights into user attitudes and knowledge of fume cupboard operation and performance. It is suggested that surveys such as this could be helpful in training programmes for laboratory workers to enable them to optimise the use of fume cupboards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses Anthony Giddens' structuration theory as a theoretical lens for examining the early adoption and use of computers by life insurance firms in tire 1950s. The theoretical lens helps us see how pre-computer punched-card tabulating technology and patterns of technology use in insurance operations structured or shaped the choice and use of computers by insurance firms in the early computer era, even in the presence of new technology advocates arguing for new models of technology and its use. This conservative influence of existing patterns is often underestimated, especially in the case of technologies popularly seen as new and innovative. While structuration leads as to expect reinforcement of existing structures or models most of the time, it also helps us to interpret the exceptions to these patterns that opened the way to new and innovative uses of computer technology in insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of reference technologies in measuring productive efficiency. The author shows that the efficiency measures which are measured relative to those reference technologies are also nested. These results are important because they tell what type of bias a reference technology will impart to the resultant efficiency measures. The author concludes that the specification of the reference technology affects the magnitude of Farrell-type efficiency measures can obviously be extended to models which do not use the linear programming approach.

Consumption data generally indicates that consumption risk is not perfectly diversified across individuals. This paper considers if and when imperfect diversification is a feature of efficient allocations in a symmetric information environment without commitment. It shows that if individuals are sufficiently patient, imperfect diversification is always sub-optimal in the long run, however, if individuals are not so patient, imperfect diversification is always optimal The paper goes on to demonstrate that the way that history matters in an efficient allocation in a symmetric- information/no-commitment environment can be used to distinguish lack of commitment from other possible rationalizations of imperfect risk sharing, such as efficiency in the presence of asymmetric information [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an explanation of why bargainers often terminate negotiations in disagreement in spite of positive expected gains from continued negotiation. The key to the analysis is a model which embeds bargaining activity within a market. Agents are continually faced with the choice between continuing to bargain with an existing partner or searching for a new partner. Bargainers may then terminate negotiations without an agreement, inspite of positive expected gains from continued bargaining, because seeking a new bargaining partner promises a higher return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Oliver Hart (1975) has forcefully shown, economies with incomplete markets can have surprising welfare properties. These examples, or counter-examples, bring out the need for further analysis of public policies in the presence of uncertainty and incomplete markets. Various policies are examined here in simple models with two goods, two types of agents, and two states of nature. The basic model has an ex ante decision by suppliers, made with rational expectations, followed by a competitive exchange economy after the state of nature is known. The paper analyses the changes in expected utilities of demanders and suppliers from small changes in the ex ante decision away from the competitive equilibrium. Such changes generally have the potential of increasing the sum of expected utilities and can result in a Parrot improvement. The paper focuses on distinguishing between situations where the gain comes from stabilizing output across states of nature and those where the gain comes from destabilizing. Then two policies are examined which work on the ex post market—use of taxes and subsidies to stabilize suppliers' incomes and use of government demand policy to maximize social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a labor market equilibrium analysis of implicit contract theory. A two-period, single-good model is used to propose consistent notions of labor market equilibrium for long-term employment contracts both when labor is specialized and cannot move in the second period and when there is free mobility without costs. The result that long-term contracts emerge in equilibrium even without mobility costs is novel and contrary to common beliefs. The main features of equilibrium are that (risk-neutral) firms will insure (risk-averse) workers against downside risk, yielding downward rigid wages. Wages are not fully rigid (as in earlier work on contract theory) because workers may quit and wages have to be bid up to retain them. The firm gets its return of the insurance deal by paying less than marginal product in the first period. The resulting equilibrium is second best and lies between productive efficiency and full insurance. Workers gain from long-term contracts in comparison to spot markets; whereas owners may not. In the model with specialized skills there exist transfer payments such that both parties are better off within an equilibrium with long-term contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines recent merger and takeover activity in the United Kingdom. Specifically, the impact of takeovers on shareholder returns and management benefits is analyzed, and some implications for the theory of the firm are drawn from the results. The research showed that mergers and takeovers resulted in benefits to the acquired firms' shareholders and to the acquiring companies' managers, hut that losses were suffered by the acquiring companies' shareholders. The results are consistent with takeovers being motivated more by maximization of management utility reasons, than by the maximization of shareholder wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS paper is concerned with a phenomenon which is constantly encountered bur seldom analysed. An internal economy or diseconomy would be external but for the fact that in occurs within a given firm or organisation. Consideration of this question raises others: the nature of cross-subsidisation, the meaning of organisational economies of scale, the identification of marginal revenue and marginal cost within systems of economic activity, the importance of the institutional setting in identifying costs and benefits, the criteria applicable to the operations of nationalised industries and much else besides. All the problems to be discussed below have been referred to somewhere in modern economic literature. Such words as indivisibilities, complementarities, sub-optimisation, interdependencies, which do raise similar issues, are to be found in many a textbook, bur all too often figuratively or literally in footnotes. They are seldom woven into the fabric of analysis. Once mentioned, they are forgotten by author and student, and the analysis, the concept of an optimum, proceeds as if these modifying circumstances did not exist, or could be abstracted without serious loss of theoretical rigour or practical relevance. What, then, is cross-subsidisation ? What is its relationship to "internal economies" as here defined ? The belief in the irrationality of cross-subsidisation is based on the apparently elementary principle that a loss-making activity involves resource misallocation, in that, in a market economy, one can increase the national product and welfare by reallocating resources to a profitable use. it is believed that the temptation to subsidise losses out of profits within a corporation or nationalised industry ought therefore to be resisted. Such a temptation may be due to a desire for a quiet life; thus the closing of uneconomic pits might cause questions in Parliament of a protest march by miners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public relations has arrived at that tricky stage, where almost anything may happen. The public mind, fascinated by its techniques, has been encouraged to expect too much too quickly. The article focuses on public relations as an integral part of doing business. According to the author this profession has yet to build up effective safeguards against misrepresentations and overselling by irresponsible opportunists. Public relations is meeting its great test at a time when another vogue is in the making. Too many business leaders think of public relations counsel as the media for getting good things into papers and keeping bad things out. However leaders of any organization, whether it be business, civic, or public, derive most of their good name and public recognition from the reputation of that organization. Individual and group are indissolubly intertwined. Public relations, is the conscious reflection of a way of life toward a determined objective.