Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
19 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, market efficiency, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: British economy, British politics, employment law, employment regulation, fixed costs of working, part-time work, The fatal conceit, The pretense to knowledge, zero hours contracts
Revealed preference rules. Not only do about half of unemployed turned down offers of zero hour contract jobs, those that switch from a zero hours contract to minimum hours are not much different from the number of people in these type of jobs who would be quitting to another job anyway.
Source: McDonald’s Workers Are Just Lovin’ Their Zero Hours Contracts – Forbes and McDonald’s offer staff the chance to get off zero-hours contracts | UK news | The Guardian.
02 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, managerial economics, survivor principle
27 Mar 2016 1 Comment
in applied price theory, financial economics, industrial organisation, managerial economics, organisational economics, survivor principle Tags: agency costs, agent principal problem, asymmetric information, dividends, entrepreneurial alertness, managerial slack
It is obvious that businesses find dividends sensible to pay because otherwise they will face disquiet from investors. Managers believe that higher dividends mean higher share prices.
Economists finds dividends to be a mysterious (Easterbrook 1984). Miller and Modigliani (1958) declared dividends to be irrelevant because investors can homebrew their own dividends by selling shares or borrowing against their share portfolios.
Modigliani (1980, p. xiii) explains the Miller and Modigliani Theorem as follows:
… with well-functioning markets (and neutral taxes) and rational investors, who can ‘undo’ the corporate financial structure by holding positive or negative amounts of debt, the market value of the firm – debt plus equity – depends only on the income stream generated by its assets.
It follows, in particular, that the value of the firm should not be affected by the share of debt in its financial structure or by what will be done with the returns – paid out as dividends or reinvested (profitably).
Warren Buffett has never paid a dividend. He only agreed to a stock split. Shareholders pressed him to do so. They wanted to bequeath their shares to children without having to sell them.
What is even more mysterious is a simultaneous existence of dividends and the raising of new capital, either through the share market or from borrowing (Easterbrook 1984).
Dividends are costly and ubiquitous so something causes them. Even if investors were irrational, dividends would go away if there cost exceeds their benefits.
If dividends were a bad idea, firms that pay few dividends would prosper relative to others; investors who figure out the truth would also prosper relative to others and before long dividends will be features of failing firms (Easterbrook 1984).
Dividends exist because they influence the firms financing policies. Dividends dissipate free cash and thereby induce the firm to float new shares and borrow. If the firm is constantly in the market for new capital, it must constantly prove the value of the investment to the market (Easterbrook 1984).
The interests and incentives of managers and shareholders frequently conflict over the optimal size of the firm and paying free cash flows as dividends. Jensen (1986) defines free cash flow as follows:
Free cash flow is cash flow in excess of that required to fund all of a firm’s projects that have positive net present values when discounted at the relevant cost of capital. Such free cash flow must be paid out to shareholders if the firm is to be efficient and to maximize value for shareholders (Jensen 1986, p. 323).
The problem is how to motivate managers to pay out this cash rather than invested at below the cost of the capital. By issuing debt, managers bind themselves to pay out future cash flows in a way that a future dividend policy cannot.
Creditors can take the firm into bankruptcy court if they do not repay. Investors and bankers play an important role in monitoring the firm and its proposed projects.
The control function of debt is more important in organisations with large cash flows but low growth prospects. Investors in the share market are alert to the control function of debt. Most leverage increasing transactions result in positive increases in share prices while most transactions that reduce leverage results in share price falls (Jensen 1986).
There is nothing new about using high debt leverage ratios to create greater business value through limiting managerial discretion in focusing entrepreneurial attention on the bottom line.
One of the driving forces behind management leverage buyouts in the 1980s was that they borrowed to take over a company to run it better. The high levels of debt in management buyouts made sure that there was no incentives to tolerate waste or inefficiency or underperforming divisions or product lines of the firm. Any slack with the organisation would very quickly be punished perhaps in bankruptcy. Heavy debt ratios focused the attention of managers and boards of directors.
New debt puts managers under additional scrutiny of a range of bankers and the share market, which is the principal reason for keeping firms constantly in the market for capital. Managers of firms that do not have to go into the market repeatedly and regularly for new capital have more discretion to behave in their own interest rather than those of investors (Easterbrook 1984). The function of dividends is to keep firms in the capital market.
Managers of firms with unused borrowing power and large free cash flows are more like to undertake expansions that are less profitable. The burst of takeovers and leverage buyouts in the 1980s were very much driven by opportunities to profit from reducing corporate slack and downsizing flabby corporate headquarters of large publicly listed companies (Jensen 1986).
Dividends reduce the resources under managers’ control and subjecting them to the monitoring by the capital markets that occurs when a firm must obtain new capital. Financing projects internally avoids this monitoring and the possibility that funds will be unavailable or available only at high explicit prices. Project finance replicates the disciplinary effect of paying regular dividends by borrowing a huge amount at the start of the project. High debt prevents management wasting resources on low return projects.
Dividends are paid by companies to tie the hands of management. Dividends make sure that there is less free cash about for them to spend on projects at their own discretion. When a major expansion must be undertaken, the management of a company must either go to the share market or banks for it to go forward. This means multiple set of decision-makers agree that it is a worthwhile project and provide funding.
The art of business is identifying assets in low-valued uses and devising ways to profitably move them into higher values uses (Froeb and McCann 2008). Wealth is created when entrepreneurs move assets to higher-valued uses.
Froeb and McCann (2008) argued that mistakes are made – business opportunities are missed – for one of two reasons:
1. A lack of information; or
2. Bad incentives.
Rational, self-interested actors err because either they do not have enough information to make better decisions, or they lack incentives to make the best use of information they already have.
Froeb and McCann (2008) argued that three questions arise about all business problems:
1. Who is making the bad decision?
2. Does the decision maker have enough information to make a good decision?
3. Does the decision maker have the incentives to make a good decision?
For Froeb and McCann (2008), the answers to these questions immediately suggest ways to fix them:
1. Let someone else make the decision;
2. Give more information to the decision maker; or
3. Change the decision makers’ incentives.
Dividends follow all three points in this matrix. Dividends include others in investment and expansion decisions of the company. These bankers or new share investors must be given more information on the merits of the new or enlarged project.
The project will not go ahead and any benefits to the careers of the executives championing it will not be forthcoming unless they can persuade these outside parties with plenty of other investment options of the merits of the project.
Dividend show that the market process as well alert to the risks of separating ownership from control. Counter strategies are developed to channel the efforts and align the interests of management teams towards those of investors and owners.
The ownership structure and dividend policies of firms arise out of the search for the capital structure that maximises profits. Different divisions of risk between creditors and shareholders and decision-making rights between owners, boards of directors and managers all affect the value and profitability of a firm. Dividends contribute to that search more profitable forms of organisation by restricting free cash flows in the hands of management.
13 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, labour economics, managerial economics, minimum wage, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: living wage, rational irrationality, The fatal conceit, The pretense to knowledge
Living wage advocate William Lester published a briefing for the Washington Centre for Equitable Growth that destroys the case for a living wage. He did not intend this but he documented in detail the exclusion of inexperienced workers from the restaurant industry in San Francisco after a living wage was imposed. He compared San Francisco’s minimum wage of $12 per hour with North Carolina which only pays the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
What Lester found was a systematic increase in hiring standards. The living wage in San Francisco of $12 all but ended the hiring of inexperienced workers as shown in the chart below. This is exactly what basic price theory predicts. I put the two pie charts in his paper into a single bar chart so this powerful effect of the living wage on hiring standards is not lost.
Source: The consequences of higher labor standards in full service restaurants – Equitable Growth.
The most fundamental criticism of living wage and minimum wage increases is they exclude workers who do not meet the new labour productivity level required to make it profitable for employers to hire them. UK research found the same thing – an increase in hiring standards and tougher shortlisting. Lester welcomes this transition of the restaurant industry in San Francisco into a career for professionals. As he says in his briefing paper:
Concurrent with this wage compression was a rise in professional standards as employers sought to hire and keep already well-trained workers at higher wages and with expanded benefits. Both developments reduced turnover and attracted more professional employees who maintain a high level of customer service.
As with all minimum wage and living wage advocates, he is incurious as to what happens to those low skilled, inexperienced workers and new workforce entrants who no longer meet the hiring standards of San Francisco restaurants because of the large minimum wage increase.
Best 2 Minimum Wage Cartoons Ever, from Henry Payne, Updated for Seattle's $15 "Economic Death Wish" @HenryEPayne http://t.co/vatUzkHMss—
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) August 18, 2015
As Lester concedes in his conclusions about what will happen if the San Francisco minimum wage of $12 an hour, the highest in the country, is extended to other cities and states:
Higher professional standards may limit entry-level opportunities within the industry, while lower standards may result in more employer-provided training for new workers.
Employer funded on-the-job training is often a major part of a job package. It is well-known in the labour economics literature since the time of Adam Smith that any job is a package of wages and other attributes including learning opportunities.
Workers sell their services and buy learning opportunities; firms buy labour services and sell jobs with varying learning possibilities (Rosen 1972, 1975, 1976). The rational allocation of time results in most careers starting with large investments in full-time schooling and then mostly investments in on-the-job training (Becker 1975; Ben-Porath 1967, 1970; Weiss 1987).
As the training provided by restaurant employers is useful to other employers, the trainee must fund it through trading off wages for this training. Once trained, the employee can command a higher pay because other employers are willing to pay them more now that they are trained. Again, this is a standard result in the human capital literature.
Where the human capital is more specialised to one firm or job, the employer and the trainee share the cost. A classic example of this is an apprenticeship.
Source: IZA World of Labor – Do firms benefit from apprenticeship investments?
In San Francisco, employers expect recruits to be fully trained and experienced. They provide little in the way of on-the-job training. Their recruits must have been able to afford to fund this in their previous jobs by trading off wages for training as Lester notes in his working paper:
…San Francisco employers were less likely to report lengthy formal training periods for either front-of-house or back-of-house workers. Instead, there is an overall higher level of skill expectation and—as is the case for many professions—workers are expected to acquire and exhibit industry specific knowledge on their own.
In North Carolina, as Lester notes, the restaurant industry hires younger workers with less formal education and offers them intensive on-the-job training:
The restaurant industry in the Research Triangle region tends to hire younger workers with a lower level of formal education. Specifically, 49.5 percent of workers in there are under age 24 or have less than a high school education, compared to 38.9 percent in San Francisco. Conversely, 40.6 percent of workers in San Francisco have some college or a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 29.7 percent in the Research Triangle Region.
North Carolina restaurants sought to hire unskilled workers who were friendly and reliable as Lester notes:
One manager of a neighbourhood bistro in Raleigh explained what he looks for in a new front-of-house worker: “Basically, we require [that a server] can work a four-shift minimum per week and go an entire shift, an entire eight-hour shift without smoking a cigarette and [without] any facial piercings or anything. Beyond that, just come in with a smile on your face.”
The restaurant industry in North Carolina is willing to give people low skilled, poorly educated and inexperienced a chance to work if they are willing to work. Lester reports this when quoting an upscale bar-and-grill manager on his hiring standards:
We look for at least one year’s experience, but the biggest thing we look for is we look for the person. We don’t look for the skill. I could teach anybody how [to] wait tables [and] pour drinks. I can teach anybody how to cook steaks. What I can’t teach is how to be a good person.
Lester then discusses with some degree of approval the hiring standards in the San Francisco where restaurants are professional careers:
Rather than viewing servers as essentially interchangeable labourers who can be trained quickly and easily if they possess a modicum of personal hygiene and a friendly personality, employers in San Francisco exhibited a clear description of what a “professional server” was.
One mid-scale restaurant employer said of her front-of-house staff: “We have a lot of people who have made it a career and they’re investing in the knowledge of the product and learning their trade or already know their trade because they’ve done it for years.”
Much to the surprise of believers in the inherent inequality of bargaining power between employers and workers, employers invest heavily in low-skilled employees despite the fact this makes them employable elsewhere. Lester again:
“Training is a huge investment for us and it is constant,” [a manager] said. “Training days depend on the position. Bartending training is ten days and servers require eight days. In the kitchen it’s probably about ten days. Every day they write note cards on all their recipes. But they’ll take a final. When they take their final, their test in the kitchen, they have to know every ingredient, every ounce, and every item, for the entire station. That’s why we require them to write note cards.
Even at higher-end restaurants, employers in the region have built a human resource system that accepts a high rate of turnover. “We try to stay ahead of the game so that we’re always hiring, we’re always interviewing, but hopefully it’s not desperation hires,” says another manager. “And we try to have a mix of needs like people who need fulltime, who can work lunches and brunches and all of that, to servers who really want very part time so that you can kind of over staff on busy shifts and then there’s always someone that wants to go home. There’s always a student that would like a Saturday night off.”
Lester paints a picture of a San Francisco restaurant industry that expects workers to fund their own industry specific human capital. In North Carolina, employers provide those training opportunities to minimum wage workers despite this making these up-skilled employees an attractive proposition for rivals to poach. By depriving low skilled workers of this opportunity of both wages and employer-funded training, a living wage would make them worse off.
I am at a loss here. How can the progressive left regard the exclusion of low paid, low skilled workers as a good thing? How do they put food on the table in San Francisco other than through a welfare check? How do they get their first job?
It's pretty simple: Minimum Wage = Compulsory Unemployment http://t.co/6xiX6YCp9Z—
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) July 25, 2015
10 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, managerial economics, minimum wage, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand
Living wage activists believe that businesses can profitably pay their low-paid workers a lot more. The living wage pay increase will not jeopardise the survival of the business or jobs because their workers will be more productive because of the living wage increase. Morale will be higher and job turnover will be lower. Both of these will increase productivity perhaps enough to offset the increase in labour costs.
In a nutshell, living wage activists have discovered a hitherto untapped entrepreneurial opportunity for profit. These living wage activists are happy to disclose this secret to lower costs to the world at no fee.
What they are arguing is businesses do not notice a profit opportunity that these political activists have noticed and are now publicising widely. Entrepreneurs are leaving money on the table that could easily be snapped up simply by paying their low-paid employers higher wages.
Source: Mancur Olson (1996) “Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3-24.
This money on the table metaphor is similar to the big bills left on the sidewalk metaphor. There is easy money to be had from paying low-paid workers more because these workers will quickly become more productive because of the higher wages.
Living wage activists do not address why entrepreneurs had not discovered this insight into cost saving themselves. After all, every entrepreneur, every employer knows that if they pay more, they will get a better class of job applicant.
Of course, if this insight by the living wage activists is true, all workers should be given a similar increase in their pay because their productivity will go through the roof as well.
Entrepreneurs profit directly from spotting every new opportunity for profit. They have no reason to turn money down particularly when it is obvious and straight under their nose.
The modern theories of the firm focus, in part or in full on reducing opportunistic behaviour, cheating and fraud in employment relationships. The cost of discovering prices and making and enforcing contracts and getting what you pay for are central to Coase’s theory of the firm put forward in 1937.
The profits of entrepreneurs for running a firm is directly linked from their successful policing of the efforts of employees and sub-contractors to ensure the team and each member perform as promised and individual rewards matched individual contributions (Alchian and Demsetz 1972; Barzel 1987). Alchian and Demsetz’s (1972) theory of the firm focused on moral hazard in team production. As they explain:
Two key demands are placed on an economic organization-metering input productivity and metering rewards.
The main rationale in personnel economics from everything ranging from employer funding of retirement pensions to the structure of promotions and executive pay including stock options is around better rewarding self-motivating employees who strive harder and reducing the costs of monitoring employee effort.
Does a higher minimum wage really reduce employment? econ.st/1gp4Jbs http://t.co/WGMZGLKHmI—
The Economist (@EconBizFin) July 30, 2015
At bottom, the efficiency wage hypothesis is entrepreneurs are unaware of the higher quality and greater self-motivation of better paid recruits for vacancies but wise bureaucrats and farsighted politicians notice these gaps in the market. Bureaucrats and politicians notice these gaps in the market before those who gain from superior entrepreneur alertness to hitherto untapped opportunities for profit do so and instead leave that money on the table.
11 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in human capital, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics, property rights, unemployment Tags: employment law, employment protection laws, employment regulation, firm-specific human capital, job search, labour market regulation, severance pay
There are a wide differences across the OECD in mandatory severance pay in the event of a layoff.
Source: Labor Market Regulation – Doing Business – World Bank Group.
Severance pay makes it more expensive to fire and therefore more expensive to hire. This means fewer job vacancies will be created but they will last longer.
The presence of mandatory severance pay could increase or reduce the unemployment rate but unemployment durations will increase because it takes longer to find a suitable job match among the fewer available vacancies.
Mandating severance pay does not make the job match inherently more profitable. It just redistributes some of the surplus from the job match to the end when it is terminated.
Employers and jobseekers may agree to severance pay where investments in firm specific and job specific human capital for the job is profitable.
Severance pay in these circumstances gives the employer and more reasons to invest in specific human capital. The promise to pay severance pay will make the employer hesitate to lay them off. The employer will instead retain them over a slack period or redeploy them within the company rather than pay them out. This pre-commitment encourages investment in firm specific and job specific human capital by both sides more secure, which makes the job match more profitable overall for both sides.
Of course, if it was possible to negotiate completely around severance pay mandated by law, there would be no effects on hiring, firing and unemployment durations. All it would mean is take-home pay would be less but in the event of a layoff, these employees would get that this wage reduction back as a lump sum.
09 Feb 2016 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, managerial economics, minimum wage, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand, Ronald Coase, theory of the firm
Research publicised by a Living Wage UK highlighted the Achilles heel of any living wage proposal. This Achilles heel applies to the voluntary adoption of the living wage and a living wage mandated through minimum wage laws.
The critique to follow accepts pretty much everything claimed by the living wage movement about the benefits of the living wage but simply traces out the consequence of this one promised benefit.
Source: New evidence of business case for adopting Living Wage Living Wage Foundation.
The living wage is substantially above the minimum wage. Offering the living wage will change the composition of the recruitment pool of low-wage employers. This is the Achilles heel of the living wage which Living Wage UK documents in its study it tweeted about and from which I have taken the above snapshot.
Jobseekers would not have considered vacancies by these employers will now apply because of the living wage increase. These better calibre applicants will win those jobs ahead of the jobseekers whose current productivity levels are less than that to justify the cost of the living wage.
Central to the living wage rhetoric is that somehow employees will be more productive because of the adoption of the living wage.
The simplest way of doing that for an employer is to hire more qualified, more productive employers are no longer a hire the type of people you currently hire. They will be unemployed or pushed into the non-living wage sector of the low-wage market.
Best 2 Minimum Wage Cartoons Ever, from Henry Payne, Updated for Seattle's $15 "Economic Death Wish" @HenryEPayne http://t.co/vatUzkHMss—
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) August 18, 2015
A living wage is an exclusionary policy where ordinary workers, often with families who are not productive enough to produce $19.25 per hour living wage plus overheads will never be interviewed.
The workers with the type of skills that currently win those jobs covered by a living wage increase will not be shortlisted because the quality of the recruitment pool will increase because of the living wage.
There will be an influx of more skilled workers attracted by the higher wages for living wage jobs. They will go to the head of the queue and displaced workers who currently apply for and win these jobs before the adoption of the living wage.
Any extra labour productivity from paying a living wage increase is in doubt because low skilled service sectors are notorious for their low potential for productivity gains. They are the bread-and-butter of Baumol’s disease.
The modern theories of the firm focus, in part or in full on reducing opportunistic behaviour, cheating and fraud in employment relationships. The cost of discovering prices and making and enforcing contracts and getting what you pay for are central to Coase’s theory of the firm put forward in 1937.
The profits of entrepreneurs for running a firm is directly linked from their successful policing of the efforts of employees and sub-contractors to ensure the team and each member perform as promised and individual rewards matched individual contributions (Alchian and Demsetz 1972; Barzel 1987). Alchian and Demsetz’s (1972) theory of the firm focused on moral hazard in team production. As they explain:
Two key demands are placed on an economic organization-metering input productivity and metering rewards.
The main rationale in personnel economics from everything ranging from employer funding of retirement pensions to the structure of promotions and executive pay including stock options is around better rewarding self-motivating employees who strive harder and reducing the costs of monitoring employee effort.
At bottom, the efficiency wage hypothesis is entrepreneurs are unaware of the higher quality and greater self-motivation of better paid recruits for vacancies but wise bureaucrats and farsighted politicians notice these gaps in the market. Bureaucrats and politicians notice these gaps in the market before those who gain from superior entrepreneur alertness to hitherto untapped opportunities for profit do so and instead leave that money on the table.
It’s kicking the living wage movement when it is down to mention that low paid workers with families will lose a considerable part of the living wage increase because of reductions in family tax credits and in-kind assistance from the government that are linked to their pay.
Their jobs are put at risk because of a large increase in the cost of employing them to their employers. Their take-home pay after taxes, family tax credits and other government assistance increases by much less. This is a pointless gamble with job security because of the much small increase in the take-home pay of many breadwinners on the living wage.
23 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: academic tenure, compensating differentials, occupational choice
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Academic Deadlines phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1… http://t.co/tazByBNUzI—
Jorge Cham (@phdcomics) August 01, 2015
Time spent writing your thesis.
**Need a graduation gift? Visit phdcomics.com/store http://t.co/PJNbG3C7PY—
Jorge Cham (@phdcomics) May 01, 2015
17 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, industrial organisation, managerial economics, market efficiency, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle Tags: Baumol's disease, labour productivity
11 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, fisheries economics, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics, survivor principle Tags: CEO pay, moral hazard, promotion tournaments, superstar, superstar wages
Bang Dang Nguyen and Kasper Meisner Nielsen looked at how share prices reacted to 149 cases of the chief executive or another prominent manager dying suddenly in American companies between 1991 and 2008.
If the shares rise on an executive’s death, he was overpaid; if they fall, he was not. Only 42% of the bosses studied were overpaid. Those with the bigger pay packages gave the best value for money as measured by the share-price slump when they passed away unexpectedly.
Share prices do speak to the value of the company and the contribution of its CEO. The share price of Apple went up and down by billions on the back of rumours about the health of Steve Jobs.
In terms of splitting of what some call the labour surplus increase from a firm hiring an executive, these employees retain on average about 71% and their employer keeps 29%. Others call this rent sharing.
71% going to the CEO might initially sound high, “but it’s not like he’s taking home more than he produced for the company,” says Nguyen.
The exploitation of CEOs gets worse when you consider the extensive use of promotion tournaments by their employers when setting their wages. They are thrust into rat races. Promotion tournaments are an integral and often invisible part of their workplaces.
Executive level employees are often ranked by their employers relative to each other and promoted not for being good at their jobs but for being better than their rivals. These promotion tournaments sent one employee against another – one worker against another – to the profit of the owners of the firm.
The rat race set up by the owners of the firm are so cutthroat that in competitions to determine promotions the capitalists who own the firm may find that their employees discover that the most efficient way of winning a promotion is by sabotaging the efforts of their rivals.
Lazear and Rozen’s tournament theory of executive pay has stood the test of time. The key to this rat race is the larger is your boss’s pay, the bigger the motivation for you as an underling to work for a promotion. As Lazear wrote in his book, Personnel Economics for Managers
The salary of the vice president acts not so much as motivation for the vice president as it does as motivation for the assistant vice presidents.
08 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: economics of personality traits, gender wage gap, reversing gender gap
Women started drifting away from computer science in the mid-1980s. The interpretation put forward by the professional grievance industry, that is, by National Public Radio in the USA is:
The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.
These early personal computers weren’t much more than toys. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing.
And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were, and it created techie culture.
Source: NPR
Another interpretation is there are systematic differences between teenage boys and teenage girls in verbal and written skills. Young women moved away from enrolling in computer…
View original post 224 more words
05 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in managerial economics, organisational economics, theory of the firm Tags: Peter Drucker
30 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, gender, labour economics, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: gender wage gap, preference formation, unconscious bias
12 Nov 2015 2 Comments
in labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand, unions Tags: compensating differentials, part-time work, zero hour contracts
My submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee today on the Employment Standards Bill is there should be no regulation of zero hours contracts:
Always knowing your working hours in advance is known only to about 30% of shift workers; and
Workers command a wage premium when they sign zero hours contracts.
The obvious question is why do jobseekers sign a zero hours contract if it is not in their interests? Most of all, why would a worker who already has a job quit to work on a zero hours contract unless it is to their advantage?
If zero hours contracts are oppressive, the only workers hired on them would be the unemployed. Anyone who has a job would refuse such offers. Those unemployed that do sign a zero hours contract would quit as soon as a better offer comes along. 50% of job offers to British welfare beneficiaries to work on a zero hours contract are turned down.
This frequent refusal of zero hours contracts not only suggests there are options for jobseekers including the unemployed but there are costs to employers. The most likely employer response to reduce these costs of rejection is a offer to pay more to sign a zero hours contract. Everyone in this room knows contractors who work in much more than those in regular employment.
Unless labour markets are highly uncompetitive with employers having massive power over employees, employers should have to pay a wage premium if zero-hour contracts are a hassle for workers. It is standard for unusual, irregular or casual work to come with a wage premium. If you want regular hours, fixed hours, that comes at a price – a lower wage per hour.
Zero hours contracts is creative destruction in the labour market. Plenty of new ways of working have emerged in recent years: the proliferation of part-time work, temporary workers, leased workers, working from home, teleworking and contracting. Employment laws rest on the now decaying assumption that workers have long, stable relationships with single employers.
At least a quarter of a million New Zealanders already work shifts often with little notice of changes. Work schedules are always known in advance only to 31% of temporary, seasonal and casual employees. Another quarter of these have about two weeks or more notice of shifts. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealand workers freely sign on for variable hours.
Source: Survey of Working Life December Quarter 2012, Statistics New Zealand, Table 13.
Something new and innovative such a zero hours contract should not be regulated because it is not well understood. Zero hours contracts don’t come cheap for employers because of the risk of job offer rejection. There must be offsetting advantages that allow this practice to survive in competition with other ways of hiring a cost competitive labour force.
The fixed costs of recruitment and training are such that one 40-hour worker is cheaper than hiring and training two 20-hour workers. Zero hour contracts would be most likely in jobs with low recruitment costs, few specialised training needs and highly variable customer flows.
This business variability can be borne by the employer with the worker on regular hours but paid less. The alternative is the employee shares this risk with a wage premium for their troubles.
Workers with low fixed costs of working at different times profit from a move onto zero-hours contracts. Those with higher fixed costs of changing their working hours will stay on lower hourly rates but more certain working times
To summarise my points today:
Advance notice of working hours is not as common as people think for shift workers; and
Irregular and unusual working arrangements usually command a wage premium.
Employers must pay a wage premium to induce in workers to sign zero hours contracts. This Bill undermines the right of workers to seek those higher wages. Thanks for your time and attention.
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A rural perspective with a blue tint by Ele Ludemann
DPF's Kiwiblog - Fomenting Happy Mischief since 2003
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change
Tim Harding's writings on rationality, informal logic and skepticism
A window into Doc Freiberger's library
Let's examine hard decisions!
Commentary on monetary policy in the spirit of R. G. Hawtrey
Thoughts on public policy and the media
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Politics and the economy
A blog (primarily) on Canadian and Commonwealth political history and institutions
Reading between the lines, and underneath the hype.
Economics, and such stuff as dreams are made on
"The British constitution has always been puzzling, and always will be." --Queen Elizabeth II
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
WORLD WAR II, MUSIC, HISTORY, HOLOCAUST
Undisciplined scholar, recovering academic
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Res ipsa loquitur - The thing itself speaks
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Researching the House of Commons, 1832-1868
Articles and research from the History of Parliament Trust
Reflections on books and art
Posts on the History of Law, Crime, and Justice
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Exploring the Monarchs of Europe
Cutting edge science you can dice with
Small Steps Toward A Much Better World
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
The truth about the great wind power fraud - we're not here to debate the wind industry, we're here to destroy it.
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Economics, public policy, monetary policy, financial regulation, with a New Zealand perspective
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Restraining Government in America and Around the World
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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