446 research outputs found
Do Small Businesses Create More Jobs? New Evidence for the United States from the National Establishment Time Series
No full textWe use a new database, the National Establishment Time Series (NETS), to revisit the debate about the role of small businesses in job creation. Birch (e.g., 1987) argued that small firms are the most important source of job creation in the U.S. economy. But Davis et al. (1996a) argued that this conclusion was flawed, and based on improved methods and using data for the manufacturing sector, they concluded that there was no relationship between establishment size and net job creation. Using the NETS data, we examine evidence for the overall economy, as well as for different sectors. The results indicate that small firms and small establishments create more jobs, on net, although the difference is much smaller than what is suggested by Birch's methods. Moreover, in the recent period we study, a negative relationship between establishment size and job creation holds for both the manufacturing and services sectors.job creation, job destruction, small businesses
Do Small Businesses Create More Jobs? New Evidence from the National Establishment Time Series
No full textWe use a new database, the National Establishment Time Series (NETS), to revisit the debate about the role of small businesses in job creation. Birch (e.g., 1987) argued that small firms are the most important source of job creation in the U.S. economy, but Davis et al. (1996a) argued that this conclusion was flawed, and based on improved methods and using data for the manufacturing sector they concluded that there was no relationship between establishment size and net job creation. Using the NETS data, we examine evidence for the overall economy, as well as for different sectors. The results indicate that small establishments and small firms create more jobs, on net, although the difference is much smaller than what is suggested by Birch's methods. However, the negative relationship between establishment size and job creation is much less clear for the manufacturing sector, which may explain some of the earlier findings contradicting Birch's conclusions.
Works Councils, Wages, and Job Satisfaction
No full textWe investigate the effects of works councils on employees’ wages and job satisfaction in general and for subgroups with respect to sex and occupational status. Making use of a German representative sample of employees, we find that employees, who move to a firm with a works council, report increases in job satisfaction, but do not receive particular wage increases. Especially the job satisfaction of female employees is affected by a change in works council status. However, we do not find support for the hypothesis that the introduction of a works council itself increases wages or job satisfaction for the employees staying at the firm.wages, job satisfaction, works councils
Schira, H. Rainer
No full textcurrentOriginally from Wittlich, Germany I came to Canada for high school to learn English, fell in love, and decided to stay. I have lived in Kitchener, Saskatoon, and London. My current job brought me to Brandon, MB. At BU I have taught as a sessional for the History Department, and coached the Women’s Soccer team. I have been Acting University Librarian, and am currently the Reference and Information Literacy Librarian.John E. Robbins Librar
Drivers of service recovery performance: perceived organisational support, learning and psychological job outcomes
No full textService recovery is an under-researched area in theoretical and empirical terms (Smith, Bolton, and Wagner 1999). In particular, limited knowledge exists regarding the factors which have an impact on the service recovery performance of frontline employees (Boshoff and Allen 2000). This research draws on goal orientation theory, perceived organisational support theory and the literature on psychological job outcomes and service recovery, in order to investigate the drivers of service recovery performance. The major goals of this study are to determine the effect of learning goal orientation on service recovery performance and the impact of perceived organisational support on learning goal orientation. Additionally, the effect of both learning goal orientation and perceived organisational support on emotional exhaustion is investigated. These simultaneous relationships are empirically tested for the first time. Following a review of the key literature, an integrative conceptual framework comprising a set of hypotheses is proposed and empirically tested in the UK. A total of 740 frontline service employees from the catering industry (representing a response rate of about 32%) provide the data for the analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is employed to assess the fit of the seven measurement components of the model and structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test the hypothesised path model. The findings provide academic insights that may open new fruitful avenues for further research. In particular, two unexpected results contradict the extant theory: job satisfaction has a negative impact on service recovery performance and emotional exhaustion has a positive impact on service recovery performance. The new empirical results reveal that learning goal orientation has a positive impact on service recovery performance. Additionally, perceived organisational support has a positive effect on learning goal orientation. Moreover, whereas perceived organisational support has a negative impact on emotional exhaustion, learning goal orientation is unrelated to emotional exhaustion. Finally, the findings provide several managerial implications for service marketing practitioners by offering them practical guidelines to develop and implement effective service recovery programmes. Suggestions are provided in terms of the best practices when recruiting and training frontline service employees
Using a browser extension to provide a natural environment
No full textThesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 59).People are spending ever increasing amounts of time online. As a result, companies are investing greater amounts of money into online advertising in an effort to influence their behavior. The impact and effectiveness of these ads is still an open question. One possible method of analyzing the effectiveness is through the analysis of clickstream data. However, this data may be difficult to obtain and does not measure behavioral change. Behavioral change is a change in consideration or preference. Surrogate sites can be used to study behavioral change but are difficult and time-consuming to create and do a poor job of mimicking certain classes of sites. This is particularly true of social media sites where the amount of content is impossible to fully reproduce and yet this content is the defining component of the web site. In this thesis, I present a Chrome extension that can be used for conducting high fidelity web site market research. The framework provides the opportunity to measure behavioral change and provide a natural environment almost identical to the actual sites. I detail the implementation of the extension and its use in a web-based media experiment with a sample size of 13,000. Preliminary results and learnings are discussed. Results suggest that use of the extension is feasible and is capable of producing significant changes in consumer consideration.by Brandon H. Baker.M. Eng
What Should the Federal Government Be Doing About Urban Economic Development?
No full textThe federal government should focus its policies towards economic development on areas in which the federal government has some unique advantages. Federal policy should: (1) discourage financial subsidies to specific large firms by state and local governments; (2) expand the federal role in economic development services in which national action has some special advantages, such as developing information on foreign markets, encouraging large national banks to be more involved in economic development, supporting the development of the "Information Superhighway," and encouraging new technology development; (3) provide modest support for state and local efforts to increase business productivity through technology extension efforts and customized job training programs; (4) encourage more and higher quality evaluation of state and local economic development programs; (5) support experiments that link economic development efforts with hiring the disadvantaged; (6) relax federal regulations, such as regulations on the cleanup of older industrial sites, that impede local economic development.urban, economic, development, federal, government, Bartik
Large Locational Differences in Unemployment Despite High Labor Mobility: Impact of Moving Cost on Aggregate Unemployment and Welfare
No full textIn the U.S., the cross-state differences in unemployment rates are large - for instance, large compared to variations in the national unemployment rate over time. At the same time, there is considerable labor mobility within the U.S.; in fact, enough that, if migration arbitrages differences in unemployment, one might expect very low cross-state differences in unemployment. This paper develops a multi-sector equilibrium model that can account for high cross-state mobility and large variability in unemployment rates across states. The model allows for explicit treatment of net and gross mobility across local labor markets and within-market job search frictions. The prediction of the model is consistent with procyclicality of gross mobility in the U.S.. The model generates a striking result: that unemployment is a U-shaped function of moving cost. However, evaluated at moving costs which are empirically relevant, a marginal decrease in the moving cost reduces aggregate unemployment. Using the model, several policy experiments are conducted. These show that the government can reduce aggregate unemployment substantially by subsidizing workers' moving expenses. Such policy is welfare-improving despite being financed by taxes imposed on workers. The model also provides insights into the impacts of homeownership, city size, and an aging population on aggregate unemployment.Labor Mobility, Regional Labor Markets, Unemployment, Vacancies, Moving Cost, Island Models, Competitive Search Models
The Impact of Job Stress on Smoking and Quitting: Evidence from the HRS
No full textThis paper examines the impact of job-related stress on smoking behavior. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine how high job stress affects the probability that smokers quit and the number of cigarettes smoked for current smokers. We include individual fixed effects, which control for time-invariant factors. Occupational fixed effects are also included to control for occupational characteristics other than stress; time dummies control for the secular decline in smoking rates. Using a sample of people who smoked in the previous wave, we find that job stress is positively related to continuing to smoke and to the number of cigarettes smoked for current smokers. The FE results are of greater magnitude and significance than the OLS results suggesting an important omitted variable bias in OLS estimates. It may be that individuals who are able to handle stress or have better self-control are more likely to have high stress jobs and less likely to smoke. We also find that the smoking/stress relationship is neither explained by heterogeneity across individuals in cognitive ability, risk taking preferences or planning horizons nor is it explained by time varying measures that we observe.
Going dark : what are the consequences of losing off-campus access to library resources?
No full textIn October 2013, one of Brandon University’s servers was hacked, and the campus’s servers were isolated from the internet. This led to the loss of off-campus library services to students and faculty. To investigate the effects of this loss, the authors surveyed Brandon University students and conducted semi-structured interviews with Brandon University faculty. The authors found that 68% of the students surveyed reported that the loss of access to off-campus library services affected them in some measure. The survey provided insight on why some students were not affected by the loss of access. The survey also provided data on how the loss of access affected students. The semi-structured interviews provided perspectives on the difficulties of the situation. Although the authors do not want to ever face this problem again, the study provided important lessons in provision of library service in these situations.Peer reviewedoff-campus accessdatabase usagestudent surveysinformation seeking behaviorPublished Online. Full text is available in IRBU and from the publisher. Publisher full text is available to BU community members via the DOI. Off-campus users must ensure that they are logged into the proxy server for access
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