nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2013‒08‒10
nine papers chosen by
Tommaso Reggiani
University of Cologne

  1. Work Norms, Social Insurance and the Allocation of Talent By Corneo, Giacomo
  2. Fatigue and Team Performance in Soccer: Evidence from the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship By Scoppa, Vincenzo
  3. Job Satisfaction of Older Workers as a Factor of Promoting Labour Market Participation in the EU: The Case of Slovenia By Aristovnik, Aleksander; Jaklič, Ksenja
  4. The Effect of Firms' Partial Retirement Policies on the Labour Market Outcomes of Their Employees By Huber, Martin; Lechner, Michael; Wunsch, Conny
  5. Findings from an Analysis of Publicly Available Reports on Medicaid and CHIP Performance Measures. By Brenda Natzke; Maggie Colby; Erin Taylor
  6. Does a work effort norm lead to more efficient taxation in majority voting? By Weinreich, Daniel
  7. Disorganizing Organizational Culture: Comment on the Individual and Family Factors By El Fasiki, Hamza
  8. Carry a big stick, or no stick at all An experimental analysis of trust and capacity of punishment By Vicente Calabuig; Enrique Fatas; Gonzalo Olcina; Ismael Rodriguez-Lara
  9. Measuring Investment in Human Capital Formation: An Experimental Analysis of Early Life Outcomes By Orla Doyle; Colm Harmon; James J. Heckman; Caitríona Logue; Seong Hyeok Moon

  1. By: Corneo, Giacomo
    Abstract: This paper challanges the view that weak work norms in generous welfare states makes them economically unsustainable. I develop a dynamic model of family-transmitted values that has a laissez-faire equilibrium with strong work norms coexisting with a social-insurance equilibrium with weak work norms. While the former has better incentives, the latter induces more intergenerational occupational mobility which improves the allocation of talent and fuels growth. Strong work norms arise as a defensive strategy of parents that aims at perpetuating their occupation along family lines. I present evidence from microdata showing that generous social insurance correlates with high intergenerational occupational mobility and that more mobile individuals endorse weaker work norms.
    Keywords: work norms; unemployment insurance; occupational mobility; economic growth
    JEL: H2 O0 Z1
    Date: 2013–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trf:wpaper:405&r=hrm
  2. By: Scoppa, Vincenzo (University of Calabria)
    Abstract: We investigate the role of fatigue in soccer (football). Although this issue is important for the "productivity" of players and the optimal organization of national and international championships, empirical evidence is lacking. We use data on all the matches played by national teams in all the tournaments of the FIFA Soccer World Cup (from 1930 to 2010) and the UEFA European Football Championship (from 1960 to 2012). We relate team performance (in terms of points gained and goals scored and conceded) to the respective days of rests that teams have had after their previous match, controlling for several measures of teams' abilities. Using different estimators we show that, under the current structure of major international tournaments, there are no relevant effects of enjoying different days of rest on team performance. However, we find that before Nineties days of rest had a positive impact on performance, presumably because athletic preparation of players was less effective. Furthermore, we show that the advantage of additional rest is quite relevant, when rest time of one of the opposing teams is three days or less.
    Keywords: sports economics, soccer, fatigue, team performance, World Cup, European Football Championship
    JEL: L83 J4 J22 L25 C29
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7519&r=hrm
  3. By: Aristovnik, Aleksander; Jaklič, Ksenja
    Abstract: This paper deals with the study of older workers’ job satisfaction as a factor that, combined with other personal and job-related factors, can significantly influence the decision to postpone retirement when this decision is in the hands of an individual. Starting from the fact that the employment rate of older workers in Slovenia in 2011 was the lowest in the EU, the article aims to establish the level of older workers’ job satisfaction in Slovenia compared to the EU, analyse its dimensions, its specifics related to age, gender, sector of economic activities and type of profession, as well as ascertain what determines it the most. A statistical analysis of the results of the Fifth European Working Conditions Survey of 2010 reveals that Slovenia ranks 15th among the EU member states in terms of older workers’ job satisfaction, thus lagging behind the EU average. While Slovenian older workers, the same as their European counterparts, are most satisfied with doing useful work and the least with their prospects for career advancement, a comparison with other EU member states shows that they are relatively dissatisfied with working conditions, salary and adequacy of the motivation to give one’s best performance, and relatively satisfied with doing useful work and with their colleagues. The analysis also shows that the level of older workers’ job satisfaction in Slovenia is determined most by their satisfaction with the adequacy of the motivation to give one’s best performance.
    Keywords: older workers, job satisfaction, employment, labour market participation, EU, Slovenia
    JEL: J14 J20 J26 J28
    Date: 2013–08–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:48809&r=hrm
  4. By: Huber, Martin (University of St. Gallen); Lechner, Michael (University of St. Gallen); Wunsch, Conny (VU University Amsterdam)
    Abstract: In this paper, we assess the impact of firms introducing part-time work schemes for gradual labour market exit of elderly workers on their employees' labour market outcomes. The analysis is based on unique linked employer-employee data that combine high-quality survey and administrative data. Our results suggest that partial or gradual retirement options offered by firms are an important tool to alleviate the negative effects of low labour market attachment of elderly workers in ageing societies. When combined with financial incentives to hire unemployed or young jobseekers as replacement, they seem to be particularly beneficial, especially when labour market conditions are difficult. Under such circumstances, they can even have positive spill-over effects on younger workers. Firms should thus be encouraged to offer such schemes.
    Keywords: part-time work, elderly employees, treatment effects, matching
    JEL: J14 J26 C21
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7513&r=hrm
  5. By: Brenda Natzke; Maggie Colby; Erin Taylor
    Keywords: Medicaid, CHIP, Performance Measures, Health
    JEL: I
    Date: 2013–04–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:7861&r=hrm
  6. By: Weinreich, Daniel
    Abstract: This paper introduces a work effort norm into a three-type ability approach to optimal linear income taxation. According to this social norm type, individuals experience stigma when working more or less than the average. This leads to a smaller dispersion in labor supply. The individual work incentives then induce post-tax income inequality to rise. Based on this, it can be shown that the socially optimal tax rate is unambiguously increasing with the strength of the work effort norm. Turning to majority voting the tax rate preferred by the median voter could decrease when the work effort norm is introduced. We can show that the majority tax rate turns out to be inefficiently low or high. Beyond, for large preference parameters the difference between the first-best tax rate and the majority tax rate seems to diminish. Further, for specific wage distributions there seem to exist a preference strength which ensures efficient taxation. Subsequently, the work effort norm can reduce the inefficiency implemented by majority voting.
    Keywords: optimal income taxation, majority voting work effort norm, labor supply, redistribution
    JEL: D70 H21 H30
    Date: 2013–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:48913&r=hrm
  7. By: El Fasiki, Hamza
    Abstract: Defining culture in relation to organizational culture has also focused on the operation level of culture. This latter as discussed by Maurice Thévenet (1993) concludes that culture is a collective phenomenon that concerns an enterprise as a human organization. By this collective point of assemblage, and in this measure, I intend to present the framework whereby entrepreneurial activities in collectivist cultures are constructed via two non-identical cultures: individual culture and family culture. I am concerned with questions like: What is the divergent line between the cultural beings and the organizational culture? How do individual and family cultures disorganize the organizational culture? What is their addition?
    Keywords: Organizational Culture, Collectivism, Disorganizing, Culture, Family Culture, Family Business, Inidividual Culture
    JEL: A3 Z1 Z19
    Date: 2013–05–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:48815&r=hrm
  8. By: Vicente Calabuig (ERICES, Universidad de Valencia); Enrique Fatas (University of East Anglia); Gonzalo Olcina (ERICES, Universidad de Valencia); Ismael Rodriguez-Lara (ERICES, Universidad de Valencia)
    Abstract: We investigate the effect of punishment in a trust game with endowment heterogeneity in which the investor may punish the allocator at a cost. Our results indicate that the effect of the punishment crucially depends on the investor’s capacity of punishment, that is measured in our experiment by the proportion of the allocator’s payoffs that the investor can destroy. We find that punishment fosters trust when the capacity of punishment is high (i.e., when the cost of punishing is relatively low). Otherwise, punishment fails to promote trusting behavior, crowding out intrinsic motivation to trust. Trustworthiness is higher with punishment than without punishment, except if investors have a high capacity of punishment
    Keywords: Trust game, punishment, crowding-out, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, experimental economics
    JEL: C91 D02 D03 D69
    Date: 2013–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbe:wpaper:0413&r=hrm
  9. By: Orla Doyle (School of Economics UCD and UCD Geary Institute); Colm Harmon (University of Sydney, UCD Geary Institute and IZA); James J. Heckman (University of Chicago, University College Dublin, UCD Geary Institute, NBER and IZA); Caitríona Logue (UCD Geary Institute); Seong Hyeok Moon (University of Chicago)
    Abstract: The literature on skill formation and human capital development clearly demonstrates that early investment in children is an equitable and efficient policy with large returns in adulthood. Yet little is known about the mechanisms involved in producing these long-term effects. This paper presents early evidence on the nature of skill formation based on an experimentally designed, five-year home visiting program in Ireland targeting disadvantaged families - Preparing for Life (PFL). We examine the impact of investment between utero to 18 months of age on a range of parental and child outcomes. Using the methodology of Heckman et al. (2010a), permutation testing methods and a stepdown procedure are applied to account for the small sample size and the increased likelihood of false discoveries when examining multiple outcomes. The results show that the program impact is concentrated on parental behaviors and the home environment, with little impact on child development at this early stage. This indicates that home visiting programs can be effective at offsetting deficits in parenting skills within a relatively short timeframe, yet continued investment may be required to observe direct effects on child development. While correcting for attrition bias leads to some changes in the precision of estimates, overall the results are quite similar.
    Keywords: Early childhood intervention, human capital development, randomized control trial, multiple hypotheses, permutation testing
    JEL: C12 C93 J13 J24
    Date: 2013–08–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201313&r=hrm

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