Showing papers on "Negative relationship published in 1990"

Trade unions and job satisfaction

Abstract: Members of trade unions express greater dissatisfaction with the conditions of their jobs than nonmembers. Alternative explanations of this are examined. It is argued that Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff's (1984) "voice" model of trade unionism does not provide a satisfactory account of the dissatisfaction expressed by unionists in the Australian youth labor market. Evidence is presented to suggest that the negative relationship between job satisfaction and unionism may be attributable to unpleasant work environments, which both induce dissatisfaction and motivate workers to join unions. Copyright 1990 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia

The Real Wage-Employment Relationship in the United States.

Abstract: This article examines the real wage-employment relationship in the United States in the light of the diversity of results in the literature. It demonstrates that, when the relationship is correctly specified, in the sense that due allowance is made for technical progress and capital accumulation, and the appropriate value-added deflator is used for the wage, then a negative relationship may be observed in the data. An incorrect specification, however, is as likely to lead to a positive relationship as a negative one.

Structure, conduct, and performance in the local public sector***

Abstract: within a Tiebout setting. The potential for This paper provides empirical evidence migration across jurisdictions serves as a of therelationshipbetweenthestructureof disciplining device within local public the local public goods market and the rel- good, markets. In the Leviathan model, it ative size of the local public sector. Market is budget maximization that is discistructure is measured with respect to both plined. As argued by Nelson (1987), dethe degree of fragmentation and an index centralization can effectively discipline of concentration. For a sample of2l8 met- fiscal behavior in alternative, non-Leviropolitan areas, support for the hypothesis athan, public goods models as well. The of a negative relationship between decen- political cost-minimizing model of Hettralization and government size-a hy- t'ch and Winer (1984) and the median pothesis associated with the Leviathan voter models of Brown and Oates (1987) government model-is found. For the sub- and Tumbull and Niho (1986) also sugurban local public sector, increased juris- get a negative relationship between the dictional fragmentation and decreased degree of decentralization of the public concentration are negatively related to the sector and size. The purpose of this paper assess empirical evidence as to the ratio of own-source revenues to suburban is to income. relationship between the structure of the local public goods market and the relative

Empirical Tests of the Proxy Hypothesis

Abstract: The proxy hypothesis states that the negative relationship between inflation and stock returns is spurious and really only proxies for the positive relationship between stock returns and real variables. Previous testes of the proxy hypothesis have used actual values instead of forecasted values for the real activity variable. Using only forecasted variables, our results do not support the proxy hypothesis.

The Jordanian consumers' perceptions of quality, price and risk of foreign vs. domestic products : an empirical investigation.

Abstract: This thesis investigates the Jordanian consumers' perceptions of quality, price and risk of foreign vs. domestic product. The main objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the consumers perceptions of the quality, price and risk of the domestic versus foreign product and to find out whether consumers perceive the products of the various countries in the same way, despite their origin, or do they discriminate between them according to their source country?; (2) to find out whether the various countries can be clustered together, in respect of the consumers' perception of the quality, price and risk, according to their level of development; (3) to explore the level of the relationship between the three main cues: quality, price and risk for each country; (4) to profile the consumers' perceptions of quality, price and risk of foreign and domestic products according to their socio-demographic variables; (5) to investigate the differences among the consumers in regard of their attitudes towards such variables as the patriotic variables, business practices .....as well as the relationship between such variables and the consumers' attitudes (perceptions) of the domestic product quality, price and risk on one hand and their socio-demographic variables on the other hand; (6) to explore the differences between the consumers who attached high importance on the origin of the product in evaluating the product quality, price and risk and those who attached lower importance to the product origin and (7) to find out what the Jordanian industry and Jordanian Government can do in relation to the findings of this research. The study employed both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected through a structured direct questionnaire from a stratified random sample of 1000 respondents. The municipalities records were used as a sampling frame. Specific statistical techniques were used to achieve the research objectives and to test the related hypotheses. The chi-squared Kolornogrov-Smirnov, T-test, and F-test are used to investigate the differences between the domestic product and the products of foreign origins as well as the differences among the consumers according to their socio-demographic variables. The Spearman Correlation Coefficient is utilised to investigate the relationship between the consumers' attitudes towards the domestic product and their perception of the quality, price and risk. The profile analysis is employed to demonstrate graphically the comparison between the domestic product and the products of the various countries. The multivariate discriminous analysis is used to investigate whether any of the socio-demographic variables could be strong enough to discriminate among the consumers and to be used s a basis for segmenting the consumers according to their demographic variables. The ANOVA analysis is used to test the significance of the differences between the domestic product quality, price and risk attributes and that of each of the participating countries. The Cluster Analysis is utilised to investigate the possibility of clustering the various countries according to the consumer's perceptions of the quality, price and risk attributes of their products. Finally factor analysis is used to group the 27 quality, price and risk attributes into smaller groups to aid in a wider understanding of the underlying dimensions of these variables. It is also used to achieve the same purpose for the attitude variables. In applying these techniques, the Sps computer package is utilised in all cases, except in the profile analysis case, where the SAS package is utilised. The thesis is organised into fourteen chapters: the first chapter discussed the research problem, questions, objectives and hypothesis; chapter two introduced the relavant theory behind the present study; the related literature is reviewed in chapter three; chapter four is devoted to the development of the research framework; chapters five and six are intended to explain the research design and the research methodology; chapter seven is related to testing the validity and reliability of the research and to introduce the characteristics of the study sample; chapters eight through to thirteen are concerned with the research findings, and finally chapter fourteen is the conclusion. The countriesof origin used in the study are: U.S.A., U.K., Japan, Russia, Romania, Taiwan, Egypt and Jordan. The product class employed in the present study is the major household electrical and gas appliances. Overall, the findings of the study support the following main conclusions: I. The country of origin appears to have a significant relationship with the consumers' perception of the quality, price and risk of the product. 2. The economic development of the source country appears to have a significant relationship with the consumers' perception of the quality, price and risk of the products of these countries in that, the countries with a relatively similar stage of development are grouped together and the developed countries' products are perceived to be higher in quality and price, but lower in risk than the products of developing countries. 3. The home country bias appears to be more relevant in comparing the domestic product to that of other countries in a relatively similar stage of development. That is, the Jordanian product is perceived to be higher in quality and price, but lower in risk than the developing countries' product. It is also perceived to be lower in quality and price but higher in risk than developed countries' products. A consistent negative relationship between quality and risk is found for the products of the entire set of countries, in that the higher the consumers' perception of the products of the various countries, the lower their perception of the risk associated with these products. However, in spite of the significant relationship between price and quality, price and risk for most of the countries, the direction of the relationship is not consistent as it is in the case of tiie quality and risk. 5. It was found that only a relatively low percentage of the consumers who agreed in connecting the purchase of the domestic product with the patriotic duties. However, it appears that the higher the consumers agreement with such variables, the better their perception of the domestic product quality, price and risk. 6. Among the five socio-demographic variables, .sex was found to be the lowest in discriminating among the consumers and age was found to be the highest. 7. The weight given to the origin of the product in the decision process was found to be of little importance in discriminating among the consumers in regard of their perception of the quality, price and risk of the products of the various countries. The study suggests that it is to the benefit of the domestic producers to develop separate marketing strategies for the imported products of developed and developing countries, rather than dealing with the imported product under the general term "foreign".

Real Wages over the Business Cycle: A Band Spectrum Approach

Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on the cyclical relationship between real wages and aggregate employment. As is well known, models that attribute fluctuations in output to movements in aggregate demand and retain the assumption of flexible product prices (the ADPF hypothesis) imply countercyclical real wage movements as employment adjusts along a downward sloping aggregate demand for labor schedule. In contrast, real business cycle theories [10; 15; 13] suggest procyclical movements as workers substitute work for leisure along dynamic labor supply schedules. The empirical evidence on these propositions remains mixed. Some influential studies report a negative relationship [4; 5; 25;], others report a positive relationship [2; 12; 18] and Geary and Kennan (GK 7] to identify the purely business cycle correlation and distinguish it from correlations at very high and very low frequencies. The frequency domain decomposition provides a simple framework for reconciling the conflicting conclusions of previous studies and for focusing attention on the business cycle relationship. I show that the highly significant (positive or negative) correlations reported in previous studies are attributable to variations at frequencies far too high or far too low to be associated with the business cycle. The true business cycle relationship is quite different from that revealed by simple regressions of real wages on employment. I find a weak but statistically significant, negative relationship over business cycle frequencies for the post-war U.S. data when wages are deflated by the Producer Price Index (PPI). The negative relationship is particularly strong over the subperiod 1947-70 but becomes weak and insignificant over the last sixteen years 1971-86. This finding is consistent with the widely held belief that in the former period cyclical movements in employment were determined by changes in aggregate demand while real shocks dominated in the 1970s. However, when wages are deflated by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the business cycle relationship is weak and not statistically significant over both subperiods. These results contrast sharply with those of previous studies that do not isolate business cycle components.

International migration and development in sub-Saharan Africa. Volume II.

Abstract: As a companion volume to the first volume on trends and characteristics of migration and the relationship to development issues this paper for each of 42 Sub-Saharan countries reviews demographic and migration patterns policies labor markets agriculture remittances education/brain drain refugees and health as appropriate. The reduced tables by country include basic economic and demographic indicators for Sub-Saharan countries a summary of the stock of migrants by source and destination countries determinants and intermediate effects of the remittance system government policies toward population distribution and mobility in terms of acceptance refugees in need of protection.assistance annually 1985-88 asylum and source countries ranked by refugee stocks for 1988 and significant voluntary repatriations. The data were obtained primarily from census reports; however the data reflect a time range between 1967 and 1982 undocumented migrants may or may not have been included and guests may have been excluded from the surveys. Some preliminary analyses revealed that the relationship between the growth of aggregate gross domestic (or national) product and the stock of migrants was insignificant and that the negative relationship between economic performance and stock of emigrants was not supported. Analysis did show that West African regions have significantly higher proportions of immigrants at the .012 level. Future research might explore the finding that countries with large immigrant populations have higher natural rates of population growth excluding growth from immigration. Another finding was that enrolled primary school children in the country of origin are negatively related to the stock of emigrants as a percentage of resident population of that country. Finally internal and external migration are interrelated. Further data collection is necessary because of the shortcomings of available data.