Showing papers on "Negative relationship published in 1991"

The Effects of Unions on Organisational Change and Employment

Abstract: This paper investigates the association between unionism, organizational change, and employment using British data over 1980-84 Union plants were more likely to have experienced organizational change This is likely to be due to both the once-for-all removal of restrictive practices and union "voice" effects The oft-cited negative relationship between unionism and employment growth may well arise from the differential extent to which restrictive practices were removed in union plants during 1980-84 More importantly, the authors present evidence suggesting that unions were associated with faster employment growth during the late 1970s Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society

Export Instability and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: Empirical research on the relationship between export instability and economic growth in less developed countries (LDCs) has yielded mixed results. While some researchers find a negative relationship between export instability and economic growth, others find a positive relationship. A third group of researchers finds no significant relationship between export instability and economic growth in LDCs.1 Those who find a negative relationship between export instability and economic growth in LDCs stress the negative effect export instability has on the supply of output through the generation of uncertainty in long-term planning as well as due to shortages of inputs at critical times during the production process. Those who find a positive relationship between export instability and economic growth argue that LDCs respond to export instability by reducing consumption. This process, if repeated over a period of time, increases savings and hence the rate of investment. Those who find no significant relationship between export instability and economic growth argue that LDCs are able to anticipate the fluctuations in export earnings and plan for such fluctuations; hence instability in export earnings has no appreciable effect on economic growth. C. Moran investigates the relationships between domestic savings rate and economic growth rate on the one hand and export instability on the other, in a sample of LDCs.2 He finds that export instability has no significant long-run impact on either domestic savings rate or economic growth rate. However, over relatively short periods of time, export instability has a negative and significant effect on both savings and economic growth rate. The negative effect occurs when the negative effects of price and of quantity fluctuations reinforce each other. On the other hand, when the negative effect of price fluctuations is counterbalanced by the effects of quantity fluctuations, export instabil-

Business risk and return: a test of simultaneous relationships

Abstract: Bowman (1980) found an unexpected and paradoxical negative relationship between risk and return in many firms, and, for about a decade, various researchers have attempted to explain the paradox. This article summarizes some of those explanations, and shows that industry conditions and business strategies are likely to influence both risk and return. The relationships are depicted in a simultaneous model where business return, risk, and debt are endogenously determined. The model is tested with 132 nondiversified firms in 8 disparate industries. OLS estimates of the parameters of the model show the risk-return relationship to be significantly negative, as many past researchers have found. However, 3SLS estimates of the parameters of the simultaneous model reveal no significant relationship between risk and return. The tentative conclusion is that many of the studies in the line of research concerned with Bowman's (1980) paradox may have used an improperly specified model, and that when a more realistic sim...

Determinants of Corporate Capital Structure: Australian Evidence

Abstract: This study seeks to provide evidence on the importnace and significance of capital structure determinants in the Australian context. The analysis was implemented on a sample of 226 Australian companies from 1977 to 1985. The following results are obtained. Company non-debt tax shields display a negative relationship with respect to each of the debt ratios. This evidence is consistent with the theory proposed by DeAngelo and Masulis (1980) that firms with non-debt tax shields at their disposal can use these as substitutes for interest tax shields. The evidence canvassed also lends some support to the pecking order hypothesis of Myers and Majluf (1984). Specifically, significant negative relationships between profitability and all debt ratios are found. The implication is that the sample of firms studied prefer to finance investments with internally retained funds before issuing debt. Some evidence of a size effect is present and this indicates that the larger firms in the sample tended to employ more debt in their capital structures. The positive relationship between cash holdings and debt ratios indicates some support for the free cash flow hypothesis of Jensen (1986), although these estimates are not significant. No support for the growth opportunity and collateral value attributes as determinants of deb ratios can be discerned, consistent with Titman and Wessels (1988).

Demand Uncertainty and the Capital-Labor Ratio: Evidence from the U.S. Manufacturing Sector

Abstract: Richard Hartman (1976) and Duncan M. Holthausen (1976) showed that firms' input choices may be affected by demand uncertainty. Specifically, uncertain demand conditions may lead to firms operating with a lower capital-ratio. This result has potentially important implications for the analysis of factor demand and factor productivity. The author constructs measures of demand uncertainty and examines the above relationship for a sample of 125 U.S. manufacturing industries. Results show that there exists a significant negative relationship between demand uncertainty and the capital-labor ratio. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.

The relationship of suicide rates to sociodemographic factors in Canadian census divisions

Abstract: The correlates of suicide rates were determined by conducting a multivariate study of sociodemographic indicators and suicide rates of 261 Canadian census divisions. Twenty-one sociodemographic variables were entered into a stepwise multiple linear regression to develop a model for suicide rates. The important variables were mortality rate for all causes of death, the age of the population, average family income, population density, proportion with no religious affiliation, proportion of Francophones, unemployment, immigration, proportion of Native people, a regional effect for British Columbia and the north, and growth by mobility, explaining 62% of the observed variation. This spatial ecologic analysis highlights the importance of cultural differences in explaining the variation of suicide rates. The analysis supports the previously found negative relationship between income and suicide while contrasting from previous studies in determining a inverse relationship with unemployment and an inverse relationship with the age distribution. Language: en

Turnover Down Under: Trade Unions and Exit Behaviour in Australia:

Abstract: Researchers typically find a negative union effect on quits in United States data and attribute part of this to 'voice' effects. In an analysis of plant-level Australian data, no significant correlation between unionization rates and quits is found. More direct measures of union voice in the workplace, however, exhibit a strong negative relationship to quits. It is concluded that unions must devote resources in order to provide meaningful voice, which, in turn, reduces quits.

In search of the liquidity effect

Abstract: A short-run negative relationship between monetary aggregates and interest rates--the "liquidity effect"--is central to popular, political, and academic discussions of monetary policy. This paper searches for this empirical relationship. We use monthly U.S. data since 1954 to ask if the characterization of the liquidity effect is sensitive to: (i) changes in sample period; (ii) conditioning the correlations on additional variables; (iii) assuming money growth is exogenous, and (iv) treating monetary changes as anticipated or unanticipated. ; The correlations change significantly with each of the four variations. We conclude that a successful search for the liquidity effect requires careful identification of private and policy behavior.

RDP 9104: Cross-Country Relationship Between Interest Rates and Inflation over Three Decades

Abstract: This paper looks at the relationship between inflation and interest rates across a number of industrialised countries over the past three decades The paper is in three parts It begins by splitting the whole period up into a number of smaller periods and looking at the inflation/interest rate relationship across countries within these periods The most interesting conclusion of this section is that while there was a negative relationship between inflation and real short-term interest rates in the 1970s (ie high inflation countries had lower real short-term interest rates), in the 1980s there was a positive relationship between real short-term interest rates and inflation The paper then discusses some explanations for this observation – why might we expect to see higher real interest rates in high inflation countries and why has this only occurred in the 1980s Finally the paper uses a simple test to attempt to distinguish between competing explanations of the positive inflation/real interest rate relationship Unfortunately, the test cannot distinguish conclusively between the competing hypotheses

Are high real interest rates bad for world economic growth

Abstract: There is a conventional perception that high real interest rates are bad for economic growth. However, the authors show that close examination of the experience over the last 40 years undermines the existence of such a relationship. For much of the 1950-79 period, expost real interest rates were less than the growth rate of income in the major economies, whereas the 1980s were a period of rapid growth in the world economy that coincided with unprecedentedly high real interest rates. The authors stress that the critical question is whether real interest rates have had an adverse effect on economic growth, not why they have been high in the recent past. To test this, the literature on cointegration is used to explore whether world interest rates and growth rates equilibrate in the long run. The econometric evidence disputes the view that high interest rates are associated with low economic growth in industrial countries. What does this analysis imply for the consequences of high real interest rates in the future? One implication is that high real interest rates may not matter for growth performance if more productive investment results. If there is a negative impact of higher interest rates on growth, it will probably affect developing countries more. Further research might consider the role of human capital and institutional constraints in determining the ambiguous relationship between world interest rates and growth in developing countries.

Relative performance evaluation of non-profit hospitals.

Abstract: In this paper, we use the relative performance evaluation model of Gibbons and Murphy (1990) to examine the relationship between management compensation and the absolute and relative financial performance of 223 non-profit hospitals in Ontario, Canada for the year 1985-86. We find support for the hypothesis of a positive relationship between absolute hospital performance and management compensation and a negative relationship between relative hospital performance and management compensation. Management compensation is also influenced by the size, teaching status, and religious affiliation of the hospital.

An empirical examination of part-time workers' organizational commitment

Abstract: Despite the fact that the proportion of part-time workers in the labor force has increased considerably, there have been only a few studies to empirically analyze the work-related attitudes and behaviors of the part-time workers. This study attempted to provide an empirical analysis of differences in organizational commitment between part-time and full-time workers. The findings indicated that:(1) the positive relationship between job tenure and organizational commitment was weaker for part-time workers than for female full-time workers;(2) the positive relationship between organizational climate or leader positive reward behavior and organizational commitment was stronger for part-time workers than for full-time workers; and (3) the negative relationship between alternative job opportunity and organizational commitment was stronger for part-time workers than for male full-time workers.