Essays on labour demand and wage formation

The first essay in this thesis is on gender wage differentials among manufacturing sector white-collar workers. The wage differential is decomposed into firm, job (within-firm) and individ-ual-level components. Job-level gender segregation explains over half of the gap, while firm-level segregation is not important. After controlling for firm, job and individual characteristics, the remaining unexplained wage cap to the advantage of men is six per cent of men s mean wage. In the second essay, I study how the business cycle and gender affect the distribution of the earnings losses of displaced workers. The negative effect of displacement is large, persistent and strongest in the lowest earnings deciles. The effect is larger in a recession than in a recov-ery period, and in all periods women s earnings drop more than men s earnings. The third essay shows that the transition from steady employment to disability pension de-pends on the stringency of medical screening and the degree of experience-rating of pension costs applied to the employer. The fact that firms have to bear part of the cost of employees disability pension costs lowers both the incidence of long sick leave periods and the probabil-ity that sick leave ends in a disability pension. The fourth and fifth essays are studies on the employment, wage and profit effects of a re-gional payroll tax cut experiment conducted in northern and eastern Finland. The results show no statistically significant effect on any of the response variables.

The shape of fisheries to come. Some thoughts on fisheries development and education with special reference to aquaculture

A brief discussion is presented on the current situation regarding world fisheries and the future role of aquaculture. The various components involved in fisheries, and affecting all changes in fisheries through time, include the biology of the species involved, environment, technology/engineering and socio-economics. The importance of education in fisheries and aquaculture development is also examined

Behaviour and rationality in corporate governance

Marnet, Oliver, 'Behaviour and rationality in corporate governance', Journal of Economic Issues (2005) 39(3) pp.613-632 RAE2008

Trust and efficiency

Agency problems within the firm are a significant hindrance to efficiency. We propose trust between coworkers as a superior alternative to the standard tools used to mitigate agency problems: increased monitoring and incentive-based pay. We model trust as mutual, reciprocal altruism between pairs of coworkers and show how it induces employees to work harder, relative to those at firms that use the standard tools. In addition, we show that employees at trusting firms have higher job satisfaction, and that these firms enjoy lower labor cost and higher profits. We conclude by discussing how trust may also be easier to use within the firm than the standard agency-mitigation tools. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Antioxidant and cytoprotective activity of leaves of Peltiphyllum peltatum (Torr.) Engl.

The antioxidant potential of fresh leaves of Peltiphyllum peltatum (Torr.) Engl. (Saxfragaceae) was analysed by measuring scavenging potential against l,l'-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH center dot) and hydroxyl radicals (W), reducing power, inhibition of lipid peroxidation and protection of cultured cells from a lethal dose of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). In all chemical assays used, the crude ethanolic extract of leaves of P. peltatum, which contained 21.8 +/- 1.7% (w/w, n = 3) of total phenols, was as effective as the standard antioxidant compound, rutin. Fractionation of the crude extract with solvent of increasing polarity (namely, petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, butanol and water) led to identification of the active fractions (ethyl acetate and butanol fractions). The crude extract and its active fractions, but not rutin, protected cultured RAW 264.7 macrophages from a lethal dose Of H2O2.

The Euro as an International Currency: explaining puzzling first evidence from the foreign exchange markets

This paper presents evidence that the bid-ask spreads in euro rates increased relative to the corresponding bid-ask spreads in the German mark (DM) prior to the creation of the currency union. This comes with a decrease in transaction volume in the euro rates relative to the previous DM rates. The starkest example is the DM(euro)/yen rate in which the spread has risen by almost two-thirds while the volume decreased by more than one third. This outcome is surprising because the common currency concentrated market liquidity in fewer external euro rates and higher volume tends to be associated with lower spreads. We propose a microstructure explanation based on a change in the information environment of the FX market. The elimination of many cross currency pairs increased the market transparency for order flow imbalances in the dealership market. It is argued that higher market transparency adversely affects the inventory risk sharing efficiency of the dealership market and induces the observed euro spread increase and transaction volume shortfall.