Business (School)
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Item Things Can Only get Worse? An Empirical Examination of the Peter Principle.(2006) Barmby, Tim; Eberth, Barbara; Ma, AdaThe results reported in this paper suggest the possible operation of the Peter Principle in a large hierarchical financial sector firm. This result holds even after we allow for variation in optimal effort over stages in the hierarchy. The method also allows us to attribute the contributory factors for the observed fall in performance after a promotion. It appears that approximately 2/3 of the fall is due to the Peter Principle and 1/3 due to lessening incentives.Item Specific Human Capital Accumulation and Job Match Quality – Implications for Measuring Returns to Tenure(University of Aberdeen Business School, 2006) Barmby, Tim; Eberth, BarbaraThis paper uses the theoretical argument presented by Stevens (2003) that suggests that the measured returns to tenure will unambiguously be biased downwards. We illustrate this effect for data from a UK internal labour market using the counterfactual methodology outlined by DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996). Finally we argue that Stevens’s theory offers a possible explanation for the apparent puzzle presented by Medoff and Abraham (1980) who find that their estimated coefficient on tenure did not fall when direct measures of productivity were introduced into the wage equation.Item The Riddle of the Sands? Incentives and Labour Contracts on Archaeological digs in Northern Syria in the 1930s(2006-01-27T17:45:23Z) Barmby, Tim; Dolton, PeterThis paper analyses data on the daily work decisions of archaeological workers on a Syrian archaeological dig in 1938. The remuneration contract that these workers faced involved a fixed component and a stochastic component termed “bakshish” which were daily payments for small finds that the worker made on the dig. The value of these finds we argue represent transitory movements in the worker’s wage which can be used to examine intertemporal labour supply behaviour.Item Worker Absenteeism: A Study of Contagion effects(University of Aberdeen Business School, 2004-02) Barmby, Tim; Larguem, MakramA number of recent studies have suggested that workers’ attendance as well as their absence, could have importance for the way in which firms’ design remuneration contracts, see Chatterji and Tilley (2000) and Skåtun (2002). One aspect of this is that, since worker absenteeism is in large part due to illness, if contracts impose costs on workers which induce them to attend work when ill this could result in the illness being more readily communicated to other workers with associated effects on productivity. This paper seeks to quantify such contagion effects by examining a personnel dataset which allows us to track daily absence decisions of a group of industrial workers employed in the same factory.Item A Note on the Labour Supply Behaviour of NYC Cabdrivers: Does Experience Count?(University of Aberdeen Business School, 2004-03) Barmby, TimIn a much talked about paper, Camerer, Babcock, Lowenstein and Thaler (1997), (hereafter CBLT) outline some potentially cautionary news about the intertemporal labour supply hypothesis. The basis of their paper is that cab drivers will face day to day variation in their wage rates due to a variety of factors (weather, subway breakdowns etc) which will affect demand, but that this variation is transitory. Their main conclusion is that there is some possibility that New York cabdrivers, who are the subject of their paper, might make their decisions one day at a time, using a daily income target. Chou (2002) in another paper looking at taxi divers in Singapore arrives at very similar conclusions. CBLT do take pains to point out that their result should be treated with some caution. However target income behaviour, of course, generates predictions which are counter to the intertemporal labour supply hypothesis, as on high wage days the cabdrivers will hit the income target earlier and work fewer hours. This short note looks at some of the CBLT data again and suggests that certain conclusions of the original article may be modified, particularly with respect to the effect of level of experience of the cabdriver, as the title suggests.