Abstract

     The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of frontline employee (FLEs) to infections and other hazards and highlighted the importance of workplace safety practices (WSP) for service organizations. In response to the critical issue of service safety, we developed and empirically tested a model proposing that WSPs negatively influence FLE perceptions of pandemic related threats and positively influence their perceptions of organizational supportiveness (POS). In turn, these perceptions have time-lagged effects on two aspects of FLE wellbeing—reduced emotional exhaustion and increased work engagement. Utilizing data from a two-wave (separated by a month) survey panel consisting of 310 FLEs across the United States, we found evidence for all hypothesized relationships. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of our findings and provide suggestions for future research on service safety on the organizational frontlines.

Literature review and hypotheses

     We propose and empirically test a model of FLE workplace safety exploring the relationship between FLE perceptions of WSPs on two specific wellbeing outcomes – emotional exhaustion and work engagement, with these relationships fully mediated by job demands and resources, respectively. Our conceptual framework represented in Fig. 1 proposes that WSPs (both, essential and discretionary) negatively influence FLE perceptions of risks/hazards related to COVID-19 and positively influence their perceptions of organizational support. In other words, in workplaces where there is a focus on implementing both, essential and discretionary safety practices, FLEs perceive fewer risks/hazards and higher levels of organizational supportiveness. Consistent with JD-R theory, risks/hazards are experienced by FLEs as job demands that drain their psychological resources, while organizational support is experienced as a job resource that helps replenish this resource loss (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Further, job demands result in emotional exhaustion, while job resources translate into FLE work engagement. Our framework and the resultant hypotheses are described in the following section.

Results

     Descriptive statistics, reliability estimates, average variance explained (AVE), and inter-construct correlations are provided in Table 2. This data can be used to establish the integrity of the measurement model (Fornell & Bookstein, 1982). Further, Cronbach alpha statistics exceeded the 0.7 threshold recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1967), and AVEs associated with each latent construct (see Table 2) exceeded the recommended threshold of 0.5 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Discriminant validity was also observed as the bivariate correlations did not exceed the square root of the associated AVEs (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). These findings support the integrity of the measurement model.

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Policy context

3. Electricity system modelling assumptions

4. Scenarios

5. Modelling results

6. Cost-benefit estimations

7. Conclusion and policy implications

Credit author statement

Declaration of competing interest

References

Abstract

Long distance power transmission is commonly considered as an option for reducing carbon footprint in future electricity systems. Accordingly, this article presents economic insights in a transcontinental power interconnection linking four Asian countries with Europe. Enhanced electricity trade through the interconnected countries is assessed via techno-economic modelling. For this purpose two electricity system scenarios are developed for the year 2040: (i) a Reference Scenario, where electricity system development follows the plans of the involved system operators and (ii) a so-called Trans-Asia Scenario, where additional power transmission capacities are added to strengthen the electricity trading route crossing the interconnected countries: Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Economic benefits arising from the proposed Trans-Asia Scenario are estimated as a change in social welfare in the electricity system. Modelling results show a 140 M€ increase in annual social welfare for the Trans-Asia Scenario. The subsequent cost-benefit analysis results in a net present value in the range of −221 M€ to 534 M€, at a discount rate of 4%. This implies that over a life-cycle period of 40 years, the evaluated economic benefit may compensate investments between 1598 M€ and 3251 M€ needed for the additional power transmission capacities.

1. Introduction

Long distance power transmission is regularly presented as an enabler for high deployment of centralized renewable energy sources (RES) [1]. Several projects have been implemented providing flexibility in transcontinental power balance between electricity demand and generation [2]. Wu and Zhang [3] presented a feasibility study of an intercontinental electricity trade between Europe and China with 100% RES generation in 2050. This interconnection significantly decreases annual electricity system running costs. However, electricity systems of countries along the Europe-China connection route are not considered. In this regard, Assembayeva et al. [4] developed an electricity market model of Kazakhstan, with possible further expanding modelling capacity in the Central Asian region. Assembayeva et al. [4] indicates power flow congestions in the electricity grid of Kazakhstan during high electricity demand in winter. According to Gea-Bermúdez et al. [5]; grid congestions can be reduced along with electricity production costs through a sound long-term electricity system planning. In the light of the above considerations, this study presents an elaborated techno-economic modelling approach giving insights in investments in additional electricity trade capacity along a route connecting Europe with a selection of Asian countries in 2040.

Transmission grid reinforcements are proposed on top of the planned transmission infrastructure development plans to allow a cross-border electricity trade capacity of 2000 MW in a selected route from Turkey to Kazakhstan, passing through Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. This route derives from a study by Ardelean and Minnebo [6] and interlinks with the European transmission grid as shown in Fig. 1. The proposed increase in cross-border trade capacity between the Asian countries to 2000 MW is close to the envisaged electricity trade capacity between Bulgaria-Turkey and Greece-Turkey in the ENTSO-E 2040 scenarios [7].

1- Introduction

2- Background

3-Data

4- Methodology

5- Results

6- Conclusion

References

Abstract

This study identifies the impact of access to and the speed of divorce on the welfare of children in a middle income largely Catholic country. Using difference-in-difference estimation techniques, I compare school enrollment for children of married and cohabiting parent households before and after the legalization of divorce. Implementing pro-homemaker divorce laws increased school enrollment anywhere from 3.4 to 5.5 percentage points, and the effect was particularly salient on secondary school students. I provide evidence that administrative processes influencing the speed of divorce affect household bargaining and investments in schooling. With every additional six months wait to the finalization of divorce, school enrollment decreased by approximately one percentage point. The impact almost doubles for secondary schooling. When contemplating development policies, advocates, policymakers, and leaders should not overlook the impact changes in family policies and administrative processes can have on advancements in child welfare and, ultimately, economic development. (JEL: D12, D13, J12, I21, I25).

Introduction

Implementing development policies focused on improving child welfare can be expensive, time consuming, and, sometimes, ineffective (Filmer, 2003; Glewwe and Kremer, 2006; Ingram and Kessides, 1994). This is particularly true if the intervention is country-wide and focused on major activities like building infrastructure, purchasing supplies, or developing advocacy groups (Ingram and Kessides, 1994). Can alternative policy paths like changes to family law lead to major advancements in child welfare and, eventually, economic development? To study this, one needs a rarefied environment where a national policy is implemented with enough leverage to induce a redistribution of household resources in certain households, restrict the household’s ability to manipulate the magnitude or speed of the redistribution, and data overtime of those exposed and not exposed to the policy to estimate outcomes. I find a natural experiment environment close to this in Chile where gendered family norms are relatively rigid, geographic immobility is common, family legal procedures are tied to the local geography where one lives, local family court districts are independent, and a major policy shock – the legalization of divorce – happened in 2004. After almost a decade of intense national debate, the Chilean Congress passed a revised Civil Marriage Act in 2004. For the first time in the country’s history, Chileans could divorce.

In October 2008, Iceland’s financial system famously crashed as its three largest banks were nationalized.1 In the years leading up to the crash, income inequality in Iceland had reached unprecedented heights, as can be seen in Fig. 1. Immediately following the financial crash, however, income inequality levels were again sharply reduced to their pre neo-liberal era levels (Standardized World Income Inequality Database, n.d.). Although the decrease in income inequality happened largely because of income reduction and loss of capital gains among top-earners, it was also a result of radical changes in tax-policy aimed at protecting low-earners (Ólafsson & Kristjánsson, 2013, 2017). Thus, although both the high and low earners became poorer in absolute terms, the relative standing of the lower earners improved, due to a more equal income distribution. Icelanders have normally considered themselves a classless, egalitarian nation with a particularly even income distribution (Bernburg & Olafsdottir, 2012; Oddsson, 2016). Being accustomed to equality, Icelanders are sensitive to departures from egalitarian norms. The rise and decline in GINI did not go unnoticed among Icelanders and as can be marked by results showing that alongside the rise in income inequality, they perceived increases in class division, which then subsided together with decreased inequality after the financial collapse (Oddsson, 2016). Moreover, as the recession deepened following the collapse, the majority of Icelanders perceived improvement in their own subjective social location (Oddsson, 2017). Both the economic bubble with its steepening of the socioeconomic hierarchy and the consequent financial collapse affected the social fabric of Icelanders. The ‘invasion’ of neoliberal thinking that started in Iceland in the late Reagan-Thatcher era led steadily to privatization and free market policies opening up markets previously unavailable to Icelanders (e.g. Bernburg, 2016; Ólafsson & Kristjánsson, 2017). This led to the so-called “outvasion” of the Icelandic “business-Vikings”; entrepreneurs who then used their borrowed cash to purchase the three Icelandic state banks in 2003. With that, a new elite emerged. They were Iceland’s 1%, mostly consisting of the generously compensated bankers and staff from associated firms. This elite embarked upon conspicuous consumption and luxury living at levels never before witnessed in Iceland (see e.g. Bernburg, 2016; Garðarsdóttir & Dittmar, 2012; Oddsson, 2016). There is evidence that this elite had a strong influence on the normative standard of living for the rest. For example, during the economic boom the privatized banks offered and promoted cheap credit resulting in an increase in household debt, reaching 255% of aggregate disposable income (Garðarsdóttir & Dittmar, 2012; Johnsen, 2014). One study showed that amount of household debt was related to levels of materialism, but unrelated to income, indicating that Icelanders engaged in status-seeking consumption far outstripping their objective economic status (Garðarsdóttir & Dittmar, 2012).

مقاله سال 2017

 مجله امگا – Omega

Social welfare is the satisfaction of basic and secondary needs experienced by individuals in a community [38]. The concept of development should be understood as the process of creating the necessary conditions for increasing opportunities for active participation of a range of actors (civil society, private sector and public sector), in the efficient management of natural, technological and human resources. This process aims to achieve greater autonomy in growth capacity and modify relationships between social groups, thereby leading to economic improvement and a higher level of welfare in the population [88]. Consequently, development seeks to establish a mechanism to solve and attend to problems that concern the welfare of society [116,97].

Three main approaches have been used to measure social welfare: a purely economic approach; an approach based on utility functions; and measurement using social indicators [89]. The approach of social indicators using synthetic indicators to obtain an overall welfare perspective has motivated the creation of various indexes (see, for example, [81]), among which the Human Development Index (HDI) stands out. The HDI was first published in 1990 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and encapsulates the postulates of Amartya Sen [101]. It is a mechanism to measure the level of development of a country, state or region, by determining its level of social welfare, and takes into account the conditions of health, education and personal income (see [59] for its measurement properties). Each of these dimensions is weighted in the same way in the index [116,29,46,82,85,93]. Owing to its simplicity and the ease of access to the statistical information required, it has become the most widely used mechanism for measuring human development, social welfare, and the success or failure of nations’ policies [116,68].

The HDI was devised to measure social welfare and human development by considering the different aspects of human life [32]. 1 However, since its publication, this index has come under close scrutiny in the literature. Some of the criticisms made concern the theoretical composition of the index: its view of human development is limited since it does not include other variables that affect individuals’ welfare such as the environment, participation, social inclusion and equity in any of its three dimensions. Other criticisms are related to technical properties of the HDI, such as how the dimension indexes are derived from raw data; the additive form of aggregation to calculate the indexes by dimension; and equally weighting the three dimensions by aggregating the HDI [106,111,32, 33,37,44,49,75,76,80,93].