IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL FREIGHT FLOWS ON THE OVERALL TRAFFIC IN SURAT CITY, INDIA

Surat is one of the major textile manufacturing hubs in India, having 40% of the synthetic fabric produced in the country. The textile industry in the city has witnessed tremendous growth in the last decade, leading to many transportation-related changes within it. Textile manufacturing has different phases like weaving, processing, value addition and trading or distribution. These phases are located as clusters or pockets in different parts of the city. The scattered nature of the industry generates numerous freight trips. This study focuses on characterizing and estimating textile freight trips in the city. Establishment survey data was collected from production units located in various clusters. A multi-linear regression model for freight trips generated using the quantity of cloth produced was developed for the estimation of the total textile freight trips. Thus, this study will help the planner identify the strategic location of the textile and its allied industries as well as for freight infrastructure in the city. More so, it would help in understanding the impacts of textile freight movement on the city’s overall traffic.

Comparing the Response Burden between Paper and Web Modes in Establishment Surveys

Previous research is inconclusive regarding the effects of paper and web surveys on response burdens. We conducted an establishment survey with random assignment to paper and web modes to examine this issue. We compare how the actual and perceived response burdens differ when respondents complete a survey in the paper mode, in the web mode and when they are allowed to choose between the two modes. Our results show that in the web mode, respondents have a lower estimated time to complete the questionnaire, while we do not find differences between paper and the web on the perceived response time and perceived burden. Even though the response burden in the web mode is lower, our study finds no evidence of an increased response burden when moving an establishment survey from paper to the web.

Trends in Establishment Survey Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias: Evidence from the 2001-2017 IAB Establishment Panel

Evidence from the household survey literature shows a declining response rate trend in recent decades, but whether a similar trend exists for voluntary establishment surveys is an understudied issue. This article examines trends in nonresponse rates and nonresponse bias over a period of 17 years in the annual cross-sectional refreshment samples of the IAB Establishment Panel in Germany. In addition, rich administrative data about the establishment and employee composition are used to examine changes in nonresponse bias and its two main components, refusal and noncontact, over time. Our findings show that response rates dropped by nearly a third: from 50.2% in 2001 to 34.5% in 2017. Simultaneously, nonresponse bias increased over this period, which was mainly driven by increasing refusal bias whereas noncontact bias fluctuated relatively evenly over the same period. Nonresponse biases for individual establishment and employee characteristics did not show a distinct pattern over time with few exceptions. Notably, larger establishments participated less frequently than smaller establishments over the entire period. This implies that survey organizations may need to put more effort into recruiting larger establishments to counteract nonresponse bias.

The IAB Job Vacancy Survey: design and research potential

This article provides an overview of the IAB Job Vacancy Survey and its research potential. The IAB Job Vacancy Survey is a quarterly establishment survey covering the (un-)satisfied labor demand in Germany. This survey identifies the entire number of vacancies on the German labor market, including those vacancies that are not reported to the Federal Employment Agency. The main questionnaire obtains information about the number and structure of vacancies, future labor demand, the current economic situation and the expected development of participating establishments. In addition, the questionnaire collects information about the last new hiring and the last case of a failed recruitment process. Finally, the questionnaire enquires about employer attitudes and firms’ use of current labor market instruments. The Research Data Centre of the German Federal Employment Agency offers access to the data starting from the survey waves 2000 onwards.

Worker Trust in Management and Delegation in Organizations

Using a unique employee–establishment survey, we find a causal relationship between an individual employee’s trust of management and their decision-making rights (delegation). We utilize both fixed effects (FE) and instrumental variables to control for unobserved factors: establishment-level FE control for management quality, practices, culture, and other characteristics; our instruments of inherited trust in management, and trust of equivalent workers in a different but similar country address the possible endogeneity of employee trust. Across all specifications, we find that delegation to a worker is more likely if that employee trusts management. In our preferred model, which includes establishment FE and accounts for endogeneity, we find a 1 standard deviation (SD) increase in employee trust increases delegation by approximately 0.6 of 1 SD. Our results are robust to the inclusion of worker preferences for individualism (which favors delegation), incentives/bonuses, and alternative measures of decision authority. (JEL D23, L22, L23).

Modeling Commercial Vehicle Trip Generation at the Business-Establishment Level

The planning and design of efficient transportation systems require an in-depth understanding of the micro-behaviour governing vehicle movements. Recent efforts to analyze commercial vehicle movements have begun focusing on the collection and usage of detailed microdata sets. This paper contributes to these efforts by devising statistical models for predicting the number of outbound commercial vehicle trips at the firm level given a sample of establishments in the Windsor, Ontario region. A comparison was made between a model that can be created using microdata obtained through an establishment survey, a model that utilized commercial firm lists with basic firm attributes that include employment size and industry classification, and a modified model with the basic variables and limited detailed microdata. The results suggest that commercial firm datasets can be used to generate reasonable predictions. However, additional information about employment, industry, vehicle ownership and other firm characteristics certainly enhance the models’ predictive ability.

Can Policy Facilitate Partial Retirement? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany

In 1996, Germany introduced the Altersteilzeit (ATZ) policy, which provided incentives for partial retirement. Using linked establishment survey and administrative employment data, the authors estimate changes in part-time employment rates and retirement after ATZ. Among men, part-time work increased and retirements were postponed by at least 0.6 years without any displacement of full-time work. For women, the increases in working lives appeared to be even larger. These estimates are based on a nationally representative sample of firms. When analysis is restricted to a subset of firms with collective agreements covering partial retirement, and when the staggered timing of those agreements is used to identify estimates, the authors find extensions of working life of more than 1 year. Overall, these findings suggest that policies encouraging partial retirement may have potential for increasing the duration of working life.

Do German Works Councils Counter or Foster the Implementation of Digital Technologies?

As works councils’ information, consultation and co-determination rights affect the decision process of the management, works councils play a key role in the implementation of digital technologies in establishments. However, previous research focuses on the potential of digital technologies to substitute for labor and its impact on labor market outcomes of workers. This paper adds the role of industrial relations to the existing literature by analyzing the impact of works councils on the implementation of digital technologies. Theoretically, the role of works councils in the digital transformation is ambiguous. Using establishment data from the IAB Establishment Survey of 2016 combined with individual employee data from the Federal Employment Agency and occupational level data about the physical job exposure, empirical evidence indicates an ambivalent position of works councils towards digital technologies. The sole existence of works councils is associated with statistically significant lower equipment levels with digital technologies. However, works councils seem to foster the equipment with digital technologies in those establishments, which employ a high share of workers who are conducting physical demanding job activities. Thus, this study highlights the importance of establishment-level workforce representation for the digital adoption process within Germany.

An assessment of using frequency weights for record linkage

Many different techniques can be used to perform entity-to-entity record linkage. The optimal approach may relate to the entity type, such as individual or establishment, and source, such as sample survey, enumeration, program administration, or register. Within the Fellegi-Sunter record linkage framework, the frequency of occurrence of match variables’ values can be either employed or ignored when estimating the probabilities from which the match weights are derived. Namely, the U-probability that a variable agrees in a pair of non-matched records, is estimated for each value of a match variable in the frequency-based approach, or in general in the non-frequency-based approach. The aim of this talk is to compare the quality of results produced by the frequency-based and non-frequency-based approaches when linking a household survey and an establishment survey to vital records. A household survey, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and an establishment survey, the National Hospital Care Survey (NHCS) are each linked to the National Death Index (NDI) using the Fellegi-Sunter record linkage framework. We perform the linkage on each survey twice; first, employing frequency-based weights for all match variables, and second, simple agree/disagree weights for all match variables. We then examine any differences in quality within each survey, and assess whether any differences in the quality of the two approaches are attributable to the type of survey, household versus establishment.