The operation of a port, including its customs import processes, is an instance of a complex socio-technical system with multiple stakeholders. In order to provide insight for policy analysis, we posit the appropriateness of agent-based modelling techniques for the simulation of potential anticorruption policies in the maritime customs context. We outline the design of an agent-based simulation...

Growing trade volumes and increased security, health and financial control regulations require customs administrations to change their working practices worldwide. An existing dilemma however, is that governments would like on the one hand to reduce the administrative burden for businesses and on the other hand to increase security and control. The traditional single side power-posing by custom...

Nursing unions are currently on the rise in the United States and therefore their implications to the Nursing profession are becoming more relevant. This paper will explore the history of unions in the profession of Nursing, the goals of nursing unions, and evidence regarding the impact nursing unions have on patient outcomes. This background will give Nurse Educators (NEs) the information need...

The publication in 1984 of Richard Freeman and James Medoff’s What Do Unions Do?, which summarized and synthesized results from their broad-based research program, was a landmark in labor economics and industrial relations. What Do Unions Do? quickly changed the subject matter and approach for scholars studying unions. The models (or descriptions) of unions employed by labor economists were ext...

From 1973 to 2007, private sector union membership in the United States declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women. During this period, inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent. We report a decomposition, relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution’s shrinking weight. We argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity, reducin...

In 1954, thirty-nine percent of private sector laborers were unionized; by 1999 that number dropped to ten percent.1 Labor unions provide vital services for workers and the decline of unions has also meant that workers go without those services. At one time, union representatives and organizers were hired by the labor unions to recruit workers to organize.2 In the postwar era the unions stopped...

Introduction Almost 20 percent of the people in the work force are union members. Just in terms of numbers, trade unions are an important influence in the labor market and in the U.S. economy. Further, unions are widely believed to play a major role in determining workers' standard of living and how work is done and in affecting firms' profitability. Freeman and Medoff (1984) recently presented...