School of Industrial and Labor Relations Honors Theses
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Undergraduate Honors Theses in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
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Item How It Worked When It Worked: Electrifying Rural AmericaKarr-Kaitin, Noah (2013-05)Item The Labor Market Integration of Asylum Seekers in FranceMasson, Marc (Cornell University, 2017-05-14)The refugee crisis in Europe has created a significant challenge for European policy makers, both in terms of receiving asylum seekers and integrating them into their new communities. Among other methods of refugee integration, the ability of asylum seekers to find work soon after arrival is particularly important to the future welfare of refugees and of their host countries. On this issue, the European response has been mixed: for example, France has historically taken a restrictive stance to prevent asylum seekers from working to make the country less attractive to “fake refugees,” while Sweden allows asylum seekers to work near instantly upon arrival in the hope they can find work quickly and sustain themselves as their claim is being evaluated. This paper evaluates best practices for the labor market integration of asylum seekers and refugees, before reviewing the historical development of labor market integration policies for asylum seekers in France since WWII. It uses the case of Sweden’s open labor market policy for asylum seekers to explain why France followed a different policy strategy, and finally suggest paths to improving the labor market integration of asylum seekers in France.Item The Invisible Workforce: What strategies allow temporary workers to overcome employer opposition to union organizing?Haribhakti, Shivali (Cornell University, 2014-05-19)The purpose of this research is to see what strategies allow temporary workers to overcome employer opposition to organizing. Three case studies of temporary workers attempting to organize are analyzed to see if the workers are successful in attaining their demands. It is shown that workers succeed in bettering their working conditions through recognizing their importance to the employer, cultivating community support, and having positive attitudes towards unionization. This research provides valuable information to the social science community as it includes an appendix of rich primary sources and transcripts of personal interviews with temporary workers.Item For The Many or The Few?Wong, Wai Kin (2011-03-17)Recent studies [Bebchuk and Fried (2002)] have shown that managerial power and negotiations play important roles in the design of executive pay arrangements, suggesting that some CEOs may extract greater economic rent from shareholders when provided with the opportunity. This paper seeks to explore CEOs rent-extracting behaviors by examining golden parachute lump sum payments received by target CEOs and other extraordinary gains they negotiated during M&As. These payments are significantly affected by the CEO's characteristics, firm size and whether the CEO is retained but appears to be unrelated to measures of performance. I find that retained CEOs are more likely to negotiate for additional gains but their success rates are dependent on the positions they occupy in the combined company. My analysis also provides evidence that all these extraordinary benefits (negotiated gains and post-acquisition positions) come at the expense of shareholders, highlighting an agency problem where CEOs trade shareholders value in return for their own personal benefits.