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August 29, 2006

How Much is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations

A paper from a doctoral student at the Harvard Business School, and an employee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has found a correlation between serving on the United Nations Security Council, and the amount of aid received from the United States and the UN. The paper will be printed in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Political Economy.

From the abstract:

Ten of the fifteen seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country’s U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members’ votes should be especially valuable) and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country’s election to, and exit from, the council. Finally, the U.N. results appear to be driven by UNICEF, an organization over which the United States has historically exerted great control.

The Harvard Business School working paper can be found here. Commentary from Steven Levitt (the co-author of Freakonomics) can be found here.

August 09, 2006

Career Advancement Without Experience

Career Advancement Without Experience

Executive Summary: Lacking experience, contract workers find it difficult to advance to a job with expanded responsibilities. But it can be done. Siobhan O'Mahony discusses research into the concept of "stretchwork" and the increasing complexity of career management. Key concepts include:

1. Lack of experience can be overcome when seeking a new job by using tactics such as taking a pay cut and framing prior performance in creative ways.

2. As employers turn to more "external" workers, career paths will become increasingly bumpy.