The Mobility of Entrepreneurs and Capital: Taiwanese Capital-Linked Migration

Much of the literature concerning international investment focuses on the movement of capital or trade flows and does not cover the persons who migrate with the capital, even though in a globalizing economic system new conditions emerge for the international migration of capitalists. On the one hand, capital owners have been recruited directly by business migration programmes in countries such as Canada, Australia, and the US. On the other hand, global economic restructuring, one part of which entails increasing foreign direct investment from a wider range of countries, has induced the migration of an entrepreneurial/managerial class. This article analyses the relation between the mobility of capital and of entrepreneurs by investigating Taiwan's capital-linked migrations. It aims to show that people can integrate migration and capital investment as a strategy to best serve their interests. Although their moves are mediated and constrained by different migration channels (governmental policies, recruitment agencies, transnational corporations, etc.), capital-linked migrants are not passive players in international migration systems. They actively position themselves with regard to migration channels and select active strategies that best suit their objectives. Sometimes immigration serves capitalists' interest in capital accumulation, at other times capital investment serves as the means for securing a second nationality. In this way, Taiwanese capitalist mobility has been incorporated into the open-ended logic of flexible capitalism itself. Such understanding of the processes of capital-linked migration and its implications contribute to new theories of the relationship between international flows of capital and international migration.     

Maternal Social Coaching Quality Interrupts the Development of Relational Aggression During Early Childhood

Previous research has shown that parents of socially competent young children provide them with elaborative, explicit, appropriate, and emotion‐laden advice about peer interactions. The current study analyzed mothers' conversations with preschoolers (N = 175; 52 percent female; M age = 52 months, SD = 7 months) about peer conflicts involving relational aggression. Conversations were coded for maternal elaboration, emotion references, and discussion of norm violations. Information about relational and physical aggression was collected from teachers at two assessments approximately 12 months apart for a subsample of 136 children. Regression analyses, controlling for physical aggression, showed that average and high levels of effective coaching operated as a protective factor against stable high levels of relational aggression. Theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of the early development of relational aggression are discussed.     

A Kernel Smooth Approach for Joint Modeling of Accelerated Failure Time and Longitudinal Data

Joint likelihood approaches have been widely used to handle survival data with time-dependent covariates. In construction of the joint likelihood function for the accelerated failure time (AFT) model, the unspecified baseline hazard function is assumed to be a piecewise constant function in the literature. However, there are usually no close form formulas for the regression parameters, which require numerical methods in the EM iterations. The nonsmooth step function assumption leads to very spiky likelihood function which is very hard to find the globe maximum. Besides, due to nonsmoothness of the likelihood function, direct search methods are conducted for the maximization which are very inefficient and time consuming. To overcome the two disadvantages, we propose a kernel smooth pseudo-likelihood function to replace the nonsmooth step function assumption. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by simulation studies. A case study of reproductive egg-laying data is provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the new approach.     

A semiparametric extended hazard regression model with time-dependent covariates

We introduce a general class of semiparametric hazard regression models, called extended hazard (EH) models, that are designed to accommodate various survival schemes with time-dependent covariates. The EH model contains both the Cox model and the accelerated failure time (AFT) model as its subclasses so that we can use this nested structure to perform model selection between the Cox model and the AFT model. A class of estimating equations using counting process and martingale techniques is developed to estimate the regression parameters of the proposed model. The performance of the estimating procedure and the impact of model misspecification are assessed through simulation studies. Two data examples, Stanford heart transplant data and Mediterranean fruit flies, egg-laying data, are used to demonstrate the usefulness of the EH model.     

Selecting more reliable weibull populations than a control

This paper deals with the selection of Weibull populations that are more reliable than a control population at some specified time. In the case when the shape parameters are known, a locally optimal selection rule is derived. From this rule, a modified one is proposed for the case when the shape parameter is unknown but has a known prior distribution. Simulation study shows that this modified rule is quite robust.     

Mis-specification analyses of gamma and Wiener degradation processes

Degradation models are widely used these days to assess the lifetime information of highly reliable products if there exist some quality characteristics (QC) whose degradation over time can be related to the reliability of the product. In this study, motivated by a laser data, we investigate the mis-specification effect on the prediction of product's MTTF (mean-time-to-failure) when the degradation model is wrongly fitted. More specifically, we derive an expression for the asymptotic distribution of quasi-MLE (QMLE) of the product's MTTF when the true model comes from gamma degradation process, but is wrongly assumed to be Wiener degradation process. The penalty for the model mis-specification can then be addressed sequentially. The result demonstrates that the effect on the accuracy of the product's MTTF prediction strongly depends on the ratio of critical value to the scale parameter of the gamma degradation process. The effects on the precision of the product's MTTF prediction are observed to be serious when the shape and scale parameters of the gamma degradation process are large. We then carry out a simulation study to evaluate the penalty of the model mis-specification, using which we show that the simulation results are quite close to the theoretical ones even when the sample size and termination time are not large. For the reverse mis-specification problem, i.e., when the true degradation is a Wiener process, but is wrongly assumed to be a gamma degradation process, we carry out a Monte Carlo simulation study to examine the effect of the corresponding model mis-specification. The obtained results reveal that the effect of this model mis-specification is negligible.     

Towards the Measurement of EFL Listening Beliefs with Item Response Theory Methods

The present research aims to identify the underlying English listening belief structure of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners, thereby informing methodologies for subsequent analysis of beliefs with respect to listening achievement. Development of a measurement model of English listening learning beliefs entailed the creation of an inventory of the beliefs on EFL listening abilities and determination of reliability of measurement and model fit. Results of multidimensional item response theory analysis utilizing responses from 505 subjects confirmed a two-dimensional structure and found that the dimensionality of listening learning beliefs can be classified as Axiomatic and Praxis. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

MASCOT: An agent-based architecture for dynamic supply chain creation and coordination in the internet economy

The emerging global internet economy will increasingly put a premium on the ability of companies to quickly and accurately evaluate new market opportunities, new product/ subcomponent designs, and other strategic business decisions (e.g. make-or-buy) in coordination with potential supply chain partners. It also requires that companies be able to effectively and efficiently coordinate activities, e.g. production and transportation across supply chains that are dynamically set up in response to constantly changing and increasingly customized market requirements. This paper provides an overview of MASCOT ('multi-agent supply chain cordination tool'), a reconfigurable, multi-level, agent-based planning and scheduling architecture aimed at supporting these functionalities. It reviews key innovative elements of the MASCOT architecture with a special emphasis on its support of realtime mixed-initiative 'what-if' functionalities, enabling endusers at different levels within the architecture to rapidly     

Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’:localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism

The emerging literature on transnationalism has reshaped the study of immigration in the USA from ‘melting pot’ and later ‘salad bowl’, to ‘switching board’, which emphasizes the ability of migrants to forge and maintain ties to their home countries. Often under the heading of ‘transnationalism from below’, these studies highlight an alternative form of globalization, in which migrants act as active agents to initiate and structure global interactions. The role of geography, and in particular, localization in transnational spaces, is central to the transnationalism debate, but is yet to be well articulated. While it has been commonly claimed that transnationalism represents deterritorialized practices and organizations, we argue that it is in fact rooted in the territorial division of labour and local community networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries. We examine closely two business sectors engaged in by the Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles: high‐tech firms and accounting firms. Each illustrates, respectively, the close ties of Chinese transnational activities with the economic base of the Los Angeles region, and the contribution of local‐based, low‐wage, small ethnic businesses to the transnational practices. We conclude that deeper localization is the geographical catalyst for transnational networks and practices.     

An assessment scale of ECB: perspectives from the faculty and staff of technical colleges in Taiwan

Faculty and staff in Taiwanese technical colleges are required to perform school self-evaluations. Most members of technical colleges come from postsecondary schools and are thus unfamiliar with school self-evaluation procedures. An effective school self-evaluation involves a complete ECB,(1) making it necessary to build faculty and staff evaluation capacity. In this research, we analyzed previous studies, interviewed experts, conducted expert reviews, constructed an ECB assessment scale, and collected the opinions of 1054 faculty and staff, to confirm the validity of the proposed assessment scale. This scale included 21 items summarized in four dimensions: understanding the evaluation guidelines, familiarizing with evaluation requirements, participating in the evaluation activity, and implementing the evaluation connotation. We explain the four dimensions behind the ECB model, and propose three lessons learned from it.