Human Capital Composition and Economic Growth

This paper examines the dimensionality and factorial invariance of the Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale (CPYDS) using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MCFA). Secondary 1 students (N = 5,649) responded to the CPYDS in the context of a positive youth development program. Results showed that there are 15 basic dimensions of the CPYDS which are subsumed under four higher-order factors (i.e., cognitive-behavioral competencies, prosocial attributes, positive identity and general positive youth development qualities). Evidence of factorial invariance in terms of configuration, first-order factor loadings, second-order factor loadings, intercepts of measured variable, and intercepts of first-order latent factor, was found. The findings suggest that the CPYDS has stable dimensions that can be used to assess positive youth development in Chinese adolescents.     

Mexican American Adolescents' Emotional Support to the Family in Response to Parental Stress

In this two‐wave longitudinal, daily diary study that followed up with 421 Mexican American parent–adolescent dyads (adolescents: M_age = 15 years, 50% males) after 1 year, we investigated the contingency between parental stressors and adolescents' emotional support to family members. Adolescents provided support to their parents and other family members at similar rates, but adolescents were more likely to provide support to other family members than to their parents on days when parents experienced a family stressor. This pattern was especially pronounced in families with parents who reported physical symptoms and adolescents with a strong sense of family obligation. Adolescents' provision of emotional support was associated with same‐day feelings of role fulfillment, but not to their concurrent or long‐term psychological distress.     

Perceptual,Attitudinal, and Behavioral Outcomes of Organization–Public Engagement on Corporate Social Networking Sites

This study proposes and tests a conceptual model that not only measures public engagement with corporate pages on social networking sites, but also evaluates the influence of such engagement on important perceptual, relational, and behavioral outcomes. Study results provide empirical evidence of the positive effects of public engagement on perceived corporate authenticity, organizational transparency, organization–public relationships, and public advocacy. Findings underscore the importance of public engagement via social media on enhancing perceived corporate transparency and authenticity, and thereby cultivating strong relationships. Additionally, organization–public relationships emerged as a deciding factor driving the effects of public engagement on advocacy behaviors.     

Gender differences in health promotion behaviors and quality of life among community-dwelling elderly

The differences of basic attributes, health promotion behaviors, and quality of life between elderly males and females in Taiwan were compared. Several scales were used to examine the gender differences and the factors associated with quality of life. Regression analysis revealed that gender, education level, depression level, and healthy diet were key factors influencing the overall quality of life. The education level of females was lower, and their depression level was higher; however, females had healthier diets. With regards to their satisfaction in the quality of life, elderly males scored higher than females in both the physical and psychological domains.     

Dynamic pricing and revenue management process in Internet retailing under uncertainty: An integrated real options approach

Competition and demand volatility often cause modern enterprises to be confronted by uncertain environments. When a firm manages revenue in such competitive and risky environments, the optimization of pricing and capacity allocation, subject to a fixed time and capacity, becomes a complicated problem. Many previous papers concerning revenue management (RM) and pricing require that the firm possesses the ability to know the demand curve (or demand distribution) and set prices on it to maximize profits. However, this assumption may not be the case in some industries. Therefore, this paper focuses on the dynamic lead indicators rather than assumptive lag indicators to establish a concise and flexible decision model for practical use. This paper provides an integrated real options (IRO) approach with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the auction RM problem under competitive/dynamic pricing and revenue uncertainty in Internet retailing. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate that the IRO approach can generate better decisions than the naı¨ve (or risk unawareness) approach in revenue quality of safety and profitability. The new perspective and approach proposed by this paper can be extended to other RM fields whenever both profitability and risk are critical to decision making.     

"Foreign brides" meet ethnic politics in Taiwan

A great number of women from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia recently arrived in Taiwan to marry men of lower social strata. Such an unusual pattern of migration has stimulated debates about the status and the citizenship of the new arrivals. This study analyzes Taiwanese responses toward these marriage migrants by using a national survey conducted in 2004. Three aspects of restrictive attitudes were tapped concerning these newcomers: (1) rights to work; (2) access to public health insurance; and (3) full citizenship. Immigrants from China were most opposed, compared to women with other origins (Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe, and the US). The seemingly unrelated regression estimation regression results do not support the split labor market hypotheses, as marriage migrants do not appear to be economic threats toward members of the lower classes. In contrast, ethnic nationalism plays a key role in determining the natives’ restrictive attitudes. The case of Taiwan represents a special genre, where ethnic politics selectively arouses the social rejection of women immigrants of certain origins.     

A note on non-negative continuous time processes

Summary.  Recently there has been much work on developing models that are suitable for analysing the volatility of a continuous time process. One general approach is to define a volatility process as the convolution of a kernel with a non-decreasing Lévy process, which is non-negative if the kernel is non-negative. Within the framework of time continuous autoregressive moving average (CARMA) processes, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the kernel to be non-negative. This condition is in terms of the Laplace transform of the CARMA kernel, which has a simple form. We discuss some useful consequences of this result and delineate the parametric region of stationarity and non-negative kernel for some lower order CARMA models.     

The probabilistic tolerance design for a subsystem using taguchi's quadratic loss function

Taguchi (1984,1987) has derived tolerances for subsystems, subcomponents, parts and materials. However, he assumed that the relationship between a higher rank and a lower rank quality characteristic is deterministic. The basic structure of the above tolerance design problem is very similar to that of the screening problem. Tang (1987) proposed three cost models and derived an economic design for the screening problem of “the-bigger-the-better” quality characteristic in which the optimal specification limit ( or tolerance ) for a screening variable ( or a lower rank quality characteristic ) was obtained by minimizing the expected total cost function.Tang considered that the quality cost incurred only when the quality characteristic is out of specification while Taguchi considered that the quality cost incurred whenever the quality characteristic deviates from its nominal value. In this paper, a probabilistic relationship, namely, a bivariate normal distribution between the above two qualy characteristics as in a screening problem as well as Taguchi's quadratic loss function are considered together to develop a closed form solution of the tolerance design for a subsystem.     

Linda Milbourne,Voluntary Sector in Transition: Hard Times or New Opportunities?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -