Markets or networks: Households’ choice of financial intermediary in Western China

We argue that households’ choice of financial intermediary is conditioned by households’ social network structures and socioeconomic status. Analyses show that households’ social network size and network composition affect their choices by limiting the quality and quantity of information, resources, and social influence one can access through social ties. Moreover, we find that high-SES families favor formal intermediaries due not only to their richer financial knowledge, higher affordability, and greater capacity to repay loans, but also to their high demands and special types of financial needs that can hardly be satisfied by embedded resources.     

Innovation in user-centered skills and performance improvement for sustainable complex service systems

In order to leverage individual and organizational learning and to remain competitive in current turbulent markets it is important for employees, managers, planners and leaders to perform at high levels over time. Employee competence and skills are extremely important matters in view of the general shortage of talent and the mobility of employees with talent. Two factors emerged to have the greatest impact on the competitiveness of complex service systems: improving managerial and employee's knowledge attainment for skills, and improving the training and development of the workforce. This paper introduces the knowledge-based user-centered service design approach for sustainable skill and performance improvement in education, design and modeling of the next generation of complex service systems. The rest of the paper cover topics in human factors and sustainable business process modeling for the service industry, and illustrates the user-centered service system development cycle with the integration of systems engineering concepts in service systems. A roadmap for designing service systems of the future is discussed. The framework introduced in this paper is based on key user-centered design principles and systems engineering applications to support service competitiveness.     

商务英语中的修辞特色

商务英语是功能性的英语变体,是商务理论与商务实践的结合.文章分析了商务英语中的修辞特色,充分运用英特色能够提高国际商务交际与谈判的水平和成效,使之更好地为国际商务活动服务.     

民营企业投资风险的统计度量与分析

中国民营企业普遍存在着寿命短暂、难以长大等问题,一个重要的原因在于民营企业投资失误较多,决策不科学,在投资风险的预测、度量、分析、控制上出了问题.因此,在传统的统计学方法计量投资项目的风险大小的基础上,指出了传统净现值法的一些缺陷,给出了较为科学的风险调整贴现率法和肯定当量法,从而使企业能作出更加合理的投资决策.     

Residential Remittances and Food Security in the Upper West Region of Ghana

In recent years, out migration from the Upper West Region to the southern belt of Ghana for farming has become commonplace. The natural question that has arisen is: what is the potential impact of remittances from this migration pattern on food security in the region? Using multivariate ordered logistic regression this study assesses the linkage between remittances and household food security (derived using the HFIAS) among urban and rural households (n=1,438) in the region. The findings show that urban remittance‐receiving households and rural remittance and non‐remittance receiving households were more likely (OR=2.44, p<0.05; OR=2.46, p<0.001; and OR=1.49, p<0.1, respectively) to report being more severely food‐insecure than urban non‐remittance receiving households. The findings demonstrate that household strategies such as migration and remittances on their own are not sufficient to ameliorate the precarious food insecurity situation of the region. The study calls for development of alternative livelihoods in the region.     

实施系统工程，实现高校思想政治工作的创新

新时期的高校思想政治工作更加复杂化,任务更加艰巨,这就要求我们因事而化、因时而进、因势而新,不断研究新情况,探索新办法,不断开创高校思想政治工作新局面。总结了信电学院的做法,实施系统工程,打组合拳,为高校思想政治工作提供了新的思路。     

To stay or to go? Postretirement housing choices of single Baby Boomer women

Single women of the Baby Boomer generation are often financially disadvantaged in the retirement planning process due to their lower accumulated savings compared to male retirees. This disadvantage impacts significant consumption decisions such as postretirement housing choices. This study uses the theory of planned behavior to examine how certainty in intentions influences preparing and planning for postretirement housing. A typology of single Baby Boomer women is developed based on their financial, demographic, and psychological circumstances. Each segment likely requires different informational strategies and financial services to foster proactive planning for retirement. Significant implications exist for social policy and the financial services sector.     

Local influence in seemingly unrelated regression model with ridge estimate

Local influence is a well-known method for identifying the influential observations in a dataset and commonly needed in a statistical analysis. In this paper, we study the local influence on the parameters of interest in the seemingly unrelated regression model with ridge estimation, when there exists collinearity among the explanatory variables. We examine two types of perturbation schemes to identify influential observations: the perturbation of variance and the perturbation of individual explanatory variables. Finally, the efficacy of our proposed method is illustrated by analyzing [13 A. Munnell, Why has productivity declined? Productivity and public investment, New Engl. Econ. Rev. (1990), pp. 3–22. [Google Scholar]] productivity dataset.