Social Exclusion and Its Causes in East Asian Societies: Evidences from SQSQ Survey Data

Using data from surveys on “social quality survey questionnaires”, carried out by the Asian Consortium for Social Quality between 2009 and 2011, this study investigates the causes of social exclusion in six Asian societies. About 6,460 questionnaires were completed and the analysis of the data reveals the features and the causes of social exclusion in these societies. The study concludes that the impact of social factors (maritual status, parental relations, and personal relations with local communities) on social exclusion is stronger than the political and economical factors (including class stratification and lack of financial resources). The findings indicate that the lack of social capitals is the most significant cause of social exclusion in these societies.     

Did the Fiancée’s Mother Drive up Housing Prices in China?——A Glimpse of the Real Estate Game in China

Mo Yan who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature last year responded to the question how he was going to spend the huge bonuses, "I’m going to buy a house in Beijing, a large house. However, someone reminded me that I wouldn’t go very far as it cost 50,000 Yuan a square meter, and 7.5 million Yuan could only buy a 120-square-meter house." A trembling joke we heard has attracted world attention on China’s real estate. Real estate development in China over the past 20 years has already surpassed business development and evolved into a complex compound made up by political, social,     

政府竞争、可信承诺与地方政府行为异质性——基于省际面板数据的经验证据

当前解释中国发展经验的理论中,一个比较成熟的理论解释是地方政府竞争是中国经济飞速发展的推动力,这种竞争由两种机制所构成,一种是财政上的分权,另一种是政治上的集权。地方政府竞争理论隐含了在中央与地方的互动中"中央—地方"间的承诺都是可信的这一条件,所以上述两种机制必定会对地方政府产生强激励。可是这一理论没办法解释地方政府行为的差异性这一现象,而其实这种差异性在纵向的时间维度和横向的空间维度都是存在的,因此探讨地方政府行为的影响因素,弄清楚造成地方政府行为差异性的原因非常重要。通过面板数据分析可得出结论,"中央—地方"间的可信承诺是造成地方政府行为差异的一个重要因素。在中央—地方博弈过程中,中央信守承诺的可能性越大,地方政府越可能按照中央希望的那样成为地方经济发展的扶助者。而"中央—地方"间可信承诺的达成,必须依靠纵向的权力制约。     

Impact of Community on Personal Well-Being in Urban China

ABSTRACT

As the work-unit system fell after economic reform in China, neighborhoods replaced work units as the primary provider of vital social services for the urban population and became a new social space for enhancing the quality of people's well-being. This study examined the neighborhood characteristics that influenced personal well-being of residents. Drawn by multistage sampling and administered by face-to-face interviews, the survey included a sample of 976 participants from 31 neighborhoods in urban Shanghai. Results indicate that neighboring behaviors enhanced subjective well-being of the young and middle-aged residents but had no impact on older people. Sense of community, on the other hand, was found to contribute to well-being of all age groups and was particularly strong among older people in more deprived neighborhoods. Findings inform development of community practice strategies for vitalizing community efficacy and fostering individual well-being in urban China. Recommendations for future research are made using the results of this study.     

两种稀见清诗总集考辨

清诗总集为数繁多.研究薄弱,许多原书需要认真考察.浙江图书馆藏唯一传世的一部清初"职业"选家顾有孝辑《纪事诗钞》,实际上是一个残本.全书十卷,后两卷单独题为"骊珠集",所选诗歌体裁亦与前八卷不同.经比对可知,后两卷乃抄自顾有孝另一种清诗总集《骊珠集》.又该馆所藏一部挂在顾有孝名下的同名《骊珠集》,除了书名以外,其他版刻形式、所收作家和作品等均与顾有孝辑《骊珠集》完全不同.则实际是他人所辑的另一种清诗总集,属于道家文学典籍的范畴,并且同样也是海内孤本.此前还没有学者对这两种清诗总集予以研究.对它们进行考辨,既有助于学术界获得正确的认识,又是文献典籍方面的一次全新发现.     

Are Rich Earners Time-Privileged in Taiwan? The Evidence from 1981 to 2006

This paper investigates how the relationship between income and working hours in Taiwan has changed over time. By using the official individual sample in the Manpower Utilization Surveys from DGBAS during 1981–2006, this study concludes that higher earners worked fewer hours as the economy is expanding and the price level increases in Taiwan; however, higher earners lose their time privileges as the economy relies on the service sector more than before. Furthermore, with regard to gender differences, it is found that higher earners still have time advantages relative to lower earners over time for male, but not so for female.

An estimation of distribution algorithm for lot-streaming flow shop problems with setup times

Lot-streaming flow shops have important applications in different industries including textile, plastic, chemical, semiconductor and many others. This paper considers an n-job m-machine lot-streaming flow shop scheduling problem with sequence-dependent setup times under both the idling and no-idling production cases. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time or makespan. To solve this important practical problem, a novel estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) is proposed with a job permutation based representation. In the proposed EDA, an efficient initialization scheme based on the NEH heuristic is presented to construct an initial population with a certain level of quality and diversity. An estimation of a probabilistic model is constructed to direct the algorithm search towards good solutions by taking into account both job permutation and similar blocks of jobs. A simple but effective local search is added to enhance the intensification capability. A diversity controlling mechanism is applied to maintain the diversity of the population. In addition, a speed-up method is presented to reduce the computational effort needed for the local search technique and the NEH-based heuristics. A comparative evaluation is carried out with the best performing algorithms from the literature. The results show that the proposed EDA is very effective in comparison after comprehensive computational and statistical analyses.     

A probabilistic transmission and population dynamic model to assess tuberculosis infection risk

The purpose of this study was to examine tuberculosis (TB) population dynamics and to assess potential infection risk in Taiwan. A well‐established mathematical model of TB transmission built on previous models was adopted to study the potential impact of TB transmission. A probabilistic risk model was also developed to estimate site‐specific risks of developing disease soon after recent primary infection, exogenous reinfection, or through endogenous reactivation (latently infected TB) among Taiwan regions. Here, we showed that the proportion of endogenous reactivation (53–67%) was larger than that of exogenous reinfection (32–47%). Our simulations showed that as epidemic reaches a steady state, age distribution of cases would finally shift toward older age groups dominated by latently infected TB cases as a result of endogenous reactivation. A comparison of age‐weighted TB incidence data with our model simulation output with 95% credible intervals revealed that the predictions were in an apparent agreement with observed data. The median value of overall basic reproduction number (R₀) in eastern Taiwan ranged from 1.65 to 1.72, whereas northern Taiwan had the lowest R₀ estimate of 1.50. We found that total TB incidences in eastern Taiwan had 25–27% probabilities of total proportion of infected population exceeding 90%, whereas there were 36–66% probabilities having exceeded 20% of total proportion of infected population attributed to latently infected TB. We suggested that our Taiwan‐based analysis can be extended to the context of developing countries, where TB remains a substantial cause of elderly morbidity and mortality.     

Scheduling to minimize stringer utilization for continuous annealing operations

In this paper we present a mathematical program and heuristic algorithms to schedule coils for the production operations in a copper (or steel) coil manufacturing industry. The processing facility uses continuous operations for processing (e.g., galvanizing and annealing) while the handling unit is a discrete coil. The ends of coils are “stitched” or welded together to enable continuous processing, and the joint is later sheared off to obtain the processed coils. Processing constraints impose restrictions on the compatibility between a pair of coils that are overcome by introducing a dummy coil called stringer, which is very expensive to a mill. This paper deals with modeling the sequencing/scheduling problem of coils on parallel non-identical machines to minimize stringer utilization. Both computational and practical experiences show the efficiency and effectiveness of the solution approaches. Implementing these methods in an actual coil annealing facility resulted in 65% reduction in stringer utilization.     

Assortment Planning for Vertically Differentiated Products

We consider the problem of a retailer managing a category of vertically differentiated products. The retailer has to pay a fixed cost for each product included in the assortment and a variable cost per product sold. Quality levels, fixed, and variable costs are exogenously determined. Customers differ in their valuation of quality and choose the product (if any) that maximizes their utility. First, we consider a setting in which the selling prices are also fixed. We find that the optimal set of products to offer depends on the distribution of customer valuations and might include dominated products, that is, products which are less attractive than at least one other product, on every possible dimension. We develop an efficient algorithm to identify an optimal assortment. Second, we consider a setting in which the retailer also determines the selling prices. We show that in this case the optimal assortment does not include any dominated product and does not vary with the distribution of customer valuations when there is no fixed cost. We develop several efficient algorithms to identify an optimal assortment and optimally price the products. We also test the applicability of our methods with realistic data for two product categories.