Environmentalising Economic Development: a South East Asian Perspective

South Asia's pursuit of economic development has entailed considerable damage to and exposed the fragility of the physical environment of the region like elsewhere in the developing world. South Asia is beset with a number of environmental problems. This paper provides an analytical overview of the of the environmental problems that manifest themselves in South Asia in a comparative perspective with East and Southeast Asian countries as well as selected developed market economies. It is argued that to-date, South Asian development process has been environment-intensive and that environmental problems may set serious constraints to sustain growth in production to feed its growing population. The paper underscores the need for environmentalesque-type process innovation to reverse the trend of high environment-intensity in South Asian development.

Kinerja Pelayanan Perijinan pada Kantor Pelayanan Terpadu (KTP) di Kabupaten Gorontalo

Licensing service performance is one form of service that often gets complaints from the public so that the community demands for better services. In addition to long- winded bureaucratic chain, arrogant bureaucrats, not the professionals, ultimateTy money. Its also no stranger to public service in the country when it imaged as a source of corruption. Thus, if the sting that should be public service in this cointry difficult to access by the poor, and becomes the trigger high-cost economy that ultimastely burden the macro economic performance, public burden, become embedded in our bureaucracy The results of this study indicate that the Licensing Service Performonce in lntegrated Services Ofice (OPT) Gorontalo regency on service disription Letter Business License (SIGU) can be said to be good, because almost all the indicators used in this study to asseess the performance of Licensing Services at the Office of Integrated services (oPT) Gorontalo regency, indicating satisfaction of tha servici user community. Contribulions and benefits that can be learned from this research is in the form of input for the Integrated Service Office (OpT) Gorontalo regency to be able to improve performance in holding licenses and permits, particularly in the service of non Permit Business Interruption (SIGU) in order to realize a quality service Keyword : Service Performance,quaIity, satisfoction Keyword : Service Performance,quaIity, satisfoctio

Factors That Affect Teaching Scores in Economics Instruction: Analysis of Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) Data

This paper explores the factors that affect students’ evaluations of economics instructions using a sample of over 2400 completed questionnaires at a large Australian university. Ordered probit analysis is used to determine the changes in the predicted probability of teaching evaluation (TEVAL) scores with variations, amongst other things, in students’ perceptions of the quality of presentation; explanation and organization of lecture material; and helping students improve their learning skills. Analyses of the comparative importance of the relationships both for undergraduate and postgraduate courses reveal significant differences across levels of the undergraduate program but little differences in students’ responses in higher level undergraduate and postgraduate instructions. One disturbing finding is that a key variable, namely emphasis on thinking rather than memorizing (THINKMEM) has little or no substantive impact on TEVAL. Thus the implication is that high TEVALs can be achieved at the cost of some critically important factors in teaching and learning. Consequently, those using just TEVAL score to evaluate teaching need to look closely at other factors of critical importance.

Demand for M2 in Developing Countries: An Empirical Panel Investigation

A significant body of literature on developed countries support the view that disequilibrium in the money market can affect the future output gap and/or inflation. This paper examines the major determinants of the demand for real money balances in eight developing countries for which consistent annual time series data are available. Pooling cross-country and time series data for the 1979-1999 periods and employing the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimation technique, this paper models a standard money demand function. Various country-specific coefficients are allowed to capture inter-country heterogeneities. Consistent with theoretical postulates, this paper finds that the demand for money positively responds to an increase in real income and negatively to a rise in the interest rate spread, the rate of inflation and the US long-term interest rate. This study supports the hypothesis that disequilibrium in the money market can exacerbate inflation and widen the output gap.Demand for Money, Money and Interest Rate Spread, Panel Data,

Demand for M2 in Developing Countries: An Empirical Panel Investigation

A significant body of literature on developed countries support the view that disequilibrium in the money market can affect the future output gap and/or inflation. This paper examines the major determinants of the demand for real money balances in eight developing countries for which consistent annual time series data are available. Pooling cross-country and time series data for the 1979-1999 period and employing the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimation technique, this paper models a standard money demand function. Various country-specific coefficients are allowed to capture inter-country heterogeneities. Consistent with theoretical postulates, this paper finds that the demand for money positively responds to an increase in real income and negatively to a rise in the interest rate spread, the rate of inflation and the US long-term interest rate. This study supports the hypothesis that disequilibrium in the money market can exacerbate inflation and widen the output gap.Demand for Money, Money and Interest Rate Spread, Panel Data,

A new framework of measuring national nutrients balance for international and global comparison

Nutrients balance such as nitrogen and phosphorus balance are increasingly used as an indicator of the environmental performance of agricultural sector in international and global context. However there still is a lack of harmony in the use of methods for estimating the nutrients balance among countries. This is because of the disagreement regarding the accuracy and uncertainty of different accounting methods. The lack of harmony in the methods used in different countries further increases the uncertainty in the context of the international comparisons. This paper provides a new framework for nutrients balance calculation using the farm-gate accounting method. The calculation under this new framework takes advantage of availability of data from FAO and other reliable national and international sources. Due to this, the proposed framework is highly adaptable in many countries, making the global comparison feasible. The paper also proposes three criteria including adaptability, accuracy and interpretability to assess the appropriateness of nutrients accounting method. Based on these criteria, the paper provides a comprehensive comparison of the farm-gate and soil-surface methods in accounting country-level nutrients balance of agricultural production. The paper identifies some shortcomings of the soil-surface balance and shows that the farm-gate method has a greater potential of providing a more accurate and meaningful estimation of national nutrients balance.

Assessing eco-environmental performance of agricultural production in OECD countries: combination of soil surface, soil system and farm gate methods of nutrient auditing

Nitrogen balance is increasingly used as an indicator of the environmental performance of agricultural sector in national, international, and global contexts. There are three main methods of accounting the national nitrogen balance: farm gate, soil surface, and soil system. OECD (2008) recently reported the nitrogen and phosphorus balances for member countries for the 1985 - 2004 period using the soil surface method. The farm gate and soil system methods were also used in some international projects. Some studies have provided the comparison among these methods and the conclusion is mixed. The motivation of this present paper was to combine these three methods to provide a more detailed auditing of the nitrogen balance and flows for national agricultural production. In addition, the present paper also provided a new strategy of using reliable international and national data sources to calculate nitrogen balance using the farm gate method. The empirical study focused on the nitrogen balance of OECD countries for the period from 1985 to 2003. The N surplus sent to the total environment of OECD surged dramatically in early 1980s, gradually decreased during 1990s but exhibited an increasing trends in early 2000s. The overall N efficiency however fluctuated without a clear increasing trend. The eco-environmental ranking shows that Australia and Ireland were the worst while Korea and Greece were the best.

Do instructional attributes pose multicollinearity problems? An empirical exploration

It is commonly perceived that variables ‘measuring’ different dimensions of teaching (construed as instructional attributes) used in student evaluation of teaching (SET) questionnaires are so highly correlated that they pose a serious multicollinearity problem for quantitative analysis including regression analysis. Using nearly 12000 individual student responses to SET questionnaires and ten key dimensions of teaching and 25 courses at various undergraduate and postgraduate levels for multiple years at a large Australian university, this paper investigates whether this is indeed the case and if so under what circumstances. This paper tests this proposition first by examining variance inflation factors (VIFs), across courses, levels and over time using individual responses; and secondly by using class averages. In the first instance, the paper finds no sustainable evidence of multicollinearity. While, there were one or two isolated cases of VIFs marginally exceeding the conservative threshold of 5, in no cases did the VIFs for any of the instructional attributes come anywhere close to the high threshold value of 10. In the second instance, however, the paper finds that the attributes are highly correlated as all the VIFs exceed 10. These findings have two implications: (a) given the ordinal nature of the data ordered probit analysis using individual student responses can be employed to quantify the impact of instructional attributes on TEVAL score; (b) Data based on class averages cannot be used for probit analysis. An illustrative exercise using level 2 undergraduate courses data suggests higher TEVAL scores depend first and foremost on improving explanation, presentation, and organization of lecture materials.Multicollinearity, variance inflation factor, instructional attributes, threshold, Australia

Teacher’s Performance in Improving Student Learning Outcomes at SDN 75 Bentang

This study aimed to determine the teachers' performance in improving student learning outcomes at SDN  75 Bentang and the inhibiting and supporting factors to improve the teachers' performance. This research method used a qualitative descriptive approach, meaning that the data collected was based on the actual conditions. The aim was to find real data directly with actual conditions. The results obtained from this study indicated that the description of teachers' performance was seen from a) educating, b) teaching, c) training, d) guiding, e) assessing and evaluating, and schools in improving the performance of educators, namely by making several efforts so that the goal of the achievement was successful. Such as by making efforts to establish good relationships with other educators and providing facilities and infrastructure based on the needs of educators. Evaluating and supervising the performance of educators directly, namely before and after carrying out the teaching and learning process. However, there were still several inhibiting and supporting factors. The inhibiting factor was the number of teachers with civil servant status was insufficient. Because some of the teachers were relatives, some tasks were managed properly between school assignments and outside of the school. The supporting factors in improving teachers' performance at SD Negeri 75 Bentang were the high sense of togetherness and kinship that existed in the school environment, the high willingness to learn from the educators and the high commitment of the principal to improving the performance of teachers at SD Negeri 75 Bentang. &nbsp

Faktor Penyebab Indisipliner Siswa Sekolah Menengah Pertama di Kota Palopo

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah  ingin mengetahui secara faktual mengenai faktor-faktor  sehingga peserta didik  sekolah menengah pertama di kota Palopo sehingga banyak diantara mereka melakukan tindakan indispliner di sekolah. Penelitian ini dilaksanakan pada dua sekolah  yaitu SMPN 8 dan  SMPN 5 Kota Palopo. Penelitian kulitatif ini menggunakan teknik observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi untuk memotret data perilaku siswa. Penelitian ini melibatkan kepala sekolah, wakil kepala sekolah bidang kesiswaan,  guru bimbingan konseling, dan beberapa wali kelas. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan, bahwa faktor-faktor penyebab sehingga peserta didik SMPN 8 dan peserta didik melakukan bolos sekolah secara umum ada dua yaitu faktor ekstern dan faktor intern. Faktor intern adalah karena;   pengaruh  teman, pagar sekolah yang mudah dilewati, kurangnya perhatian orang tua, peserta didik banyak begadang dimalam hari, seringnya guru terlambat masuk kelas. Sedangkan faktor intern adalah karena; kurangnya motivasi peserta didik untuk belajar, adanya mata pelajaran yang kurang disenangi, guru memberikan tugas pekerjaan yang terlalu banyak dan peserta didik banyak tidak memahaminya