Verifiable wage offers and recontracting: effect on wage and consumption profiles

Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of recontracting and matching verifiable wage offers on the intertemporal structure of contract wage and consumption profile for a two-period economy. A contract firm provides specific training for a worker during the first period, which increases his productivity if he stays in the second period, but the worker may quit to accept an alternative wage offer after a successful search. Wage offers are private to the worker but can be presented to the contract firm for matching. This paper shows that when capital markets are imperfect and wage offers are verifiable, the contract firm recontracts and matches any wage offers the worker receives up to the second-period productivity. The ex ante contract wage profile will be flat. Inefficient quits will be eliminated and there will be complete ex ante consumption smoothing. It is significant to note that the result of rising wage profile derived in numerous contract models is fragile with respect to assumptions on mechanism of interfirm labor mobility.

淺析蠶神神話演變: 比較《搜神記》〈女化蠶〉、《中華古今注》〈程雅問蠶〉及《原化傳拾遺》〈蠶女〉

《搜神記》中〈女化蠶〉是推原神話，據袁珂的解釋，推原「就是推尋事物本源的意思」。而女化蠶神話則以女子化蠶之變形，推尋民間所信奉的蠶神——馬頭娘的來源。蠶神馬頭娘由蠶演化為神之故事經歷了一個漫長的演化過程，而記載蠶神之神話數量亦多。本文將選取《搜神記》〈女化蠶〉、《中華古今注》〈程雅問蠶〉和《原化傳拾遺》〈蠶女〉作比較，對比當中蠶神的形象、蠶演化為神之過程和原因，以及其所反映之文化意義，淺析蠶神神話的演變

The development of universal retirement policy in Hong Kong : a study of political and administrative dynamics

published_or_final_versionPolitics and Public AdministrationMasterMaster of Public Administratio

How Ontologies Can Help in an eMarketplace

Recently, ontologies have been developed in various business domains with the recent maturing of the Semantic Web technologies. However, ontology-related researches have largely focused on the facilitation of successful matchmaking but not much on traders’ requirement elicitation and potential negotiations in e-marketplaces. Because ontology provides the key knowledge about the inter-relationships among the issues and alternatives of the traders’ requirements, we show how to elicit trade requirements, alternatives, and tradeoff from an agreed ontology. This facilitates the whole business process of the e-marketplace, from matchmaking, recommendation, to negotiation. We further propose a novel methodology for the elicitation of dependencies among traders’ requirements for the formulation of an effective decision plan. As a result, traders can have a better cognition of their requirements and the overall operations of the e-marketplace can be streamlined

Effect of Tumor Necrosis Factor Family Member LIGHT (TNFSF14) on the Activation of Basophils and Eosinophils Interacting with Bronchial Epithelial Cells

Allergic asthma can cause airway structural remodeling, involving the accumulation of extracellular matrix and thickening of smooth muscle. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family ligand LIGHT (TNFSF14) is a cytokine that binds herpesvirus entry mediator (HVEM)/TNFRSF14 and lymphotoxin β receptor (LTβR). LIGHT induces asthmatic cytokine IL-13 and fibrogenic cytokine transforming growth factor-β release from allergic asthma-related eosinophils expressing HVEM and alveolar macrophages expressing LTβR, respectively, thereby playing crucial roles in asthmatic airway remodeling. In this study, we investigated the effects of LIGHT on the coculture of human basophils/eosinophils and bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cells. The expression of adhesion molecules, cytokines/chemokines, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) was measured by flow cytometry, multiplex, assay or ELISA. Results showed that LIGHT could significantly promote intercellular adhesion, cell surface expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1, release of airway remodeling-related IL-6, CXCL8, and MMP-9 from BEAS-2B cells upon interaction with basophils/eosinophils, probably via the intercellular interaction, cell surface receptors HVEM and LTβR on BEAS-2B cells, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase, p38 mitogen activated protein kinase, and NF-κB signaling pathways. The above results, therefore, enhance our understanding of the immunopathological roles of LIGHT in allergic asthma and shed light on the potential therapeutic targets for airway remodeling

The Moderating Effect of Different Types of Internet Use on the Relationship between Transitional Aging Changes and Self-esteem of Older Adults

This study investigates the moderating effect of different types of Internet use regarding the relationship between three transitional aging changes and self-esteem of older adults. The current paper is still in progress; this is a research-in-progress paper. An aging population increases government expenditures and family responsibilities, thus drawing more attention from the academic community. Recent research posits that self-esteem tends to decline in individuals from the ages around 50-65 due to role loss, social loss, and dissatisfaction resulting from unaccomplished life goals. To address this issue, previous studies considered that the general use of the Internet may help to enhance self-esteem among older adults. To fill this research gap, the present study proposes that the cultural use of the Internet could moderate role loss of older adults, while social use of the Internet could mitigate social loss. Furthermore, economic use could moderate the dissatisfaction of unfulfilled life goals. Regarding various theoretical contributions, this is the first study to apply different types of Internet use, so as to investigate its moderating effect concerning the relationship between transitional aging changes and self-esteem. Findings of the present study can also help shed light on interventions for the caregiver in both community centers and the domestic environment to moderate the decline of self-esteem among older adults. The data will be collected through surveys distributed to District Elderly Community Centers (DECCs) in Hong Kong. Multiple regression analysis will then be utilized to test the moderating effect of each type of Internet use

Co-pyrolysis of Chlorella vulgaris with plastic wastes: Thermal degradation, kinetics and Progressive Depth Swarm-Evolution (PDSE) neuro network-based optimization

The search of sustainable route for biofuel production from renewable biomass have garnered wide interest to seek for various routes without compromising the environment. Co-pyrolysis emerges as a promising thermochemical route that can improve the pyrolysis output from simultaneously processing more than two feedstocks in an inert atmosphere. This paper focuses on the kinetic modeling and neuro-evolution optimization in the application of catalytic co-pyrolysis of microalgae and plastic waste using HZSM-5 supported on limestone (HZSM-5/LS), in which co-pyrolysis of binary mixture of microalgae and plastic wastes (i.e. High-Density Polyethylene and Low-Density Polyethylene) was investigated over different heating rates. The results have shown a positive synergistic effect between the microalgae and polyethylene in which the apparent activation energies values have reduced significantly ( 20 kJ/mol) compared to that obtained by pyrolysis of individual microalgae component. The kinetic models reflect that the mixture of microalgae and Low-Density Polyethylene for use as co-pyrolysis feedstock requires activation energy that is 23% and 13% lower compared to that required by pure microalgae and the mixture of microalgae and High-Density Polyethylene, respectively. The Progressive Depth Swarm-Evolution (PDSE) was used for neural architecture search, which subsequently provided optimal reaction condition at 873 K can achieve 99.6 % of degradation rate using a tri-combination of LDPE (0.13 %) + HDPE (0.77 %) + MA (0.11 %) in the presence of HZSM-5/LS catalyst