Public Administration Reform in a Transitional Economy: Case of Vietnam

This paper examines Vietnam’s institutional debates and reforms during 1987-1997. It maintains that the country has started “renovation process” due to the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Identification and analysis of the problems and challenges show that the prescription for economic reforms cannot be effectively carried out without an efficient administrative capacity to manage the change.governance

Public Administration Reform in a Transitional Economy: Case of Vietnam

This paper examines Vietnam’s institutional debates and reforms during 1987-1997. It maintains that the country has started “renovation process” due to the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Identification and analysis of the problems and challenges show that the prescription for economic reforms cannot be effectively carried out without an efficient administrative capacity to manage the change.governance

Lazy stochastic principal component analysis

Stochastic principal component analysis (SPCA) has become a popular dimensionality reduction strategy for large, high-dimensional datasets. We derive a simplified algorithm, called Lazy SPCA, which has reduced computational complexity and is better suited for large-scale distributed computation. We prove that SPCA and Lazy SPCA find the same approximations to the principal subspace, and that the pairwise distances between samples in the lower-dimensional space is invariant to whether SPCA is executed lazily or not. Empirical studies find downstream predictive performance to be identical for both methods, and superior to random projections, across a range of predictive models (linear regression, logistic lasso, and random forests). In our largest experiment with 4.6 million samples, Lazy SPCA reduced 43.7 hours of computation to 9.9 hours. Overall, Lazy SPCA relies exclusively on matrix multiplications, besides an operation on a small square matrix whose size depends only on the target dimensionality.Comment: To be published in: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW

Application of geographic Information system and remote sensing in multiple criteria analysis to identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation in Vietnam

There has been an increasing need for methods to define priority areas for biodiversity conservation since the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation in protected areas planning depends on available resources (human resources and funds) for the conservation. The identification of priority areas requires the integration of biodiversity data together with social data on human pressures and responses. However, the deficit of comprehensive data and reliable methods are key challenges in zoning where the demand for conservation is most urgent and where the outcomes of conservation strategies can be maximized. In order to fill this gap, the environmental model Pressure–State–Response (PSR) was applied to suggest a set of criteria to identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation. The empirical data have been compiled from 185 respondents, categorizing into three main groups: Governmental Administration, Research Institutions, and Protected Areas in Vietnam, by using a well-designed questionnaire. Then, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) theory was used to identify the weight of all criteria. These results show that three main factors could identify the priority level for biodiversity conservation: Pressure, State, and Response, with weights of 41%, 26%, and 33%, respectively. Based on the three factors, seven criteria and 17 sub-criteria were developed to determine priority areas for biodiversity conservation. In addition, this study also indicates that the groups of Governmental Administration and Protected Areas put a focus on the “Pressure” factor while the group of Research Institutions emphasized the importance of the “Response” factor in the evaluation process. Then these suggested criteria were applied by integrating with Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) to define priority areas for biodiversity conservation in a particular conservation area (Pu Luong-Cuc Phuong area) in Vietnam. The results also reveal the proportion of very high and high priority areas, accounting for 84.9%, 96%, and 65.9% for Cuc Phuong National Park, Pu Luong Nature Reserve, and Ngoc Son Ngo Luong Nature Reserve, respectively. Based on these results, recommendations were provided to apply the developed criteria for identifying priority areas for biodiversity conservation in Vietnam.:Acknowledgement I Abstract III Table of contents IV List of figures VI List of tables X Acronyms and Abbreviations XII Chapter 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Problem statement and motivation 1 1.2. Research objectives and questions 2 1.3. Study contribution 3 1.4. Thesis structure 6 Chapter 2. Literature review 8 2.1. Background information on Vietnam 8 2.2. Environmental Pressure-State-Response model 11 2.3. Defining criteria for biodiversity conservation 13 2.4. Application of GIS and RS for biodiversity conservation 16 Chapter 3. Research methodology 19 3.1. Study areas 19 3.2. Data collection 23 3.3. Analytic Hierarchy Process 25 3.4. Remote Sensing 27 3.5. Geography Information System 35 3.6. Climate change scenarios 40 Chapter 4. Establishment of criteria 42 4.1. Summary of responses 44 4.2. Statistic of pairwise comparison 46 4.3. Weights of criteria based on all respondents 48 4.4. Weights of criteria based on groups 60 Chapter 5. Application of Criteria 64 5.1. Mapping criteria 64 5.2. Synthesis of multiple criteria 144 Chapter 6. Conclusions and recommendations 158 6.1. Establishment of criteria 158 6.2. Application of criteria 161 6.3. Recommendations 165 References 167 Appendix I. Questionnaire 197 Appendix II. Establishment of criteria 207 Appendix III. Application of criteria 23

STUDYING AND APPLYING THE EFFECT OF WHIRLING AIR STREAM IN ESTABLISHING CENTRIPETAL WET-FILTER PRINCIPLE

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

“Choice and voice”: elementary teachers’ perceptions of the influence of Edcamps on their professional practice

Created by a group of educators in 2009, Edcamps are “free, voluntary, participant-driven” unconferences for educators to informally learn from one another (Carpenter & Linton, 2016, p. 97). Since the first Edcamp in 2010, over 700 Edcamps have been held across the United States and in 25 total countries (Edcamp Foundation, 2016). In spite of the viral, organic growth of Edcamps and the extensive research literature on the need for high-quality teacher professional development (PD), almost no empirical research exists on this model of teacher PD. As a result, education stakeholders have little understanding of the possible value and influence of Edcamps on teachers’ professional practice. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study was to explore U.S. public elementary teachers’ perceptions of their Edcamp experiences and how, if at all, their Edcamp experiences influenced their professional practice, specifically in the areas of student instruction, peer collaboration, and teacher leadership. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the twelve study participants. During the second of these interviews, participants shared and discussed artifacts demonstrating the influence of Edcamps on their professional practice. A total of 68 unique artifacts were collected and examined from among all participants. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the interview data revealed that all twelve teachers perceived that their Edcamp experiences were legitimate, high-quality PD. All teachers also perceived that their Edcamp experiences had influenced their professional practice in at least one of the following areas: student instruction, peer collaboration, and teacher leadership. Teachers spoke of applying the discrete knowledge and skills that they had learned during Edcamp sessions as well as applying the format and beliefs of the Edcamp model of PD itself to their professional practice. Based on teachers’ interview responses, three major factors contributed to whether Edcamps influenced teachers’ professional practice: teachers’ motivations, colleague support, and administrator support. Additionally, all participants stated that teachers should have greater choice and voice in their PD. The findings of this study may inform future studies about Edcamps and, more generally, teacher-driven PD. Recommendations for practice and future research are discussed

Essays on post-crisis fiscal policy

This thesis comprises of four essays on fiscal policy and fiscal policy adjustment. The first of these essays, Chapter 2, reviews a wide range of literature about fiscal policy. This chapter also discusses the sudden stop and fiscal policy during sudden stops episodes. Chapter 3 constructs a simple dynamic deterministic model to study how the speed of adjustment to a sustainable level of debt affects economic welfare. The simulation results in Chapter 3 suggest that in order to bring the level of external debt to a sustainable level as required by foreign lenders, the small open economy will attempt to delay adjustment as long as possible. Chapter 4 uses a Structural Vector Autoregression Model to estimate government consumption multipliers for groups of countries. The empirical results suggest that: (i) The higher degree of financial openness, the larger the government consumption multiplier. (ii) The government consumption multiplier is significantly bigger in countries with higher levels of external debt. (iii) The higher the level of financial development, the smaller the government consumption multiplier. (iv) The government consumption multiplier in countries with fixed exchange rates seems to be bigger than in countries with a flexible exchange rate regime. Chapter 5 of this thesis analyses four case study countries including Greece, Latvia, Pakistan and Turkey. This chapter finds that fiscal policy choice varies across countries because there are many possible determinants for this. It will also be determined that all factors including the level of public debt, level of external debt and monetary policy, especially exchange rate regime, affects the fiscal policy choice of each country. Furthermore, Chapter 5 also points out that political economy can influence fiscal policy directly and indirectly