Human Capital: Parental Aspirations, Ethnic Differences and Crime

This thesis comprises three empirical papers. Using various econometric techniques, each paper examines different aspects of human capital. These aspects vary from determinants of human capital to heterogeneity in human capital, and to non-economic benefit of human capital. The objective of this thesis is to obtain a better understanding about issues related human capital and education in developing countries, in particular Indonesia and Vietnam. The first research paper examines the role of parental academic aspirations for a child in determining the allocation of the child’s time. Parental academic aspirations are included in a theoretical model of household utility maximization to assess how they affect the child’s optimal time allocation. Then, an empirical analysis is conducted to verify the effect of parental aspirations on a child’s hours of study and work by using data from the 2006 and 2014 Vietnam Young Lives Survey. The instrumental variable approach is adopted to address a problem related to the simultaneity of decision making process and endogeneity of parental aspirations. Both the theoretical and empirical results show that parental academic aspirations are positively associated with the child’s hours of study and negatively associated with the child’s hours of work. The second research paper seeks to understand the reasons for the ethnic gaps in education outcomes, measured by enrolment rate, schooling progress and test scores, in Vietnam. The examination employs Probit and multilevel regression models, and associated decomposition techniques. The estimation results suggest that the factors mainly driving the poor performance at school of minority children are not their own internal attributes, but disadvantages related to the external determinants. The decomposition results show that the gap in enrolment is mostly explained by household characteristics. However, all child, household and commune attributes significantly contribute to the gap in schooling progress. The test score gaps are attributable to a broader set of variables such as parent’s education, the use of the Vietnamese language, peer and school characteristics. The third paper identifies the causal effect of education on property crime at the district level in Indonesia over the period 2007–2012. Both dynamics of crime and endogeneity of education are taken into accounted by applying difference generalized method of moments. The results show that more educated neighbourhoods experience less crime. Secondary and higher education play a particularly important role in crime reduction. Effects are more pronounced for crimes reported by males than females. One mechanism seems to be that there are fewer opportunities for engaging in criminal behaviour when one is in school. Extreme poverty appears to weaken the extent to which education reduces crime

New Blind Muti-signature Schemes based on ECDLP

In various types of electronic transactions, including election systems and digital cash schemes, user anonymity and authentication are always required. Blind signatures are considered the most important solutions to meeting these requirements. Many studies have focused on blind signature schemes; however, most of the studied schemes are single blind signature schemes. Although blind multi-signature schemes are available, few studies have focused on these schemes. In this article, blind multi-signature schemes are proposed based on the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP). The proposed schemes are based on the GOST R34.10-2012 digital signature standard and the EC-Schnorr digital signature scheme, and they satisfy blind multi-signature security requirements and have better computational performance than previously proposed schemes. The proposed schemes can be applied in election systems and digital cash schemes

A decade of _Publications_ in the field of scholarly communication

From 2013 to July 2022, Publications contributed 322 documents in 10 volumes to the field of scholarly communication, with more than 71% of its papers published in the last five years

Urban residents’ support for biodiversity conservation starts from childhood!

Protecting rare native species in protected areas is not enough to assist biodiversity conservation; establishing green spaces in urban areas for children to engage with and learn about nature (animal, plant) is also a more sustainable choice since it helps build up an eco-surplus culture among urban residents

Urban residents’ support for biodiversity conservation starts from childhood!

Information absorbed from the external environment during childhood is likely to significantly affect the formation of attitudes because the children’s minds still have not been filled up with many beliefs, convictions, and prejudices

Whether or not the informal economy as an engine for poverty alleviation in Vietnam

This paper examines impacts of income from informal employment and informal sector employment on poverty in Vietnam to define whether the informal economy is an accelerator or a decelerator of poverty. Using data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, we find that although income from informal sources does not account for a large proportion to total income of the poor households in comparison with the non-poorhouseholds, it significantly contributes to poverty reduction. Without earnings from informal sources, 33.4 per cent of the surveyed households in 2010 live under the poverty line and this rate is only 10.34 per cent if informal income is added up. Both probit and quantile analysis affirms that informal earnings significantly mitigate poverty. Interesting findings from quantile regression are that informal earnings have divergent effects across distribution of household income. Particularly, it is a factor reducing poverty in poor households but it negatively affects the economic capacity of the rich households. The policy implication derived from empirical results is that poverty program should be associated with supporting policy for informal employees with low income so that they can improve their living standards

Whether or not the informal economy as an engine for poverty alleviation in Vietnam

This paper examines impacts of income from informal employment and informal sector employment on poverty in Vietnam to define whether the informal economy is an accelerator or a decelerator of poverty. Using data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, we find that although income from informal sources does not account for a large proportion to total income of the poor households in comparison with the non-poorhouseholds, it significantly contributes to poverty reduction. Without earnings from informal sources, 33.4 per cent of the surveyed households in 2010 live under the poverty line and this rate is only 10.34 per cent if informal income is added up. Both probit and quantile analysis affirms that informal earnings significantly mitigate poverty. Interesting findings from quantile regression are that informal earnings have divergent effects across distribution of household income. Particularly, it is a factor reducing poverty in poor households but it negatively affects the economic capacity of the rich households. The policy implication derived from empirical results is that poverty program should be associated with supporting policy for informal employees with low income so that they can improve their living standards

Bacteria associated with soft coral from Mot island - Nha Trang bay and their antimicrobial activities

Microbial communities associated with invertebrates had been considered as a new source of bioactive compounds. The soft coral associated bacteria in Mot island, Nha Trang bay were isolated, extracted and assessed for antagonistic activity against human and coral pathogens, the strongly active strains were identified by 16S rRNA analysis. The soft coral associated bacterium SCN10 had abcd antibacterial pattern which was named for inhibition towards Bacillus subtilis (pattern a), Escherichia coli (pattern b), Salmonella typhimurium (pattern c) and Serratia marcescens (pattern d). It was the nearest strain to the well-known antibiotic producer Bacillus amyloliquefaciens with 99% sequence similarity. Whereas strain SCL19 had abde pattern which means inhibition of the growth of B. subtilis, E. coli, S. marcescens and Vibrio parahaemolyticus (pattern e). This strain SCL19 affiliated with Bacillus sp. strain A-3-23B with 99.8% identity. In addition to antimicrobial activity to the aforementioned tested bacteria, the isolate SCX15 also inhibited Vibrio alginolyticus (pattern f) and Candida albicans (pattern g), so this isolate possessed abcdefg antimicrobial pattern. The coral associated isolate SCX15 was identified as Bacillus velezensis with 99% sequence similarity. Among the 78 screened strains, 25 isolates possessed antibacterial activity against at least one of seven tested microorganisms and exhibited 12 different types of antimicrobial activities, suggesting that they can produce many different natural substances with antibacterial activity

The Mediating Effects of Switching Costs on the Relationship between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: A Study in Retail Banking Industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Especially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights into their roles. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty

The mediating effects of switching costs on the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty: A study in retail banking industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Specially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights about their roles. This approach extended the insights on mediating effects of switching costs by differentiate the roles of positive switching costs and negative switching costs in the model. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261 valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty. However, using the right types of switching costs is necessary to significantly boost the loyalty from customers. © ExcelingTech Pub, UK