GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES IN CHINA AND TAIWAN: DO THEY FOLLOW WAGNER¡¯S LAW?

This paper tests Wagner¡¯s Law for China and Taiwan, using annual time series data covering the period 1979-2002. To estimate the long-run relationship between government expenditures and output, we use a robust estimation method known as the Bounds Test based on Unrestricted Error Correction Model (UECM) estimation (Pesaran et al. (2001)). Empirical results from the Bounds Test indicate that there exists no long-run relationship between government expenditures and output in China and Taiwan. Furthermore, Toda and Yamamoto¡¯s (1995) Granger non-causality test results also show that Wagner¡¯s Law does not hold for China and Taiwan over this same period.Wagner¡¯s Law, UECM, Bounds Test

A Narrative Inquiry Into Chinese Pre-Service Teacher Education and Induction in Southwest China Through Cross-Cultural Teacher Development

This study was founded upon my 5-year intensive fieldwork as a graduate assistant in Dr. Shijing Xu’s Pre-service Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program (Xu, 2011b), a part of Xu and Connelly’s (2013) SSHRC Partnership Grant Project between Canada and China. The study adopted Connelly and Clandinin’s (1988) narrative research tradition to examine 4 participating Chinese teacher candidates’ cross-cultural learning and induction experiences. The investigation revealed transitions in the process of learning to teach via cross-cultural experiences. Through the lens of “three-dimensional inquiry space” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and “reciprocal learning in teacher education” (Xu, 2014), I explored experiential nuanced facets of participants’ cross-cultural learning experiences in Canada and stories of induction within various educational cultures in Southwest China. Field texts were collected through participant observation, participants’ reflective journals and portfolios submitted to the program during their 3-month stay in Canada, as well as interviews, debriefing notes, and participants’ observations at their schools after their return to China. The study illustrates an effective approach that fuses teacher education with cross-cultural experience. Both the benefits and challenges of this method of teacher education imply that this practice has significant potential in this interconnected world. Particular attention was paid to cross-cultural experiences’ influence on the dissonance of pedagogies, teacher-student relationships, socialization, and beliefs about teaching and learning that interweave global and national curriculum boundaries. Findings revealed that cross-cultural experiences provided beginning teachers with a global perspective that enabled them to reconsider the local situation, become reflective practitioners, and broaden their horizons. Participants’ notion of being good teachers is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture and is heavily influenced by their cross-cultural experiences in Canada. Findings also revealed how Chinese beginning teachers struggle to find their voice and to socialize among a range past practices, lived experiences, and cross-cultural experiences. In these competing narratives of Chinese and Western views, perspectives of what constitutes good teaching and school practices take on more than one level of meaning. It is important to consider Chinese teachers’ current practices as well as how such practices will continue to change and thus influence teaching reforms in the globalized world. The study also demonstrates features of Chinese teacher induction, such as flexibility of time to reflect, significant mentorship and guidance, and various organizational assistance. There is much to be gained from studying how one becomes a teacher both in Canada and China. Chinese teachers’ dedication to teaching and their efforts to improve socialization contribute to teaching and teacher education in the interconnected world

Combining Spot and Futures Markets: A Hybrid Market Approach to Dynamic Spectrum Access

Dynamic spectrum access is a new paradigm of secondary spectrum utilization and sharing. It allows unlicensed secondary users (SUs) to exploit opportunistically the under-utilized licensed spectrum. Market mechanism is a widely-used promising means to regulate the consuming behaviours of users and, hence, achieves the efficient allocation and consumption of limited resources. In this paper, we propose and study a hybrid secondary spectrum market consisting of both the futures market and the spot market, in which SUs (buyers) purchase under-utilized licensed spectrum from a spectrum regulator, either through predefined contracts via the futures market, or through spot transactions via the spot market. We focus on the optimal spectrum allocation among SUs in an exogenous hybrid market that maximizes the secondary spectrum utilization efficiency. The problem is challenging due to the stochasticity and asymmetry of network information. To solve this problem, we first derive an off-line optimal allocation policy that maximizes the ex-ante expected spectrum utilization efficiency based on the stochastic distribution of network information. We then propose an on-line VickreyCClarkeCGroves (VCG) auction that determines the real-time allocation and pricing of every spectrum based on the realized network information and the pre-derived off-line policy. We further show that with the spatial frequency reuse, the proposed VCG auction is NP-hard; hence, it is not suitable for on-line implementation, especially in a large-scale market. To this end, we propose a heuristics approach based on an on-line VCG-like mechanism with polynomial-time complexity, and further characterize the corresponding performance loss bound analytically. We finally provide extensive numerical results to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions.Comment: This manuscript is the complete technical report for the journal version published in INFORMS Operations Researc

A REEXAMINATION OF SOUTH KOREA¡¯S AGGREGATE IMPORT DEMAND FUNCTION: THE BOUNDS TEST ANALYSIS

This paper uses a robust estimation method referred to as the unrestricted error correction model - the bounds test analysis to re-analyze the long-term relationships between the demand for imports and it¡¯s determinants for South Korea over the period 1980-2000. Our results show that the volume of imports, income, and relative prices are all cointegrated. The estimated long-run (short-run) elasticities of import demand with respect to income and relative price are 1.86 (0.86) and -0.2 (-0.05), respectively. The major implication of our study is that neither monetary nor fiscal policies may be used as instruments to maintain the trade balance in South Korea¡¯s favor during this sample period.Aggregate Import Demand Function, UECM, Bounds Test Analysis

Spatial Planning and High-tech Development

High-tech development—which lies at the very heart of the processes of economic growth—has been recognised by many developed and developing countries as a strategic instrument to enhance and sustain their competitiveness in the global economic network. Although the concept of high-tech development differs between countries, many share the underlying assumption that the core of high-tech development is to create a sound environment where innovation thrives. This ideology implies a definite spatial dimension. As a result, various spatial strategies have been formulated and implemented to support high-tech development. This has had intentional and unintentional effects on the economy, society and space. Numerous studies have been devoted to exploring, analysing and theorising this global phenomenon. However, there has been less attention given to the role spatial planning may play in the process of high-tech development and to the factors that shape the spatial planning approaches to high-tech development in a particular place. The major objectives of this research are to advance the knowledge of the role of spatial planning in the process of high-tech development, and to establish an analytical framework that helps reveal the major institutional factors that shape spatial planning mechanisms for dealing with the spatial issues of high-tech development in different places. This contributes to the field of high-tech spatial policies transfer and lesson-drawing. In order to explore the major factors that shape the practices of spatial planning in hightech development, a comparative approach is applied in this research. The Eindhoven city-region in the Netherlands and the Hsinchu city-region in Taiwan are selected as case study areas. Both city-regions can be recognised as success stories of high-tech development not only on a national scale but also on a global scale, despite the fact that they apply different approaches. In the Eindhoven city-region, the governments act as supporters and governors. High-tech development in the city-region is a result of close collaboration between different levels of government and other parties. In contrast, in the Hsinchu city-region the governments act as providers in high-tech development. By critically reviewing relevant literature, the research begins with the identification of principal components of high-tech development and their spatial dimensions, and with the establishment of a set of comparative frameworks, which are built upon the concepts of institutionalism and previous comparative studies of spatial planning systems. On the basis of the frameworks, the comparative study is conducted. Four major conclusions are drawn in this research. First, R&D capital, relational capital and human capital can be identified as the principal components of high-tech development, but the conception of the principal components is not static. It may change through time and space, and be influenced by contemporary technological development and dominant discourses about high-tech development. Additionally, how governments in a particular place conceptualise the principal components will influence the content of their strategies for high-tech development. Second, how governments in a particular place use their spatial planning system and tools to conduct, facilitate and/or coordinate the development of high-tech spaces is influenced by the socio-political context (e.g. model of society, administration system and conceptualisation of rights in land), conceptualisation of the principal components, dominant style of spatial planning, but also by their historical roots and contemporary technological capacities. At the city-regional level, the particular culture characteristics and historical experience of a city-region also have effects on the approach to spatial governance. Third, it is common that governments recognise the necessity of collaborating with knowledge institutes and high-tech firms in the process of high-tech spatial development, because they have access to a wide range of know-how and crucial resources. The creation of new institutional arenas to invite institutes and firms to participate in the process of decision-making is a good strategy for governments, although they must assure that the decision-making process is transparent and accountable, and meets the principles of social justice. Finally, the two cases have shown that a successful high-tech spatial development would have spatial effects on the surrounding areas, such as traffic congestion, imbalance between land supply and demand for housing and/or industrial land, and so on. It is necessary to anticipate and monitor continuously the externalities of the development from a more comprehensive perspective and to leave room for adjustment to the spatial planning and governance approaches. The analytical framework built upon the institutional concepts of Ostrom and Scharpf worked well in this research, but in the process of conducting the empirical study I found that the framework of institutional analysis I established for the empirical study implied a temporarily fixed situation for analysis. Such a framework did create an easier situation for analysis, but proved difficult to use to investigate and explain the dynamic interrelationships between the changing institutional contexts and the decision making of high-tech spatial planning at a specific place and time. While considering this limitation, I adopted a diachronic approach to complement the empirical study of part three, in order to understand the influences of prior institutional developments and specific episodes on later policy/decision making and action taking. In the future, if other studies consider applying the frameworks of this research, the effect of historical path dependency has to be taken into consideration

Discourses of disability sport: Experiences of elite male and female athletes in Britain and Taiwan

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Disability sport has been a relatively under-researched area within the fields of both sport sociology and disability studies, in particular regarding countries outside the West. This comparative research, therefore, is an attempt to rectify the situation and make sense of the experiences of elite sportsmen and sportswomen with physical disabilities in Great Britain and Taiwan, specifically those who have represented their respective countries at the Paralympic Games or the Athletics and Power lifting World Championships. Through 21 in-depth interviews with a life history approach, the aim of the research has been to gain a greater understanding and provide as authentic an account as possible of the experiences of elite male and female athletes with disabilities - in particular, how they experience their bodies and construct, negotiate, and perform their identities in relation to their involvement in elite disability sport. This research also involves a critical analysis, set within the social model of disability and using a feminist perspective, of dominant medical model ideologies and discourses associated with disability, gender and sport in British and Taiwanese societies. It investigates how dominant ideologies and stereotypes produce disabling physical and social barriers that are manifest in various oppressive practices within social institutions and thus impinge on the lives, sporting experiences and the construction of identities of the research participants. In line with the emancipatory research framework adopted in this research, the elite disabled athletes are included in the research process as active participants who are experts in their own experiences, rather than as research objects.Funding from the Taiwanese Government and Dandao Culture Foundation are used in this study

Characterization of Structure and Function of SECA Domains

SecA is a central component of the general secretion system that is essential for growth and virulence of bacteria. A series of fluorescein analogs were tested against ATPase activities of Escherichia coli SecA. Rose Bengal (RB) and Erythrosin B are potent inhibitors abolishing the activities of three forms of SecA ATPase with IC50 in µM range. Both inhibit SecA intrinsic ATPase with two mechanisms depending on ATP concentrations, indicating they influence the two non-identical nucleotide binding sites differently. RB shows different inhibitory effects against three forms of SecA ATPase activities, suggesting that the inhibition is related to the conformation of SecA. RB with IC50 at sub-µM level is the most potent inhibitor of SecA ATPases and SecA-dependent protein translocation to date. The fluorescein analogs inhibit intrinsic ATPase of Bacillus subtilis SecA similarly, and also exhibit antibacterial effects in E. coli and B. subtilis. Our findings indicate the value of fluorescein analogs as probes for mechanistic studies of SecA and the potential development of new SecA-targeted antimicrobial agents. A series of SecA derivatives with truncated C-terminus within the first long α-helix of the helix-bundle extending the ATPase catalytic domain of N68 was analyzed. These SecA variants interact with lipids, and those containing the C-terminal portion of the long α-helix starting at residues #639 form the ring-like structure in liposomes, indicating the critical domains for forming the protein-conducting channel. The presence and length of the C-domain influence the response to RB of NBDII mutants and C-terminal truncates of SecA. Thus this region may interact with the inhibitors and is involved in the structure and regulation of SecA ATPase activity. B. subtilis SecA was analyzed for interspecies comparison. Despite sharing high homology, this SecA homolog cannot complement E. coli mutants with SecA defect. Phospholipids do not stimulate ATPase activities of B. subtilis SecA, but induce its conformational changes, leading to the lipid-specific domains and ring-like structures similar to E. coli SecA. These pore-ring structures may represent part of the protein-conducting channels. Therefore, the potential structural roles of SecA in the protein translocation machinery may be universal in both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria

Consumer Perceived Economic Value of Electronic Charts

This paper applies the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to derive the mean willingness to pay (WTP) for the chart information in electronic format by end users. A case study of the members of the Passenger Vessel Association (PVA) was conducted. The results show that on average a PVA Vessel member is willing to pay approximately US$700 per vessel just for the chart information in electronic format. The proposed evaluation methodology can be modified to assess WTP for electronic charts of other key users such as recreational boaters and larger cargo shipping companies so the overall benefits of electronic charts can be derived.Este articulo apfica ef Metoda Contingente de Vaforacion (CVM) para derivar fa vofuntad de pagar (WTP) promedio del usuario de fa informacion de cartas en formato efectronico. Se efectuo el estudio de un caso de fa Asociacion de Buques de Pasajeros (PVA) para demostrar fa metodologra. Se pidio a los miembros del buque de fa PVA. Los resultados muestran que, en promedio un buque miembro de fa PVA esta dispuesto a pagar aproximadamente$700 par buque solo par fa informacion de fa carta en formato electronico. La metodologra de vaforacion propuesta puede modificarse para evafuar ef WTP par las cartas electronicas de otros utifizadores clave como los navegantes de embarcaciones de recreo y las compantas navieras mayores, de manera que los beneficios generales de las cartas electronicas pueden derivarse.Get article applique fa methode d 'evaluation CVM (Contingent Valuation Method) afin de cafcufer fa vofonte de payer de l'utifisateur (WTP) moyenne pour fes informations cartographiques dans un format electronique. Une etude de cas ete menee a bien parmi fes membres de l'Association des navires a passagers (PVA). Les resuftats ant montre qu'en moyenne, un membre de fa PVA est pret a consacrer approximativement 700 $ par navire, uniquement pour disposer des informations cartographiques dans un format electronique. La methodologie d 'evafuation proposee peut etre modifiee pour evafuer fa WTP pour les cartes efectroniques d'autres utifisateurs ces comme fes pfaisanciers, et fes compagnies maritimes plus importantes afin de pouvoir calculer les benefices globaux des cartes electroniques