The Role of Family and Gender in the Transfer of and Returns to Human Capital

This dissertation explores the role of family and gender in understanding the disparities in human capital accumulation and corresponding disparities in labor market outcomes. The first chapter explores the relationship between workers’ wages and the gender of their supervisor, conditioning on the occupational gender composition. It develops a theoretical model suggesting that supervisors’ task assignment accuracy is affected disparately in occupations of different gender types, leading to varying degrees of skill mismatch among workers. This leads to average wage differences between workers with female supervisors and those with male supervisors in occupations of different gender types. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, the empirical evidence suggests that workers have better occupation-skill matches and higher average wages if they work with female supervisors in predominantly female occupations, compared to those with male supervisors; the opposite is true for workers in predominantly male occupations. Although not significant at the early career stage, supervisor wage effects emerge as a worker’s career develops. These findings emphasize the importance of supervisors’ task assignment accuracy in workplace gender wage disparity, and underscore the necessity of integrating minority managers to the “gendered” organizational contexts. The second chapter examines the extent to which children enter occupations that are different from their father’s occupation, but require similar skills, which we call task following. We distinguish between task followers and occupational followers, considering the possibility that fathers can transfer task specific human capital either through investments or genetic endowments to their children. We show that there is indeed substantial task following, beyond occupational following and that task following is associated with a wage premium of around 5% over otherwise identical workers employed in a job with the same primary task. The wage premium is robust to controls for industry, occupation categories and occupation characteristics. The premium is largest for followers in non-routine cognitive jobs and college graduates. Using a nationally representative sample, the third chapter sheds light on whether and how cadre parents affect their offspring\u27s labor market outcomes in China. On the one hand, individuals with a cadre parent tend to have higher promotion rates over those without a cadre parent. On the other hand, evidence does reveal a 10% cadre parent wage premium at the mean level, which is not attributable to individual, parental and occupational characteristics. Most of this premium can be explained by individual’s larger size of social networks and closer relations with government officials and people from the public owned enterprises. This suggests that social networks may be one of the mechanisms through which cadre parents benefit the labor market outcomes of the next generation

Rural Labor Absorption Efficiency in Urban Areas under Different Urbanization Patterns and Industrial Structures: The Case of China

In this paper, we use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate how well China’s urban areas absorb migrant workers under the interaction of urbanization and industrialization. We applied an output-oriented BCC model to evaluate provincial and regional rural labor absorption efficiency in mainland China. It appears that 4 out of 31 provinces and municipals are efficient, and 2 out of 8 economic regions are efficient in absorbing migrant workers. In the southern and eastern parts of China, urban labor absorption efficiency is higher compared with the western and northern parts of China. Different urbanization patterns and industrial development strategies should be adopted in different economic areas to enhance labor absorption ability in these areas. Urban areas in many parts of China still have potential to accommodate rural migrant workers. The inter-regional flow of production factors would affect urban labor absorption efficiency.rural labor absorption in urban areas, urbanization, industry structure, DEA

Research of Multi-Information Integration for the Aircraft Ground De-icing Monitoring System Based on GIS and GPRS

Aiming at solving the problem of information dispersed, hysteresis even lost in the process of aircraft ground concentrated de-icing which reduce the efficiency and safety of the aircraft ground de-icing. A multi-information integration system of the whole process of the aircraft ground concentrated de-icing is designed in this paper, which describes the architecture and the function of the information integration system, proposes the hardware structure and implementation of software of the database server and the monitoring terminal. The simulation results show that the system can collect and show the information of the whole process of aircraft ground de-icing properly and provide an efficient monitoring platform for aircraft ground de-icing

Generalized integrated importance measure for system performance evaluation: application to a propeller plane system

The integrated importance measure (IIM) evaluates the rate of system performance change due to a component changing from one state to another. The IIM simply considers the scenarios where the transition rate of a component from one state to another is constant. This may contradict the assumption of the degradation, based on which system performance is degrading and therefore the transition rate may be increasing over time. The Weibull distribution describes the life of a component, which has been used in many different engineering applications to model complex data sets. This paper extends the IIM to a new importance measure that considers the scenarios where the transition rate of a component degrading from one state to another is a time-dependent function under the Weibull distribution. It considers the conditional probability distribution of a component sojourning at a state is the Weibull distribution, given the next state that component will jump to. The research on the new importance measure can identify the most important component during three different time periods of the system lifetime, which is corresponding to the characteristics of Weibull distributions. For illustration, the paper then derives some probabilistic properties and applies the extended importance measure to a real-world example (i.e., a propeller plane system)

E-waste recycling in Beijing and the impact of China's WEEE directive: competition or collaboration between informal recyclers and authorized recycling enterprises?

This thesis traces the afterlives of used electronics after they are discarded by household consumers in Beijing and examines the roles of informal and formal sectors in discarded electronics recycling through following the commodity chain. In contrast to most mainstream narratives about China’s e-waste recycling, which almost all conclude with the need to crack down on the current informal e-waste sector and establish a new e-waste collection network controlled by government authorized processing facilities, I argue that the current informal sector has a sophisticated collection and reuse network and has found ways to collaborate with the formal e-waste recycling companies since 2012 when China’s WEEE directive and funding mechanism (Administrative Measures on Levy and Use of the Fund for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Treatment) came into enforcement. I establish this argument by showing how specific e-waste flows have changed and are currently managed between informal collectors to formal companies in Beijing. Prior to China’s WEEE enforcement, discarded electronics in Beijing had been collected, repaired, reused or dismantled by informal sector entrepreneurs since the 1990s. Following the implementation of the WEEE funding mechanism, certain appliances (in particular CRTs and washing machines) collected by the informal sector have gradually flowed to the formal e-waste disposal companies in Beijing and neighboring provinces. I conclude that the relationship between informal and formal sectors in handling China’s domestic discarded electronics is currently more one of collaboration than competition. Other important related findings include: 1) Informal e-waste collection and reuse businesses have been a vibrant part of environmental and economic activities in Beijing’s urbanization over the last 30 years. That sector’s salvaging of appliances for repair and reuse has extended the useful lives of tens of millions of electronic appliances and thereby made major contributions to resource conservation and sustainability. 2) The current ad hoc division of tasks, with the informal sector managing used electronics collection and sorting and formal companies managing end-of-life dismantling, has both economic and environmental benefits. By contrast, any attempts by formal e-waste companies to compete with the informal sector over residential collection have failed, and the formal companies remain almost comically ignorant regarding the economics and skills required for collection/sorting. 3) The biggest obstacles facing the informal discarded electronics sector are urban planning and policing policies that make their working and living conditions unstable, economically precarious, and at times dangerous. In this way, Beijing municipal policy undermines a sector that contributes greatly to resource conservation and pollution reduction of pollution. 4) The discarded electronic trade provides a clear picture of current trends in appliance manufacturing that are accelerating habits of disposal which are counter to environmental sustainability. A key policy suggestion derived from my research is that, if the government’s aim is to limit resource waste and maximize environmental sustainability, it should formulate standards requiring OEMs to design longer lasting appliances paired with policies incentivizing repair and reuse. 5) My research reveals that trade in imported used electronics into China is not as massive as many reports have claimed, but it is significant for particular types of devices and products. It is crucial to note that the flow of products is not simply from OECD countries into China; significant flows move out of China and into other countries, including ones in Africa. 6) Authorized e-waste recycling companies’ supplies mainly rely on the informal sector’s work. My research reveals that their relationships are more cooperation than competition. More and more would-be dismantled e-waste is sent to the formal sector after collected by the informal sector

Online Channels and Store Brands: Strategic Interactions

This study examines the strategic interactions between the online channel strategies of a national brand manufacturer and the store brand strategies of a retailer. We develop a game-theoretical model in which a manufacturer makes channel choices, a retailer selects product lines, and both need to take the other’s strategy into consideration. We compare the results with cases where no interactions are involved to explicate how the manufacturer’s online channel choice affects the retailer’s store brand strategy, and vice versa. The results suggest that the retailer executes a more defensive strategy if the threat of the online channel is severe but tends to be cooperative when the threat is less alarming. The manufacturer, however, would rather give up its efficient online channel to act cooperatively when the store brand is introduced. Our findings explain certain stylized facts regarding supply chain coordination

Risk Assessment of Nautical Navigational Environment Based on Grey Fixed Weight Cluster

In order to set up a mathematical model suitable for nautical navigational environment risk evaluation and systematically master the navigational environment risk characteristics of the Qiongzhou Strait in a quantitative way, a risk assessment model with approach steps is set up based on the grey fixed weight cluster (GFWC). The evaluation index system is structured scientifically through both literature review and expert investigation. The relative weight of each index is designed to be obtained via fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP); Index membership degree of every grey class is proposed to be achieved by fuzzy statistics (FS) to avoid the difficulty of building whiten weight functions. By using the model, nautical navigational environment risk of the Qiongzhou Strait is determined at a “moderate” level according to the principle of maximum membership degree. The comprehensive risk evaluation of the Qiongzhou Strait nautical navigational environment can provide theoretical reference for implementing targeted risk control measures. It shows that the constructed GFWC risk assessment model as well as the presented steps are workable in case of incomplete information. The proposed strategy can excavate the collected experts’ knowledge mathematically, quantify the weight of each index and risk level, and finally lead to a comprehensive risk evaluation result. Besides, the adoptions of probability and statistic theory, fuzzy theory, aiming at solving the bottlenecks in case of uncertainty, will give the model a better adaptability and executability.</p