Technology, Trade Specialization and Development: Jumping to Technology Development Era

Developing countries often are characterized as producers and exporters of a few types of natural resource based goods. Intuition dictates that these countries should change their strategy from being merely merchandise producers to technology developers in order to experience higher level of development. Hence, the study analyses the effect of technology production and export specialization on the per capita income and growth of some countries in West and East Asia and the Pacific and investigates their behavior in this regard. Moreover, some recommendations are drawn for East- West Asian economic relationships from these results.Technology, International Trade, Development, Comparative Advantage

Investment Under Uncertainty: A Theory

There must be a restricted time horizon within which investors trust their anticipations in an uncertain condition. In this circumstance investors are concerned about what happens if the worst condition (i.e. decreasing prices) occurs. A best-worst strategy in a discounted payback period framework is applied to examine the effect of uncertainty on the time horizon and investment. The model shows that increasing uncertainty will reduce the time horizon as well as investment. Moreover, the calculated time horizon can be considered as a benchmark for the adjusted payback period approach in finance.Uncertainty, Investment, Discounted payback period, best-worst strategy

Predicting Dynamic Capacity Curve of Elevated Water Tanks: A Pushover Procedure

Despite the importance of water tanks for water supplies and supporting the community resilience through the firefighting usages in catastrophic conditions, post-earthquake situations especially, a few studies have been done on seismic behavior of water tanks so far. The scope of this paper is to propose a new pushover procedure to evaluate seismic responses of elevated water tanks (EWT) supported on the concrete shaft in the form of dynamic capacity curves (i.e. base shear versus top displacement). In this regard, a series of shaft supported EWTs are simulated considering soil-structure and fluid-structure interactions. The shaft is modelled with frame elements and plastic hinges are assigned along the shaft to consider the material nonlinearity. The effect of soil-structure interaction and fluid-structure interaction are considered through the well-known Cone model and modified Housner model, respectively. At first, parametric studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of various essential parameters such as soil type, water level and tank capacity on seismic responses of EWTs using incremental dynamic analysis (i.e. nonlinear-time-history-analyses with varying intensities). Thereafter, pushover analyses as nonlinear static analyses are performed by variation of lateral load patterns. Finally, utilizing these results and comparing them with mean IDA curve, as an exact solution; a pushover procedure based on the most reliable lateral load patterns is proposed to predict the mean IDA curve of the EWTs supported on the concrete shaft. The obtained results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed pushover procedure with errors limited to 30 % only in the changing stage from linear to nonlinear sections of the IDA curve

Uncertainty and investment in private sector: An analytical argument and a review of the economy of Iran

The initial theories of investment have emphasized the role of reduction of interest rate and increase in output for encouraging private investment. But there are ample grounds for doubting these theories. As a result, researchers have recently emphasized the importance of uncertainty in determining the private rate of investment. As different theories give various results with respect to their assumptions, a new theory of investment under uncertainty is explained in this study. Intuition is that investors use the best worst strategy instead of maximization of expected returns in an uncertain environment. There must be a time horizon within which entrepreneurs can rely on information and assess their projects. This time horizon is compared with adjusted payback period of projects. Projects with longer adjusted payback period will be rejected. Among the viable projects, a project with shorter adjusted payback period is preferable. The more is the uncertainty about the future, the shorter the horizon within which information can be trusted. Twenty-three factors relating to uncertainty are classified into three different categories: changes in policies and macroeconomic outcomes, the quality of public governance and socio- political institutions and conflicts. A panel data method is applied to examine the effect of these factors on the private investment rate. Among the macroeconomic factors, uncertainty relating to exchange rate distortion, terms of trade, growth and trade have significant negative effect on the private investment rate. The effect of other factors (i.e. uncertainty about credit to private sector, inflation and real interest rate) on the rate of private investment is insignificant. Among the socio-political institutions and conflict factors the negative effect of civil war, purges, coups and constitutional changes cannot be rejected. There is not enough evidence that other measures of socio-political uncertainty (i.e. democracy, revolutions, inequality, assassinations, strikes and riots) have a significant impact on the private investment rate. However I cannot reject the positive effect of war on the private investment rate. Among the indices of the quality of public governance, there is not enough evidence to reject the hypothesis that worsening condition of regulatory burden, rule of law and property rights will reduce the private investment rate. However, the hypothesis of negative effect of government contribution in economy on the private investment rate can be rejected. Surprisingly, the effect of control of corruption on the private investment rate is quite negative and significant.Investment, Private Sector, Uncertainty, Panel Data

Exploring Teachers’ Assessment Literacy: Impact on Learners’ Writing Achievements and Implications for Teacher Development

Teacher-mediated classroom assessment might have significant impacts on learners’ academic achievements and teachers’ development. The current study investigated teachers’ assessment literacy and its impact on their current assessment practices and learners’ writing outcomes. The study sought to gain an understanding of the extent to which teachers’ assessment literacy affects their practices and their learners’ outcomes. To conduct the study and gather the required data, the researchers employed teachers’ assessment literacy inventory, semi-structured interview, non-participatory observation, and Writing Competence Rating Scale (WCRS). Ten male EFL instructors and 75 male sophomores from Iranian EFL contexts were selected from four language schools in Iran. The results of the study indicated that teachers’ assessment literacy has a statistically significant impact on learners’ writing achievements and teachers’ assessment awareness leads teaching environments into effective and motivated assessment design. These findings suggest language educators considering teachers’ assessment awareness in their teacher education programs

Metafora Konseptual dalam Konferensi Pers Program Kerja Gubernur Tokyo Yuriko Koike di Televisi

Abstract The purpose of this research is to determine the conceptual metaphor from Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike’s press conference on television through cognitive semantic analysis. The method used in this research is the descriptive qualitative method. The data for this research were derived from a press conference from Yuriko Koike who was re-elected for the second time as Tokyo governor and classified based on conceptual metaphor theory from Lakoff and Johnson. As the result, there are 15 data of structural metaphor, 3 data of orientational metaphor, and 5 data of ontology metaphor. The conceptual meanings found in this research are related to the government such as economy, government system, work plans, and government priorities. There also found some conceptual meanings related to disease and fight. Keywords: conceptual metaphor, cognitive semantic, utterance Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan metafora konseptual dalam konferensi pers program kerja gubernur Tokyo, Yuriko Koike di televisi dengan analisis semantik kognitif. Metode yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah metode deskriptif kualitatif. Data pada penelitian ini diperoleh dari konferensi pers pemaparan program kerja yang disampaikan oleh gubernur Tokyo, Yoriko Koike yang kembali terpilih untuk kedua kalinya. Data kemudian dianalisis dan digolongkan berdasarkan jenis metafora konseptualnya berdasarkan teori oleh Lakoff dan Johnson. Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah ditemukan lima belas data metafora struktural, tiga data metafora orientasional, dan lima data metafora struktural. Makna konseptual yang ditemukan berkaitan dengan pemerintahan seperti perekonomian, sistem pemerintahan, program kerja, dan prioritas pemerintah. Selain itu juga ditemukan makna konseptual penyakit dan pertarungan. Kata kunci: metafora konseptual, semantik kognitif, tutura

PENGGUNAAN POLA KALIMAT KAGIRI DAN KAGIRI DA DALAM BAHASA JEPANG (ANALISIS STRUKTUR DAN MAKNA)

The purpose of this research is to find the way of using kagiri and kagiri da as sentence patterns in Japanese. The type of this research is qualitative research with descriptive method. The data was taken from Japanese online news website, Asahi Shinbun which published on early December 2020 that contain sentences that using kagiri and kagiri da sentence pattern. There are 21 data gathered from Asahi Shinbun, and based on the part of speech that formed with kagiri and kagiri da sentence pattern, there are ten data were classified as noun, nine data were classified as verb, and 2 data classified as adjective. The kagiri sentence pattern used as conjunction when formed with noun and verd with semantic meaning as “while” with certain condition or terms, and used as suffix when formed with noun which containing number or time with semantic meaning of limitation of something. While the kagiri da sentence pattern only formed with adjectives and always in the end of the sentence with semantic meaning of describing a certain level of the speaker feelings. The kagiri sentence pattern have a lot of variations such as formed with joshi in ni kagiri pattern, ni kagitte pattern, and ni kagiru pattern. The further research through another data source such as corpus may needed to find another purpose of this sentence pattern. Keywords: syntax, semantic, verb, kagiri, kagiri d

The Impacts of Post-task Activities on Iranian EFL Learners’ Reading Achievements

As learners’ proficiency is more important than their abstract knowledge of the language rules, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is of crucial values today. Task-based instruction has three phases: pre-task, during-task, and post-task. Studies have demonstrated that all of them might play a significant role in language teaching. Moreover, recent studies have compared different tasks over time. However, it is still unclear how different phases of a task impact learners’ language ability. To better understand this issue, this particular study investigated the effect of post-task activities on EFL learners’ reading achievements. To conduct the study, 47 Iranian EFL learners in a private language institute in Esfahan, Iran were selected. The participants were assigned into three groups randomly (two experimental groups and one control group). Through ten sessions (five weeks), the participants learned how to focus on post-task activities such as reflection on the task and repeated performance in a task-based instruction. The required data were collected through pretest, posttest, and semi-structured interview. After the course, semi-structured interviews were also conducted with five students from experimental groups. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data indicated that post-task activities have a significant effect on learners’ language proficiency, their reading achievements, and their motivation to participate in classroom tasks. The implementation and discussions were also discussed

Investment Under Uncertainty: A Theory

There must be a restricted time horizon within which investors trust their anticipations in an uncertain condition. In this circumstance investors are concerned about what happens if the worst condition (i.e. decreasing prices) occurs. A best-worst strategy in a discounted payback period framework is applied to examine the effect of uncertainty on the time horizon and investment. The model shows that increasing uncertainty will reduce the time horizon as well as investment. Moreover, the calculated time horizon can be considered as a benchmark for the adjusted payback period approach in finance