Educational Policies for the 21st Century in Southeast Asian Developing Countries

Makalah ini membincangkan dasar pendidikan dan keperluannya bagi menghadapi masalah dan isu pendidikan di negara-negara membangun di Asia Tenggara sebagai persediaan untuk menghadapi abad ke 21. Hal-hal dasar yang berkaitan dengan kualiti pendidikan, persamaan pendidikan dan pengurusan dan model dasar pendidikan disentuh. Soalan-soalan mengenai kepentingan dan jenis pengetahuan dan kemahiran bidang pengajian dan kurikulum pendidikan satu perkembangan teknologi dalam pendidikan bagi keperluan kemajuan negara dan antara negara dibincangkan

Corrective receding horizon EV charge scheduling using short-term solar forecasting

Forecast errors can cause sub-optimal solutions in resource planning optimization, yet they are usually modeled simplistically by statistical models, causing unrealistic impacts on the optimal solutions. In this paper, realistic forecast errors are prescribed, and a corrective approach is proposed to mitigate the negative effects of day-ahead persistence forecast error by short-term forecasts from a state-of-the-art sky imager system. These forecasts preserve the spatiotemporal dependence structure of forecast errors avoiding statistical approximations. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on a receding horizon quadratic program developed for valley filling the midday net load depression through electric vehicle charging. Throughout one month of simulations the ability to flatten net load is assessed under practical forecast accuracy levels achievable from persistence, sky imager and perfect forecasts. Compared to using day-ahead persistence solar forecasts, the proposed corrective approach using sky imager forecasts delivers a 25% reduction in the standard deviation of the daily net load. It is demonstrated that correcting day-ahead forecasts in real time with more accurate short-term forecasts benefits the valley filling solution

Determinants of Patient Satisfaction in Hospital

Service quality is playing significance role in developing and building customer value and customer satisfaction in modern business world. In case of Sri Lankan government hospital, government has introduced several new attractive packages to enhance and also promote the patient satisfaction in different ways. Even though, success of implementation of the package is questionable. This study clearly investigates what types of factors impact of patient satisfaction in general hospital in Jaffna. Keywords; brand, Brand awareness, patient satisfactio

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND CORPORATE FINANCE: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE LISTED COMPANIES

This thesis explores the linkages between corporate governance and corporate finance, making use of a large panel of Chinese listed firms over the period 2003-2010. We investigate three main themes. First, we examine the impact of managerial ownership and other corporate governance variables on firms’ exporting decisions, which are characterized by considerable risk and information asymmetries. We document that both export propensity and intensity increase with managerial ownership up to a point of around 23%-27%, and decrease thereafter. We also find a negative association between state ownership and export intensity. Furthermore, we observe that the larger the board size, the lower the firm’s export propensity and intensity, and that firms with a higher proportion of independent directors in the board are generally less likely to export. These findings are driven by privately controlled firms during the post-2006 split share structure reform period. Second, we examine the relationship between managerial ownership and corporate investment decisions. We find that investment decisions are systematically related to managerial ownership in two ways. Firstly, managerial ownership exerts a positive direct effect on corporate investment decisions, by aligning management’s incentives with the interests of shareholders. Secondly, we document that, by acting as a form of collateral to lenders, managerial ownership helps to reduce the degree of financial constraints faced by firms. Third, we examine the impact of ownership and corporate governance on agency costs. We measure the latter in two ways: using the sales to assets ratio, and the general administration and selling expenses scaled by assets. We find that, especially in the post-2006 split share structure reform period, increased managerial ownership and debt financing work as effective corporate governance mechanisms, by mitigating agency problems. We also find evidence that while legal person shareholding helps to mitigate agency costs for privately controlled firms in the post-reform period, large boards of directors are associated with higher agency costs in government controlled firms. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that the Chinese government’s recent policies aimed at reforming ownership structure and encouraging managerial ownership in listed firms have helped to reduce agency and asymmetric information problems, thereby enabling firms to enhance investment efficiency and international activities. Our study recommends that greater attention should therefore be paid to compensation contracts of the management team and to board characteristics, and that state ownership should be further reduced. This would help further enhance resource allocation efficiency and sustain high levels of economic growth