Buyers, sellers and middlemen: variations in search theory

We study bilateral exchange, both direct trade and indirect trade that happens through chains of intermediaries or middlemen. We develop a model of this activity and present applications. This illustrates how, and how many, intermediaries get involved, and how the terms of trade are determined. Bargaining with intermediaries depends on how they bargain with downstream intermediaries, leading to interesting holdup problems. We discuss the roles of buyers and sellers in bilateral exchange, and how to interpret prices. We develop a particular bargaining solution and relate it to other solutions. We also illustrate how bubbles can emerge in the value of inventories.

Living as a Self-sufficient Second-class Citizen: Chinese International Undergraduate Students’ Journey to Permanent Residency in Canada

In recent years, Canada has become one of the world’s most popular destinations for studying abroad, and China has become the top sending country of international students to Canada. In Canada’s 2015 International Student Survey, more than half of international students indicated an interest in applying for permanent resident status following graduation. Meanwhile, the deflation of Western degrees in the Chinese market and recent spate of media coverage circulated portraying the outbound Chinese students as low-quality students have created barriers for studying abroad returnees for seeking desirable employment in China. Thus, it is logical to estimate that a considerable percentage of current Chinese international students will eventually become Canadian citizens. During my undergraduate years as an international student at the University of Waterloo (UW), I heard many of my fellow Chinese international undergraduate students express their strong and sustained desire to stay permanently in Canada but complained about Canada’s “backwardness” and its “lack of urban vitality”. Such irony sparkled my scholarly interest and I decided to conduct an ethnographic research on the Chinese undergraduate student community at UW. My thesis looks at the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate students’ aspirations and perspectives on becoming permanent residents in Canada. Specifically, I examine how they envision their future in Canada in relation to their individuality, self-happiness and self-satisfaction, neoliberal potentials, moral personhood, and skepticism toward Canadian multiculturalism

Socio-economic Correlates Of Suicidality In Hong Kong

This study explores the correlates of the suicidality in Hong Kong with its socioeconomic predictors. Hong Kong witnessed its economic decline and its improvement in the last decade with 2003 as the turning point. After applying Poisson regression models on the data, it was found that individual payroll and property price indices were closely associated with the monthly suicide counts in Hong Kong, whereas unemployment rate and average rent index were not observed statistically significant. The results reinforce the findings that structural socioeconomic conditions generally have a substantial impact on suicidality and that unemployment rates may not always be correlated with suicide. This study recommends taking into account of some alternative macroeconomic variables, namely property price and individual payroll, to predict suicide rate

Lexical representations of Chinese single characters tested through reformed and standard phonetic compounds

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), University of Hong Kong, April 30, 1992.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1992Also available in print.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Mind your weight: ‘Motionlessly’ sitting between the object and the verb in Japanese

The object in Japanese is often displaced from its canonical position next to the sentence-final verb, due to motivations such as information structure or animacy. Such flexibility allows for an adverb to be placed between the object and the verb. In the literature, there are suggestions for an almost equal preference to place Japanese manner adverbs before or after the object, inferred from both online and offline results. We will present a corpus study with a representative Japanese manner adverb zitto ‘motionlessly’ to show that either order may be preferred in different accounts of word order variation, but none can satisfy both requirements of distance minimization and accessibility, which are manifested in competing directions in Japanese, a verb-final language. In both accounts, weight has immense effect and should not be neglected. By using two heuristic methods to measure the weight effect, we propose that this case study with an object and an adverb sheds new light on the explanatory power of the distance minimization account, in particular by the Mimimize Domains principle (Hawkins 1994), which operates at both levels of (1) the constituency construction of the full VP, which favors the object-first order, and (2) the Phrasal Combination Domain between the head of object and the verb, which favors the adverb-first order. It is also proposed to implement a complement-and-adjunct distinction in the MiD principle, as a step toward a more effective study method of weight effect which I shall call efficiency profiling

Interrole Conflict and Social Support: A Study of Married Women Nurses

The study focused on inter-role conflict and social support. The first objective of this study was to determine the intensity of inter-role conflict experienced by married women nurses in their total life space as they performed their multiple roles. Secondly, it examined the potential sources of social support they managed to gamer from individuals within and without the work place in times of work-family conflict: spouse, friends and relatives, co-worker and boss/supervisor.The sample size of 129 respondents was taken from the population of 615 eligible nurses meeting the criteria for the study. All instruments used were from previously developed instruments and adaptations of the instruments. Data collected from self-administered questionnaires were used to examine the work-family interface environment among the respondents. The results showed that medium inter-role conflict intensities were experienced by majority of the nurses. The nurses received the highest amount of support from their spouses and the least from their bosses/supervisors. It is implied that social support could have been an important factor in reducing the level of experienced work-family conflict among the nurses

A Case of the Philips Curve in the Formation of a Monetary Union: A Glimpse at High Inflation Countries of the European Monetary Union

This paper examines how disinflation in high inflation economies affects unemployment levels. According to Keynesian macroeconomic theories, a decrease in inflation will cause an increase in unemployment in the short run. Due to high inflation over the years among countries like Italy and Ireland, their expected inflation rate is significantly high. As a result, when the government starts a process of disinflation though restrictive fiscal and monetary policies, economic activity declines, and significant short run increase in unemployment follows

Using weblogging to develop schema-based English reading skills of Chinese students in Hong Kong secondary schools

This thesis investigates how far weblogging can be used to develop schema English reading skills of Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong. The theoretical foundation of the research design is built on a sociocultural model originating in Constructivism within which communication through discussion or sharing of ideas is the preferred approach for second language learning. Constructivists’ theory integrates reading, schema, and weblogging that are the three core concepts to be examined in my research. The examination is facilitated by the methodological framework that adopts a mixed methods approach involving case study and experimental study methods. An experiment was conducted among eight sample case Chinese students of which four students formed an online community of practice on weblog so that they could experience reflective learning while using their schemata in reading English texts. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the experiment and case studies. Analysis of these data had considered individual differences of Chinese students in the process of English reading skills development. The analyzed results give evidences to address the research purposes and questions on exploring the relationship between weblogging and second language textual development, in particular schema-based English reading skills of Chinese students. Major findings of the research reveal how weblogging can facilitate schema development in reading and explain to what extent weblogging can be used as a useful means to develop schema-based reading skills in the context of second language learning