Three Essays on International Mobility and Economic Development

This dissertation contains research on three topics in economic development. The main argument of this dissertation is that when societies interact, they learn new ideas, superior technologies, and new production processes from each other. Any barriers to this interaction can hurt the diffusion of ideas across nations. Chapter 1 tests the relationship between international travel and institutions. This paper features a neglected channel of institution convergence among countries, i.e., international travel. International travel clearly increases human interaction over space and exposes societies to foreign influences, foreign ideas, and foreign institutions. Does international travel promote institutional change in a traveler\u27s home country? This paper uses panel data on 149 countries from 1995-2012 to test the hypothesis of institutional convergence among countries stemming from international travel. Our instrumental variable results indicate that institutions are very persistent over time and that international travel itself is not a significant determinant of institution quality in the home country. However, institutional quality in host countries visited by travelers has a significant effect on home country institutions, and this effect increases with the number of travelers. In the system GMM settings, we do find evidence for institutional convergence among countries. Chapter 2 tests the relationship between mobility of international students and technology diffusion. This paper investigates whether foreign qualified students bring new ideas and technical expertise from abroad, disperse them, and stimulate aggregate productivity in their home countries. An instrumental variable is derived from a fitted gravity equation model. An unbalanced panel data of 111 countries during the period 1950-2012 shows that foreign education has a statistically significant effect on technology diffusion. The results are robust across different sub-samples and to the inclusion of other channels of technology diffusion. These findings should prove helpful to policy makers in developing economies to adopt more open education policies and to increase public spending on foreign education. Chapter 3 tests the relationship between barriers to international mobility and technology diffusion. Barriers to international mobility are the critical factors to impede the process of international technology diffusion. Using bilateral visa restrictions data from 30 host and 198 home countries over the period of 2001-2012, this paper shows that the international technology gap increases as the barriers to international mobility increase. These results are robust across three different measures of visa restrictions and even after taking care of econometric problem of endogeneity. The results suggest that visa facilitation programs by advanced countries could promote international technology diffusion

Meningkatkan Prestasi Siswa Kelas V Belajar IPS Materi Sumber Daya Alam Dengan Menggunakan Belajar Kelompok Di SDN Wata Kec. Bungku Barat Kab. Morowali

Permasalahan dalam penelitian ini adalah apakah dengan penerapan metode belajar kelompok pada pembelajaran IPS dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa kelas V SDN Wata Kec. Bungku Barat Kab. Morowali? Pada pembebelajaran IPS. Rendahnya hasil belajar siswa, salah-satunya adalah strategi belajar yang digunakan guru dalam mengajarkan IPS, guru hendaknya melakukan pembelajaran dengan memvariasikan metode pembelajaran yang dirasa cukup sesuai yaitu dengan metode belajar kelompok untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa kelas V SDN Wata pelajaran IPS. Metode penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa pada pembelajaran IPS melalui penerapan metode belajar kelompok. Rancangan penelitian menggunakan desain penelitian Kemmis dan Mc. Taggart yang terdiri dari dua siklus. Dimana setiap siklus dilaksanakan dua kali pertemuan dikelas dan setiap siklus terdiri dari empat tahap yaitu perencanaan, pelaksanaan, observasi, dan refleksi. Penelitian dilaksanakan di SDN Wata melibatkan 24 orang siswa terdiri dari 9 laki-laki dan 15 orang perempuan yang terdaftar pada tahun 2013/2014. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pada tindakan siklus I diperoleh nilai rata-rata 62.08. Pada tindakan siklus II diperoleh nilai rata-rata siswa 66.95. Hal ini berarti pembelajaran pada siklus II telah memenuhi indikator keberhasilan dengan nilai daya serap klasikal minimal 65% dan ketuntasan belajar klasikal minimal 80%. Berdasarkan nilai rata-rata daya serap klasikal dan ketuntasan belajar klasikal pada kegiatan pembelajaran siklus II, maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa perbaikan pembelajaran dengan menggunakan metode belajar kelompok dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa kelas V pada pembelajaran IPS materi sumber daya alam di SDN Wata

Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar Siswa Melalui Strategi Pembelajaran Berbasis Masalah Pada Mata Pelajaran IPS Di Kelas V SDN 2 Limbo Makmur Kecamatan Bumi Raya

Permasalahan dalam penelitian ini adalah kurangnya keterlibatan siswa secara langsung dalam proses pembelajaran, dimana siswa hanya sebagai pendengar dan pencatat dari apa yang disampaikan guru. Berdasarkan hal tersebut maka rumusan masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah Apakah penerapan model pembelajaran berbasis masalah dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa melalui strategi pembelajaran berbasis masalah pada mata pelajaran IPS di kelas V SDN 2 Limbo makmur kecamatan Bumi raya. Penelitian ini menggunakan model pembelajaran berbasis masalah dengan jenis penelitian tindakan. Hasil dari penelitian ini yaitu pada hasil tes akhir pembelajaran terhadap belajar siswa pada siklus I belum mengacu pada indikator keberhasilan yaitu hanya mencapai nilai rata-rata 52,31 dengan ketuntasan belajar klasikal 7,7% atau sebanyak 2 orang siswa yang memperoleh nilai 70. Sedangkan pada hasil tes siklus II menunjukkan peningkatan atau dengan kata lain indikator keberhasilan telah berhasil yaitu mencapai rata-rata 73,3 dengan ketuntasan belajar 80,77% berarti indikator keberhasilan telah tercapai yaitu apabila 75% siswa mendapatkan nilai 70. Atau 21 0rang siswa dikatakan kualifikasi baik, dengan demikian penggunaan Strategi Pembelajaran Berbasisi Masalah pada Mata Pelajaran IPS di Kelas V SDN 2 Limbo Makmur Kecamatan Bumi Raya dapat Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar Siswa

A two-stage method for the capacitated multi-facility location-allocation problem

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Inderscience via the DOI in this recordThis paper examines the capacitated planar multi-facility location-allocation problem, where the number of facilities to be located is specified and each of which has a capacity constraint. A two-stage method is put forward to deal with the problem where in the first stage a technique that discretises continuous space into discrete cells is used to generate a relatively good initial facility configurations. In stage 2, a variable neighbourhood search (VNS) is implemented to improve the quality of solution obtained by the previous stage. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using benchmark datasets from the literature. The numerical experiments show that the proposed method yields competitive results when compared to the best known results from the literature. In addition, some future research avenues are also suggested

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF ULTRAVIOLET–VISIBLE SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHOD FOR ESTIMATION OF GLYCYRRHIZIN IN METHANOLIC EXTRACT OF GLYCYRRHIZA GLABRA L

Objective: The pure form of glycyrrhizin was bought from Yucca Enterprises, Mumbai-37, India. The pure form of drug used in treatment of acne vulgaris disease. Pharmacognostical studies of Glycyrrhiza glabra L. indicated surprising antibacterial action against Propionibacterium acnes. Methods: A simple, rapid, accurate, precise, and economic spectrophotometric technique for estimation of glycyrrhizin in methanolic extract of G. glabra L. have been developed. Glycyrrhizin exhibit absorbance most at 254 nm when phosphate buffer (pH-6.8) methanol is used as solvent in 70:30 proportion, so absorbance was once measured at the identical wave lengths for the determination of glycyrrhizin. Glycyrrhizin obeys the Beer Lambert’s law in the concentration range of 4–24 μg/ml. Results: This method was validated according to International Council for Harmonization guidelines and can be adopted for the general analysis of glycyrrhizin in hydroalcoholic extract of G. glabra. The approach is simple, rapid, safe, accurate, affordable, and beneficial for standardization of the licorice products. Conclusion: The results applied in the routine analysis and quality control of pharmaceutical dosage forms containing glycyrrhizin

Investigating smart home security : is blockchain the answer?

Smart Home automation is increasingly gaining popularity among current applications of Internet of Things (IoT) due to the convenience and facilities it provides to the home owners. Sensors are employed within the home appliances via wireless connectivity to be accessible remotely by home owners to operate these devices. With the exponential increase of smart home IoT devices in the marketplace such as door locks, light bulbs, power switches etc, numerous security concerns are arising due to limited storage and processing power of such devices, making these devices vulnerable to several attacks. Due to this reason, security implementations in the deployment of these devices has gained popularity among researchers as a critical research area. Moreover, the adoption of traditional security schemes has failed to address the unique security concerns associated with these devices. Blockchain, a decentralised database based on cryptographic techniques, is gaining enormous attention to assure security of IoT systems. The blockchain framework within an IoT system is a fascinating substitute to the traditional centralised models, which has some significant concerns in fulfilling the demand of smart homes security. In this article, we aim to examine the security of smart homes by instigating the adoption of blockchain and exploring some of the currently proposed smart home architectures using blockchain technology. To present our findings, we describe a simple secure smart home framework based on a refined version of blockchain called Consortium blockchain. We highlight the limitations and opportunities of adopting such an architecture. We further evaluate our model and conclude with the results by designing an experimental testbed using a few household IoT devices commonly available in the marketplace. © 2013 IEEE

Enhancing quality-of-service conditions using a cross-layer paradigm for ad-hoc vehicular communication

The Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) is an emerging paradigm aiming to introduce a plethora of innovative applications and services that impose a certain quality of service (QoS) requirements. The IoV mainly relies on vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) for autonomous inter-vehicle communication and road-traffic safety management. With the ever-increasing demand to design new and emerging applications for VANETs, one challenge that continues to stand out is the provision of acceptable QoS requirements to particular user applications. Most existing solutions to this challenge rely on a single layer of the protocol stack. This paper presents a cross-layer decision-based routing protocol that necessitates choosing the best multi-hop path for packet delivery to meet acceptable QoS requirements. The proposed protocol acquires the information about the channel rate from the physical layer and incorporates this information in decision making, while directing traffic at the network layer level. Key performance metrics for the system design are analyzed using extensive experimental simulation scenarios. In addition, three data rate variant solutions are proposed to cater for various application-specific requirements in highways and urban environments. © 2013 IEEE

Meningkatkan Prestasi Siswa Kelas V Belajar IPS Materi Sumber Daya Alam dengan Menggunakan Belajar Kelompok di SDN Wata Kec. Bungku Barat Kab. Morowali

Permasalahan dalam  penelitian  ini  adalah  apakah dengan penerapan metode belajar kelompok pada pembelajaran IPS dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa  kelas V  SDN Wata Kec. Bungku Barat Kab. Morowali? Pada pembebelajaran IPS. Rendahnya hasil belajar siswa, salah-satunya adalah strategi belajar yang digunakan guru dalam mengajarkan IPS, guru hendaknya melakukan pembelajaran dengan memvariasikan metode pembelajaran yang dirasa cukup sesuai yaitu dengan metode belajar kelompok untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa kelas V SDN Wata pelajaran IPS. Metode penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa pada pembelajaran IPS melalui penerapan metode belajar kelompok. Rancangan penelitian menggunakan desain penelitian Kemmis dan Mc. Taggart yang terdiri dari dua siklus. Dimana setiap siklus dilaksanakan dua kali pertemuan dikelas dan setiap siklus terdiri dari empat tahap yaitu perencanaan, pelaksanaan, observasi, dan refleksi. Penelitian dilaksanakan di SDN Wata melibatkan 24 orang siswa terdiri dari 9 laki-laki dan 15 orang perempuan yang terdaftar pada tahun 2013/2014. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pada tindakan siklus I diperoleh nilai rata-rata 62.08. Pada tindakan siklus II diperoleh nilai rata-rata siswa 66.95. Hal ini berarti pembelajaran pada siklus II telah memenuhi indikator keberhasilan dengan nilai daya serap klasikal minimal 65% dan ketuntasan belajar klasikal minimal 80%. Berdasarkan nilai rata-rata daya serap klasikal dan ketuntasan belajar klasikal pada kegiatan pembelajaran siklus II, maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa perbaikan pembelajaran dengan menggunakan metode belajar kelompok dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa kelas V pada pembelajaran IPS materi sumber daya alam di SDN Wata. Kata Kunci: Prestasi Siswa IPS, Materi Sumber Daya Alam, Belajar Kelompo