Productivity Catch‐up Between Chinese and Taiwanese Electronics Firms

This paper aims to depict the patterns of China's productivity catch‐up with Taiwan in the electronics industry over the period 2001–2007. Specifically, we investigate the roles that ownership structure and innovation efforts play in the dynamics of the productivity gap. The firm‐level evidence suggests that the labour productivity gap between Chinese and Taiwanese electronics firms has narrowed during the past decade. Second, the narrowing of the labour productivity gap has occurred in foreign‐owned enterprises rather than in local firms. Examining the determinants of productivity catch‐up show that R&D significantly contributes to Chinese electronics firms' catching up with their Taiwanese counterparts.     

Political challenges in community-based ecotourism

This paper applies the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) to explore the development of ecotourism in a Taiwanese community after a major earthquake. The study employs interviews with different NGO groups and residents, participant-observation and documentary analysis. Through a political economy lens, the study examines the social and political influences on, and the social and political consequences of, ecotourism development. Results reveal insights into political elements of the community asset base, calling for its inclusion in the existing model. The paper illustrates the challenges of ecotourism development and recognises the importance of attention to differing values if it is to be considered as a sustainable livelihood option in vulnerable communities. In particular we critique the positions of both existing power structures and NGOs, often envisioned as “experts” in the tourism governance process. In this case the imposition of various political values led to failures in inclusivity, particularly in terms of goal setting, empowerment, leadership, organisational fragmentation and benefit sharing, all of which are important principles of sustainability. Greater attention to the political nature of community-based tourism through the revised SLA model could reduce the many documented cases of hosts being merely objects of development, rather than active subjects.     

基于DSP的DVB流发射/接收系统

研究了数字视频广播流的发射／接收系统，基于DSP技术实现了0～8Mbps的DVB流的发射和接收系统，误码率低于10^-7，详细介绍了发射／接收系统数据处理原理，探讨了相关系统硬件设计和软件实现问题。     

An Assessment of Taiwan's Indirect Investment Toward Mainland China

The economic ties between Taiwan and the mainland China had been restored since 1987. A comparison of Taiwan's investment toward the mainland and the ASEANs shows that the investment size is much smaller in the mainland in terms of money flow; nonetheless, much higher in terms of number of firms. Also, the effects of investment-induced trade is much stronger in the mainland. Using the 1986 Input-Output Tables and the data set of officially registered investment volume by industry, this paper simulates the possible linkage effects on output, employment and export shift for both sides.     

Economic effects of card transactions in Singapore

There is some concern that the increasing use of credit and charge cards may have adverse effects on the Singapore economy. This paper argues that while cards provide economic benefits in many ways, their monetary impact on inflation should be negligible and their impact on consumption and overspending should not be cause for much concern.     

Uncovering the Value of Green Advertising for Environmental Management Practices

This paper extends previous environmental management research by building and empirically testing a model of the contingency effects of green advertising on the relationships between environmental management practices in terms of environmentally conscious manufacturing and product stewardship, environmental reputation and financial performance. We examine the value of green advertising in sharing and publicizing information about organizational achievements in environmental preservation in a business‐to business context with the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing industry. The theoretical propositions are largely confirmed by structural path analyses of survey responses collected from 122 Taiwanese electronics manufacturers. Green advertising delivers financial benefits only for those manufacturers that do not have an established environmental reputation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Applying digital analysis to detect fraud: an empirical analysis of US marine industry

Firms have tendency to window dress their financial statements by reporting earnings to achieve reference points represented by N × 10 ^k . Such practice of reporting rounded earnings is likely due to (1) firms may believe that investors perceive a reported earnings of $1.99 million to be significantly less than $2.0 million; and/or (2) contracts between firms and stakeholders are likely to express earnings in round numbers. Auditors have employed more sophisticated digital analysis such as Benford's law, as part of their fraud detection processes. This study investigated the window dressing behaviour among firms in the US marine industry. The findings of the study suggest that window dressing is a significant practice among the marine firms. However, the extent of the pervasiveness of such behaviour is less severe among marine firms than among all publicly-listed firms in the entire US economy, suggesting that the quality of financial statements of marine companies is higher than the overall population of public companies.     

Time varying structural VARs with sign restrictions: The case of Taiwan

I apply a Bayesian approach to a time-varying structural vector autoregression model with stochastic volatility (TVP-SVAR-SV) to study the time-varying nature of the Taiwanese economy. In particular, the structural parameters are identified via the sign information in a three-variable VAR system. The estimated results show that TVP-SVAR-SV model has the best fit to the data, compared to the time-varying parameters VAR model with constant volatility and a classical VAR model with constant parameters and volatilities. Moreover, I find the time-varying contemporaneous relationship between the output growth and inflation rates, particularly significant before the year 2000. Lastly, the impulse responses and the volatilities of all the variables are found to be time-varying.