Leaving studies because of lack of interest: an analysis of the risk factors of school dropouts in Pakistan

Quality & Quantity - Among all the students dropping out of school for different reasons in Pakistan in 2017, nearly 23% of the students dropped out because they were not...     

The use of simulation in system design: A case study using the precision location strike system

The purpose of the article is to illustrate the use of computer simulation study and modeling in the design of complex systems. When new systems are designed, decision-makers rely heavily upon judgment, intuition and experience. The method discussed is intended to enhance these executive attributes by providing a vehicle with which the decision-maker may be proactive before implementing the system rather than being solely reactive after implementation.The application of a method known as the “systems science paradigm” is discussed and illustrated using the U.S. Air Force's Precision Location Strike System. The problem was to design a logistical support structure for the Strike System. The three major options proposed were to locate repair and resupply structures at the point of equipment use in Europe, to have a mixed system, or to locate support at a base in the continental United States.The research employed the paradigm suggested to develop an experimental Q-GERT simulation model of the processes and structures envisioned. Data development for abstract systems is illustrated and methods to experiment with alternate structures are developed and discussed. The concept of multiechelon inventory and repair are addressed within the problem's context.A proposed design alternative resulted from application of the process. Methods, other than cost effectiveness, to evaluate the system are also suggested. Implementing the design process for ill-defined systems appears to be an effective method for dealing with such design problems.     

The school as a social system: Indicators for change

In systems analysis, the school may be viewed as a functionally differentiated subsystem of the broader social system in which it is embedded. To maintain a viable relationship with that social system, the school is subject to continual changes to meet the shifting social, economic, political, and technological forces in its environment. However, the more successful the school organization is in assessing accurately changing environmental forces, and in making appropriate adjustments to those forces, the more successful will it be in resisting temporary pressures and transitory movements and in controlling its own directions.

A major research problem is to identify those organizational properties that enable the school to assess accurately new demands and to adjust appropriately to those demands. Theoretically, those properties might be expected to include: (1) operationalized statements of instrumental goals; (2) a work structure that involves interdependence in task performance; (3) participation in decision making; (4) an incentive system that utilizes performance criteria rather than expressive relationships; (5) personnel practices that encourage a cosmopolitan orientation; and (6) institutionalized provisions for change advocacy.

The specification of the relationships among these properties, or variables, and the determination of means for assessing them quantitatively, are tasks that remain to be accomplished.     

A dynamic mobility model of individuals between jurisdictions in a system of local governments

This paper presents a dynamic mobility model in which individuals find incentives to move from one jurisdiction to another when they can enjoy a higher utility level by doing so, and inquires about welfare implications of the final outcome of such dynamic paths. The main conclusions are summarized as follows: (i) The mobility process of individuals is globally stable in the sense that the dynamic paths converge to the steady state equilibrium as time tends to infinity. (ii) There is a possible conflict between the principles of horizontal equity and Pareto optimality in the steady state of the dynamic system.     

Contagion risk in the Czech financial system: A network analysis and simulation approach

This paper examines the potential for contagion within the Czech banking system via the channel of interbank exposures of domestic banks, enriched by a liquidity channel and an asset price channel, over the period March 2007 to June 2012. A computational model is used to assess the resilience of the Czech banking system to interbank contagion, taking into account the size and structure of interbank exposures as well as balance sheet and regulatory characteristics of individual banks in the network. The simulation results suggest that the potential for contagion due to credit losses on interbank exposures was rather limited. Even after the introduction of a liquidity condition into the simulations, the average contagion was below 3.8% of the remaining banking sector assets, with the exception of the period from December 2007 to September 2008. Activation of the asset price channel further increases the losses due to interbank contagion, showing that the liquidity of government bonds would be essential for the stability of Czech banks in stress situations. Finally, the simulation results for both idiosyncratic and multiple bank failure shocks suggest that the potential for contagion in the Czech banking system has decreased since the onset of the global financial crisis.     

中国电影企业股份制改制现象的探讨

中国电影企业越来越热衷于股份制改制 ,本文从股份制改制所带来的直接利弊 ,股份制改制的本质 ,以及中国电影企业目前的现状和经营管理特点着眼 ,进行深层次的部析和研讨 ,发掘中国电影业发展过程的矛盾和问题 ,明确指出中国电影业进行股份制改制时机尚未成熟 ,并就解决问题的方法提出了个人的观点和见解。     

构建高校证券业务模拟教学实验室

文章通过描叙证券业务模拟软件的安装配置使用,提出构建高校证券业务模拟教学实验室的方案,为金融及其它相关专业的学生走向社会提供一个理论结合实际的实习环境。     

The emergence of Zipf's Law in a system of cities: An agent-based simulation approach

This paper develops a spatial agent-based model to generate a system of cities that exhibits the statistical properties of the Zipf's Law. The numerical results suggest that the combination of bounded rationality and maximum heterogeneity of agents can produce a generic power-law relationship in the size distribution of cities, but does not always generate the Zipf's Law. We found sufficient conditions on the probability distribution of spatial reach to generate the Zipf's Law associated with unit power coefficient. Our model also indicates that the Zipf's Law breaks down unless the extent of agglomeration economies overwhelms the negative disagglomerating forces.     

Economies of scale for a state system of public school districts

A review of the different variables, school district samples, regression techniques and a priori assumptions utilized in recent studies clearly indicates that no standard model or set of procedures have been developed for the problems of economies of scale within the educational sector. Based on these studies and a brief discussion of the limitations of economies of scale models as a tool in policy planning, we present a generalizable model that can easily be applied to statistics now available in state departments of education to derive valuable new information about the existing cost-size relationships and opportunity costs that exist in a state system of public school districts. A recent application of the model in Oregon that illustrates its generalizability is described. An example of how economies of scale information might be used in policy planning and proposed district consolidations is also outlined.     

地方创新系统构建的必要性及地方政府的作用

在全球化的过程中 ,地区形象超越了国界 ,也跨越了大企业 ,新的国际竞争力主要不是以国家为依据 ,而是以地方竞争来表现。因此 ,需要建立地方创新系统。同时 ,它也是国家创新系统的基础和创新网络的终点。地方政府具有市场经济条件下竞争主体的特征 ,地方政府在地方创新系统中只能扮演着准创新主体的角色 ,应该发挥其积极的作用 ,限制其消极的一面。     

Class and the local state: a reply

If anyone ever made money in Gateshead, they must have taken great care not to spend any of it in the town. And if nobody ever did make money in the town, what is it there for? It cannot be there for fun. Gateshead is not Somebody's Folly. How is it that a town can contain one hundred and twenty five thousand persons and yet look like a sprawling swollen industrial village? The answer is that this is a dormitory for the working class. Perhaps at first they wanted nothing better, and now, by the time that some of them want something a great deal better, there is no money.… Every future historian of modern England should be compelled to take a good long slow walk round Gateshead. After that he can at his leisure fit it into his interpretation of our national growth and development.     

City of art as a High Culture local system and cultural districtualization processes: the cluster of art restoration in Florence

This article engages in the debate on cultural economics that has recently become more intense in Italy, in order to focus on two particular aspects: the city of art as an autonomous socio‐economic unit of analysis, and the hypothesis of its districtualization as a driving force for culture‐driven and sustainable economic development. In the article we consider the city of art as a typology of a High Culture local system and we test some hypotheses of cultural districtualization in the art city of Florence. Thus, we concentrate on the ‘artistic component’ of the productive factor CANH, taking into account only private firms that operate in the field of art restoration and are localized in the Florence city territory. With this as our aim, we undertook an analysis and integration of the questionnaires collected in research by ARTEX (1998) that accounted for 145 firms in the cluster of art restoration. Our analyses brought to light a few interesting signs that evidence the occurrence of different degrees of cultural districtualization. Cet article participe au débat sur l'économie culturelle qui s'est récemment animé en Italie, et vise deux aspects particuliers: la ville d'art en tant qu'unité d'analyse socio‐économique autonome et l'hypothèse de sa constitution en districts en tant que moteur de développement économique durable propulsé par la culture. La ville d'art est considérée comme une typologie de système local de culture élevée; ainsi, sont testées quelques hypothèses sur les districts culturels dans la cité d'art de Florence. Les travaux se concentrent sur la ‘composante artistique’ du facteur productif (CANH), tenant compte uniquement des entreprises privées qui uvrent dans la restauration d'art et sont implantées sur le territoire urbain de Florence. Etant donné ce but, une analyse a été entreprise, en intégrant des questionnaires collectés par une enquête d'ARTEX (1998) couvrant 145 entreprises dans le secteur de la restauration d'art. L'étude a mis en avant quelques signes intéressants qui montrent l'occurrence de plusieurs degrés de ‘districtualisation’ culturelle.     

Choosing a school: the impact of social class on the primary school decision‐making process

One of the objectives of recent government educational reform is greater emphasis on parental choice of school. In consequence, schools are increasingly exposed to competition and in order to maintain pupil numbers will have to become more responsive to their customers. This study, drawing from semi‐structured interviews, examines the process of parental choice of primary school. There is a consensus among parents as to the importance of the decision being taken and regarding the influential evaluative criteria. However, during the early stages of the decision‐making process there are variations between different groups of parents, in particular first time choosers and those with a child already at school, but most especially between different socio‐economic groups. Implications for the primary schools' marketing strategy are considered. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Kornai's soft budget constraint and the shortage phenomenon: A criticism and restatement

Concluding Remarks In this paper we have sought to modify Kornai's analysis of the shortage phenomenon. One point and two modifications are suggested. The point is that firms' budget softness in real terms, while generally probably higher under socialism than capitalism, is always limited enough for any economies still to remain very much productive. One modification is that, in the theory of the shortage phenomenon, the key operational variable is not the degree of budget softness, provided it is not too high as to make the economy unproductive, but a quite different concept of the degree of budget flexibility. Our example of the Leyland-type economy and references to Yugoslav economy were intended to make this proposition evident. In this and any other soft-budget economy the degree of softness is, instead, linked with inefficiency, both static and dynamic. The other modification is that while the household does have a hard budget constraint and the firm has a soft one, sufficiently high prices for consumer goods would nevertheless be able to abolish any consumer goods' shortages.An important topic which has been alluded to, but not discussed in this paper, is Kornai's suggestion that there may operate a trade-off between the rate of unemployment and the degree of goods shortages. This topic is related to a number of issues, one of which is the validity of equating shortage economy with resource-constrained economy. To indicate a potential problem, it may be noted—as Kornai himself does—that an abstract, perfectly competitive economy is free of shortage (as well as of unemployment), and yet it is resource-constrained (as well as demand-constrained). Actual market-based economies are from time to time also resource-constrained, but the point is that the distance to full employment is, in those economies, related to the inflation rate (the Phillips curve) rather than to the incidence of shortage (Kornai's suggestion), especially if the upward price flexibility is high. However, these are matters which may be better left for separate treatment.This paper was written when the author was Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, the University of Pennsylvania. Its ideas were presented earlier, at seminars at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. The paper benefited much from detailed critical comments from Wlodzimierz Brus of Wolfson College, Oxford, Philip Hanson of the University of Birmingham, UK, Cezary Jozefiak of Lodz University, Poland, János Kornai, Kazimierz Laski of Linz University, Austria, Herbert Levine of the University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Wiles of the London School of Economics.     

A question of community: at not-for-profit hospitals health is a local affair

For-profit hospitals' entrepreneurial status, big business climate, and adherence to market discipline mandate that their services be considered akin to any other market commodity, to be bought and sold at the highest margin to the largest audience. Investor owned healthcare's primary allegiance must be a reasonable return to its stockholders and as a result it must avoid unprofitable services and unprofitable patients, by displacing their costly burdens onto the rest of the healthcare system.     

Concentration on the nearby contract in financial futures markets: A stochastic model to explain the phenomenon

A stochastic model is developed to explain how the early unwinding propensity of market participants in financial futures markets can lead to a strong concentration of the trading volume on the nearby contract. In this model the position closing behavior of the market participants is captured by three distribution functions. The concentration process works under many realistic specifications of these distribution functions. The authors would like to thank Wolfgang Bühler (University Mannheim) and Michael Brennan (UCLA/Los Angeles) for valuable discussion and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for financial support.     

Violence in European schools: A widespread phenomenon that matters for educational production

Violence at schools is a well-known problem in many societies. This paper assesses the degree of school violence in 11 European countries and analyzes the determinants of being a victim and its effect on student performance. The study draws on the international TIMSS 2003 and the British longitudinal NCDS data. The level of school violence is high in most countries but seems not to increase over time. Besides gender, social and migration background and the appearance of students determine being bullied, hurt or stolen from by fellow students. Being a victim has a significantly negative impact on contemporary and later student performance. In addition, the level of educational attainment is affected while there is no direct link to earnings when controlling for education, non-cognitive skills and appearance.     

Training and organisational innovations in a local industrial system: empirical evidence from Emilia‐Romagna1

The article studies the driving forces of firm training using a survey‐based dataset of manufacturing firms in the Emilia‐Romagna region, Northern Italy. The data are derived from the responses to a structured questionnaire administered in 2002 to the management of a representative sample of firms with more than 50 employees in the highly industrialised province of Reggio Emilia. Firms’ training choices are analysed using a theoretical/conceptual framework based on the notion of complementarity among productive factors. Training is provided as long as it favours the establishment of complementary relationships among the skills it develops and other inputs. The main factors associated with training include structural characteristics, HRM practices, workforce features, labour management and performance of the firm. Training activities emerge as being positively associated with organisational practices that affect the whole firm: workforce skill level, firm size, firm productivity and labour flexibility. The role of HRM practices in driving training is brought into question. These are key issues for the current debate on the development of local systems in the European and Italian context. The high and joint relevance of structural variables and labour demand‐related factors shows that regional industrial policies must support labour policies within an integrated policy effort aimed at increasing potential firm productivity.     

Small system dynamics model for alleviating the general practitioners rural care gap in Ontario,Canada

The disproportionate concentration of healthcare professionals in urban areas is a concern in many countries, including Canada. A need to address this rural care gap has driven a large number of government led initiatives worldwide over the years. This paper presents a model that can be used as a tool to examine the efficacy of such policies on the workforce distribution in the long term. A small system dynamics model is employed to simulate the current and future distribution of general physicians at a jurisdictional level. The model represents the transition of general practitioners to provide insight into the dynamics of care provision over time. The movement, and competition, between rural and urban areas is modeled to enable detailed exploration of the ability for proposed measures to alleviate the care gap in the future. Among the tested policies are such commonly used initiatives as financial incentives to rural professionals, promotion of medical education in rural areas, expansion of rural education programs and the engagement of international medical graduates etc. We demonstrate how the model can be used as a tool to determine an efficient and well-chosen combination of policies which can help alleviate the rural care gap in the future, given that some policies are more effective than others alone but also combined with other initiatives. The presented small system dynamics model is tested on Canada's reality, but its simple nature lends itself to easy application to other countries that experience a similar problem.