英国的爹妈是如何抚养孩子的？

“How long is a piece of string?” To ask how much it costs to rear a child from birth to eighteen in the United King- dom is a bit like asking that, but there is no doubt that all parents feel that children are an expensive item. This is true at every stage of the young people’s development from birth right up to what the Chinese books on British culture de- scribe as “independence”. In some ways the younger the child, the greater the po- tential costs. Because of increased mobility, few…     

A Business Cycle Indicator for Abu Dhabi

According to the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, the main objective is to diversify its production base, and widen non-oil production. In addition to this growth strategy cyclical fluctuations are also a concern. Economic measures to increase the periods of economic prosperity and reduce the slowdown periods are implemented. To do so there is also a need for reliable tools to monitor the cyclical economic development. The composite indicator approach for economic change assessment, therefore, is seen as a proper method taken up by the Department of Economic Development （DED） in Abu Dhabi as a tool to assess actual short-term economic changes. However, there are no quarterly national accounts for Abu Dhabi at the moment and only a few short-term statistics. A suitable quarterly reference series for indicator assessment has to be constructed with temporal disaggregation methods. Since Abu Dhabi has a huge oil sector real income is used as a reference, because it reflects the economic situation better than real GDP. For the construction of the composite indicators various data sources are exploited.     

Generating of multi-criteria alternatives for decision-making in electric light rail control

The purpose of this paper is to study and evaluate genetic algorithms and scheduling theory about the methods of controlling public electric transport. Scheduling theory can be defined as criteria of time constraints for target functions of the optimal electric transport control task and for electrical process diagnostics task. Mathematical models and procedures are developed for the control of electrical processes and the optimization of railway traffic control, using scheduling theory and multi-criteria of decision making. Functional dependencies between electrical processes and dynamics of electric transport flow states are investigated in the research. Genetic algorithms are investigated for getting dynamic multi-criteria optimization of processes in real time mode. Efficiency of proposed methods about procedures for optimal electric transport flow control is analyzed and. Safety is considered as an inherent component of the total transport system, which embraces infrastructures, goods and containers, transport users and operators, vehicles and vessels, measures at policy and legislative levels includes decision support and validation tools. Integrated safety and security systems for surface transport systems includes advanced modeling, simulation and engineering tools, aiming at the improvement of safety and security performance of transport systems. Development will include methodologies and designing environments for risk based design and approval, roll-over test development and pre-normative research towards regulations based on virtual testing methods as well as mechatronic systems for dynamic stability, reliable and effective braking systems for vehicles. The paper is based on authors＇ previous scientific work which researches the intelligent device systems and their applications in transport systems. Intelligent devices are controllers, which have interface to work in global network and wireless networks, and are programmed to use methods of the artificial intelligence. Intelligent devices have possibilities to negotiate with each other and to coordinate their work to get better decision. The results of experiments show the possibility of the developed systems to prevent accidents and to avoid different problems by intelligent diagnostic and coordination devices.     

The viable measure for hospitals？ --Healthcare expenditure forecasting under the global budget system

After the implementation of the global budget system, hospitals need to negotiate individual＇s healthcare budget in order to face the uncertainty of income and cost control. The major contribution of this study is to predict the increase of the inpatient healthcare expenditure using ARIMA model under the global budgets system to establish a better allocation rule for healthcare expenditure budget during the negotiation with the Bureau of National Health Insurance. The healthcare expenditure prediction model proposed in this paper will serve as a justification for hospitals＇ negotiation. Although Taiwan has abundant experiences implementing national health insurance, there are still a limited number of literatures concerning economic significance of the budget allocation rule. This paper intends to fulfill this gap. We find that as the individual healthcare expenditure increases, the number of physicians does not function as a bargaining chip. However, there are significant differences in the increase rate and quality of healthcare within the scope of insurance coverage and the increase rate of healthcare for healthy insured. The findings in this paper can serve as policy references in hospital management.     

Implementing the Independent Director System in China: Issues and Considerations

Independent Directors (IDs), also known as outside directors or non-executive directors, are those who are independent of the company's shareholders and who hold no post in a joint-stock company. Unlike internal directors who are under the control of dominant shareholders and a company's leading group, IDs are in a position to play a favorable role for the company to independently judge and determine its business. The introduction of the ID system in the corporate     

International payment finality requires a supranational central-bank money： Reforming the international monetary architecture in the spirit of Keynes

Payment finality is a key issue domestically as well as across a country＇s borders. In the current international monetary architecture, the existing protocols for a delivery-versus-payment operation with central-bank money do not and cannot provide for international payment finality through the links that national central banks have established between themselves on a multilateral basis. This problem concerns each country considered as a whole, but not its residents. In this connection, moving from a positive to a normative analysis, this paper points out the lack of an international settlement institution, as well as the ways and means to provide such an institution, as the result of a structural change of the current international monetary architecture. The lack of an international means of final payment implies that, to date, countries use national currencies as objects of trade, which are thereby subjected to supply and demand on the foreign-exchange market, where exchange rates may, and do, vary daily according to a currency＇s excess demand （either positive or negative） with respect to another currency. This paper argues that exchange rates＇ erratic volatility is the result of the current international monetary disorder, which denatures national currencies when they are traded on foreign-exchange markets.     

An Alternative for Time Series Models

Two methods for construction of new stochastic processes with discrete time are presented. One of the methods employs as the defining tool “triangular （more specifically ＇pseudoaffine＇） transformations” which are extended from the Euclidean R^n to infinite dimension space. They transform any well-known discrete time stochastic process into the constructed one. The other more flexible method is the “method of parameter dependence”, extended to infinite dimension. Properties of the obtained stochastic processes （by either method） indicate the possibility to apply them for financial analysis, as an alternative for the classical time series models. The advantage of the presented models over the existing ones first of all relies on expected better accuracy. This follows from the fact that the typically held assumption on Markovianity in the existing models can easily be relaxed. The defined processes may incorporate a quite long memory including, among others, the k-Markovian cases for k _〉 2. Regardless the non-Markovianity of the models they still are tractable in an analytical or numerical way. The stochastic processes defined in this paper provide more flexible and more general tools than the existing time series models for modeling financial problems. Among others, they make it possible to incorporate the influence of environmental （explanatory） random variables on the underlying stochastic models＇ behavior. These additional features turn out to be describable by the method of parameter dependence. Some suggestions for an associated preliminary statistical analysis are included.     

Charismatic leader＇s dilemma： How to be a good charismatic leader in the context of racism？

It is an important issue to advice leaders and managers how to act in difficult managerial situations caused by the multicultural communality. Racism paves the way to the bad society. Racism understood as cultural phenomenon gives interesting prospects for the development of anti-racist organization culture. Leaders, who inspire their followers to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the organization and who is capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on the followers, are in the main focus of this article.     

Is the eldest son different? The residential choice of siblings in Japan

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of the living arrangements (coresidence behavior) of elderly parents and their children (whether elderly parents live with their children, and if so, with which child) in Japan using micro-data from a household survey. Our results provide support for all four explanations of coresidence behavior but especially for the life cycle and dynasty models (both of which assume selfishly motivated parents) and social norms and traditions: the fact that parents who were self-employed before retirement are more likely to live with their children, the fact that parents are less likely to live with sons who adopt their wife's surname, and the fact that parents are more likely to live with daughters whose husbands adopt their surname constitute evidence in favor of the dynasty model. The fact that parents who were (relatively wealthy) executives before retirement and parents who are homeowners are more likely to live with their children and the fact that parents are more likely to live with less educated children constitute evidence in favor of the selfish life cycle model (or the altruism model). And the fact that parental attitudes toward their children affect their coresidence behavior, the fact that parents are more likely to live with their eldest child if their eldest child is a son, and the fact that parents are most likely to live with their eldest son even if he is not the eldest child constitute evidence in favor of social norms and traditions.     

The Effect of Household Socioeconomic Status on the Demand for Child Health Care Services

The health of the child is an important factor for proper childhood development. Unfortunately, efforts to improve child health in many countries have not yielded the desired results as many children do not receive appropriate health care, hence contributing to high child mortality and morbidity from avoidable causes. To address this problem, it is important that we understand the factors that drive the demand for child health care services. This study, employing the binary and multinomial logistic regression models, examines the effect of household socioeconomic status on the demand for child health care in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia using data from the 2014 Demographic and Health Surveys. The results indicate that the likelihood of seeking appropriate health care for the child is higher when both parents make decisions. The findings further indicate that the odds of seeking treatment for the child falls with the birth order and age of the child, but increases with household wealth, insurance status and proximity to the health facility. Working women are more likely to demand child health care than their counterparts who are unemployed. Our results, therefore, suggest that improving child health will need the participation of both parents in the household on such decisions. Besides, there is the need to educate parents on the importance of seeking appropriate care for all the children born irrespective of the birth order and age of the child. There should also be deliberate efforts to improve the economic lot of households to enhance their purchasing power and encourage them to participate in health insurance schemes to enable effective utilization of health care services for the child in the efforts to improve child health.     

Motivation of Parent–Child Co‐residence Behavior: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

This paper examines the motivations of parent‐child co‐residence behavior in China using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. We test three possible motives: social norms, self‐interest and altruism. We find that social norms play an important role in household co‐residence behavior, showing that the belief that “sons take care of parents” is strong, and children in different birth orders take different responsibilities. Taking the one‐child policy as a natural experiment, we compared co‐residence behavior between only‐child and multi‐child families. This allowed us to test whether children in multi‐child families with wealthier parents more often co‐reside in order to compete for a bequest. We find that parents' wealth is more appealing to children in multi‐child families. The results support the life cycle theory that co‐residence decisions are motivated by self‐interest. We also find some evidence of altruism when parents and children make co‐residence decisions. These findings provide some insights for designing future elder‐support policies in China.     

Parent–child co-residence and bequest motives in China

In this paper, I discuss the actual conditions and the determinants of co-residence between older parents and their children in China, especially the impact of bequest motives on parent–child co-residence, using micro data from the “Survey of Living Preferences and Satisfaction,” conducted at Osaka University. More specifically, I use three subsamples of older respondents (those who live in urban areas, those who live in rural areas, and the pooled sample of both) to analyze the impact of bequest motives and other factors on the probability of parent–child co-residence. The results are as follows: bequest motives are strong in China, with more than 60% of respondents having a bequest motive, and the parent–child co-residence rate is also high (about 60%). Turning to the determinants of parent–child co-residence, children of urban parents are more likely to live with their older parents if their parents have a bequest motive, own their own homes, and live in an area where housing prices are high, a result which is consistent with both the selfish life-cycle and altruism models. Children are more likely to live with their older parents if their parents have a bequest motive in both the rural and combined samples, which implies that children are selfishly motivated and that the selfish life-cycle model applies in China.     

Intergenerational analysis of the donating behavior of parents and their offspring

Using data drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we explore the relationship between the donating behavior of parents and that of their children aged less than 18 which gives a direct insight into whether an intergenerational relationship in donating behavior exists. Furthermore, we exploit information relating to whether or not parents encourage their children to donate to charity by talking to them about donating to unveil information related to the intergenerational transmission of philanthropic behavior. Our findings suggest that an intergenerational correlation is only present in the absence of a control for whether the parent talks to the child about donating. The effect from the parent talking to their offspring is associated with an increased likelihood that the child donates by approximately 10 percentage points, a finding which is robust to a number of different estimation strategies.     

A note on the equality of distribution of child mortality: Java-Bali, 1950-1976

Infant mortality is a widely recognized social indicator that is a useful index of the relative socioeconomic condition of subgroups of the population of a developing country. In developed countries, a more appropriate indicator of mortality is the proportion of babies who die before they reach their 5th birthday. 3 birth cohorts are identified from data provided by the Indonesian Fertility Survey conducted in Java and Bali in 1976 in order to examine the trend in mortality: births occurring 15 or more years before the survey, 10-14 years before the survey, and 5-9 years before the survey. 4 characteristics of parents related to education, occupation and urban vs. rural residence are used to analyze child mortality trends. A table shows the estimates for various combinations of these characteristics. Child mortality has decreased, but more importantly, it has decreased most for parents on the low end of the socioeconomic scale. Either parent having secondary education appears to be the key factor in the experience of low child mortality, although as more parents achieve secondary education, another factor may emerge as more important.     

Do Parents Invest Less in Worse-Performing Children? Evidence from the Asian Financial Crisis

This article uses data from Indonesia around the time of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis to examine the role of parental preferences in human capital accumulation. Using a household fixed-effects estimation, I test whether parental education spending is affected by child mathematics test scores. I find that parents are more sensitive to the human capital of younger children, who are penalised for having lower skills than their older siblings. Differences in investment by child gender or birth order are evident in 2000 but not in 1997. This suggests that parents may have an efficiency investment strategy only when resource-constrained, and that education of younger children may be a luxury good.     

Multi-generational educational mobility in China in the twentieth century

Two essential strategies to understand the mechanisms of intergenerational mobility are to compare mobility across countries and across time. However, for multi-generational mobility, estimates for developing countries are mostly missing, and trend studies are rare. This paper uses education to measure social status and provides nationally representative estimates of social mobility over three generations in China that are suitable for international comparison. Results show that grandparents’ education positively correlates with children’s education, controlling for the parents’ education. This grandparent effect is comparable to what is found in Western countries, despite differences in cultures and institutions. During the sample period, the correlation between grandparent and child education is relatively stable. When exploring mechanisms, we find that the observed grandparent effect is primarily due to omitted information from the parents’ generation, not direct interactions between grandparents and children.     

Child labor, family income, and the Uruguay Round

Conclusion We are no longer limited to qualitative discussions of the merits of a social clause in the GATT against child labor. Future debates should be in quantitative terms. Child labor can contribute up to 25 percent of family income-contributions that the ILO regards as critical to their survival. Child laborers have few alternatives if they lose their jobs as a result of a social clause on labor standards. It is reasonably clear that child labor falls away quickly with economic development. However, multilateral trade agreements against child labor such as those proposed for inclusion in the WTO (and ILO) do not promote economic development. The contrary is more likely to be the case: they may reduce the range of alternatives available to children and their parents as producers, consumers, and breadwinners in developing countries.     

Human Capital and Hours Worked of Children in Cambodia: Empirical Evidence for Policy Implications*

This study uses data from the Cambodian Child Labor Survey 2001/02 (CCLS‐2001/02) to investigate the trade‐off between child labor and their human capital formation. It also investigates the determinants of child schooling and that of the income earned from child labor. This study finds that children's education is a significant determinant of their wage rate, which implicitly explains the logic behind the household's decision to allow a child to both work and study, and thus explains why parents keep investing in their children's education. We also find that non‐poor households and fathers’ and mothers’ education have statistically significant effects on child schooling. Finally, this study has found that if children's average working hours are below the threshold level of 22 h per week, then education is not affected. These research findings have policy implications for the human capital development of children, as well as for broader social policy in Cambodia.