Assessing scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11 using the e-scape system

This article reports on the outcomes from the e-scape Primary Scientific and Technological Understanding Assessment Project (2009–2010), which aimed to support primary teachers in developing valid portfolio-based tasks to assess pupils’ scientific and technological enquiry skills at age 11. This was part of the wider ‘e-scape’ project (2003-present), which has developed an innovative controlled alternative to design & technology and science public assessment at age 16. Teachers from eight primary schools were trained in the use of an online task-authoring tool to develop and trial assessment activities based on current classroom work. To compile their e-portfolios of assessment evidence, pupils used netbook devices, which afford multi-modal responses (text, drawing, photo, audio, video, spreadsheet) whilst leaving space on pupils’ tables for practical investigations. Once the pupil e-portfolios had been uploaded to the secure e-scape website, teachers assessed them using a ‘comparative judgement’ approach to produce a rank order with a high reliability coefficient. Participant teachers recognised the strength of the e-scape approach in terms of facilitating and managing pupils’ responses to assessment tasks in the classroom, which they successfully adapted to suit primary pedagogy. In particular, the benefits of scaffolding complex assessment tasks through the step-wise e-scape process in the authoring tool represented for some of the teachers a pedagogically significant development in terms of their planning.     

Export–led growth and structural change: evidence from Malaysia

Many studies have tried to establish the causal link between export expansion and economic growth. This contribution is to recognize that structural changes will change the sources of growth and this will affect the export-growth relationship. A country case study approach is used focusing on Malaysia, a country with one of the world's highest sustained growth rates and a long history of commodity trade. We use VAR analysis of Malaysian quarterly trade and GDP growth from 1965 to 1996. Trade data are disaggregated into primary and manufactures exports and causality tests are applied to the entire period as well as two subperiods #150 the 1965 #1501980 period when policy emphasis was on import substitution and the 1981#1501996 period when policies favoured export-led growth. Statistical tests confirm export-led growth for the full period and for the period to 1980 but tests on the 1981#1501996 period show growth causing exports. Primary exports had a stronger direct impact on economic growth than manufactures. The weakening support for export-led growth after Malaysia shifted to an export-oriented development strategy is associated with structural changes associated with industrialization. Interaction among trade and growth variables becomes more complex with a broadening export base and more diverse sources of growth.     

Corporate social responsibility,stock prices,and tax policy

We model a market in which some investors get utility from owning shares of firms that engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). In equilibrium, investors' CSR considerations influence portfolio choices, stock prices, and CSR spending. We study tax policy designed to maximize total giving (individual and corporate) net of government tax breaks and find that its effectiveness is non‐monotonic in the proportion of altruistic investors: with few or many altruistic investors, it has little impact on giving, but, at intermediate levels, effective tax policy intuitively relates the corporate tax rebate rate on giving and the cap on allowable tax savings.     

改革30年后，中国经济徘徊在十字路口

【英国路透社12月9日】也许在数月前，可能还没有人认为，对于中国而言，即将成为过去的2008年，值得铭记的或许并不是北京8月的奥运盛会或是5月的四川震灾，而是中国经济发展模式的转变。     

Managing Visitor Impacts at Visitor Attractions: An International Assessment

This paper presents the findings of a study designed to extend and develop a previous study conducted by the authors on the management of visitor impacts at visitor attractions in Scotland. This follow-up study sets out to discover the extent to which attractions in other countries experience similar impacts, with comparable management challenges to those already identified in the Scottish visitor attraction sector. In order to provide a direct comparison to the Scottish study, a replication of the research methodology employed in that study was considered necessary. A self-completion survey was thus mailed to managers of paid-admission attractions in Canada, Australia and New Zealand: three ‘leading-edge’ destinations selected for comparison. Findings suggest that although many impacts are perceived to be similar across the four countries, a number of important differences are evident. Given that the reasons for such differences vary, the paper concludes that the development of a generic strategy for the management of visitor impacts internationally remains something for the future. In the meantime, the sector should rely on the identification and adoption of best practice on a case-by-case basis. The sector’s diversity and fragmentation suggest that qualitative research holds the key to identifying appropriate techniques for managing visitor impacts.     

Trade Policy and Antitrust: Do Consumers Matter to Legislators?

We provide one of the first efforts to measure the importance of consumer preferences in legislators' trade policy decisions by estimating the degree to which the level of antitrust enforcement in the legislator's state impacts his or her vote on free trade agreements. To the extent that antitrust and trade liberalization are both viewed as pro‐consumer in nature, we would expect to see a positive relationship between antitrust enforcement in their legislative district and Congressional votes in support of trade liberalization. We find evidence suggesting that consumer preferences do play a role in legislative decisions on trade policy.     

ASEAN FTA,distribution of income,and globalization

This paper examines the impact of Free Trade Agreements on income distribution within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and between the members and their trading partners outside ASEAN. The study uses a Computable General Equilibrium model, a modified version of the 57 sector, 87 country, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) integrated model of national input–output tables, version-6.2 (2001 database) with its reserve matrix facility, to simulate income distribution results as an outcome of certain parameter changes that appear in intra and inter regional trade.Within ASEAN, trade liberalization will stimulate the output of each country within the region according to their comparative advantage. Since trade liberalization tends to increase output of capital-intensive goods more than labor-intensive goods, the less-developed countries within the region tend to get smaller benefits compared to other member countries. In addition, the physical means of production tend to gain more relative to the gains of labor from the FTAs. This tends to widen the income gap between high-income and low-income households within ASEAN.Comparing ASEAN and the developed non-ASEAN countries, an FTA within ASEAN tends to reduce the returns to labor of the developed non-member countries and narrow the income gap between ASEAN, as a whole, and those rich countries since capital-intensive products of developing countries are often labor-intensive goods of developed countries.     

《瓦格纳五讲》前言

1正如我很久之前说的那样,瓦格纳的歌剧是我生命的一部分。这是我母亲在音乐方面最大的爱好,我在屋子里听着古老的黑胶78转唱片,在唱片的电流中,听着来自西格弗里德1的森林细语,或者魁梧女人的骑马远行,抑或伊索尔德2死亡的交响乐。自1952年夏以来,我的父亲,作为图卢兹的"市长",被邀请参加由威     

Rejoinder

We thank discussants Christine O’Keefe, Natalie Shlomo, Josep Domingo‐Ferrer, and George Duncan for their thoughtful commentary. Their insightful points are precisely the kind of “serious conversation” that we called for in the paper.     

Direct and indirect transmission of avian influenza: results from a calibrated agent-based model

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper develops an agent-based model of the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a regional poultry sector. Spatially located flocks...