Social-Centric Development of Multi-Agent Architectures

In the past few years, software applications have increased in complexity and in stakeholders' expectations principally due to new Internet-centric application areas, such as e-business, web services, ubiquitous computing, and peer-to-peer networks. Multi-agent systems (MAS) architectures have gained popularity for developing such software. Unfortunately, despite considerable work in software architecture during the past decade, few research efforts have aimed at truly defining frameworks for agent-based architectural design. Considering that MAS architecture is conceived as a society of software agents, this article overviews a social-driven design approach dedicated to build up agent-based systems. The approach is based on organizational structures and social patterns to define agent architectures notably in the context of e-business system design.     

Investigating the Memorable Experiences of the Senior Travel Market: An Examination of the Reminiscence Bump

The importance of the senior travel market has been well-recognized by tourism marketers and researchers. While academic studies have begun to examine the psychological aspects of senior travelers, more progress must be made to investigate the psychology of memory, particularly with respect to the reminiscence bump, behind the nature of their memorable experiences (MEs). In-depth interviews with 42 respondents revealed five characteristics: identity formation, family milestones, relationship development, nostalgia reenactment, and freedom pursuits. Finally, the practical implications of this study are discussed and several avenues for future research are proposed.     

Does option provide more informative content than stock after regulation fair disclosure?

This article examines the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), which intends to eliminate selective disclosure to only a few privileged interested parties, on the information embedded in the stock-and-option markets prior to tender offer announcements. In the pre-announcement period after Reg FD, the volume of public option information contains less information about subsequent stock price movements. Although the quantity of public information may be higher after Reg FD, the inferior quality of publicly available option information dominates the higher quantity. Thus, the predictive power of option information decreases. In the post-RFD pre-announcement period, the volume of public option information is more informative than the volume of stock private information. It indicates that although the quality of private stock information is superior to that of public option information, the much lower quantity of stock information results in a lower predictive power of private stock information than that of public option information.     

How foreign direct investment promote institutional quality: Evidence from Vietnam

Using a unique dataset from a provincial competitiveness survey and the rising foreign direct investment (FDI) from joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), I find that variations in economic institutions across the provinces of Vietnam are associated with the flow of foreign investment. To overcome endogeneity problems, I use the minimum distance from each province to a main economic centre as an instrument for foreign investment inflows. The instrumental variable approach shows that the direction of influence is from greater foreign investment to better institutions. These results hold after controlling for various additional covariates, and are also robust to various alternative measures of institutions. I also find that foreign direct investment has greater short-term impacts on institutional quality in the northern provinces.     

The role of learning motivation on financial knowledge among Vietnamese college students

Using survey data from 730 undergraduates in Vietnam, we find that learning motivation and its components, especially self-efficacy, finance learning value, and achievement goals, significantly correlate with students' financial literacy performance. In addition, these correlations are moderated by student characteristics, among which academic seniority, university type, parents' education, and extra math study during high school matter the most. Our results raise significant implications to policymakers, researchers, and educators that include understanding the role of motivation and incorporating it in financial literacy education and intervention programs and considering the moderation roles that individuals' characteristics play in the motivation-financial literacy link. We encourage more research in these areas.     

Climate-resilient practices and welfare impacts on rice-cultivating households in Vietnam: Does joint adoption of multiple practices matter?

Farmers have a long history of adjusting their production practices in response to changing production conditions. Using a multinomial endogenous treatment effects model that accounts for observable and unobservable heterogeneity, this study investigates the adoption and welfare impacts of climate-resilient practices on Vietnamese rice-cultivating households. We found evidence of clear and positive welfare impacts from the adoption of canal irrigation (CI) and the joint adoption of agricultural conservation practices (CP) and CI as the main adaptation strategies to increase water stress. More importantly, although farmers with access to CI systems obtained the highest returns, the joint adoption of multiple practices still had substantially high adoption rates and significantly positive effects on rice yield, rice revenue and household income. Our findings indicate that farms' and farmers' characteristics, market information and climatic conditions are generally the main factors driving rice farmers' decisions to adopt climate-resilient technologies, both individually and jointly. Follow-up policy interventions should focus on improving CI systems and promoting the joint adoption of climate-resilient technologies to improve rice farmers' well-being and enhance their resilience capacity to cope with incoming climatic uncertainty.     

CO-EVOLUTION OF THE ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY: POLICY INTERACTIONS ACROSS THE PACIFIC

Abstract.    This study highlights the cross-border co-evolution of the global electronics industry, under international policy interactions. From the world distribution of the major IT producing and using firms, and the fabrication and trading network, the prominence of the Pacific Rim nexus stands out. The comparative advantages and trade gains of individual economies are decided by the impact of the institutional and policy matrix. In turn, their competing yet complementary relations give policy analysis a historical perspective. The policy performance interplay yields new insight into both how the world stands, and what the national policy should be, other things being given.