DETERMINANTS OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AMONG MIGRANT CHILDREN: SURVEY EVIDENCE FROM CHINA'S JIANGSU PROVINCE*

Abstract.  Across the developing world education is seen as a means of raising levels of everyday wellbeing and is being linked to improved measures of productivity and economic growth. This paper employs a household production function framework to examine the determinants of school attendance among migrant children using a unique dataset collected in China's Jiangsu province. The study finds that the main predictors of school attendance among migrant children in the sample were household income, mother's education, the length of residence of the child's mother in the city and whether both parents were working in the same city.     

Market Alternatives, Third Party Intervention, and Third Party Informedness in Negotiation

Negotiation is one possible mechanism for setting transfer prices when no unique transfer price is obviously correct, allowing divisional managers to run their divisions with some degree of autonomy. This study examines the effects of market alternatives, third party intervention and third party informedness in transfer pricing negotiation.Experiment 1 examined the effects of market alternatives in a fully crossed design of buyer and seller's Best Alternatives To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) at four levels (no, low, medium, or high). Experiment 2 examined the effects of third party intervention with reference to role (binding vs. nonbinding) and informedness (informed vs. uninformed).Results of Experiment 1 indicated that both the existence and level of market alternatives affected reservation prices, expected profits, aspiration levels, and individual profits. Dyads with unequal BATNAs did not obtain higher joint profits than those with equal BATNAs, while dyads with unequal BATNAs distributed profits more unevenly between negotiators than dyads with equal BATNAs. Results of Experiment 2 indicated that only making the third party's role binding had an effect on joint profits. However, the presence of a third party and both the role and informedness manipulations affected resource distribution.     

Integral scenarios: Reframing theory, building from practice

Australian futurists have been working with a range of integral theories over the past decade to inform new approaches to scenarios. Chief among the integral theories explored is Wilber's All Quadrant, All Level, All Lines, All States, All Types (AQAL) meta-theory. This emerging and diverse set of scenario methods, falling under the term ‘integral scenarios’ as reviewed in this paper, have mostly been developed in practice and to date, have not been represented in futures journals. This paper contextualises integral scenarios with a summary of the theoretical background to their development before arriving at a generic scenario generation process together with a set of utility and quality criteria. This generic framework and criteria are then used to situate a range of case studies of integral scenarios, outlining their features, benefits and limitations. Finally, the areas of potential for further development are highlighted—for both refined and wholly new types of integral scenario methods.     

The Manpower Law of 2003 and its implementing regulations: Genesis,key articles and potential impact

This paper reviews Indonesia's Manpower Law 13/2003 and related regulations, against a backdrop of slow employment growth, business concerns about the legislation and government attempts to change it in 2006. The paper focuses on severance rates and dismissals, short-term contracts and out-sourcing, and minimum wages, also briefly discussing other articles, and comparing the law with those in neighbouring countries. It suggests that certain articles have contributed to significantly higher wage costs and reduced flexibility in the management of labour in Indonesia's formal sector, even though compliance is by no means universal within the private sector. Key provisions, especially large increases in severance rates, and needs criteria imposed for the purpose of setting minimum wages, are also out of step with labour market policies in other developing countries. Circumstantial evidence suggests that these measures have adversely affected the investment climate and damaged prospects for a recovery in employment.     

Of course that is not the whole (toy) story: Entrepreneurship and the cat's cradle

Reading and analyzing the Toy Store story imply a critical inquiry into how the act of storytelling can be understood. The entrepreneurial story is situated within the context of the plea to downplay the focus on the individual entrepreneur. As this discussion did not share some of the critical debates on the status of the subject, a narrative study of entrepreneurship might refocus on the storytelling entrepreneur rather than on the process of storytelling. To prevent this, storytelling is conceived as an enacted performance that balances complexity and coherence and that draws upon but is not enclosed by a range of cultural and masternarratives.     

An Economic Analysis of the Eutrophication Problem of the Barwon and Darling Rivers in New South Wales

The focus of the paper is the 1000 km toxic blue-green algal bloom which afflicted the Barwon and Darling Rivers in 1991. Factors which contributed to the bloom are increased water use for irrigation, drought and nutrient pollution, mainly phosphorus from sewage treatment plants and other point sources. A model for finding the optimal allocation of nutrient removal amongst point sources is developed in which the blue-green algal externality impacts on a number of locations on the rivers. The cost of pollution function is unknown but our results suggest that if the marginal costs of phosphorus removal are low, the equilibrium level of phosphorus at each location is likely to be below that which reduces the recreational value of the rivers.     

The Development and Diffusion of Radical Technological Innovation: The Role of Bus Demonstration Projects in Commercializing Fuel Cell Technology

North American, European and Japanese governments have legislated to control Greenhouse Gas emissions and have promoted alternative technology as part of strategies to address climate change. Governments worldwide have sought to encourage adoption of alternative automotive technology by funding demonstrations and in-service trials. Among other initiatives the automotive industry has explored applications of a radical technological innovation—fuel cells—to power a range of vehicles from forklifts to buses. This paper examines the rationale and actions of various stakeholders to facilitate adoption of fuel cell technology in vehicles through a specific market segment—that of fuel cell buses (FCBs)—and explores the progress of FCB projects in North America, Europe and Japan. It examines the role of demonstration projects and highlights the complexity of the relationship between government and developers, and the multifarious and conflicting objectives of industry players that inhibit progress.     

Management strategy and HR in international mergers: choice,constraint and pragmatism

The article combines consideration of the range of contextual factors that impact on management strategy and HR in the post‐merger period (such as corporate structures and cultures, pressures from shareholders and regulatory and legal environments at national and international level) with an examination of the interests and power of various groups of actors within the firm. Specifically, we apply a framework which integrates the insights of market‐based, institutionalist and micro‐political approaches. We locate our analysis within the relevant international HRM literature, most notably recent debates concerning multinational corporation (MNC) merger dynamics. International mergers and acquisitions provide particularly useful scenarios through which to explore the interdependence between choice and constraint, illustrated here by processes of negotiation, compromise and balance across a range of issues in several case study organisations. The key areas highlighted concern: (1) the integration of HR strategies, and (2) processes of post‐merger rationalisation.     

Liberalizing Europe's Network Industries: Ten Conflicting Priorities

This article, the first of a two-part feature, summarises the general arguments of the inaugural report of a programme to monitor the progress of European deregulation. The author starts by defining Europe's network industries in terms of three phases of market structure: monopoly, monopoly and competition co-existing and, finally, effective competition. In the current second phase, he identifies ten conflicting priorities for policy-makers and the industries.