REAL AND DISTRIBUTIVE EFFECTS OF PETROLEUM PRICE LIBERALIZATION: THE CASE OF INDONESIA

The effect of higher petroleum prices on the aggregate price level, real growth, and income distribution is appraised within a multisector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. A reduction in the government subsidy raises petroleum prices and production costs throughout the economy. Consumer demand, production, and income decline as output prices increase and consumer purchasing power decreases. The model is applied to and calibrated for Indonesia. The simulated results predict a slight increase in the price level and a slight decrease in output. An important result is that urban household groups will be the most significantly affected by the subsidy reduction.     

Comparison of attitudes towards school lunch by elementary school children in Japan,Korea and Thailand

The attitudes of elementary school children towards school lunch among three Asian countries, namely Japan, Korea and Thailand, were compared. More school children in Japan felt that their teachers gave them advice during the school lunch programme. Japanese and Korean teachers advised their children to eat as much as possible of the lunch. Korean children may be a little more obedient with regard to heeding the advice. However, few teachers in Thailand gave the children advice over eating lunch, and the Thai children looked forward to and enjoyed the school lunch. The different responses between Thailand and other two countries may be attributed in part to the differences in the teachers' instruction in the programme. Elementary school teachers, especially in Thailand and Korea, have to take more classes in food and nutrition in universities or colleges, and positively take part in the school lunch programme.     

农业水土资源耦合研究进展与展望

目的 寻找农业水土资源耦合研究热点、梳理研究发展历程、统筹和归纳研究体系,明晰未来研究发展方向和突破点,助力农业水土资源可持续利用。方法 文章通过定性与定量研究相结合,借助CiteSpace软件对1992—2022年农业水土资源耦合研究热点、发展历程进行初步分析,之后借助文献归纳法进一步综述研究体系。结果 研究聚焦于农业水土资源利用效率及效用,总体上经历了从土壤理化性质到水土资源优化配置、从小尺度作物种植到大尺度流域治理的发展历程,研究体系由3个研究基本面和6个研究基本点构成,研究基本面分别为水土资源匹配格局、水土资源利用过程、水土资源状态响应,即“格局—过程—响应”的农业水土资源耦合研究体系。结论 水土资源匹配格局方面需进一步明晰水土资源空间分异特征并加强二者物理交互过程和时空变异规律的研究,建议未来聚焦于识别水土资源配置差别并建立实践性的匹配等别标准;水土资源利用过程方面土地利用变化后水文过程响应研究尚待补充,建议未来可深入探索土地利用与水文过程的二元互馈机理;水土资源状态响应方面气候变化下需注意从气象指标入手探究农业生产中水土资源的关系,建议未来加强气候变化背景下低效利用问题的动态监测及预测模拟。     

Medical costs in patients with heart failure after acute heart failure events: one-year follow-up study

Aims: This study investigated annual medical costs using real-world data focusing on acute heart failure.

Methods: The data were retrospectively collected from six tertiary hospitals in South Korea. Overall, 330 patients who were hospitalized for acute heart failure between January 2011 and July 2012 were selected. Data were collected on their follow-up medical visits for 1 year, including medical costs incurred toward treatment. Those who died within the observational period or who had no records of follow-up visits were excluded. Annual per patient medical costs were estimated according to the type of medical services, and factors contributing to the costs using Gamma Generalized Linear Models (GLM) with log link were analyzed.

Results: On average, total annual medical costs for each patient were USD 6,199 (±9,675), with hospitalization accounting for 95% of the total expenses. Hospitalization cost USD 5,904 (±9,666) per patient. Those who are re-admitted have 88.5% higher medical expenditure than those who have not been re-admitted in 1 year, and patients using intensive care units have 19.6% higher expenditure than those who do not. When the number of hospital days increased by 1?day, medical expenses increased by 6.7%.

Limitations: Outpatient drug costs were not included. There is a possibility that medical expenses for AHF may have been under-estimated.

Conclusion: It was found that hospitalization resulted in substantial costs for treatment of heart failure in South Korea, especially in patients with an acute heart failure event. Prevention strategies and appropriate management programs that would reduce both frequency of hospitalization and length of stay for patients with the underlying risk of heart failure are needed.     

“Untact”: a new customer service strategy in the digital age

Service Business - The Industry 4.0 era has brought a shift in consumers’ purchasing behaviors from traditional retailing to online and/or mobile channels, triggered by advanced digital...     

A network text analysis of published papers in service business, 2007–2017: research trends in the service sector

The service sector has become the most important part of the global economy. Thus, Service Business: An International Journal (SB) was launched in 2007 to deliver innovative studies that can provide resonating insights to researchers and practitioners in services. This study analyzed 311 articles published in SB during the past 10+ years (2007–2017) by conducting network text analysis (NTA). The published papers’ keywords link relations were analyzed to create network maps of research topics, ranging from traditional to emerging ideas of researchers. Influential research topics and their clusters were identified using centrality and community analyses. Research trends were identified for the first 5 years (Volume 1–5) and later years (Volume 6–11) separately through NTA. The results reveal interesting change in research topics over time. Common keywords of studies published in the first 5 years were: Service, Innovation, Customer, Strategy, Tourism, and Quality. The primary frequent keywords of articles published during 2012–2017 were: Customer, Quality, Satisfaction, Innovation, Mobile, and Technology. The results of the study shed valuable insights to the researchers and practitioners in the service sector. Applications of keyword network building and analysis methods provided in this study would be helpful to researchers who are interested in exploring trends of emerging new topics.     

后WTO时代深圳经济特区利用外商投资的策略

<正> 24年来,深圳经济特区依赖“以开放促改革,以改革促发展” 的独特成长道路,创造了持续高速增长的经济奇迹。外商投资经济不仅构成深圳经济特区重要的微观基础,而且外商投资作为对外开放的最重要内容,有力促动了经济特区的体制改革和经济社会发展。加入世贸后,我国根据对外经济贸易政策统一性原则所作出的承诺,使经济特区利用特殊的政策吸引外商投资的作法受到一定约束,虽然经济特区的一些特殊经济政策仍然可以保留,但必须转换思路,主要依靠先行优势和移民城市具有的大量战略性资产,参加跨国公司本土化,培育深圳经济特区核心竞争力,建成世界经济中心之一。     

Coordinating under incomplete information

We show that, in a minimum effort game with incomplete information where player types are independently drawn, there is a largest and smallest Bayesian equilibrium, leading to the set of equilibrium payoffs (as evaluated at the interim stage) having a lattice structure. Furthermore, the range of equilibrium payoffs converges to those of the deterministic complete information version of the game, in the limit as the incomplete information vanishes. This entails that such incomplete information alone cannot explain the equilibrium selection suggested by experimental evidence. We thank Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Hans Carlsson, Ani Guerdjikova and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Part of this work was done while Asheim was visiting Cornell University, which hospitality is gratefully acknowledged.     

Interdisciplinarity in design education: understanding the undergraduate student experience

Interdisciplinarity is becoming a critical issue of concern for design schools across East Asia in their attempts to provide industry graduates with the skills and competences to make creative contributions in a global economy. As a result, East Asian higher education institutions are aggressively endeavouring to provide interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum that combine traditional designerly skills with engineering knowledge and methods. The current study takes an interdisciplinary undergraduate course as case-study to examine how the pedagogic strategy of team teaching influences student learning experience. Two surveys of student learning were conducted for this research purpose. The first provided an indication of the holistic student learning experience, while the second explored the conditions of team and non-team teaching as influence upon learning experiences specifically. Results showed how students taught by a single instructor provided a more positive overall opinion of course quality and experienced significantly more encouragement to participate compared to team taught respondents. However, findings also indicated how team teaching significantly increased the students’ experience of a balanced contribution from different disciplinary perspectives and how the team teaching approach was significantly more effective in providing students with greater opportunities to understand the relevance of the different disciplines to the course subject. We conclude with a discussion of results in terms of the effective use of team teaching at undergraduate level as strategy for interdisciplinary learning experiences.     

Residents' Perceived Impacts of Gaming Development in Macau: Social Representation Perspectives

The purpose of the research was to provide a better understanding of local residents' perceived impacts of gaming tourism based on social representations theory. An empirical investigation was conducted in Macau, where gaming tourism is under explosive development. Through a survey of 396 local residents, two social representation groups were identified: “Ambivalents” and “Rationalists”. The two social representation groups presented significantly different perceptions and attitudes toward the impacts of gaming tourism in Macau. The three most significant factors that influenced residents' representations were personal income, perceptions of gaming tourism being able to increase personal/family income, and satisfaction with government performance in managing gaming tourism development. The research provides theoretical implications for future gaming impact studies and also practical ones for local governments and stakeholders in the tourism industry in Macau and other gaming destinations.