Internationalizing the Assessment Criteria to Build Cross-Cultural Competency

ABSTRACT

International business programs, universities with international students, and educators who seek to internationalize their teaching need to make informed decisions about teaching, testing, and assessment criteria. The infusion of American business curricula throughout the world as well as the need to train American business students for leadership roles in global contexts calls for teaching and assessment practices which explore a plurality of cognitive, affective and behavioral pedagogical strategies. This article considers traditional education and assessment in China in light of American educational practices currently used for assessment in business training. It explores how an understanding of modern Confucianist values can shape assessment choices in both American and overseas programs as an example of developing cross-cultural awareness. The authors call for an assessment process in business education which draws from a plurality of methods adapted to teaching, learning and testing for global awareness.     

Do the English Legal Origin Countries have More Dispersed Share Ownership and More Developed Financial Systems?

The essence of the legal origin hypothesis is that a country with an English legal origin provides better investor and creditor protection and experiences greater financial development; financial institutions and stock markets flourish, the general public participate more in financing investment projects of companies and so shareholding is less concentrated. The present paper examines this hypothesis on the basis of a cross‐country study of 85 countries. We find no evidence of more dispersed share ownership in the English law countries than in other countries with different legal origins irrespective of whether we adjust for the existence of transitional economies and less developed countries in the sample. Using three indicators of development of banking and other credit institutions and four indicators of stock market developments, we also find no evidence of more developed financial systems in the English law countries. As expected, there is some evidence of lower financial development in the less developed countries and transitional countries. It is not the English law heritage but the security of persons and goods that appears to explain the cross‐country variations in financial development.     

城市竞争力研究综述

本文对城市竞争力的相关概念进行了辨析。这些概念主要有：比较优势、竞争优势、核心竞争力等。在梳理这些概念的同时对这些概念与城市竞争力的关系进行了分析，确定了本文研究的城市竞争力概念。     

比较优势、竞争优势与河南省制造业结构现状及其优化

本文将比较优势、竞争优势理论引入制造业结构评价中,以此为基础构造评价模型,将河南省29个产业部门划分为4种类型,据此对河南省制造业结构现状进行评价,在此基础上给出优化对策。     

比较优势、囚徒困境与制度建设

比较优势理论认为,只要贸易双方都按照自身的比较优势进行分工和合作,则最终的结果对于贸易双方来说都是有利的。但在现实生活中,贸易双方往往没有遵循比较优势理论进行分工。出现这种社会现象的根源在于缺乏有效的利益制约制度。本文分析了这种制度缺乏的原因,并提出了完善它的基本思路。     

平衡就业结构以发挥我国的比较优势

改革开放20多年来,我国经济保持了持续快速增长。但近年来,我国的就业结构却出现了明显的不平衡。这种不平衡突出地表现在两个方面:一是大学生就业压力增大;二是部分地区出现“民工荒”现象。本文拟从这两个方面分别进行分析,并探讨如何平衡就业结构以进一步发挥我国的比较优势。     

劳动力成本提高条件下如何保持竞争力

近年来我国劳动力成本呈上升趋势,许多人担心我们在国际市场上的竞争优势将被削弱。文章认为,对此既要防止无所作为,又要避免反应过度。只要能够实现增长方式的转变,仍然可以获得动态比较优势的收益,寻找到新的经济增长源泉。应通过改善就业、再就业环境,挖掘劳动力供给的制度潜力,延缓劳动力成本上升趋势;避免对劳动力市场的过度干预;通过发展教育和培训,有效扩大人力资本存量,减少劳动力成本带来的冲击。     

企业家精神型政府与少数民族地区经济竞争优势

本文以企业家理论为依据,深入分析了企业家精神型政府对少数民族地区经济竞争优势获取的作用,文章分别从企业家精神型政府的创新精神、寻求机会、承担风险、协调作用等方面来阐述企业家精神型政府对少数民族经济竞争优势获取的作用和意义,文章为获取少数民族经济竞争优势地位提供了战略发展依据。     

The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000

This paper brings a historical perspective to debates on worktime differences across OECD countries, exploiting new data sets on hours of work per week, and days and hours of work per year between 1870 and 2000. We contest the popular view that the divergence in worktimes between Europe and North America and Australia is a recent phenomenon. Since 1870 the decline in weekly and annual hours was consistently greater in the Old World; the New World has had fewer days off for the last 130 years. Labor power and inequality, held to be important determinants of worktime after 1970, had comparable effects in the period before 1913. We find that given their levels of income in 1870 New World workers supplied relatively too many hours of work.     

Regret in auctions: theory and evidence

The sealed-bid first-price auction of a single object in the case of independent privately-known values is the simplest auction setting and understanding it is important for understanding more complex mechanisms. But bidders bid above the risk-neutral Nash equilibrium theory prediction. The reasons for this “over bidding” remain an unsolved puzzle. Several explanations have been offered, including risk aversion, social comparisons, and learning. We present a new explanation based on regret and a model that explains not only the observed over bidding in sealed-bid first-price auctions, but also behavior in several other settings that is inconsistent with risk aversion. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation.