Browsing by SDGs "[SDGs]SDG10"

This study constructs a dynamic model of the coexistence of public and private schools to study the impact of voucher programs when there are nonlinear peer group effects. The government provides public schools as well as tuition vouchers for households attending private schools. School quality depends on expenditure per student and peer quality within the school. When peer quality is nonlinear, more agents will choose public schools if peer quality is more substitutable, whereas more agents will attend private schools if peer quality is more complementary. We find that vouchers will typically create a "cream skimming" effect and the impact of voucher programs on economic performance is sensitive to the way in which peer interactions affect school quality. © 2006 Cambridge University Press.

Despite increasing interest in the study of Taiwanese migrants, the underlying concept and methodology remain gender-blind. Invisible from the Census are the women who emigrated with their husbands, leaving behind their adopted country to make a living elsewhere. Most of the 'astronaut wives' studied in this research are middle-class women who had careers in Taiwan prior to emigration, but became full-time home-makers upon arrival in Canada, the host country. The major questions raised for this research are: (1) What are the circumstances of migration for Taiwanese families? (2) How do Taiwanese 'dan qi ma ma'/'astronaut wives' cope with the challenges of the new environment? (3) How do they relate to their husbands, children, and the Taiwanese community during the process of adaptation? Thirty women from 'astronaut' families were interviewed in Toronto and Vancouver in 2005 and 2006, using a semi-structured questionnaire, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation methods. It was found that migration has not liberated them from the traditional familial roles in Taiwan, but has however enabled them to build new social networks that play an important role in their new lives.

This study develops an endogenous growth model of migration to analyze the impact of international migration on the economic growth of a source country. When making their fertility and education decisions, adults may have the option of migrating to a foreign country. We find that changes in the migration probability or the extent of migration costs will lead to a trade-off between the quality and the quantity of children. When a host country cannot differentiate between the abilities of migrants, an increase in migration probability will raise a source country's economic growth. When low- and high-skilled workers are faced with different migration probabilities, allowing more low-skilled workers to emigrate will cause a "brain gain" in both the short run and the long run. However, relaxation of restrictions on the emigration of high-skilled workers will damage economic growth in the long run, although a brain gain may occur in the short run. © 2008 Western Economic Association International.

The determinants and/or economic effects of modern food distribution channels have attracted much attention in previous research. Studies on the welfare consequences of modern channel options, however, have been sparse. Based on a broader definition of modern food distribution channels including midstream processors and downstream retailers (supermarkets, hypermarkets, brand-named retailers), this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the distributional implications of farm households’ choice of modern food distribution channels using a large and unique farm household dataset in Taiwan. Making use of the two-step control function approach, we identify the effect of modern food distribution options on farm households’ profitability. The results reveal selling farm produce to modern food distributors does not produce a positive differential compared to the traditional outlets. Another dimension of farm household welfare affected by the choice of modern food distribution channel is income inequality. We apply the Lerman and Yitzhaki decomposition approach to gain a better understanding of the effect of the marketing channel option on the overall distribution of farm household income. The Gini decomposition of different income sources indicates that the choice of modern food distribution channels results in an inequality-equalizing effect among the farm households in Taiwan, suggesting the inclusion of smallholder farmers in the modern food distribution channels improves the overall welfare of the rural society. ? 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

How the rise of civil society intersects with globalization can be seen in the spaces of cities. Here called “civic spaces” – inclusive social spaces with a high degree of autonomy from the state and corporate economy – the focus is on identifying and tracing the on-going uses and transformations of these spaces in Pacific Asia cities. Taking the view that civil society is as much ‘for itself’ as it is potentially engaged in the public sphere of politics, the concept of civic space is defined in contrast to exclusive civil society spaces and state or corporate economy colonization of public spaces. A general timeline of globalization processes is presented to show that not only do local contexts matter greatly but also that the world system is dynamically changing through time. Particularly since the mid-1980s, the confluence of the globalization of the factory and assembly system, finance capital, franchise consumerism, and international worker migration in Pacific Asia has been part of the radical growth and social as well as physical restructuring of cities. At the same time, globally-linked economic growth and access to information beyond that provided by state-controlled media have promoted the rise of civil society calling for popular inclusion in the decisions about rights to the city. These converging forces are intensifying contestations from within civil society over urban governance. Six general contemporary trends and related issues with regard to civic spaces are identified from on-going research in urbanization and civic space: (1) the acceleration and polarization of urbanization; (2) the shift from national civil society-state contestations to civil society-global economy and cultural confrontations; (3) increasing multicultural make up of metropolitan regions and the impending crisis of citizenship; (4) growing inequality and social fragmentation; and (5) the city, civil society and the search for new forms of governance.

Stalagmite ZJD-21 (12.3-cm long) was collected from Zhijin Cave in Zhijin County, Guizhou, China. Its 210Pb profile and seven 230Th/234U dates indicate that the stalagmite has grown continuously for the past 1100years. The δ18O record of ZJD-21 indicates that δ18O in the stalagmite was mainly influenced by rainfall amount and/or summer/winter rain ratio, with lighter values corresponding to wetter climatic conditions and/or more summer monsoonal rains. The ZJD-21 δ18O record suggests: (1) dry/warm climates during AD 950-1100 (overlapping with most of the Medieval Warm Period, MWP, in Europe); (2) strengthening of the summer monsoon from the MWP toward the beginning of the Little Ice Age (LIA) at AD 1250; (3) relatively wet/cold conditions occurred between AD 1250 and 1500, shown by relatively light δ18O values; (4) the summer monsoon intensity strongly declined referred by the increase δ18O trend from AD 1500 to AD 1600, perhaps resulting in dry/cold conditions; and (5) a strongly enhancement of the summer monsoon intensity appeared from AD 1700 to 1950, reflecting wet/cold conditions during the late period of the LIA. On decadal scales the monsoonal climate of central western Guizhou can be either warm/wet and cold/dry, or warm/dry and cold/wet. The δ13C variations in ZJD-21 on decadal-to-centennial scales respond mainly to vegetation changes with heavier values reflecting lesser amount of forest coverage. Prior to AD 1700, the δ13C generally co-varied with δ18O reflecting the expected more extensive vegetation growth (lighter δ13C) under wetter climate (lighter δ18O). However, during the past 300years the δ13C increased sharply showing an opposite trend to that of δ18O. This observation strongly suggests that a decline of surface vegetation due to an artificial deforestation might have occurred - an occurrence coincident with the large-scale immigration into central western Guizhou in connection with copper-mining activities during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng of Qing Dynasty. Since the late 1890s, especially in the past 50years, population surge has led to serious karst rocky desertification in the area. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

On the southern coast of Taiwan, the majority of juveniles of the damselfish Dascyllus reticulatus (Richardson) live exclusively on table corals on reefs. Patterns of juvenile settlement were evaluated monthly on 5 coral heads from February 1997 to September 1998, to study the influence of recruitment on colonization. The population size, which was negatively linked to rainfall, ranged from 13 (minimal, in August 1997) to 187 individuals (maximal, in September 1998). New recruits occurred throughout the year. There was concordance among the monthly numbers of new recruits in different colonies. The main recruitment season occurred from late summer to early autumn and peaked in October 1997 and August 1998. The old residents had no effects on recruitment. Immigration to colonies was evident in certain colonies. Overall, results suggest that colonization was mainly governed by the influx of juveniles during peak recruitment. Apart from other post-settlement processes yet to be elucidated, migration and environmental factors such as typhoons and rainfall might also have contributed to temporal variations.

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The 2016 US election and the victory of Donald Trump are closely connected to a perceived rise of the far-right in the United States. We build upon public sphere and alternative media theory to discuss the relevance of alternative media for the US (far-)right and whether the election period and the candidate Trump allowed far-right alternative media to establish themselves in the (far-) right networked public sphere. We investigate whether it has come to a convergence of topics between the right and the extreme far-right. We analyze the topics nine right-wing outlets, ranging from Fox News to the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, covered in 2015/2016 during the US presidential election. We show through topic modeling of 21,919 articles how Breitbart established itself as a media outlet between the extreme far-right and mainstream right by both covering more extreme and more classic conservative topics. We show through time series clustering how Breitbart and Fox News converged in their coverage of Islam and immigration. Finally, we show through hyperlink analysis that the connection between the far-right and the mainstream right is mostly one-sided; while the alternative outlets link to more established ones, the established outlets mostly ignore the outlets from the far-right.

Consumption has been recognized as a more reliable indicator of household well-being than income. Although a considerable body of literature has examined income inequality between farm and nonfarm households, little is known about inequality in consumption. This research aims to fill this knowledge gap by investigating consumption disparity between farm and nonfarm households. Using a nationally representative household survey from Taiwan, we apply an unconditional quantile regression-based decomposition method to decompose the differences in the distribution of household expenditure between these farm and nonfarm households. The results indicate that differences in the observed characteristics between these two types of households explain most of the consumption inequality. Moreover, the difference in the education level of the farm operator, household income, and the degree of urbanization are particularly important. © 2012 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

Crop switching has been examined in the literature addressing the production effects of irrigation or as viable strategy in the adaptation to climate change, which is closely related to agricultural resilience. Attention to the identification of the direct linkage between crop switching and farm profitability, and, thus, farm sustainability, however, has been quite limited. This study at-tempts to provide a significant complement to the extant research by identifying the treatment effect of crop switching on the net returns of crop growers in Taiwan. A multinomial endogenous treatment effects model with the latent-factor structure is used to take self-selection into account. The result suggests that farm households’ economic resilience is closely related to their choice of crops, which constitute the major source of farm income. Specifically, among the six cash crop categories, fruit crops and other crops are found to be most remunerating and, thus, suggests possible improve-ments in farm households’ economic resilience through crop switching. A further analysis of the distributional implications of crop switching through quantile regression confirms the persistent and stronger effects of crop choice on net returns when moving from the bottom to the top quartiles along the net-return distribution. This result suggests a close association of crop choices with farm income inequality among the crop farm households in Taiwan, which in turn implies possible dis-tributional effects of crop switching. ? 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Movement toward gender equality has occurred worldwide for the past century; nevertheless, some people still strongly endorse traditional gender norms. We investigated the associations of societal characteristics (gross domestic product [GDP] per capita and the gender empowerment measure) and cultural characteristics, including Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s, and Welzel’s scores (hierarchy vs. egalitarianism, person vs. social focus, mastery vs. harmony, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity–femininity), with support for traditional household gender roles. To reveal advantageous or disadvantageous conditions for support for traditional household gender roles, we conducted a secondary data analysis with representative samples (n = 59,713) of 41 societies collected by the International Social Survey Program. According to the multilevel modeling analysis, individuals have lower endorsement of traditional household gender roles in societies that value mastery and enjoy economic development (i.e., GDP per capita), gender equality (measured by the gender empowerment measure), and personal focus. Contrarily, individuals have higher endorsement of traditional household gender roles in societies where hierarchy, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and masculine characteristics are valued. Individual characteristics (women, work experience, education, big-city experience, and younger generations) also predict lower support for traditional household gender roles. In addition, gender differences in traditional household gender roles are larger in societies with greater economic development and personal focus and lower emphasis on hierarchy and long-term orientation. Finally, the national means of traditional household gender roles predict concurrent social movement activities and gender equality at a later time. Potential mechanisms are further discussed. © The Author(s) 2020.

Purpose: The Old Farmer Pension Program (OFPP) represents Taiwan’s long-standing efforts aiming at improving farm household income and well-being; however, how effective the pension program is in terms of achieving the policy agenda has remained unclear. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: Based on data drawn from the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure during 1999–2013, two identification strategies are used to examine the effect of OFPP. First the authors apply the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to address the concern if the program reaches the socially/economically disadvantaged farm households. The second identification strategy involves using the static and dynamic decomposition approaches to identify the major factors contributing to farm household income inequality and the redistribution role of the OFPP. Findings: Results from the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicate that about 60 percent of the income gap can be eliminated if the pension recipients’ socio-economic characteristics are the same as the non-recipient group, suggesting it is the disadvantaged group that receives the old farmer pension. Moreover, the results suggest the significant contributions of household investments in health and human capital as well as diversification toward nonfarm activities, to income inequality among Taiwan’s farm households. Results from the dynamic decomposition suggest that the first-wave adjustment of the OFPP enlarges farm household income inequality, the following two waves of adjustment, however, plays an equalizing role. Originality/value: This study adds to the literature by providing a methodological refinement promoting the view that it calls for the use of the dynamic (change) decomposition framework to investigate the inequality-enlarging or inequality-equalizing role each income determinant plays. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Empirical evidence for a relationship between democracy and crime has not been investigated. This paper combines several international data sets to show that, compared to non-democratic governments, democratic governments punish major (minor) crime more (less) severely and hence this crime rate is lower (higher). Namely, the effect of democracy on crime is negative for serious crime such as murder and positive for minor crime such as theft. This empirical result is robust across different data sets and estimation methods. A 2SLS method is also used to solve the endogeneity problem embedded in OLS. In addition, GDP has a negative effect on all crime rates. Furthermore, inequality and unemployment increase, while clearance rate decreases, crime. Evidence also suggests that democracy per se rather than transitional or political instability causes the relationship. Using prison sentence length, clearance rates, and prisoners per crime as measures of deterrence, it was found that deterrence can explain approximately 40% of the effect of democracy on crime. Journal of Comparative Economics 35 (3) (2007) 467-483. © 2007 Association for Comparative Economic Studies.

The purpose of eco-labels is to encourage a move towards more environmentally friendly consumption patterns. The eco-label has been recognized as a means of promoting products with lower environmental impact. A considerable body of literature has focused on consumer demand for eco-label use: however, little attention has been paid to producers. Because the adoption decision is voluntary, a better understanding of producers' adoption behaviors towards eco-labels could significantly determine the effectiveness of the program. This paper contributes to this policy issue by assessing the impacts of the Taiwan Good Agricultural Products program, a combined eco-label and food traceability system, on the distribution of aquaculture producers' income in Taiwan. Using a unique aquaculture producer survey in Taiwan, we examine the extent to which label use may affect the level of income, income variability and income inequality of the producers. Our findings suggest that eco-label use increases income and that the effect is more pronounced for producers at the higher percentile range of income distribution. Label use also increases income variability, but no significant effect on income inequality is evident. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Duty rebate has been a popular policy adopted by developing countries as part of an export incentive package. Taiwan is no exception. However, the importance of such a policy is declining. Whether it should be abolished was one of the policy debates during the 1980s. The purpose of this paper is to set up a simple theoretical model to study the economic impact of such a policy. The focus is placed on its technology upgrading effects. Whether tariff liberalization could help firms to upgrade their technologies if duty rebate is to be abolished is also discussed. This study's conclusions help clarifying some of the policy debates in the 1980s.