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Abstract One of the features in Taiwan market is price competition. What makes it even worse are the outflow of investment, more demand on environmental protection, increase of labor cost, and the limit of national policy. These factors make business hardly earn profits. And therefore, how to gain reasonably with limited resources and survive in the competition are the difficulties we need to overcome in Taiwan. Printed Circuit Board played a key role in ¡§Taiwan Financial Miracle¡¨ for the past 10 years. However, the manufacturers now have no choice but to search for new niche to meet the change on the whole business environment. The headquarters staying in Taiwan have to face even more harsh conditions, which come from the demand of cost-down, the price competitions among the same industry. Therefore, it becomes essential to adjust Product Mixed in order to fit the insufficient Product Resources. My study puts focus on ¡§Most Constrained Station¡¨ from the Theory of Constraint. It helps PCB manufacturers, who suffers slim profit, find out the best Products Mixed in accordance of Throughput Contribution. Each product brings different profit and cost. Some may share common resources, and some may not, when they are put in the process line. Therefore, to continue forward in the age of slim-profit, the complex of Product Mixed and earnings becomes prominent. Studying Theory of Constraint, I aim to bring forth the best solution on processing contribution by means of figuring out the Throughput Chain in Most Constrained Station and analysis of application on Most Constrained Station. And then I will conclude with the best production strategy for the PCB manufacturer as the main thesis of the research.

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The research investigates the application of asset allocation model to pension structure and mortgage payment. The defined contribution pension plan has become the main pension plan in Taiwan. In this pension plan, labors could adjust the contribution rate to maximize their utility function even if they change jobs. Thus, the pension plan may cause changes in their optimal asset allocation. In addition, due to the financial innovations of personalized debt instruments, lenders are allowed to adjust the mortgage payment to maximize personal utility function and hence the adjustable payment ratio could also change the lenders¡¦ optimal asset allocation. This study presents an extended intertemporal asset allocation model of Campbell(1993) and Viceira(2001) to investigate the effects of defined contribution pension and mortgage payment. The numeric simulation is also present to demonstrate the effects on labors¡¦ optimal asset allocation.

Since APRANET, the predecessor of global internet, came into being during the 1960s, the advancements of networking technologies over the decades have created online communities such as MUDs, BBS, and newsgroups that allow users in different locations to exchange messages and share information. Nowadays, there are even wiki websites that invite all users to edit any page or to create new pages, and Yahoo! Answers, a community-driven knowledge market website where users can submit their questions and answer questions asked by other users. With such a variety of digital communities, individuals choose their own favorites to interact with others. Especially in recent years, with personal blogs, online photo albums, and micro-blogging taking the lead, more personalized features such as the display picture and user name, deep profiling, avatar and even personal page, are integrated into online discussion forums for individual users to freely present themselves. On the other hand, there are Wikipedia and MIT OpenCourseWare, both web-base collaborative projects that invite the collaboration and contributions of users identifying with their founding goals. Based on these observations, this thesis takes personal and social perceive into account. The research adopted self-presentation and social identity as the factors that can affect community member¡¦s participation, commitment, and knowledge contribution in the online communities. As hypothesized, community member¡¦s participation can motivates their commitment and knowledge contribution to the community. Furthermore, community member's identification with the online communities fosters their participation and commitment while community member¡¦s self-presentation, reflecting the degree of their participation and commitment though, has no direct relation in making any knowledge contribution to online communities.

Purpose: Explain how consumer engagement affects consumers motivation to rank and review on price-comparison sites. Hypotheses raised:H1 - There is a positive relationship between affective consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to rank products online.H2 - There is a positive relationship between affective consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to review products online.H3 - There is a positive relationship between cognitive consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to rank products online.H4 - There is a positive relationship between cognitive consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to review products online.H5 - There is a positive relationship between behavioral consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to rank products online.H6 - There is a positive relationship between behavioral consumer engagement and theconsumer's motivation to review products online. Methodology: Cross-sectional social survey design with a self-completion questionnaire. Conclusion: Based on this research all hypothesis tied to each individual dimension has been accepted, thus it can be concluded that consumer engagement does have a positive relationship with consumer’s motivation to engage online.

Melting point finds applications in chemical identification, purification and in the calculation of a number of other physicochemical properties such as vapor pressure and aqueous solubility. Despite the availability of enormous amounts of experimental data, no generally applicable methods have been developed to estimate the melting point of a compound from its chemical structure. A quick estimation of melting point can be a useful tool in the design of new chemical entities.In this dissertation, a simple means of estimating the melting points for a large variety of pharmaceutically and environmentally relevant organic compounds is developed. Melting points are predicted from the separate calculation of the enthalpy and entropy of melting directly from the chemical structure. The entropy of melting is calculated using a semi-empirical equation based on only two non-additive molecular parameters. This equation is validated and refined using a large collection of experimental entropy of melting values. The enthalpy of melting is calculated by additive group contributions.Melting points are estimated from the ratio of the enthalpy of melting and the entropy of melting. All of the methods and group contributions developed in this study are compatible with the UPPER (Unified Physical Property Estimating Relationships) scheme. The predicted melting points are compared to experimental melting points for over 2200 organic compounds collected from the literature. The average absolute error in melting point prediction is 30.1 °. This is a very reasonable estimate considering the size and diversity of the dataset used in this study.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of top executive compensation from intellectual capital perspective using data from US listed companies and aims to examine whether executives get appropriate compensation. I propose a pay-contribution compensation scheme and extend previous research on agency theory, by exploring how executive compensation contract design may be based on the firm’s intellectual capital (IC). Such features would serve the core purpose of compensation design, which is to create long-term firm value. But inappropriate compensation scheme cannot motivate individual ICs to contribute fully and deteriorate firm value eventually. I view CEO, CFO, COO, CMO, CSO, CTO, CHOs as individual intellectual capital of firms, and through examining key indicators from financial contribution, organizational contribution, relational contribution and growth contribution, I find that their total compensations, total incentive compensations and total cash compensations are not significant on their functions for all executives, implying that free rider problem may exist. I conduct two steps regression models: the first step is to reveal free-rider problem based on the significant relationship between executive compensation and his/her role contribution, and the second step is to examine whether executive compensations rewarded by his/her role contribution have significant influence on firm valuation. The outcome of model 1 shows that CEO and CSO have no free-rider problem, while CTO and CHO may have potential free-rider problem, CFO and CMO may have the risk of free-rider problem, and COO may have moderate free-rider problem. The outcome of model 2 shows that CEO and CFO compensation rewarded by role contribution have significant influence on firm valuation; COO, CMO and CHO compensation rewarded by role contribution have moderate influence on firm valuation; while CTO compensation rewarded by role contribution have little influence on firm valuation and CTO compensation rewarded by role contribution have no influence on firm valuation. My result is consistent with agency theory since free rider may cause executive inertia, reduce individual IC productivity, and impair firm value. The findings suggest that pay-contribution compensation contracts and remuneration schemes focus on different executive positions and strategic roles of individual intellectual capital to avoid free rider problem.

This thesis provides a range of analyses to examine the current Chinese pension reform in both provincial and national contexts, with special emphasis on coverage increase and its long term financial implications. Quantitative assessment includes econometric analysis of survey data initiated and organized by the author and her colleagues. Special models are designed to reflect the transitional characteristics of the current Chinese pension system. The results confirm that the coverage increase delays the system-aging process, through labor migration and urbanization, by about 20 years. But a funding crisis is inevitable if no parametric reforms could be made in the current system and if the system is not well managed. Policy suggestions are made in line with the empirical analysis and model results. In addition, some structural pension reform options are discussed. Two Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) applications are presented and simulations indicate that an NDC system may be effective in smoothing the financial pressure for government while maintaining adequate levels of individual retirement benefit. In the final part of the thesis, a hypothetical safety net is assessed in the context of the current policy framework, and its cost is examined. The thesis introduces new data and first hand information about Chinese pension reform in a provincial context to reflect the features of the national system.

This dissertation addresses a significant gap in audience-orientated criticism by introducing a new approach to theatre audience research: audience contribution through the vehicle of a postperformance discussion. Audience contribution considers the physical and vocal behaviour of audience members as contributions to the theatrical event. Much scholarship has concentrated on the written and performance texts. What I posit as the audience text, comprised of audience contributions, has been predominantly ignored. The audience text is an integral part of the theatrical event that changes, adds to and informs the theatrical experience for audience and arts professionals alike. Over the past century the audience role has changed from interactive contributor to passive receiver. For the contemporary theatre audience member, opportunities to contribute to the theatrical event have been limited to laughter, applause and consumerist practices such as the purchasing of theatrical merchandise. Similarly in much theatre audience theory, audiences are perceived as passive receivers of the drama whose only active contribution is through autonomous cognitive meaning-making processes. The study takes into account the extant audience theory of audience reception and builds on this. Post-performance discussions, which have risen significantly in popularity in the last decade, are an under-explored and under-utilised avenue for audience contribution. A new method for the facilitation of post-performance discussions that encourages audience contribution and privileges the audience voice is introduced. Case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? trial this new discussion model. An audience text is created that informs the theatrical event and a new role for the contemporary audience is discovered: audience critic. Through the post-performance discussions, audience members become active contributors to, and co-creators of, the theatrical event. Audience contribution has significant implications for audience theory and theatre practice alike.