This study aims to explore the relationship among school brand, parents¡¦ educational attitude and school choice of junior high schools in Kaohsiung City. The study was conducted by means of questionnaire survey with self-edited ¡§Questionnaire on School Brand, Parents¡¦ Educational Attitude and School Choice.¡¨ 413 junior high schools¡¦ parents were randomly sampled in Kaohsiung City. The collected data was analyzed by statistical methods, including t-test, One-Way ANOVA, Pearson Product-Method Correlation and Multiple Regression. Based on the analyzed results, the followings were concluded: 1.The junior high schools¡¦ parents in Kaohsiung City could hold the positive attitudes toward school brand, parents¡¦ educational attitude and school choice. 2.The attitudes of the parents with different background have no difference on school brand. 3.The attitudes of the parents with different background have no difference on parents¡¦ educational attitude. 4.The attitudes of the parents with different background have no difference on s school choice. 5.School brand and parents¡¦ educational attitude have moderate related; school brand and school choice has moderate related.

Many researchers in the social science, includes the political science, insist that the main stream of theory of social science depends on structural foundation. But we tried to provided new approach for social science through Elster¡¦s view, on the hand, we clarified what reductionism is, on the other hand, we believed the social science can connect with the natural science by the reductive approach. In order to prove that the natural science¡¦s foundation is the reductive mechanism, we researched the philosophy of natural science and stressed the importance of the ontology and the epistemology. We confirmed the foundation of natural science is micro-mechanism. Elster re-interpret Rational Choice and Marxism through cognition psychology and game theory. We can increase the research range of human behaviors, moral and culture through the intensive explanation.

The purpose of this paper to discuss the monopoly and duopoly firm¡¦s pricing model and the optimal location choice in the Barbell Model. In this study, the first part of this article is that the assumption of market for a barbell market, the monopolist in the face of symmetric and asymmetric barbell market, firm in considering the case of the transportation costs to adopt a different pricing strategy to its optimal location choice. The latter part of this article is to consider if the same circumstances, to a duopoly market, the Cournot and Bertrand competition, the two plants how to choose the most suitable location choice. Also, we discuss the social welfare analysis under different circumstances and when it will reach the principle of minimum differential, or the principle of maximum differential.

Multichannel marketing is the practice of simultaneously offering information, goods, services, and support to customers through two or more synchronized channels. In this dissertation, I develop an integrated framework of multichannel marketing and develop models to assist managers in their marketing resource allocation decisions. In the first essay of the dissertation, I investigate the factors that drive customers multichannel shopping behavior and identify its consequences for retailers. In the second essay, I build on this work and develop a model that enables firms to optimize their allocation of marketing resources across different customer-channel segments. In the first essay, I develop a framework comprising the factors that drive consumers’ channel choice, the consequences of channel choice, and their implications for managing channel equity. The results show that customer-channel choice is driven in a nonlinear fashion by a customer demographic variable such as age and is also influenced by consumer shopping traits such as number of categories bought and the duration of relationship with a retailer. I show that by controlling for the moderating effects of channel-category associations, the influence of customers’ demographics and shopping traits on their channel choices can vary significantly across product categories. Importantly, the results show that multichannel shoppers buy more often, buy more items, and spend considerably more than single channel shoppers. The channel equity of multichannel customers is nearly twice that of the closest single channel customers (online or offline). In the second essay, I propose a model for optimal allocation of marketing efforts across multiple customer-channel segments. I first develop a set of models for consumer response to marketing efforts for each channel-customer segment. This set comprises four models, the first for purchase frequency, the second for purchase quantity, the third for product return behavior, and the fourth for contribution margin of purchase. The results show that customers’ responses to firm marketing efforts vary significantly across the customer-channel segments. They also suggest that marketing efforts influence purchase frequency, purchase quantity and monetary value in different ways. The resource allocation results show that profits can be substantially improved by reallocating marketing efforts across the different customer-channel segments.

This dissertation examines the effects of charter schools in Texas, using data from the Texas Education Agency for 190 charter schools and over 60,000 charter students. In Chapter II we examine charter effect test score gains for charter students. After controlling for individual student characteristics, we find that students in their first year in a charter school have large negative test score gains compared to when they were in traditional public school, and that charter schools that have been in operation for more than one year have higher average test score gains than new charter schools. Charter schools appear to have the most positive effects on African-American students. We find that the overall effect of being in a charter school for multiple years is that students have slightly lower average test score growth than when they were in a traditional public school. In Chapter III we examine the effect of charters on test score gains for students attending nearby traditional public schools. After controlling for campus and student characteristics, we find traditional public school districts and campuses that face greater competition from charter schools have higher average test score gains than other traditional public schools. This positive effect of charter competition is strongest for African-American and Hispanic students, and is focused entirely on students attending traditional public campuses in the bottom 50% of the initial campus average achievement distribution. In Chapter IV we examine the charter effect on the distribution of students by ability and race/ethnicity, as well as examining what factors are associated with a student choosing to move to a charter school. We find that students who move to charter schools tend to move to schools with a higher percentage of students of their same race/ethnicity, and that this gap is largest for African-American students. We also find that average math and reading test scores are lower than the statewide average at the traditional public schools that charter students leave, and that charter schools are attracting, on average, the lower-performing students from these lowperforming schools.

This study takes the medical service as an example to discuss the evaluation and choice models of professional services. The main purpose of the study is to see whether consumers¡¦ involvement and knowledge of medical services as well as their personal difference will affect their evaluation and choice models. In this study, the common cold, stomach ulcer and cancer are chosen to represent medical services with low, median and high involvement. Convenience sampling is conducted in Taipei, Hsinchu and Kaohsiung and a total of 407 valid questionnaires have been collected. About the data analysis, factor analysis, ANOVA and chi-square test are used as statistical analysis methods. The results are presented below. 1. Consumers¡¦ involvement and knowledge of medical services have different effects on their evaluation criteria. 2. Consumers¡¦ involvement of medical services makes difference to their evaluation and choice models. 3. Consumers¡¦ knowledge of medical services makes difference to their evaluation and choice models. 4. There is interaction between consumers¡¦ involvement and knowledge of medical services, and they together affect the choice models. When consumers face medical services with ¡§low involvement, high knowledge¡¨ and ¡§high involvement, low knowledge¡¨, obvious difference is found between the choice models they use. 5. Consumers¡¦ personal factors make difference to their evaluation and choice models. 6. Consumers¡¦ personal factors make difference to their involvement and knowledge of medical services.

The objects this thesis want to study can be separated into two parts. The first part is investigating why firms choose to issue convertible bond. We use the public financial information and macroeconomics factors to establish a security choice model. In this security choice model, we can understand the motivation of issuance and investors¡¦ expectation of security type (equity-like or debt-like) which will be issued. The second part of this thesis is about convertible bond issuance announcement effect. We want to know if the public information and the pre-issuance security type expectation would affect the announcement effect. Following is the conclusions: (1) We find that less information asymmetry, less agency cost, more operating risk will lead to higher probability of equity-like security issuance. (2) Most convertible bonds issued in Taiwan are more debt-like. (3) Equity-like convertible bonds issuances have negative announcement effect. The issuances different from expectation will lead to more negative price effect, especially those debt-like firm but issue equity-like security. (4) The variables that can explain security choice may not explain the announcement price effect.

The purpose of this study is to understand why some children of teachers, who, having been brought up in an environment where education is highly valued, nevertheless, choose not to pursue a college education right out of high school. The study focuses on young adults who have at least one parent who is a teacher and who, when they graduated from high school, either chose not to attend college right away or enrolled in college then left within the first few semesters. Through open-ended interview questions, constant comparative qualitative analysis, and narrative analysis, the study examines what impact having a teacher as a parent has had on young adults’ construction of formal education and their decision to forego higher education immediately after high school. The interviewer also asks the teacher-parents what response they had to that decision. The research questions of this study are as follows: (1) What experiences of education do these young adults, who are teachers’ kids, have? (2) How has their family shaped their understanding of education and their attitudes toward it? (3) How did they choose not to pursue a college degree right out of high school and what meaning do they give to this decision? and (4) What is/was the teacher-parent’s response to this decision? This study illuminates the college decision-making process that young adults go through when they are in an environment in which education is a prominent feature. Two major findings emerge. For the young adults, all valued education but they had no sense of urgency about pursuing formal education immediately. Their decisions were shaped by particular life circumstances and, for many, a belief that a college education was irrelevant at that point in their lives. The second finding concerns the teacher-parents. These educators assumed that their children would go on to college, but they did not pressure them to do so; their primary concern was that their children be happy.

The rational choice theory provides good explanations of the factors on juvenile delinquency: the decision-making mechanism of delinquency is as same as the other activities, is based on the rationality. Juveniles will increase the probability of delinquency if the expected utility exceeds the expected cost; oppositely, they will reduce the probability of delinquency if the expected cost exceeds the expected utility. This proposed research from the perspective of rational choice is to study the influence between juveniles¡¦ individual rationality and delinquency and intend to provide the reasonable explanation to provide the reasonable explanation to juvenile delinquency. But besides individual rational choice factor, the degree of social bond will also have the influence to juvenile delinquency, therefore this research will also simultaneously discuss the mediate effects of the society bonds to the rational choice and juvenile delinquency. Our results suggest that the rational choice (perception of risks and self-imposed costs) and the social bonds (attachment and belief) are negatively related to juvenile delinquency. The society bonds (attachment and belief) could mediate the effects of the rational choice and juvenile delinquency. The interaction between demographic characteristics and rational choice has few effect on juvenile delinquency.

<p>I syftet att undersöka hur en skatte- och bidragsreform kan tänkas påverka utbudet av arbetskraft för ungdomar, modelleras en Discrete Choice nyttofunktion, där valet av antalet arbetstimmar begränsas till fem olika arbetstimmarsklasser. Modellen tar hänsyn till icke-linjära skatter och icke-konvexa budgetkurvor. I nyttomaximeringen tas även hänsyn till valet av socialbidrag. För att se effekten på ungdomarnas arbetstimmar används mikrosimuleringsmodellen FASIT som innehåller databaser över inkomster, skatte- och transfereringssystem. Finans- och Socialdepartementen använder modellen för att se reformers eventuella effekter på specifika grupper i samhället.</p><p>Skattereformen innebär en höjning av grundavdraget och bidragsreformen en sänkning av socialbidraget. Syftet med reformerna är att öka inkomstdifferensen mellan att inte arbeta och att arbeta och därmed öka incitamenten till att vilja arbeta för ungdomar. För att kunna motivera en sådan reform, ska den inte försämra statens finanser, utan helst vara självfinansierad.</p><p>Resultaten visar att en skatte- och bidragsreform av detta slag inte ökar ungdomarnas arbetstimmar signifikant. Däremot kommer användandet av socialbidrag minska med över 90 %, även om inte många ungdomar levde på socialbidrag innan reformen. För staten innebär en sådan här reform att både skatteinkomsterna minskar, p.g.a. grundavdragshöjningen och bidragsutgifterna minskar, till följd av mindre socialbidragsutbetalningar. Däremot, kommer inkomsterna att minska mer än utgifterna, så det blir svårt att berättiga reformen.</p> / <p>With the purpose of examining how a tax- and social assistance reform would affect the labor supply for Swedish youth, a Discrete Choice utility function is utilized, where the choice of working hours is restricted to five different sets of working hours. This model takes nonlinear taxes and nonconvex budget constraints into consideration and in the utility maximization the youth has to keep the choice of accepting the social assistance in mind. The effect on youth working hours is simulated in a micro simulation model, FASIT, which contains databases on Swedish incomes, taxes- and subsidies systems and is mostly used by the Swedish Ministry of Finance in order to investigate policy reforms’ affect on different groups in society.</p><p>The tax reform implies an increase of the basic deduction and the subsidy reform implies a decrease of the amount of social assistance. The purpose of the reforms is to increase the income gap between not working and working and thereby increase the incentives of being willing to work. To be able to justify a reform like this, it must not be too expensive for the government, but preferably it should be self-financed.</p><p>The results show that the reforms will not increase the working hours of the youth significantly. But at the same time the reform decreases the need of social assistance with over 90 %, although not a large part of the youth supported themselves through social assistance before the reform. For the government the reform will result in a decrease in tax revenues and a decrease in the subsidy cost. The problem is that the revenues will decrease much more than the costs; therefore the reform is difficult to justify.</p>