published_or_final_version / Electrical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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The aim of this research is to study how the Swedish service sector measures and develops Human Capital. It consists on five parts. The first part will be compounded by the background, problem, purpose and limitations. We will detail the goal of the project; we will introduce the research question which we will answer at the end of the thesis. The second part deals with the Methodology; we will use the necessary methods in order to conduct properly this study. After that, in the third part, Theoretical Framework, we will develop the model in order to know how Human Capital is measured and developed, that is to say, the theoretical aspects of our research in order to acquire enough knowledge and from here, to be able to answer the research question. The fourth part will regard the Empirical Findings with the results of the questionnaire. Analysis will be the fifth part, where we will apply the theory studied in the previous part throughout the questionnaire. It will be based on making Conclusions, last part where we will answer the research question launched in the introduction.

E-learning is a form of education that is increasingly being used in higher education in the developed world. However, the take-up and use of e-learning in developing countries is at a preliminary stage. This thesis deals with e-learning in the context of a developing country. The aim of the study was to describe and understand teachers’ beliefs about e-learning in higher education at UMSA. Qualitative semi-structured interviews and observations were used to identify 10 teachers’ beliefs about e-learning. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework was used for analysing the interviews and observations. Teachers’ showed varying levels of knowledge about technology, pedagogy and content, as well as varying knowledge levels about different combinations of these three knowledge domains. Despite the limited educational resources at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), most teachers’ believed e-learning is beneficial for themselves and their students

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The decision to analyze the possibilities and problems of social competence in mother-tongue lessons is connected to the statement that in the lessons of above mentioned subject students should be encouraged to communicate more, understand the other, nearby person. Communication situations, variety of characters, their differences and generalities, questions analyzed in discussions, talking about polemic situations can help to do that. The aim of this thesis is to explore educational possibilities of students’ social competence in mother-tongue lessons. Today necessary condition of personal self-sufficiency is his virtuous maturity and versatile contemporary competence, new cultural, political and economic literacy. Social human competence gets special significance in present conditions. None the less important it is the purpose of education to proportion personal objectives to objectives of civil community and in this way to create the base for self-sufficient and creative national life. The education program has to be directly connected to giving value attitudes, general abilities and competences necessary for personal and social life. While looking through, improving, writing programs and standards of general education, the main attention is paid that new education program conveyed necessary value attitudes for personal and social life, gave general abilities and competences required for a present-day person. Language education, recognition and literary education are... [to full text]

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This research attempted to assess the housing strategy at Waterloo as well as the services such as electricity, sanitation, water, transport, adequate shelter and employment opportunities that are available for residents. The information was gathered through interviews and the use of questionnaires. There were some problems encountered during the gathering of information. The questionnaires were completed by the household head and in some cases the head was not available, making it difficult for the researcher to continue smoothly, in such cases extra visits were made. In some cases the household head was unable to read, so the researcher had to read the questionnaire for him/her and then write down an answer. Another problem worth noting was that of acceptance of a researcher by the respondents, but the researcher was able to finally convince them and assured them of confidentiality of the information. There were lots of problems raised by beneficiaries of Waterloo about the services rendered to them. Most of them are not satisfied with the type of houses built for them, they are small, some have leakages and no ventilators. Beneficiaries also complained about the basic services which are not available for them. The other services needed at Waterloo are health clinics, schools and transport. People have to travel long distances for other services and traveling to those places is very costly. It is recommended that Government looks at the problems raised by the beneficiaries and improve on them. It would also help them when they are building in other areas not to make the same mistake again. From this study it shows that the strategy in Waterloo partially meets the requirements of the beneficiaries and with the recommendations given, Waterloo will be a better place to live in . / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

This thesis focuses on three issues pertaining to growth, development, and trade between developed and developing countries. The first essay develops an endogenous growth model that incorporates Engel’s law into the preferences. The model shows that the initial distribution of income is crucial to the outcome. A closed-economy country where most of its population is poor experiences a low rate of innovation. Income transfers from the rich to the poor can increase the effective labour supply, thereby enhancing the rate of innovation. Under free trade, only the rich benefit from trade. The poor are indifferent unless they already can afford to consume the minimum requirement of food before trade or the minimum requirement becomes affordable after trade by cheaper imported food. The initial distribution of income influences the trade patterns. Moreover, income redistribution in a free trade environment also increases the growth rate. The second essay extends the first one by assuming that the marginal product of labour of the food sector is decreasing. It shows that an increase in population may decrease the growth rate if the initial population is large relative to the productivity of the food sector. Moreover, an increase in one country’s population may reduce that country’s production share of the world’s innovation and increase its dependency on imported technology. The last essay analyzes the welfare impact of minimum-export requirements (MERs) imposed on foreign direct investments. This essay shows that MERs can be Pareto improving measures to both the source and the host countries. When offshore plants are used by parent firms to compete with domestic firms in the source country, MERs can improve the host country’s welfare by inducing the total sales in the source country to rise, thereby reducing the distortion generated by imperfect competition. The MERs can simultaneously improve the welfare of the host country by shifting profits of the foreign firms toward the local firms. If the local firms are absent, the host’s welfare may still be improved if sufficient profits from foreign operations are retained in the host country.