Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the development of knowledge-based economy and related policies in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. Furthermore, a cross-country analysis of knowledge-based economy is conducted. The meaning and content of knowledge-based economy are firstly analyzed in the light of innovation theory and human capital theory. A cross-country empirical study is then conducted. The data source is 2001 World Development Indicators CD-Rom published by the World Bank. Utilizing the method of factor analysis, we extract two important factors characterizing knowledge-based economy. The first is the efficiency of communication and exchanging information, which represents the efficiency of delivering knowledge, and the level of human capital, which represents the stock of knowledge. The regression method is used to analyze the relationships between the two factors and productivity. It is found that both factors have strong positive effects on GDP per capita, agriculture value added per worker, and research and development expenditure. Individual indicators in the two factors are used to evaluate and compare the performance of Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. It is found that Taiwan¡¦s level of knowledge-based economy is similar to the average level of APEC memberships, but better than that of East Asia, of Pacific countries, and of upper-middle income countries. China¡¦s level of knowledge-based economy is obviously not able to catch up with the average level of APEC memberships, that of East Asia, that of Pacific countries, and that of low-middle income countries. The performance of knowledge-based economy of Hong Kong is much better and equal to that of OECD and of G8 memberships. Our findings imply that the performance of knowledge-based economy of Taiwan is better than that of China, but inferior to that of Hong Kong and that of Japan, Singapore, and Korea. The reason might be that Taiwan¡¦s implementation of related national policies falls behind these countries. We suggest that the government should put more emphasis on implementing information and communication infrastructure in order to enhance the efficiency of delivering, stirring up, and diffusing of knowledge.

In the past, firms based on economics of scale, capital intensive, mass advertisements, customers service and product quality had changed into creative excellent human resource. Human resource could truly be the only source of sustaining competitive advantage for firms. The related academic about strategic human resource management especially integrative employment and development is less for reference in Taiwan. More over, operations and practices in strategic human resource management are usually not made known to the public because of executives¡¦ hesitation. Thus, these impacts had influenced the empirical studies. Based mainly on transaction cost economics, human capital, resource based view, the purpose of research is to discover an integrated architecture for strategic human resource employment and development by examining high-technology facility industries. The thesis will share the successful experiences of applied human resource management to firms and for reference to the industries, and contribute to the construction of strategic human resource management theory.

This research looks at the effects of changes in various kinds of motivation for further study on increases in human capital. On the basis of planned behavior theory, it also examines how both motivation for further study and human capital influence an employee's intention to leave his job. Finally, it also discusses the moderating effects of external labor market opportunity and organization retention practices on the relationship between human capital and intention to leave. At Stage 1 of this longitudinal study 1721 questionnaires were sent out and 1004 valid returns were received. At Stage 2, six months later, a further questionnaire was sent out to the original respondents and 603 valid returns were received. The results show that different motivations for further study have significant and varied effects on increases in human capital. They also show that employees choose to transfer to another unit in order to take advantage of their increased human capital while their organization tries hard to retain them. Where external labor market opportunity is high, employees with increased human capital opt to leave their current organization.

The environment of medical industry in Taiwan is unprecedented rigorous. Except the finance pressure of medical expense billing and the increasing demand of the quality of medical service, recently due to the change of government health insurance policy, each medical organization strives for the rare resource and limited customer, not only start changing the type of the medical service, but also emphasis on improving the function of hospital management and controlling the cost. Formerly, purchasing simply means buying goods; but now, for the rigorous medical management environment and the rapid pace of innovation, purchasing clerk is required constant skill upgrading, such as leasing, loaning, BOT and outsourcing by contract, to obtain the use of goods and to satisfy the aim of demand. Additionally, the way to obtain the operation or ownership of goods is different from the former way. Contributed to the change, it presents its importance in business management. So, this research wants to investigate the relationship of human capital, knowledge sharing will, purchasing ability and purchasing performance. We applied exploratory and confirmatory analysis to investigate the relationship involved. The samples were purchasing clerks of hospital, including medical centers, regional hospitals and area hospitals. Out of 400 questionnaires were sent, the valid questionnaires returned were 114. Factor analysis , variable analysis, regression analysis were used to process the data acquired. The major findings of the research are summarized as follows: (1) the human capital of purchasing clerk is positive effect to purchasing ability and purchasing performance. (2) knowledge sharing will is positive effect to purchasing ability and purchasing performance (3)purchasing ability is positive effect to purchasing performance (4) purchasing ability has the mediate effect among human capital and knowledge sharing will with purchasing performance.

China has been a popular place for investment since it opened market in 1980¡¦s. Firms need to consider how to use inner and outer factors to gain competitiveness in this furious competition. This research is using a qualitative approach and case details were collected from firms which operate in China for years. This research aims to discover the relationship between firms¡¦ inner factors which are organizational capital types, strategic human capital management practices, and corporate entrepreneurship capability, and how they affect organizational competitiveness. Besides, this research also adds in the effect of institutional environment to find out how it influences those inner resources. Findings reveal that environmental factors are influencing firms¡¦ corporate entrepreneurship capability, but the effect is different in different industries and ownerships. For foreign investment, the effect is weak and negative; for local high-tech firms, the effect is strong and positive; for local service firms, the effect is huge and negative. Moreover, organizational capital types and strategic human capital management practices are influenced by institutional environment. Organizational capital is positively influencing corporate entrepreneurship and influencing selection of strategic human capital management practices, and even positively affecting organizational competitiveness. However, corporate entrepreneurship capability is influenced by organizational capital types and strategic human capital management practices and further affecting organizational competitive ability.

Multiple customer needs and rapid technological change are what MNCs are confronted with, thus, they rely on subsidiaries responding to local market needs. The ability of subsidiaries to integrate resources to respond to market opportunities determines its competitiveness, and contributes to whole corporate. The purpose of this dissertation is to construct an integrative framework toward generating subsidiary initiatives and competitiveness. Structural equation modeling was employed to verify the conceptual framework. Based on the results of SEM, entrepreneurial leadership of top management teams enhances the talent on the process of human-capital leveraging to facilitate them to be creative and agile; further, promote collective learning among members. Additionally, with the support of top management teams, learning culture of subsidiaries can be strengthened. Support of top management team, human-capital leveraging and learning culture, improve the absorptive capacity, further, they promote subsidiary initiatives and competitiveness.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the effect of human capital in Swedish export. Human capital is here expressed as the number of employees in the private sector per municipality with university education of at least three years. Two regression models were tested with aggregated export value/municipality and export value per kilo/municipality as dependent variables. Human capital as well as the total accessibility to R&D was assumed to have a positive impact on the Swedish export performance.</p><p>During the last decades many economists have attached great importance to education, knowledge and investments in R&D. Sweden is in general abundant in human capital and have also several world leading companies characterized by knowledge intensive production and export. According to the Product Life Cycle Theory, Sweden should focus on the first phase that requires high input of human capital and product competition to maintain the competitiveness in the international market.</p><p>The results indicate as expected that the access to human capital as well as accessibility to R&D have a positive impact on the Swedish aggregated export value and export value per kilo. The assumption about human capital being even more important in high value export could not be confirmed by the results. Innovation promoting investments together with continuous efforts to improve innovation nets and interaction possibilities are presumed to be important factors for Swedish competitiveness also in the future.</p>

<p> </p><p> </p><p>This bachelor thesis aims to uncover the determinants of the economic growth in Mexico with an exogenous growth model. The study is based in an Augmented Solow Model em-ployed by Mankiw, Romer and Weil in</p><p><em>"A contribution to the Empirics of the Economic Growth" </em>(1992). The model uses annual data of Mexico from 1960-2007 and the regressions and tests are developed in the econometric package Stata 10 for eight different periods. The thesis not only uses the Effective Labour and Physical Capital as Inputs in the production Function, but also employs the variable of Human Capital as an economic determinant of growth in the production function. The results of the model correspond with the actual scenario in Mexico; more weight to the Effective Labour (76.34%) rather than to Human Capital (2.12%) or Physical Capital (21.54%) as determinants of growth.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

<p>This paper deals with Iraqis in the Swedish labour market. The main goal was to point out on positive aspects of the Swedish labour market integration. Previous studies were mostly problem oriented on immigrants’ situation in finding a job, especially when related to immigrant from non-European countries. Instead this study is focused on the more positive aspects. It was attempted to answer which public resources respectively which individual assets were of value in getting a job. This paper is based on a qualitative method, as five Iraqis with jobs were interviewed. To analyse the empiricism of this study the human capital theory and the theory of social capital were applied. Furthermore the impact of public resources on getting a job was taken into account in the analysis. The study shows that both public resources and individual assets were of importance in the pursuit of a job. The interviews showed that one’s education and social network weighed most when looking for a job. On the other hand internships were named as the most significant of the public resources. But finally it is to conclude that it is not enough to itemise influences but to have a look at their interaction.</p>

國外實證研究證實，個人外表與其在勞動市場的表現密切相關，但台灣目前尚無學者從美貌理論的面向，探討身材、相貌與個人薪資水平有無關係。因此，為了初探台灣勞動市場是否存有“平庸懲罰”和“俊美獎勵”的情況，本文以太子汽車工業股份有限公司之員工為研究對象，以BMI值外加相貌等級作為個人外表的觀察指標，檢驗太子汽車工業股份有限公司員工之身材、相貌，與其所獲取的薪資有無關連，期能藉此彌補相關文獻，多從個人特徵及人力資本考量勞動者薪資差異之不足。 本文以最小平方法（OLS），將男性非銷售人員、女性非銷售人員、及銷售人員分別估計。實證結果如下：首先，在男性非銷售人員部分，婚姻、教育與年資對其時薪皆有正面效果；國小以下子女數、年資平方及BMI值肥胖則有負面影響。其中，肥胖者時薪偏低的情況，可能與「雇主歧視」有關。至於男性非銷售人員之相貌則與其薪資無關。 其次，在女性非銷售人員部分，其估計結果與男性非銷售人員有極大的落差，僅有年齡和相貌與其時薪呈正相關；其餘的個人特徵及人力資本變數皆未達顯著水準。 最後在銷售人員部分，婚姻及教育程度與其時薪呈正相關；BMI值過輕對時薪則有不利的影響，此現象可能源自於消費者歧視。至於相貌等級與銷售人員的時薪無關。 部門間時薪比較的結果如下：就男性非銷售人員而言，部門員工平均時薪由高至低分別為總經理室、會計部、稽核室、售後服務本部、資訊部、管理部、國外部、法務部、採購部、塗裝部、營業本部、製造部、品保部、技術部、工務部、財務部及售後服務場。而女性非銷售人員之平均時薪由高至低則分屬國外部、總經理室、售後服務場、工務部、品保部、製造部、塗裝部及技術部。 。 / This study aims to apply the theory of beauty to the labor market in Taiwan and attempts to investigate determinants of the wage difference for the sake of being the supplement to the existing literature related to this research field which primarily consider the gender or human capital factors. This study takes the data form the data bank of Prince Motor Corporation. The total number of sample used in this study is 754 and the empirical employed in this study is OLS Model. The findings suggest that marital status, education, experience have a positive effect on non-sales men’s hourly wages; number of children under age 12, square of experience, and being overweight, a negative effect. For non-sales women, hourly wages are only significantly and positively affected by age and attractiveness. Compared with non-sales men, significant earnings premium for attractive are found for women. Finally, the sales people who are married and have higher education definitely have higher hourly wages and who are obese oppositely pay a penalty.