The study has twelve chapters. After a brief introduction in chapter 1 the development and scope of Swedish manpower training are summarized in chapter 2. Chapter 3 examines to what extent Swedish manpower training has contributed to the attainment of the overall goals of economic policy. Aspects of stabilization, allocation, growth and distribution are dealt with. The chapter ends with a brief review of attempts in the economics of education to explain why it may be advantageous for an individual to participate in manpower training. Chapter 4 opens with an account of results from Swedish and a number of American evaluations of manpower training. In order to assess the effects for the individual some kind of comparison must be made between participants and non-participants. Ways of doing this are discussed. The planning and implementation of the empirical study is described in chapter 5. One aim of the study is to determine the profitability of manpower training for the trainees. The trainees are compared to individuals in similar positions when the former started their training. In chapter 6 the main groups and the control groups are described with reference, to inter alia: sex, age, educational and occupational background. For the trainees, the occupations that the training leads to were also considered. One of the most important aims of manpower training is to improve the position of the trainees on the job market; that is, to shorten the duration of unemployment and to increase the time spent in gainful employment. Chapter 7 describes how the employment situation of the trainees has changed compared to that of the control groups. The effects of manpower training on employment are then analyzed in chapter 8 using regression analysis. Attention is paid to partial response and self selection. In addition to effects on employment, effects on income are also of interest. The measures of income used in the study are defined in chapter 9. These measures are then used in chapter 10 where the income of the trainees is compared to that of the control groups in order to determine to what extent income is influenced by manpower training. Chapter 11 analyzes how participation in manpower training has influenced income. The measures of income used are earned income, hourly wage and three measures of disposable income. Finally, the study concludes in chapter 12 with a summary and discussion. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis aims to reveal the magnitude of the income elasticity of health expenditure and the impact of non-income determinants of health expenditures in the Canadian Provinces. Health can be seen as a luxury good if the income elasticity exceeds unity and as a necessity good if the income elasticity is below unity. The motivation behind the analysis of the determinants of health spending is to identify the forces that drive the persistent increase in health expenditures in Canada and to explain the disparities in provincial health expenditures, thereby to prescribe sustainable macroeconomic policies regarding health spending. Panel data on real per capita GDP, relative price of health care, the share of publicly funded health expenditure, the share of senior population and life expectancy at birth have been used to investigate the determinants of Canadian real per capita provincial total, private and government health expenditures for the period 1975-2002. Dynamic models of health expenditure are analyzed via Generalized Instrumental Variables and Generalized Method of Moments techniques. Evidence confirms that health is far from being a luxury for Canada and government health expenditures are constrained by the relative prices. Results also cast doubt upon the power of quantitative analysis in explaining the increasing health expenditures.

Composite materials have been more and more used in aircraft primary structures such as wing and fuselage. The aim of this thesis is to identify an effective way to optimize composite wing structure, especially the stiffened skin panels for minimum weight subject to stiffness and strength constraints. Many design variables (geometrical dimensions, ply angle proportion and stacking sequence) are involved in the optimum design of a composite stiffened panel. Moreover, in order to meet practical design, manufacturability and maintainability requirements should be taken into account as well, which makes the optimum design problem more complicated. In this thesis, the research work consists of three steps: Firstly, attention is paid to metallic stiffened panels. Based on the study of Emero’s optimum design method and buckling analysis, a VB program IPO, which employs closed form equations to obtain buckling load, is developed to facilitate the optimization process. The IPO extends the application of Emero’s method to an optimum solution based on user defined panel dimensional range to satisfy practical design constraints. Secondly, the optimum design of a composite stiffened panel is studied. Based on the research of laminate layup effects on buckling load and case study of bucking analysis methods, a practical laminate database (PLDB) concept is presented, upon which the optimum design procedure is established. By employing the PLDB, laminate equivalent modulus and closed form equations, a VB program CPO is developed to achieve the optimum design of a composite stiffened panel. A multi-level and step-length-adjustable optimization strategy is applied in CPO, which makes the optimization process efficient and effective. Lastly, a composite outer wing box, which is related to the author’s GDP work, is optimized by CPO. Both theoretical and practical optimum solutions are obtained and the results are validated by FE analysis.

This thesis aims to reveal the magnitude of the income elasticity of health expenditure and the impact of non-income determinants of health expenditures in the Canadian Provinces. Health can be seen as a luxury good if the income elasticity exceeds unity and as a necessity good if the income elasticity is below unity. The motivation behind the analysis of the determinants of health spending is to identify the forces that drive the persistent increase in health expenditures in Canada and to explain the disparities in provincial health expenditures, thereby to prescribe sustainable macroeconomic policies regarding health spending. Panel data on real per capita GDP, relative price of health care, the share of publicly funded health expenditure, the share of senior population and life expectancy at birth have been used to investigate the determinants of Canadian real per capita provincial total, private and government health expenditures for the period 1975-2002. Dynamic models of health expenditure are analyzed via Generalized Instrumental Variables and Generalized Method of Moments techniques. Evidence confirms that health is far from being a luxury for Canada and government health expenditures are constrained by the relative prices. Results also cast doubt upon the power of quantitative analysis in explaining the increasing health expenditures.

The relationship between health and globalization may be constructed on improving public health through the flow of personnel, the import of medication, the quality improvement of drinking water, the utility of new medical technology, and the use of new medication on patients. Some scholars have pointed out that globalization may affect life expectancy from four aspects as income, education, nutrition, and public health. Unlike the existing literature primarily focuses on the correlation between health expenditure and GDP (gross domestic product), we examine to see whether a cointegration relationship between GDP and health expenditure exists under the impact of globalization by applying the panel cointegration test of Pedroni (1999, 2004) which allows heterogeneous data analysis and the Fully Modified OLS test. This paper mainly conducts a cross-continental comparison by using the data in the period from 1995 to 2004 of an estimate sample of 87 developing countries which consists of 12 European countries, 21 Central and South American countries, 20 Asian countries, and 34 African countries. The result shows that the existence of a cointegration relationship between GDP and health expenditure in both the overall developing countries and the cross-continental sample countries. Generally, investment of health and a fast pace of globalization progress boost GDP; especially in Europe and Asia, globalization is a very important factor in influencing the effectiveness of health expenditure upon GDP. In central and south America, the effect of globalization on the effectiveness of GDP to health expenditure is the most significant. The findings of this paper offer future researchers a different aspect for viewing and studying the correlation between health expenditure and GDP.

The gradually increasing pressure of the organization¡¦s job demands becomes a universal and unchangeable fact. Most studies focused on the normal causal relationships between work stress and its outcomes rather than the reversed and reciprocal relationships between them. From the view points of drift hypothesis and gain and loss spiral resulting from the conservation of resource theory, the present study probed the reciprocal relationships between job characteristics, burnout and health. Two-wave panel data were collected from nurses both in public and private hospitals in southern Taiwan. Pre-test data were used to test the Cronbach's £\ and confirmatory factor analysis for each scale. Structural equation modeling implemented with AMOS 5.0 was employed to test the fitness of the hypothesized models. Through a series of nested models competing, our findings showed that the final models fitted well to the data. Our results proved some cross-lagged effects including the normal causal relationships between psychosocial job characteristics and burnout, the reversed causal relationships between burnout and mental, physical health, burnout has partial mediating relationships between psychosocial job characteristics and mental, physical health, and the reciprocal causal relationships between psychosocial job characteristics, burnout, and mental, physical health. According to our findings, managerial implications can be suggested that managers should pay attention to employees¡¦ burnout and introduce some managerial practices immediately in order to prevent the harmful outcomes of health. It can be achieved by higher job control to alleviate employees¡¦ job strain. Organizations should increase employee¡¦s job control such as job redesign, flexible work schedules, and goal setting. In addition, burnout can be affected by mental and physical health as well. From the viewpoint of organizational intervention, stress management programs can help to improve employees¡¦ physical and mental health, which will in turn release employee¡¦s burnout. Organizations will gain a competitive advantage if they make better use of their human resources.

Since our current economic environment is getting more and more competitive, enterprises must continuously improve and strengthen their ability in order to maintain their competitiveness. Therefore, investment activities of firms are the key elements to drive business growth. This article tries to discuss whether three different investment dimensions can help to boost firm¡¦s future growth of profitability. This research uses investment spending of listed firms in domestic electronics industry (including capital expenditure, intangible assets and R&D expenditures) as variable to explore the effects of these three investment expenditures on corporate P/B ratio as well as ROA (Return on Asset). This study attempts to analyze whether firm¡¦s investment activities can impose significantly positive influence on its future profitability. We use panel data to run regression analysis and further divide Taiwan electronics industry into five sectors to analyze the effects of firm¡¦s investment expenditure on P/B and future profitability among different sectors. The empirical results show that investment spending imposes significantly positive effect on firm¡¦s profits, but this relationship exist time lags.

Privatization is defined as the sale of state-owned assets by governmental agencies to private investors (e.g., Megginson, Nash, Netter, and Poulsen, 2004; Villalonga, 2000). Research on privatization has focused on privatization techniques (e.g., share issue privatization or voucher privatization), social welfare, governmental commitments to economic development, and varieties of outcomes of privatizations. Most prior studies from the financial economics perspective take privatization as a natural research context to examine the function of capital markets, the impact of national institutional settings, and the differences between partial privatization and initial public offerings. Very little research, however, has examined the determinants of privatization from an organizational perspective. This dissertation proposes that privatization decisions of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are influenced by different interests in governmental agencies. Using the resource dependence theory, I studied the power relationships of SOEs and their governmental owners. Four panel databases of 206 pharmaceutical firms across eight years in China were combined to answer the research question of this dissertation: What is the role of power imbalance between different governmental owners in the privatization of an SOE? The results suggest that organizational effectiveness and efficiency of an SOE increase the likelihood of its privatization. Results also show that provincial governmental owners are more likely to privatize SOEs if they can successfully attract foreign direct investment projects. Furthermore, the likelihood of privatization increases with the power asymmetry between the provincial government and the central government but decreases with the degree of the defense mechanism used by SOEs.

This research, aimed at advancing the theory of environmental hazard adjustment processes by contrasting households from three cities in a high seismic hazard area with households from three other cities in a moderate seismic hazard area. It identified seven types of stakeholders namely, the risk area residents and their families (primary group), the news media, employers, and friends (secondary group), and federal, state, and local governments (tertiary group), and explained why they are relevant to the adoption of seismic hazard adjustments. It also addressed three key attributes— knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility for protection—ascribed to these multiple stakeholders and the relationships of these stakeholder attributes with risk perception, hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, gender, resource adequacy, fatalism and hazard adjustment adoption. It was specifically concerned with the effects of nested interactions due to trust and power differentials among the seven stakeholders, with the self reported adoption of 16 earthquake protective measures at two points in time (1997 and 1999). Some of the key findings indicate that risk perception, gender, fatalism, city activity in earthquake management and demographic characteristics did not significantly predict hazard adjustment adoption. However, all stakeholder characteristics had significant positive correlations with risk perception and hazard adjustment, implying a peripheral route for social influence. Hazard intrusiveness, hazard experience, and stakeholder knowledge, trustworthiness, and responsibility affected the increased adoption of hazard adjustments by households. Particularly important are the peer groups’ (employers, friends and family) knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility. These findings suggest, hazard managers cannot count only on the federal, state, and local government advisories put out through the news media to affect community decisions and thereby households’ decisions to take protective actions. Instead, hazard managers need to shift focus and work through peer group networks such as service organizations, industry groups, trade unions, neighborhood organizations, community emergency response teams, faith-based organizations, and educational institutions to increase the knowledge, trustworthiness and responsibility of all in the peer group. This will assure higher household hazard adjustment adoption levels, thus facilitating a reduction in post disaster losses and recovery time.

The usual theoretical assumption that the retailer's promotional activities serve the purpose of attracting customers into stores lacks empirical verification. The relationship between promotional activity and customer count is examined empirically in just a few studies, and no significantly positive association is found. This dissertation is a comprehensive empirical study of a unique time series cross section dataset, which contains scanner data representing 28 product categories in a large supermarket chain over two and a half year long period. The main result of this dissertation is that retailer's promotional activities are positively related to customer count. Two constructed measures of the promotional activity have a positive significant effect on store traffic that is comparable with the customer count effect of an average holiday. Some 55 percent of the positive long-run promotional activity effect is felt immediately, and the remaining 45 percent is spread over a five week long period. The promotions have prolonged effects that last until the next promotional peak -€“ the next holiday. It is also found that promotional discounts have positive and significant effect on store profit.