Chapter 1 Low-skilled Migration and Altruism: Population ageing has become a common concern among welfare states, including Canada and most of the OECD countries. Immigration has been identified as a solution to help sustain labour-force growth in industrialized countries, and as the factor most able to mitigate dire predictions of future fiscal imbalances. This chapter examines the impact of low-skilled immigration in a host country where households are altruists with a pay-as-you-go pension system to support the elderly. It demonstrates that low-skilled immigration does not harm the welfare of the domestic population. We use an overlapping-generations model similar to the work of Razin and Sadka (2000) but introduce paternalistic altruism into the life-cycle framework. Within this context of inter-generational altruism and pay-as-you-go pension systems, the initial negative fiscal impact of low-skilled migrants is compensated, thus, all income groups (high and low) and all age groups (young and old) benefit from migration. // Chapter 2 Growth and Sustainability: In light of the major environmental issues experienced by several countries in the last decades, several papers have advocated the rethinking of the role of governments in environmental preservation. This chapter develops an overlapping-generations model of environmental quality and production and investigates the potential role of governmental participation in the preservation of the quality of the environment so as to achieve both economic growth and environmental sustainability. The analysis suggests that long term economic growth and environment sustainability can be maintained with tax-funded environmental programs in a context of a negative production externality on the quality of the environment. // Chapter 3 The Incidence of Geography on Canada’s Services Trade: We estimate geographic barriers to export trade in nine service categories for Canada's provinces from 1997 to 2007 using the structural gravity model. Constructed Home, Domestic and Foreign Bias indexes capture the direct plus indirect effect of services trade costs on intra-provincial, inter-provincial and international trade relative to their frictionless benchmarks. Barriers to services international trade are huge relative to inter-provincial trade and large relative to goods international trade. A novel test confirms the fit of structural gravity with services trade data.

Arithmetic cognition research was at one time concerned mostly with the representation and retrieval of arithmetic facts in memory. More recently it was found that memory retrieval does not account for all single digit arithmetic performance. For example, Canadian university students solve up to 40% of basic addition problems using procedural strategies (e.g. 5 + 3 = 5 + 1 + 1 + 1). Given that procedures are less efficient than direct memory retrieval it is important to understand why procedure use is high, even for relatively skilled adults. My dissertation, therefore, sought to expand understanding of strategy choice for adults basic arithmetic. Background on this topic and supporting knowledge germane to the topic are provided in Chapter 1.<p> Chapter 2 focused on a well-known, but unexplained, finding: A written word problem (six + seven) results in much greater reported use of procedures (e.g., counting) than the same problem in digits (6 + 7). I hypothesized that this could be the result of a metacognitive effect whereby the low surface familiarity for word problems discourages retrieval. This was tested by familiarizing participants with a subset of the written word stimuli (e.g. three + four = ?, six + nine= ?) and then testing them on unpractised problems comprised of practiced components (four + six = ?). The result was increased retrieval reported for unpractised problems with practiced components. This indicates that surface familiarity contributes to strategy choice.<p> Chapter 3 focused on another classic phenomenon in the arithmetic cognition literature, the problem size effect: Response time, error, and procedure rates increase as a function of problem size. A previous study reported a reduced problem size effect for auditory multiplication problems compared to digit problems. I hypothesized that if this reduction was due to problem encoding processes rather than an effect on calculation per se, then a similar pattern would be observed for addition. Instead, I found that the size effect for addition was larger. I concluded that the auditory format promotes procedures for addition, but promotes retrieval for multiplication.<p> Chapters 4 and 5 were concerned with a well-known methodological issue in the strategy literature, subjectivity of self-reports: Some claim self-reports are more like opinions than objective measures. Thevenot, Fanget, and Fayol (2007) ostensibly solved this problem by probing problem memory subsequent to participants providing an answer. They reasoned that after a more complex procedure, the memory for the original problem would become degraded. The result would be better memory for problems answered by retrieval instead of by procedure. I hypothesized that their interpretation of their findings was conflated with the effect of switching tasks from arithmetic to number memory. I demonstrated that their new method for measuring strategy choice was contaminated by task switching costs, which compromises its application as a measure of strategy choice (Chapter 4). In a subsequent project (Chapter 5), I tested the sensitivity of this new method to detect the effects of factors known in the literature to affect strategy choice. The results indicated that Thevenot et al.s new method was insensitive to at least one of these factors. Thus, attempts to control for the confounding effects of task switching described in Chapter 4, in order to implement this new measure, are not warranted.<p> The current dissertation expanded understanding of strategy choice in four directions by 1) demonstrating that metacognitive factors cause increases in procedure strategies, 2) by demonstrating that the process of strategy selection is affected differentially by digit and auditory-verbal input, 3) by investigating the validity of an alternative measure of strategy use in experimental paradigms, and 4) by discovering a critical failure in the sensitivity of this new measure to measure the effects of factors known to influence strategy use. General conclusions are discussed in Chapter 6.

Arithmetic cognition research was at one time concerned mostly with the representation and retrieval of arithmetic facts in memory. More recently it was found that memory retrieval does not account for all single digit arithmetic performance. For example, Canadian university students solve up to 40% of basic addition problems using procedural strategies (e.g. 5 + 3 = 5 + 1 + 1 + 1). Given that procedures are less efficient than direct memory retrieval it is important to understand why procedure use is high, even for relatively skilled adults. My dissertation, therefore, sought to expand understanding of strategy choice for adults basic arithmetic. Background on this topic and supporting knowledge germane to the topic are provided in Chapter 1.<p> Chapter 2 focused on a well-known, but unexplained, finding: A written word problem (six + seven) results in much greater reported use of procedures (e.g., counting) than the same problem in digits (6 + 7). I hypothesized that this could be the result of a metacognitive effect whereby the low surface familiarity for word problems discourages retrieval. This was tested by familiarizing participants with a subset of the written word stimuli (e.g. three + four = ?, six + nine= ?) and then testing them on unpractised problems comprised of practiced components (four + six = ?). The result was increased retrieval reported for unpractised problems with practiced components. This indicates that surface familiarity contributes to strategy choice.<p> Chapter 3 focused on another classic phenomenon in the arithmetic cognition literature, the problem size effect: Response time, error, and procedure rates increase as a function of problem size. A previous study reported a reduced problem size effect for auditory multiplication problems compared to digit problems. I hypothesized that if this reduction was due to problem encoding processes rather than an effect on calculation per se, then a similar pattern would be observed for addition. Instead, I found that the size effect for addition was larger. I concluded that the auditory format promotes procedures for addition, but promotes retrieval for multiplication.<p> Chapters 4 and 5 were concerned with a well-known methodological issue in the strategy literature, subjectivity of self-reports: Some claim self-reports are more like opinions than objective measures. Thevenot, Fanget, and Fayol (2007) ostensibly solved this problem by probing problem memory subsequent to participants providing an answer. They reasoned that after a more complex procedure, the memory for the original problem would become degraded. The result would be better memory for problems answered by retrieval instead of by procedure. I hypothesized that their interpretation of their findings was conflated with the effect of switching tasks from arithmetic to number memory. I demonstrated that their new method for measuring strategy choice was contaminated by task switching costs, which compromises its application as a measure of strategy choice (Chapter 4). In a subsequent project (Chapter 5), I tested the sensitivity of this new method to detect the effects of factors known in the literature to affect strategy choice. The results indicated that Thevenot et al.s new method was insensitive to at least one of these factors. Thus, attempts to control for the confounding effects of task switching described in Chapter 4, in order to implement this new measure, are not warranted.<p> The current dissertation expanded understanding of strategy choice in four directions by 1) demonstrating that metacognitive factors cause increases in procedure strategies, 2) by demonstrating that the process of strategy selection is affected differentially by digit and auditory-verbal input, 3) by investigating the validity of an alternative measure of strategy use in experimental paradigms, and 4) by discovering a critical failure in the sensitivity of this new measure to measure the effects of factors known to influence strategy use. General conclusions are discussed in Chapter 6.

According to several studies immigrants today in general face more difficulties to enter the labor market than before. This also applies to educated immigrants who are the main focus of this thesis. Studies have shown that educated migrants have more difficulties of obtaining an adequate job than ethnic Swedes. Thousands of educated immigrants are forced to work in low skilled occupations to cope with their everyday lives. The reasons behind their lack of success on the Swedish labor market have been blamed on different kinds of obstacles.     This study wants to examine at least some of the obstacles that educated immigrants face on the labor market through some informants own personal reflections and experiences. The study is based on an inside perspective in which the different personal experiences and reflections of the various informants is of great importance.  The study is focused on how five educated immigrants describe their situation on the Swedish labor market. The aim is to investigate the informants 'understanding of the difficulties they have to get a job that matches their skills. It also aims to discuss the structural barriers that respondents relate to when they describe their situation.    The results of the interviews with the informants have been analyzed with the help of central concepts gained from the two sociologists, Erving Goffman and Pierre Bourdieu.    The results of my study have shown through the personal experiences of the informants that the difficulties they face on the labor market can be attributed to their lack of access to valuable social networks and to the various requirement profiles that exist from employers, often with a strong focus on a developed knowledge of the Swedish language. These two obstacles results in that the skilled migrants on the labor market have a relative disadvantage in comparison with ethnic Swedes in the search for the attractive jobs.

Due to the poor working environment, work without a certain protection and facing changes in the social structure, change the mindset of employment, a great demand in service industry, and the labor force structure changes, with low birth rate, and the level of education are generally improving. As a result, labor force willing to work for construction industry gradually reduced, causing a potential gapping crisis. The utilities industry is more difficult, dangerous and laborious work. Furthermore, the working environment is poor, the social and economic status is low and its work nature is more physique demanding and professional. In this regard, the main characteristic of the professional and technical manpower in the utilities engineering industry is mostly the male workers of 30 to 40 years old, having relevant work experience of five years or more and with education at high school or below. Under the shortage in labor force, there are structural changes in industry. In addition, under the structural change in labor force, employees are in favor of engaging in service industry, and science and technology and electronics industry and they are not willing to work in the engineering and manufacturing industry. Under this labor force situation and the unique requirement of professional and skilled manpower resources, which cannot be met with by the general labor, have made the lack of professional and skilled people in the water and electricity engineering become more critical. This research targets at a case study on manpower requirements in a large scale and representative company in the water and electricity industry in Kaohsiung. The study framework bases on the structure of labor requirements in industry, the characteristics of the utilities industry and statistical analysis of the supply and demand in technical manpower of the targeted companies of the study cases, so as to prove increasing acute shortage in professional and skilled manpower in the utilities industry, and its impact on the utilities and construction industries in future to help resolving the utilities industry business hardship.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-203). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-203). Also available on the Internet.

This thesis is an exploratory work into the migration and settlement experiences of highly skilled Turkish migrants who have settled in Canada. It is a qualitative study conducted with sixteen immigrant respondents living in Halifax and Toronto. The focus of this work is on the role of networks, specifically in shaping these migrants’ migration routes, developing belongings and reworking identities. While it is the feminist theory that informs this study, I use the intersectional theory as the theoretical framework. It has been found that the social class not only arose as a central factor that influenced these migrants’ experiences but it also affected the interplay between ethnicity and gender. The findings are analyzed with the help of current literature on globalization and international migration theories. The similarities and differences between the Halifax and Toronto respondents are also highlighted in order to inform provincial and national policies.

If one considers the view's of the "pessimists" too long, it is not difficult to lapse into a spiral of depression with regard to the nature of South Africa and her economic future; suffice to say that this in fact could be the stimuli in itself to result in the so-called "brain drain" phenomenon. However, though opinions and views of even the experts may be rejected or accepted on que, the figures do speak for themselves. According to one such report, a staggering 1% of the total science and IT workforce left the country between 1994 and 2001, some 17 000 professionals! Research studies and government campaigns aimed at addressing the issue of skill shortages, continue to look for appropriate strategies to properly address and/or minimize the problem. In so doing, research studies and current literature have highlighted top destination countries for South African emigration, skilled migrant impact as measured in terms of industry and job classification as well as prevalent reasons for emigration. The essence of this study is to uncover the most prevalent socio-economic factor, as perceived by skilled migrants, and as a contributory factor to the brain drain crises. This study aims to evaluate, specifically, extent of safety and security concerns as most prevalent stimuli for emigration. In so doing, the study aims to present strategy solutions in alignment with findings to aid in present government initiatives to curbing the brain drain. Furthermore, it aims to provide a basis for further study to develop government strategies for skilled migrant prevention. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

This study explores whether and how skilled Chinese immigrants can contribute to New Zealand's knowledge society and economy with their knowledge and skills. As New Zealand is moving towards a knowledge society and economy, the attraction of skilled migrants is one of the critical strategies in maintaining its competitive advantages. However, the results of the socioeconomic integration of new skilled migrants always lead to debates on the real role of skilled migrants in New Zealand's society and economy. This study uses multiple research strategies combining analyses of historical and statistical materials, and a case study with fourteen interviews conducted with new Chinese immigrants, who came from Mainland China after 1990 and are living and working in Christchurch, to explore the relationships between these 'descendents of the dragon' and New Zealand's knowledge society and economy. Through these strategies, the study shows the role of knowledge in the emergence of New Zealand's knowledge society and economy, the value placed on knowledge and skills in New Zealand immigration policies and the change in the Chinese community with the growing demand for skilled migrants. It argues that tacit knowledge is not separated from but interactive with explicit knowledge through cultural values, social networks and structures, and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, in the process surrounding the entry of new skilled Chinese immigrants into New Zealand society, the knowledge economy is not exclusively economic but socially and culturally conditioned; and the knowledge society is not universal but diversified and interdependent.