<p>Thailand’s economy has gone through a quick development during the past two decades As a result of the economic crisis in 1997, His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej introduced the philosophy of sufficiency economy (SE). SE is built upon a model which can be used every day, notonly during crises, to strengthen the economy within the country and the society. Due to the worldwide attention on the philosophy it is interesting to research how applicable SE is in Sweden or generally worldwide.The aim of the field study and the thesis is to obtain a contemporary interpretation of the applicability of sufficiency economy.The approach of the field study consisted of four main steps; feasibility study, research tool, the field study procedure and evaluation. The study includes a literature study with a combination of interviews with key persons, a multinational company situated in Bangkok and Thai students. The intention of the selection was to obtain a conceptual interpretation of SE in relation to the interviewed people. The answers of the different groups were first put in their own context, and then a comparison was made in order to make the analysis.Several different opinions were uncovered regarding the interpretation of SE. It is necessary to interpret it at an individual level.The rational decision making and following the middle way is important to achieve a balanced life. However it is a knowledge gap within theThai society where it is important to have a stable government and the right spokesman of SE.</p> / Mior Field Studies via SIDA

Peace Corps Fellows award for commitment to the community / What are Iskashitaa Refugee Harvesting Network’s roles and objectives in teaching English as a Second Language to adult refugees in the Tucson community? How can we create a classroom environment that builds their language acquisition while promoting self-sufficiency? To inquire into these questions, interviews were conducted with adult refugee students who attend the classes, anecdotal records were kept of the ESL teachers’ weekly reflections and classroom observations were performed. Iskashitaa’s ESL classes should provide a space for English language acquisition, assisting in the acculturation process through introducing material that is based on life-skills, with the teachers serving as a cultural broker, advocate and friend and finally, introducing the adult refugees to the community through volunteer activities with Iskashitaa. There is a need for more inquiry and discussion about the pre-literate refugee population, especially in effective teaching strategies, curriculum ideas and a better understanding of literacy practices within the home. These are matters that merit a larger discussion by people who work in education and with refugees, as feedback would be beneficial from all who work with refugees and can recommend what they have observed, experienced and envision to help in the language acquisition, self-sufficiency and acculturation process for refugees.

Abstract: In this thesis, we give a general construction of a conditional model through embedding that concept into the concept of unconditional model. Formally, the conditional model is considered as a statistical model bearing on all the variables, i.e. on the "endogenous variables" Y and the conditioning, or "exogenous", variables Z such that j, the parameter characterizing the marginal distribution of Z, is a nuisance parameter that is identified and "well-separated” from q, the parameter of interest characterizing the Z-conditional distribution. Therefore, a family of marginal distributions on the exogenous variables and a family of “well specified” transitions of probabilities, playing a role of conditional probabilities in a global model, characterize a conditional model. Typically, but not always, j takes values in a "thick" subset F, of all the probability distributions of Z. From this construction, we analyze the identification of a conditional model in the framework of the identification of a function of the parameters in unconditional model. We propose a definition of identification in conditional models called weak identification, derived from the usual concept of identification in unconditional models. We show, under a separability condition, that weak identification may be considered as a generalization of definitions usually met in the statistical literature; in particular those in Manski (1988) and Matzkin (1993). However, an undesirable property of weak identification is shown, namely that under rather general conditions, the weak identification does not depend on the sample size. As an alternative, three other levels of identification are given, stressing the proper role of the randomness of the conditioning variables. Similar distinctions are also shown to be relevant for properties of estimators, such as unbiasedness or consistency. The relationships between these different levels of identification, unbiasedness and consistency are given. Another aspect analyzed in this thesis is the concept of partial sufficiency. Our contribution to this area is to give some further properties of S-sufficiency. In particular, we establish the connection between S-sufficiency and the identification concept for unconditional models and also for conditional models with partially observable endogenous variables. We show that when we reduce the structural (latent) model by marginalizing w.r.t an S-sufficient statistic, we do not lose the identification of the parameter of interest in the statistical (reduced) model. Furthermore, we study the properties and the conditions of applicability of S-sufficiency, with a view to compare the properties of the standard concept of sufficiency and of S-sufficiency respectively. As an application, we analyze the identification of the conditional binary response models from the semi-parametric point of view.

Thailand’s economy has gone through a quick development during the past two decades As a result of the economic crisis in 1997, His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej introduced the philosophy of sufficiency economy (SE). SE is built upon a model which can be used every day, notonly during crises, to strengthen the economy within the country and the society. Due to the worldwide attention on the philosophy it is interesting to research how applicable SE is in Sweden or generally worldwide.The aim of the field study and the thesis is to obtain a contemporary interpretation of the applicability of sufficiency economy.The approach of the field study consisted of four main steps; feasibility study, research tool, the field study procedure and evaluation. The study includes a literature study with a combination of interviews with key persons, a multinational company situated in Bangkok and Thai students. The intention of the selection was to obtain a conceptual interpretation of SE in relation to the interviewed people. The answers of the different groups were first put in their own context, and then a comparison was made in order to make the analysis.Several different opinions were uncovered regarding the interpretation of SE. It is necessary to interpret it at an individual level.The rational decision making and following the middle way is important to achieve a balanced life. However it is a knowledge gap within theThai society where it is important to have a stable government and the right spokesman of SE. / Mior Field Studies via SIDA

Many people think that political equality is obviously a good thing, an ideal toward which any decent political system should strive. Despite this -- or perhaps because of it -- some basic questions about political equality remain unanswered. What is political equality? What is good about it? Could some other ideal(s) take its place? My aim here is to answer each of these questions. In regards to the first question, I argue that political equality obtains when political power is distributed equally. Two people are political equals if, and only if, they have the same amount of political power. By 'political power' I mean (roughly) the ability to get what one wants in the political arena. Conceiving of political equality in this way allows us to accommodate both the moral and amoral dimensions of politics. What is good about political equality, so conceived? Political equality is good insofar as it leads to the equal advancement of everyone's interests. There are several reasons to think that advancing everyone's interests is important. It may be a fundamental requirement of morality, a principle of social justice, or a necessary condition of political legitimacy. Of course, an equal distribution of political power is not unique in its ability to advance people's interests equally. Indeed, I argue that an unequal distribution of power will almost always lead to a moral equal advancement of everyone's interests. This is because different people have different interests, and, depending on the circumstances, different amounts of power may be needed in order to advance different sets of interests to the same degree. Thus, it is a mistake to assume that an equal distribution of power will lead to the equal advancement of everyone's interests. If the equal advancement of interests is our ultimate goal, then political power should be distributed in accordance with a principle of sufficiency, not equality. Everyone should have whatever amount of political power they need in order for their interests to be advanced to the same degree.

This case study investigated eight welfare recipients and their perceptions of the effectiveness of the job training programs in which they participated in an effort to understand the domains in which welfare-reliant individuals exhibit a commitment to work. Specific issues addressed by this qualitative study included the individuals' perceptions of (1) the program effects on escaping poverty and becoming self-sufficient; (2) the impact of the program focus on the participants' achievement and empowerment; (3) employment and the prospects of getting off welfare, both before and after program completion; and (4) recommendations for improvement in designing such programs. It is clear that all participants in the study found resolution to the tensions in their lives through the programs. Life skills training was critical in enhancing the self-esteem of the participants, providing them the tools necessary to overcome their fear of independence and allowing them to experience their own definition of success. Each participant in the study wished for more time in the program. Most participants felt the program was a gift and verbalized the value of supportive services on-site.

A statistic that summarizes an entire data set without losing any information about the family of distributions or the model is often called a sufficient statistic. Generally, one would like to use the statistic that contains the most information about the parameter space. Sometimes there are several sufficient statistics. At other times the only sufficient statistic is the entire data set. A large data set can be difficult to work with. In this case, can one use a statistic that, though not sufficient, does summarize the data set somewhat? How much information would be lost? How can one compare two statistics that aren't sufficient in terms of the amount of information each provides? A new method for comparing experiments and measuring information is introduced. No assumptions are made and no conditions are required in order for this new method to measure the amount of information contained in almost any statistic. Several properties of this new method are discussed and a new characterization of sufficiency based on this new method is presented. The new method is used to evaluate the expected efficiency of a statistic in discriminating between any two values of the parameter as compared to a sufficient statistic. This new method can be self-calibrated to give this expected efficiency a meaningful scale. It is shown that this new method has some advantages over existing methods of measuring information. This new method is applied to Casino Blackjack. Several card-counting statistics are compared by the amount of information each provides in discriminating between different deck compositions as compared to a sufficient statistic. This new method provides new insight about information in card-counting statistics by putting this information on a meaningful scale. / Ph. D.

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Aggregating performance measures considerably reduces the complexity of a performance evaluation system. This dissertation analyzes the nature and characteristics of the aggregation of performance measures in institutional settings of multiple tasks and multiple periods. In multi-task settings, the number of tasks restricts the feasibility of a statistically sufficient aggregation and the nature of an economically sufficient aggregation. Statistical sufficiency of aggregation can be achieved only by multi-dimensional aggregate measures, whose minimum dimensionality is given by the number of tasks. If the number of aggregate measures is less than the number of tasks, an economically sufficient aggregation incurs loss of information even if there is no loss of information through the likelihood ratio. The results support the use of multi-dimensional aggregate measures to preserve the information content of performance measures in multi-task agencies. In a multi-period setting, the inter-temporal correlations among performance measures restrict the feasibility of a statistically sufficient aggregation and the nature of an economically sufficient aggregation. When performance measures are inter-temporally correlated, there is no statistically sufficient aggregation and an economically sufficient aggregation of the basic measures depends on the effort level to induce. The optimal aggregation is characterized by the agent's characteristics and the economic situation of the agency as well as the statistical properties of performance measures. In a long-term contract with multiple tasks, the inter-temporal covariance risk has a monotonic impact on the endogenous allocation of effort through the optimal relative incentive rate. The inter-temporal covariance risk, as well as the within-period risk premium, prevents the first best allocation of effort from being endogenously achieved even if the first best allocation is feasible. / Accounting

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