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Propose a more comprehensive explanation on the determinants and fluctuations of China’s exchange rate policy in the past decade (2005–2015).

Case study on China’s exchange rate policies in three respective stages since 2005 and then a comparative study on these three stages.

Put forward a two-pronged explanation on the determinants and fluctuations of China’s exchange rate policy in the past decade and arrive at three specific conclusions. First, external pressure is only one factor among many influencing the formation of China’s national interests (Guojia Liyi in Chinese) and the decision-making process on exchange rate policy. Second, national interest is the fundamental driving force and substratum for making China’s exchange rate policy. Third, in the short term, the specific exchange rate policies in different periods were not always in accordance to the national interests (or Guojia Liyi), due to the influences of some factors on the decision-making environment.

The comprehensive view is conducive to better explaining the formation and fluctuations of China’s exchange rate policy and consequently contributes to understanding and even predicting future policies.

We discuss the ways in which the tensions between deregulation and bailouts create fundamentally inefficient markets. Although there is an appetite for the rhetoric of a laissez-fair economic system in the United States, we do not have the political will to operate such a system, as there are always cries for bailouts when a crisis emerges. And bailouts rob markets of the crucial ability to discipline capital for risky behavior. Using the case of China as an example, we argue that the post-Cold War conclusion that state ownership is fundamentally inefficient is premature. The key issue is not state versus private ownership per se but, rather, how well aligned the incentives are within a given system. Some of the economic models we find in reform-era China are actually better aligned and perhaps as transparent as their counterparts in the market economies of the capitalist West. Finally, because China is not caught up on the categorical assumption that private firms are efficient while state-owned firms are inefficient, the country has been able to be an institutional innovator in the area of public–private partnerships, leading to radical new corporate forms.

In the spring of 1995, the Electronics Bureau of Shanghai [Shanghai Dianziju] changed its name to “Shanghai Electronics State-Owned Asset Management Company” [Shanghai dianzi guoyou zichan jingying gongsi]. As one official in the former Bureau explained, it had changed its name and its function: It was no longer set up to “govern” or “manage” [guan] Shanghai's electronics sector; instead it was now an asset management company whose function was to manage the assets of the firms that it owned.¹ At the time, the transformation seemed purely cosmetic. Calling itself an asset management company instead of a government bureau was one thing, but actually acting like an asset management company was quite another. Would firms under this former Bureau be any more productive as a result of the change? Would the work-life experiences of the people actually working in these firms change at all as a result?

This chapter focuses on community and social group networks. All six facets of knowledge networks are described. The importance of three of the six facets is called out, including geography, domain, and the messages exchanged across the network. The authors provide profiles of five networks, including family networks, neighborhood networks, issue and support networks, community organization networks, gangs and criminal networks, and sports and gaming networks.

We review the role immigration amnesties have played in US immigration policy, placing them in the context of similar programs embarked upon by other nations. The theory of amnesties suggests rent-seeking, bargaining, and costs as reasons for a country offering an amnesty, often in conjunction with increased border controls, internal enforcement and employer penalties. We model an immigration amnesty in which the destination country has a formal sector employing only legal immigrants, an informal sector employing both legal and illegal immigrants, and open unemployment. The model focuses on the productivity enhancing effects of legalization, and establishes specific conditions under which unemployment, the informal sector and the formal sectors increase/decrease in size. Building on these insights, our empirical work examines Mexican migration to the US. We study who are migrants; among migrants, who are legalized via Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), and who are legalized via sponsorship of family or employer. Furthermore, to measure the impact of amnesty on welfare of migrants, we estimate earnings equations of various migrants groups.

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to understand how, if at all, backchanneling technology supported an early career English teacher’s facilitation of literary discussions in his 10th grade classroom. Although emerging findings from studies of backchanneling in teaching contexts have illustrated its potential power, little attention has been given to how teachers learn to use the tool or reimagine their pedagogical roles as they use backchanneling for instructional purposes.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Discourse analyses of 16 face-to-face (frontchannel) and online (backchannel) transcripts of discussions exposed how participants used these two venues to interact simultaneously around a literary text. Methods from Nystrand’s (2002) dialogic discourse analysis isolated each teacher interjection in the contexts of each discussion.

Findings – The teacher used the backchannel to probe for elaborated student responses and model dialogic discourse moves. The teacher’s behind-the-scenes support limited his participation during frontchannel discussions, allowing for open discussion among students without the teacher’s consistent interjection, which disrupted the initiation-response-evaluation discourse structure that is pervasive in US schools.

Practical Implications – Although backchanneling technology can be used to archive records of students’ participation that could be useful for assessment purposes, the teacher’s skillful capacity to negotiate two discussions at once reconstituted his role during the discussion from facilitator to a fellow reader with his students as they explored meaningful questions that literature provokes – a less obvious and potentially more powerful affordance of this digital tool for instructional purposes.

When immigrants experience “nationality discrimination” in the labor market, ceteris paribus their earnings are lower than native-born workers because they were born abroad. The challenge to testing for nationality discrimination is that the native/immigrant earnings gap will very likely also be influenced by productivity differences driven by incomplete assimilation of immigrants, as well as the possibility of racial or gender discrimination. There is relatively little empirical literature, and virtually no theoretical literature, on this type of discrimination. In this study, a model of nationality discrimination where customer prejudice and native/immigrant productivity differences jointly influence the earnings gap is presented. We derive an extension of Becker's market discrimination coefficient (MDC), applied to the case of nationality discrimination when there are productivity differences. A number of novel implications are obtained. We find, for example, that the MDC depends upon relative immigrant productivity and relative immigrant labor supply. We test the model on data for hitters and pitchers in Major League Baseball, an industry with a history of immigration, potential for customer discrimination, and clean detailed microdata on worker productivities and race. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and decomposition methods are used to estimate the extent of discrimination. We find no compelling evidence of discrimination in the hitter group, but evidence of ceteris paribus underpayment of immigrant pitchers. While our test case is for a particular industry, our theoretical model, empirical specifications, and general research design are quite generalizable to many other labor markets.