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Along with the “reform and open door” policy launched in the late 1970s, China has experienced an annual average GDP growth rate of 9.8% between 1978 and 2002 (Hu, 2003, October 19). China's economy system has also gone through a fundamental transition from a central planning system to a socialist free market economy. To cope with the booming economy and radical social changes, the higher education system of China has been undergoing a process of expansion with marketization (World Bank, 1997).

Insurance is a dynamic business highly affected by the environment it operates in. Alongside the practice of insurance, come principles on which the business of insurance is based. One of the principles, that is not short of controversy, is the doctrine of utmost good faith which requires full disclosure of material facts by the contracting parties. The author, in this chapter, explored the need for change in the regulation of this insurance principle and discussed the drivers behind these changes and the commensurate effect on the practice of insurance. The author delved into case studies, practices and literature and traced back to the origins of the long-standing principle of utmost good faith. This principle is one on which the acceptance (or otherwise) and premium of an insurance contract is based and through which certain factors and developments in the industry have led to a major reform in some jurisdiction.

The author discussed the development and drivers leading to reform and concluded that reform is ultimately the result of public outcry, through individual cases heard predominantly in court, a well-established reform committee, the socio-political environment of that country and the advent of technology. Moreover, although, different countries have their own jurisdictions, laws and regulations as well as market practices and international trade have made it imperative to have common technical practices between market players especially in insurance, which depends on the spread of risks between countries internationally. Smooth insurance business can only be established if this reform is harmonised between jurisdictions.

This chapter explores two comparative longitudinal cases studies involving policy entrepreneurs inside and outside government in Taiwan. From 2003 to 2007, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan played the conventional role of policy entrepreneur to initiate the “University Corporation Project.” Through this project, the MOE sought to transform all national universities in Taiwan into independent entities, gaining them more autonomy and increasing their accountability as well. From 2008 to 2014, as a policy entrepreneur outside the government, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) took the lead and proposed the “University Autonomous Governance Project.” This project sought an alternative solution based on public universities’ needs to improve university autonomy and accountability.

The method undertaken in this study includes document analysis and participants’ observation. First, both policy entrepreneurs adopted the strategy of power sharing, but the effectiveness of the strategy is determined by the interaction between policy entrepreneurs and stakeholders. Moreover, facing a multiple-principals condition in both cases, both policy entrepreneurs should negotiated with or compete with other potential agenda competitors. Those findings will be a detailed roadmap for policy makers in East Asia once they plan to initiate policy entrepreneurship in their countries.

This chapter examines the trend in school enrollment and transitions to senior high school and to college in China for selected young cohorts since the 1990s, based on the analyses of the sample data from population censuses in 1990 and 2000 and the mini-census in 2005. We pay particular attention to educational inequality based on gender and the household registration system (hukou) in the context of educational expansion. Results show a substantial increase in educational opportunities over time at all levels. In particular, women have gained relatively more; gender inequality has decreased over time, and the gap in college enrollments was even reversed to favor women in 2005. However, rural–urban inequality was enlarged in the 1990s. The educational expansion has mainly benefited females and urban residents.

The Canadian mutual fund setting is unique in that two governance mechanisms – corporate and trust – coexist. This study empirically examines the impact of each mechanism on fund fees and performance. We find that corporate class funds charge higher fees but deliver superior fee-adjusted returns than trust funds. We then analyze the impact of various board characteristics on fees and performance for corporate class funds. We find that a board with smaller size, CEO duality, and a higher percentage of independent directors is more likely to charge lower fees. In addition, smaller boards are strongly associated with higher fee-adjusted performance. Our study supports agency theory over stewardship theory and provides valuable guidelines for Canadian investors and regulatory agencies.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the role of real exchange rates in the relationship between tourist arrival and economic growth in Malaysia over the period of 2000–2018. We disaggregate Malaysian tourists into six geographical regions, namely Asia, Singapore, Europe, Pacific region, Americas, and Africa. Using a non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model, we find that the appreciation of real exchange rates with positive growth of economy plays a prominent role in influencing international tourist arrivals from Singapore, other Asian countries, Pacific region, Europe, and Americas. Our study suggests that real appreciation is important in providing some insights into the effectiveness of growth-led-tourism policies. In line with this, some implications are provided at the end of this chapter.

Los Angeles, California, is facing record drought conditions. As a result, there is interest in all things related to building and maintaining water capabilities. Leaks in the infrastructure can lead to costly losses of water resources. Accordingly, attention increasingly is being devoted to water leak management. Using data available through the City of Los Angeles’ open data movement, the number of leaks is analyzed in order to study both the impact of temperature and whether the number of leaks is decreasing over time. Three different approaches for modeling the number of leaks, including regression, time series, and neural networks, are compared.

Most decision-making problems in construction are complex and difficult to solve, as they involve multiple criteria and multiple decision makers in addition to subjective uncertainties, imprecisions and vagueness surrounding the decision-making process. In many instances, the decision-making process is based on linguistic terms rather than numerical values. Hence, structured fuzzy consensus-reaching processes and fuzzy aggregation methods are instrumental in multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems for capturing the point of view of a group of experts. This chapter outlines different fuzzy consensus-reaching processes and fuzzy aggregation methods. It presents the background of the basic theory and formulation of these processes and methods, as well as numerical examples that illustrate their theory and formulation. Application areas of fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation in the construction domain are identified, and an overview of previously developed frameworks for fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation is provided. Finally, areas for future work are presented that highlight emerging trends and the imminent needs of fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation in the construction domain.

The authors focus on a non-Western setting that has hardly featured in debates around political authenticity, Taiwan. The authors also adopt a novel inter-generational perspective to look at varying attitudes towards two ‘unconventional’, high-profile politicians, Ko Wen-je and Han Kuo-yu. Drawing on focus group data, the authors note the similarities and differences in the way that the different generations engage with, and assess, the two politicians with a particular focus on the extent to which their personalities, appearance, and everyday activities are perceived as authentic.