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The main objectives of this study were to examine the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) agricultural exports to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the tuning of the Agricultural Commodity Frequency Index (ACFI) to non-tariff measures (NTMs), and the coverage ratio of goods to determine the effects of the PRC’s NTMs on Lao PDR’s agricultural exports using a demand export model with a fixed-effect method. The authors found that Lao PDR’s agricultural exports to the PRC increased by an average of 46.91% from 2013 to 2020, covering a total of 51 product codes, comprising six of the most valuable product types (i.e., bananas, corn, tapioca flour, watermelon, sticky rice, and sweet potato) given priority by the PRC. Additionally, from 2013 to 2020, the average ACFI concentration with NTMs was 10.08%, and the average coverage ratio for goods was 14.43%. The results of statistical significance testing at 1% suggest that three factors demonstrated the most significant impact on value: agricultural products facing NTMs in the form of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBTs), treaties with priority conditions regarding SPSs and priorities for agricultural products, and the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the PRC. Furthermore, a PRC GDP increase of 1% resulted in a 3.1235% impact on Lao PDR exports.

In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PRD), the services sector accounts for more than 41% of GDP and more than 80% of total trade (World Bank, 2021). Empirical studies show that most of the services trade occurs in the travel and tourism sectors, accounting for more than 50% of the total services trade in the Lao PDR. The services sector also plays an essential role in the Lao PDR’s wholesale and retail sectors, which employ the most significant number of people across all services sectors. The services trade balance was in a surplus between 1997 and 2011, though in 2012, it entered a significant deficit that continues to the present. This study investigates the link between services trade and economic growth in the Lao PDR, building on a recent analysis of the services trade in various economic and economic growth. The authors use econometric methods such as the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test and the Granger causality test to analyze time-series data for the Lao PDR from 1990 to 2019. The econometric results demonstrate the long-run relationship between economic growth and variables related to the services trade. This indicates the government and policymakers of the Lao PDR should invest in infrastructure, particularly in trade facilitation and the liberalization of the services sector, to facilitate the acceleration of economic growth.

The academic literature and motivational theory recognise the positive role of motivation on organisational performance and considers personal development as a key motivational factor. In practice, most organisations employ a personal development review (PDR) process to drive and plan the development of their staff. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelation and impact of the PDR process, and its elements, on staff motivation.

The study is based on a case study research approach carried out in two large manufacturing-engineering departments of a world-class manufacturing organisation. A survey questionnaire was designed, validated and distributed to the engineering staff and its results were analysed using descriptive statistics.

The study's results indicate that in most of the cases, a PDR process does not by itself motivate staff. But it argues that a poorly designed and conducted PDR process may make motivation, through personal development, difficult to achieve.

This paper provides manufacturing managers with an opportunity to understand whether a common business process (i.e. PDR), and the elements that comprise it, can be employed as a method to aid in the motivation of their staff.

This research expands the current knowledge on motivational and manufacturing management theory by performing an initial and exploratory study that establishes the impact of the PDR process on staff motivation. It is among the very first investigations that correlate the PDR process and motivation, especially in the manufacturing industry.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss policy-relevant findings regarding strategies for mainstreaming gender in achieving sustainable post-disaster reconstruction (PDR).

An exploratory case study was used to explore the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategies and the link to sustainable PDR. The Bantul and Sleman regencies of Yogyakarta province provide a unique site for researching PDR as they are located in a region that is more strongly affected by earthquakes than nearly any other in Indonesia. Data were collected through interviews with 17 key stakeholders and 26 beneficiaries who were involved during and after the earthquake. To support the interview findings, surveys involving 50 policy makers and 150 beneficiaries were conducted. Content analysis and t-statistics were used in analyzing the data.

Gender mainstreaming strategies within sustainable reconstruction should incorporate strategies for protecting against gender vulnerabilities and for promoting gender capacities. Both are fundamental to the achievement of sustainable PDR.

The paper establishes comprehensive strategies for mainstreaming gender under three pillars (i.e. economic, social and environmental) of sustainable development. The findings benefit relevant policy makers by improving the policy performance of gender mainstreaming in the affected communities in enhancing sustainable PDR.

The participatory method, a major factor for a successful post-disaster reconstruction (PDR) project, is applied in various stages of the PDR. However, the application of this method for PDR involving indigenous populations is underexplored. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the critical factors that can influence the participatory PDR in the indigenous context.

Two large-scale, indigenous, post-disaster relocation projects after the 2009 Typhoon Morakot were selected as case studies. The qualitative and quantitative methodology (semi-structured interview and questionnaire) were applied in the research.

A participation-friendly policy, community organization, the extent of damage, flexibility of nongovernmental organizations, understanding of the participatory concept and mutual trust were found to be essential factors that profoundly influence participation in PDR projects.

This study contributes by providing guidelines for future participatory PDR projects, especially in the indigenous context.

The online platform is one of the essential components of the platform economy that is constructed by a large scale of the personal data resource. However, accurate empirical test of the competition structure of the data-driven online platform is still less. This research is trying to reveal market allocation structure of the personal data resource of China's car-hailing platforms competition by the empirical data analysis.

This research is applying the social network analysis by R packages, which include k-core decomposition and multilevel community detection from the data connectedness via the decompilation and the examination of the application programming interface of terminal applications.

This research has found that the car-hailing platforms, which establish more constant personal data connectedness and connectivity with social media platforms, are taking the competitive market advantage within the sample network. Data access discrimination is a complementary method of market power in China's car-hailing industry.

This research offers a new perspective on the analysis of the multi-sided market from the personal data resource allocation mechanism of the car-hailing platform. However, the measurement of the data connectedness requires more empirical industry data.

This research reveals the competition structure that relies on personal data resource allocation mechanism. It offers empirical evidence for governance, which is considered as the critical issue of big data research, by reviewing the nature of the data network.

It also reveals the data convergence process of the social system and the technological system.

This research offers a new research method for the real-time regulation of the car-hailing platform.

This paper aims to describe an in-depth study conducted on transition of recovery into subsequent recovery phases after the 2010 super floods in the Sindh province of Pakistan. The objectives of this research were to examine the post-disaster activities after the floods and highlight the critical areas hindering the transition into an effective recovery phase.

A case study approach based on literature reviews with semi-structured interviews with disaster management stakeholders were applied as the primary source of data.

The study found that long-term recovery was the most neglected phase of post-disaster recovery (PDR). The factors hindering successful transition following short-term recovery activities are lack of following: community-level involvement, local administration and community capacity, disaster governance, different stakeholders and coordination, information and knowledge management.

This paper examines the long-term disaster recovery after the 2010 super floods in three districts of Sindh. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to investigate the factors in other areas for different types of disasters.

These findings are critical to planning future post-disaster recoveries in the region. It also provides a basis to investigate other types of disasters.

The transition of recovery into long-term phase has never been investigated before. The recovery phase is an opportune time to incorporate strategies for building back better, resilience, mitigation and preparedness. A PDR that does not incorporate these strategies in the long-term leaves affected communities in more vulnerable conditions for future disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse social and environmental sustainability considerations developed in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) and to identify problems and challenges related to sustainable hydropower planning and development.

The paper is leaning on empirical analysis based on analysing primary and secondary data and information; official government documents and relevant literature, a series of workshops of the Future Resource and Economy Policies in Laos till 2020 Project (FREPLA2020), and interviews with government officials and experts.

To achieve its socio‐economic objectives, Lao PDR needs to manage its hydropower development to ensure environmental and social sustainability through developing of the legal, institutional and regulatory environment and strengthening of the institutional capacity of the sector, improving knowledge and data management, and developing institutional coordination across the government agencies.

The paper suggests that the Lao government assesses strategically the hydropower development options, prepares capacity building plans, develops risk assessment and management, and learns from past hydropower developments.

The paper recommends using hydropower development generated revenues to poverty reduction activities and to strengthen participatory approaches.

The paper can act as a discussion awakener, to help and give some guidance to decision makers and actors in the hydropower sector to integrate sustainable development considerations into hydropower development and planning.

At present, smartphones are embedded with accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and WiFi sensors. Most researchers have delved into the use of these sensors for localization. However, there are still many problems in reducing fingerprint mismatching and fusing these positioning data. The purpose of this paper is to improve positioning accuracy by reducing fingerprint mismatching and designing a weighted fusion algorithm.

For the problem of magnetic mismatching caused by singularity fingerprint, derivative Euclidean distance uses adjacent fingerprints to eliminate the influence of singularity fingerprint. To improve the positioning accuracy and robustness of the indoor navigation system, a weighted extended Kalman filter uses a weighted factor to fuse multisensor data.

The scenes of the teaching building, study room and office building are selected to collect data to test the algorithm’s performance. Experiments show that the average positioning accuracies of the teaching building, study room and office building are 1.41 m, 1.17 m, and 1.77 m, respectively.

The algorithm proposed in this paper effectively reduces fingerprint mismatching and improve positioning accuracy by adding a weighted factor. It provides a feasible solution for indoor positioning.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the sources of financing accumulation that women entrepreneurs of family businesses use for start-up capital in the garment sector of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR).

This study presents insights gleaned from a qualitative case study into the ways in which women in Lao PDR finance their family businesses in the start-up phase. The authors conducted 36 in-depth interviews – the study used this purposive sample in each of its five rounds of data collection. The data were collected between December 2018 and April 2019 and were analysed by conducting a content analysis assisted by the software programme ATLAS.ti.

The results, though highly case specific, show Lao women’s ability to: accrue their experience, apply their knowledge, engage in self-employment, support their families and aspire to become entrepreneurs. The findings clearly illustrate that women are opportunity and necessity driven, can accumulate income, possess savings behaviour, can manage working capital, investment and accounting and have access to finance (loan and debt) and thus have the potential to become successful entrepreneurs.

By contextualizing women’s entrepreneurial practices, the paper contributes to an understanding of the sources of financing accumulation used for start-up capital in Vientiane, Lao PDR. Theoretically, the paper extends the knowledge of women entrepreneurs seeking the optimal stock of finance which has the potential to drive family business success.