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A cheaper yen gives foreign investors strong incentives to buy Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) of 5 and 10 years under the comprehensive easing policy regime. The purchase of JGBs by foreign investors using a cheaper yen funded on a negative basis in the long-term basis swap market contributes to the declining yield of JGBs under the comprehensive easing policy regime. When the Bank of Japan introduced a quantitative and qualitative easing policy, and then a negative interest rate policy, the trend observed under the comprehensive easing policy changed. This was because long-term basis swap rate tended not to decline under the quantitative and qualitative easing policy and negative interest rate policy regimes in comparison with under the comprehensive easing policy regime.

The problems experienced by young people when looking for information are significantly under‐researched and this paper aims to attempt to expand the fragmented knowledge base. It concentrates on action taken by English high schoolers to meet academic information needs.

The work draws on qualitative data elicited via an online questionnaire administered in October and November 2006. Thirty‐five participants contributed data on the problems they had encountered.

Inductive coding of the data revealed that over 20 individual problems were apparent. The most frequently mentioned was an inability to locate the desired information. Some of the other issues related to information use, rather than information‐seeking.

The project was small scale, with data collected from pupils in only one school. It relied solely on self‐reported data and insight into information‐seeking problems was gained purely in terms of behaviour to satisfy academic information needs. A future project may consider issues that develop when youngsters are intent on meeting leisure‐oriented needs.

The findings have implications for the improvement of Web filters and the teaching of information skills, especially with respect to the effective use of search engines and the training of learners in information‐seeking methods beyond the use of the Internet.

The paper is unusual in exploring information‐seeking problems entirely from the perspective of information users. It is envisaged that the research will be of use to academics interested in information behaviour, teachers in secondary schools and information professionals who work with young people.

A common criticism of research into information seeking on the internet is that information seekers are restricted by the demands of the researcher. Another criticism is that the search topics, are often imposed by the researcher, and; particularly when working with children, domain knowledge could be as important as information‐seeking skills. The research reported here attempts to address both these problems.

A total of 15 children, aged 11 to 16, were each set three “think aloud” internet searches. In the first, they were asked to recall the last time they had sought information on the internet, and to repeat the search. For the second, they were given a word, asked to interpret it, then asked to search for their interpretation. For the third, they were asked to recall the last time they had been unsuccessful in a search, and to repeat the search. While performing each task, the children were encouraged to explain their actions.

The paper finds that the factors that determined a child's ability to search successfully appeared to be: the amount of experience the child had of using the internet; the amount of guidance, both from adults and from peers; and the child's ability to explore the virtual environment, and to use the tools available for so doing.

Many of the searches performed by participants in this paper were not related to schoolwork, and so some of the search approaches differed from those taught by teachers. Instead, they evolved through exploration and exchange of ideas. Further studies of this sort could provide insights of value to designers of web environments.

This chapter uses the nonlinear difference-in-difference (NL-DID) methodology developed by Athey and Imbens (2006) to estimate the effects of a treatment program on the entire distribution of an outcome variable. The NL-DID estimates the entire counterfactual distribution of an outcome variable that would have occurred in the absence of treatment. This chapter extends the Monte Carlo results in Athey and Imbens's (2006) to assess the efficacy of the NL-DID estimators in finite samples. Furthermore, the NL-DID methodology recovers the entire outcome distribution in the absence of treatment. Further, we consider the empirical size and power of tests statistics for equality of mean, medians, and complete distributions as suggested by Abadie (2002). The results show that the NL-DID estimator can effectively be used to recover the average treatment effect, as well as the entire distribution of the treatment effects when there is no selection during the treatment period in finite samples.

Young people in rural areas often face barriers when accessing participation opportunities in their municipalities. This affects their voices being heard and their ability to create change. Even though almost half the world’s population lives in rural areas, rural young people’s activism is often overlooked in the literature. In addition, when young people’s activism is explored in empirical research, conceptualisations of activism and methods are often not tailored to rural areas. This chapter, thus, adds to our understanding of young people’s activism in rural municipalities by drawing on a mixed methods case study including thirteen focus groups (FGs; n = 35) and a questionnaire (n = 106) with young people aged 13–17, and semi-structured interviews (n = 11) with teachers from one secondary school in a rural municipality in Germany. Five of the FGs were conducted and analysed by Year 10 students, adding unique insights into participants’ experience of activism. In this chapter, activism is conceptualised as one of the multiple dimensions of citizenship. Activism includes demanding systemic change, individually or collectively, which may include refusing to do things, aiming to prevent laws, raising awareness, and making consumer choices. Rather than being full-time activists, the young people in this study were engaged in only a few forms of activism, often carried out ad-hoc, part-time and in connection with other citizenship activities such as volunteering. Spaces for activism included online, the local municipality, everyday spaces such as the supermarket, and school. Participants experienced multiple barriers when engaging in activism including narratives of non-activist young people, age restrictions, power imbalances and few opportunities for creating change, particularly at participants’ school and in their municipalities.

Six Sigma has been one of main quality improvement approaches since Motorola first invented Six Sigma in 1987. Many scholars and consult experts have discussed the critical success factors of implementing Six Sigma management, but most of them are based on related theories or qualitative analyses. In the paper, we first review critical success factor of Six Sigma status quo based on literature. Then we design the questionnaire and survey China manufacturing enterprises that have introduced Six Sigma management. And finally, we analyze the critical success factors of China manufacturing industry implementing Six Sigma management by using structural equation model and find that leadership and Six Sigma strategy, focus on market and customer, evaluation and motivation, selecting, managing and implementing Six Sigma projects are four critical success factors of China manufacturing enterprises implementing Six Sigma management. At the same time, the paper also presents the relationships between the critical success factors. The results are of important role in China manufacturing industry locating resources, eliminating waste and improving Six Sigma performance.

This paper analyzes county-level firm births across the United States using a spatial count model that permits spatial dependence, cross-correlation among different industry types, and over-dispersion commonly found in empirical count data. Results confirm the presence of spatial autocorrelation (which can arise from agglomeration effects and missing variables), industry-specific over-dispersion, and positive, significant cross-correlations. After controlling for existing-firm counts in 2008 (as an exposure term), parameter estimates and inference suggest that a younger work force and/or clientele (as quantified using each county’s median-age values) is associated with more firm births (in 2009). Higher population densities is associated with more new basic-sector firms, while reducing retail-firm starts. The modeling framework demonstrated here can be adopted for a variety of settings, harnessing very local, detailed data to evaluate the effectiveness of investments and policies, in terms of generating business establishments and promoting economic gains.

Industry competition environment is not being meaning of internal and external distinction. This may be phenomenon of globalization progress. In this time, we wish to examine present level in our enterprise and also analyze cause relation between 7 category of China Excellence Performance model which is modified Malcolm Baldridge Model and compare with China enterprise by using the same questionnaire with China. It is right opportunity to obtain information by comparing China enterprise with the Korea. This questionnaire composition and contents used as it is questionnaire contents that enforce in 2007 in China CAQ. The survey on Korea enterprises’ is 509 by KSA in 2008, China is surveyed 1679 by CAQ in 2007. In Korea “leadership”, “strategy planning”, “customer and market”, “measurement, analysis and improvement”, “resources management” and “process management” stronger than China, but in China “performance results” is stronger than Korea.

Structural optimisation and reliability theory are considered, and described. A general reliability‐based structural optimisation problem is formulated, and consideration given to procedures for solving it. Two different examples suggest the efficacy of these procedures. The amount of calculations depends to a great degree on the definition of failure of the structure. In order to reduce this by improving optimisation procedures, more research is needed, and the convergence of the optimisation is very dependent on accurate evaluation of the gradients of the reliability constraints.

This paper studies the efficiency of Indian coal-fired thermal power plants (CTPPs) in by-production of electricity and particulates also known as Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM).

A non-radial directional distance function is optimized using data envelopment analysis to enumerate the overall inefficiency of CTPPs and its components in recent times. Further, second-stage regression analysis is conducted to identify factors that affect the inefficiency of plants.

The low inefficiency score for electricity generation suggests that most CTPPs operate close to the good output frontier. A high degree of emissions inefficiency is a challenge for Indian CTPPs. Ever-rising coal use inefficiency is a hindrance to control SPM emissions. The second stage regression analysis concludes that factors like ownership and capacity utilization play vital roles in determining a plant’s inefficiency level. Privately owned CTPPs have performed better in terms of technical inefficiency and emission inefficiency than plants owned by Central and State governments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few published works that benchmark the productive and environmental performance of Indian CTPPs.