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This chapter aims to delineate the indigenous pattern of parental involvement in Taiwan by investigating the effects of specific practices in schools and in the family, such as school selection, school involvement, preparing a study place at home, and providing nutritious food.

We use two waves of data from the Taiwan Youth Project (2000, 2003) to examine how parental involvement varies between dual- and single-earner families, and we further demonstrate how sons and daughters have different access in terms of recognizing their parents’ effort, and how children’s subjective appraisals promote their academic performance with respect to test scores.

We find that dual-earner families have higher incomes, higher educational levels, and have fewer children than single-earner ones. Our multivariate analyses show that parental involvement does increase youngsters’ Basic Competence Test (BCT) score. However, we are unable to find any direct or indirect effects from parental employment status on BCT scores. Further analysis indicates that the relationship between parental school involvement and BCT score is only significant among dual-earner families, but not for the single-earner ones. In addition, our multiple group analysis reveals that sons’ BCT scores are affected more by parents’ school involvement, whereas daughters’ are affected more by special home provision. Our findings from adolescents’ subjective responses imply that sons may be more responsive to a non-familial context in contrast with daughters, who react more positively to familial provision.

This paper aims to compare the aging behavior of water-based coatings and solvent-based coatings in sulfuric acid environments and to discuss the related mechanism.

A sulfuric acid solution with a concentration of 5 Wt.% was selected for immersion test at 23°C. The failure behavior of the coating was studied by combining the transformation rules of the macroscopic morphology and basic properties with the results of electrochemical impedance spectrum analysis.

The results showed that the surface smoothness of the water-based coating was lower than that of the solvent-based coating. The glossiness, thickness and hardness of the water-based coating exhibited more significant changes. The electrochemical test also indicated that the water-based coating was infiltrated by a large number of corrosive media, which may have induced corrosion under the coating. In contrast, the solvent-based coating showed good shielding properties, but the adhesion was seriously affected by the corrosive medium.

This work clarified the difference of failure behavior and mechanism between water-based coatings and solvent-based coatings in acidic environment and provided a theoretical basis for the selection and mechanism research of anticorrosive coatings.

The paper attempts to discuss the impact of reference price effect on pricing decisions.

With the growth of the Internet and e-commerce, more and more customers purchase products in through online channels and choose products by comparing different prices and services, and the reference price effect has an impact on pricing decisions. To investigate the impact of consumers' reference price effect on the dual-channel supply chain, the authors establish a basic model consisting of a single dominant manufacturer and a single downstream retailer, and analyze the optional decisions under different situations and discuss the influence of reference price effect. Finally, a number case verifies the validity and rationality of the proposed model.

The results show that (1) the reference price effect has varying effects on the price, channel demand and income of manufacturers and retailers in the channel depending on the role of customers' channel preferences. (2) The manufacturer's online channel demand and profits always increase with the reference pricing effect, whereas the retailer's offline demand and profits always decline. (3) When the proportion of consumers preferring offline is higher, the manufacturer's network price and wholesale price increase with the reference price effect, while the retailer's retail price decreases with the reference price effect; when the proportion of consumers preferring offline is lower, the opposite is true, and the centralized decision results are consistent with the decentralized decision results.

This paper can clarify the impact of consumer reference price effects on the operation of dual-channel supply chains, and help inform pricing decisions of manufacturers and retailers in dual-channel supply chains.

The proposed approach can well analyze the impact of consumer reference price effect and give channel their optional decisions.

By using ethnographic data and family interviews from eight families in Taipei, Taiwan, this paper aims to delineate how multigenerational families implement parents’ child-rearing values, and how these strategies vary by social class. The primary focus is the child’s mother and her relationship with other family members. I ask the following question: How does a mother in a three-generation family implement her ideal parenting values for her child while being encumbered by the constraints of her parents-in-law? Additionally, how does this intergenerational dynamic vary with family socioeconomic status? To conceptualize this process in such a complex context, I argue that we must understand parenting behaviors as acts of “doing family” and “intensive mothering.”

From 2008 to 2009, I conducted a pilot survey in two public elementary schools to recruit the parents of sixth-grade students. All eight cases of multigenerational families in this paper were selected randomly after being clustered by the parent’s highest education level and family income levels. This paper utilized the mothers’ interviews as the major source to analyze, while the interviews of other family members served as supplementary data.

Two cases, Mrs Lee and Mrs Su’s stories, were selected here to illustrate two distinctive approaches toward childrearing in multi-generational families. Results indicate that white-collar mothers in Taiwan hold the value of concerted cultivation and usually picture the concept of intensive mothering as their ideal image of parenthood. Yet, such an ideal and more westernized child-rearing philosophy often leads to tensions at home, particularly between the mother and the mother-in-law. Meanwhile, blue-collar mothers tend to collaborate with grandparents in sharing childcare responsibilities, and oftentimes experience friction over child discipline in terms of doing homework and material consumption.

Via this analysis of three-generation families in Taiwan, we are able to witness the struggle of contemporary motherhood in East Asia. This paper foregrounds the negotiations that these mothers undertake in defining ideal parenting and the ideal family. On the one hand, these mothers must encounter the new parenting culture, given that the cultural ideal of concerted cultivation has become a popular ideology. On the other hand, by playing the role of daughter-in-law, they must negotiate within the conventional, patriarchal family norms.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a flexible design-oriented development cost method for commercial aviation aircraft based on small sample and poor information.

To predict the development cost of commercial aviation aircraft accurately, the methodology is based on the collected cost data and actual technical, and then the cost prediction relationships derived from an exhaustive statistical and filtered from regression analysis are incorporated. A series of regression equations with high regression coefficient are yielded after the cost driving factors of the development cost are fixed. Next, several sets of equations with high regression coefficient are selected for final integration. It is a flexible method that can be used efficiently to predict the cost of commercial aviation aircraft.

The development of commercial aviation aircraft has relatively a late start and no cost prediction model has been suitable for small sample, the proposed method is expected and is rather desirable.

By comparing the approach with the ordinary regression model and back propagation (BP) neural network, the scheme in this work is more efficient and convenient.

The results obtained in this paper show that the proposed method not only has a certain degree of versatility, but also can provide a preliminary prediction of the development cost of commercial aviation aircraft.

Purpose: The advent of the fintech revolution has brought a tremendous increase in the dissemination of digital financial services. Although digital financial services increase financial inclusion through financial intermediation, it also increases the chances of systematic risk.

Need: In the quest to satisfy the curious minds, the authors have examined the influence of digital financial services on banking stability and efficiency.

Methodology: To achieve the above objectives, the authors have used the Auto-Regressive Distribution Lag (ARDL) estimation technique on the annual data set of India and the United States from 2004 to 2018. In addition, to estimate the long-run cointegration, the ARDL bound approach is also used.

Findings: The empirical analysis concludes that in the short run, the expansion of digital financial services in India in the form of internet-based transactions and mobile money transactions creates a negative and significant impact on banking efficiency and stability. Meaning, banking sector efficiency and stability fall by 0.09% and 0.05% with a 1% increase in digital financial services. However, in the long run, digital financial services enhance banking stability and efficiency in India. Besides, the study also reveals that in a developed country like the United States, both in the short run and long run, expansion of digital financial services helps in improving banking efficiency and stability. Furthermore, in context to control variables, the findings suggest that in the short run, industrial productivity has a negative influence on the Indian banking sector efficiency and stability, compared to the positive impact in the long run. This is unlike the United States, where both in the long-run and short-run, industrial productivity has a positive influence on the banking sector’s efficiency and stability.

Practical implication: The findings reveal several policy implications and suggest policy synergies between digital financial services, banking stability and efficiency.

Since China’s “opening-up” in the late 1970s, Singapore has played a major role in enhancing China’s engagement with the world, especially in economic terms. This traditional relationship is well manifested in the third government-to-government (G–G) project under the BRI, which is known as the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative (CCI). The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: despite Singapore’s initial reluctance to agree on a third G–G project with China, why did Singapore eventually decide to join the CCI?

This paper draws on archives of over 700 Chinese language media reports and over 400 English language media reports, as well as private interactions with scholars interested in Sino-Singapore relations and with both sides’ officials in charge of the CCI project.

The paper finds that it is the goal of connecting the region, along with the need to maintain Singapore’s relevance to China and the regional economy that led to Singapore’s participation in the third G–G project. This paper also uses this case to analyse the changes that are taking place in the bilateral economic relations.

Despite wide media coverage, op-ed commentaries and respective government statements, there are a limited number of academic studies on the rationale of the third G–G project and contemporary Sino-Singapore relations in the literature. The scholarship has not addressed the rationale for Singapore’s changing attitude towards CCI and the manner in which the CCI has improved cooperation (or upgraded cooperation to a broader and regional level).

A cyber world (CW) is a digitized world created on cyberspaces inside computers interconnected by networks including the Internet. Following ubiquitous computers, sensors, e‐tags, networks, information, services, etc., is a road towards a smart world (SW) created on both cyberspaces and real spaces. It is mainly characterized by ubiquitous intelligence or computational intelligence pervasion in the physical world filled with smart things. In recent years, many novel and imaginative researches have been conducted to try and experiment a variety of smart things including characteristic smart objects and specific smart spaces or environments as well as smart systems. The next research phase to emerge, we believe, is to coordinate these diverse smart objects and integrate these isolated smart spaces together into a higher level of spaces known as smart hyperspace or hyper‐environments, and eventually create the smart world. In this paper, we discuss the potential trends and related challenges toward the smart world and ubiquitous intelligence from smart things to smart spaces and then to smart hyperspaces. Likewise, we show our efforts in developing a smart hyperspace of ubiquitous care for kids, called UbicKids.

This paper examines the direct and indirect effects of CEO intellectual capital on sustainable growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China.

It adopts a quantitative approach based on 3,474 unbalanced panel data in 836 Chinese listed SMEs from 2008 to 2017.

The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between CEO intellectual capital and sustainable growth of SMEs. The findings also reveal that dual innovation (exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation) has a partial mediating effect on the relationship.

It further provides an original contribution to identifying and testing the mediating effect of dual innovation on the relationship between CEO intellectual capital and sustainable growth of SMEs.

In contrast to most of the extant literature, which considers intellectual capital as a whole at the organizational level or focuses on employee intellectual capital, this paper highlights the role of CEO intellectual capital for SMEs’ growth. It provides an original contribution to identifying and testing the mediating effect of dual innovation on the relationship between CEO intellectual capital and sustainable growth of SMEs.

Developments in communications are now of prime interest to all cyberneticians. In particular, the need to provide instant and direct communications between computers, work stations and other equipment regardless of location and type, for applications such as computer‐aided design, software engineering and office automation is immediate.