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There has been much debate over the micro-level relationship between employment situations and fertility in Europe and Northern America. However, related research in East Asia is scant, although countries in this region have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Moreover, most studies analyse the employment–fertility relationship from a static perspective and only for women, which underemphasises life course dynamics and gender heterogeneity of employment careers and their fertility implications. Drawing on retrospective data from the 2017 Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS), this study explores women's and men's career trajectories between ages 18 and 40 in Taiwan using sequence cluster analyses. It also examines how career variations associate with different timing and quantum of birth. Empirical results show that economically inactive women experience faster motherhood transitions and have more children by age 40 than women with stable full-time careers. For men, having an unstable career associates with slower fatherhood transitions and a lower number of children. For both genders, self-employed people are the earliest in parenthood transitions and have the highest number of children by midlife. Our findings demonstrate sharp gender contrasts in employment careers and their diversified fertility implications in low-fertility Taiwan.

Teleworking has become a popular work arrangement in many developed countries. Although there are heated public debates over the benefits of teleworking, empirical evidence on the causal relationship between teleworking and health is still rare. Using panel data from the German BAuA Working Time Survey (2015, 2017, and 2019), the authors investigated the effects of teleworking on health and well-being. The authors applied an innovative research design to underscore different sources of selection. Overall, no concrete evidence was found for the positive effect of teleworking on workers' self-reported health, quality of sleep, and psychosomatic conditions. The ostensible better health outcomes among teleworkers could be partially explained by the positive selection on both prior levels and prior trajectories of health into teleworking. Moreover, the health impacts of telework were contingent on workers' gender and parenthood status and the intensity of teleworking. These findings indicate that the positive association between teleworking and health appears to reflect selection bias rather than a causal relationship in Germany before the COVID-19 pandemic.

this present study's objective was to assess governances' role in quality water supply and its impact on Ghana's health improvement. To that, data spanning from 1996 to 2018 was utilized in time series. However, time-series methodologies such as unit root test, cointegration test, correlation matrix, ARDL regression, and Granger causality test were performed to arrive at the study's findings. The study found that governances' role in the supply of quality water to rural communities and the entire country positively improve the health status of the people. In that, increasing the effort churned out by regulatory organizations and the government's effectiveness; thus, governance quality improves people's health conditions, thereby increasing their life expectancy at birth. In essence, the study found that governance quality and health improvement are bidirectional in terms of causality. The study recommends that all governances be brought on deck to support the function to provide safe and quality water supply to the rural population and the entire country.

AbstractWhy would an emerging market economy without Western democratic institutions provide and promote social welfare to its citizens? This paper explores the driving forces behind the rapid yet unequal expansion of social welfare in China, a phenomenon notable since the late 1990s. Rather than adhering to the conventional state-centered approach that views welfare expansion as a strategy for one-party regimes to seek legitimacy, this study offers an alternate perspective that emphasizes the 'demand' side, particularly the role of business. Through a systematic analysis of all 336 Chinese municipalities from 2001 to 2012, the study demonstrates how big businesses act as 'vanguard,' pushing local governments to enhance social welfare provision. It suggests that big businesses, in the absence of institutionalized democratic institutions, serve as 'functional equivalents,' channeling societal demands to the government. This paper also finds that firms' influence on social policy in non-democracies is more capability based instead of institutional based; large domestic and multinational corporations are more capable in lobbying the government.

AbstractWe consider the problem of identifying the simulated system with the best expected performance measure when the number of alternatives is finite and small (often < 500). Recently, more research efforts in the simulation community have been directed to develop ranking and selection (R&S) procedures capable of exploiting variance reduction techniques (especially the control variates). In this article, we propose new R&S procedures that can jointly use control variates and correlation induction techniques (including antithetic variates and Latin hypercube sampling). Empirical results and a realistic illustration show that the proposed procedures outperform the conventional procedures using sample means or control variates alone. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012

PurposeThe paper attempts to discuss the impact of reference price effect on pricing decisions.Design/methodology/approachWith 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.FindingsThe 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.Practical implicationsThis 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.Originality/valueThe proposed approach can well analyze the impact of consumer reference price effect and give channel their optional decisions.

PurposeAddressing the significant differences between referral programs and traditional promotional marketing, this paper aims to investigate and examine the impact of how reward-related information is presented within referral programs and how it interacts with reward size and reward allocation.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts framing effect and equity theory to build the relationship between reward presentation, reward size and reward allocation. Then, two scenario-based experimental studies are designed and conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk.FindingsThe results show that there is no direct impact of reward presentation on referral likelihood, while the effect relies on reward size. As the levels of reward size increase, the referral likelihood gradually shifts from percentage form to dollar form as perceived size mediates the interaction effect on referral likelihood. Further, adding information about reward allocation also indicate the different impacts of equity and inequity on influencing the above findings.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by introducing reward presentation and emphasizes its impact on individual's behavior decisions in the context of referral programs. This study extends and broadens the scope and effectiveness of the framing effect on traditional promotional marketing strategies, while also bridging the gap in the literature by examining the combined role of information about rewards.