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This book provides practitioners with a step-by-step guide on how to conduct efficiency analysis using the stochastic frontier approach.
This book looks at the relationship between Chinese international relations (IR) scholarship and China’s rise as a world power. Specifically, it addresses how China’s rising international status since the early 1990s has shaped the country’s IR studies, and the different ways that Chinese IR scholars are interpreting that rise. The author argues that the development of IR studies in China has been influenced by China’s past historical experiences, its recent change in status in world politics, and indigenous scholarly interpretations of both factors. Instead of treating Chinese IR scholars as value-free social scientists, the author shows how Chinese scholars—as purposive, strategic, and emotional actors—tend to manipulate existing (mostly Western) IR theories to support their policy propositions and identity statements. This book represents one of few efforts to determine how local Chinese scholars are constructing IR knowledge, how they are dealing with intersections between indigenous Chinese and imported IR theory and concepts, and how Chinese scholars are analyzing “their China” in terms of its current rise to power.
Wang discusses the dynamics of Sino–US relations since 2008 and the implications for relations between Taiwan and both the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Ever since China surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, it has appeared to shift its policy shift from “biding our time” and a self-described “peaceful rise” toward increased assertiveness in regional and international affairs. This has only become more pronounced since the 19th Party National Congress in October 2017, when Xi Jinping reiterated his agenda for “the Chinese Dream.” In contrast, the US’s “Pivot to Asia” strategy has been widely perceived as unsuccessful. In its...
Urology is the branch of medicine dealing with disorders or diseases of the male genitor-urinary tract and the female urinary tract. This important book summarises the wealth of recent research on the use of biomaterials and tissue engineering to treat urological disorders.Part one reviews the fundamentals with chapters on such topics as biofilms and encrustation formation. Part two then discusses recent advances in biomaterials and design of urological devices such as metal ureteral stents, self-lubricating catheter materials and penile implants. Chapters in Part three address urological tissue engineering with coverage of themes such as artificial and natural biomaterials, nano-technology ...
Current preoccupations with the 'rise of Asia' attest to the nascent contestation of the very idea of what the pattern of international politics should look like and how it should be practiced. In this respect, the growing reference to a 'shift to the East' in global politics has become a popular shorthand for the nascent 'power transition' in world affairs. This volume offers a detailed conceptual and empirical investigation of the dynamics of power transition in Asia and details the accommodation strategies and coping mechanisms of different small and middle powers in Asia and, importantly, China's responses to these approaches.
This book explores Chinese soft power and public diplomacy, and the way that it has played out in the context of the US-China relationship. As tensions between the two countries have grown in recent years, Chinese foreign policy has oscillated between confrontation and conciliation. In this work, which integrates all facets of China’s public diplomacy especially towards United States, the author explores the past and future of Chinese soft power, in a text that will interest diplomats, scholars and journalists.
This book provides an insight into the complex entanglements between African countries and India, China, and South Korea from multidisciplinary perspectives connecting approaches from cultural, anthropological, literary, and music studies and art history. The three parts present a regional focus, namely Africa-India, Africa-South Korea, and Africa-China while the single contributions speak to each other and offer complementary insights. At the same time, the chapters also link across the regional realms as they deal with similar topics, such as travelling music genres. In part I, for Pombo material culture is the starting point to investigate the connections between the islands of the Indian...
This book provides a detailed introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of production efficiency analysis using benchmarking. Two of the more popular methods of efficiency evaluation are Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), both of which are based on the concept of a production possibility set and its frontier. Depending on the assumed objectives of the decision-making unit, a Production, Cost, or Profit Frontier is constructed from observed data on input and output quantities and prices. While SFA uses different maximum likelihood estimation techniques to estimate a parametric frontier, DEA relies on mathematical programming to create ...
This three-volume handbook includes state-of-the-art surveys in different areas of neoclassical production economics. Volumes 1 and 2 cover theoretical and methodological issues only. Volume 3 includes surveys of empirical applications in different areas like manufacturing, agriculture, banking, energy and environment, and so forth.
Economic efficiency analysis has received considerable worldwide attention in the last few decades, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) establishing themselves as the two dominant approaches in the literature. This book, by combining cutting-edge theoretical research on DEA and SFA with attractive real-world applications, offers a valuable asset for professors, students, researchers, and professionals working in all branches of economic efficiency analysis, as well as those concerned with the corresponding economic policies. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which is devoted to basic concepts, making the content self-contained. The sec...