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Economic development, planning, and international cooperation
Title
Economic development, planning, and international cooperation.
Creator
Lange, Oskar
Date Issued
1963
Identifier
361637, CFDT361637, ucf:5256
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FCLA/DT/361637
The capital development needs of the less developed countries: Report
Title
The capital development needs of the less developed countries: Report.
Creator
United Nations Secretary General
Date Issued
1962
Identifier
371189, CFDT371189, ucf:5520
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FCLA/DT/371189
A Framework for Lean Transformation in Developing Countries: The Case of Saudi Arabian Industry
Title
A Framework for Lean Transformation in Developing Countries: The Case of Saudi Arabian Industry.
Creator
Andejany, Murad, Elshennawy, Ahmad, Rabelo, Luis, Lee, Gene, Darwish, Mohammed, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Lean is a dynamic, knowledge-driven, and customer focused philosophy that continuously eradicates waste and generates value, with a goal to improve a company's productivity, efficiency, and quality. Successful implementation of lean does not only offer cost reduction and improved quality and productivity, but also provides efficient guidance for organizations to attain significant and continued growth. Although its adoption by companies has proven successful in developed countries, there is...
Show moreLean is a dynamic, knowledge-driven, and customer focused philosophy that continuously eradicates waste and generates value, with a goal to improve a company's productivity, efficiency, and quality. Successful implementation of lean does not only offer cost reduction and improved quality and productivity, but also provides efficient guidance for organizations to attain significant and continued growth. Although its adoption by companies has proven successful in developed countries, there is no sufficient evidence of its successful implementation in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia. A review of the literature indicates that there is a need to study lean transformation in developing countries as part of a comprehensive approach to their survival in the global economy. The purpose of this research is to develop a framework for a successful lean transformation in developing countries. The framework was developed by conducting a thorough literature review analysis and interviewing key personnel in ten local and eight multinational Saudi Arabian companies. The framework reacted to general data about lean transformation in developing countries, assessed a lean transformation level, and constructed the Interpretive Structure Molding (ISM) for barriers to achieve a successful lean transformation. Expert opinions were used for validation of the main components of this study, which are assessment, barriers, ISM and framework. Similar to the literature findings which indicated that the level of successful lean transformation in developing countries is low, the assessment revealed that the lean transformation level in local companies in Saudi Arabia is between 30% and 40%, and in multinational companies the level is between 50% and 60%. Both local and multinational companies in the case of Saudi Arabian industry considered lack of suppliers' involvement, lack of cooperation from suppliers, lack of good quality suppliers, and slow response to market due to demand fluctuations as the root barriers that need to be addressed at the primary stages of lean transformation. The resulting framework provides clear phases with an estimated timeline for each phase, from the foundation phase to the excellence level phase. In addition, it involves executive leaders and a cross-functional team to mentor and assess the transformation after each phase. The framework comprises several methods and tools that can be considered critical success factors for lean transformation, which will enable companies in developing countries to move toward achieving a successful lean transformation and sustainability, as well as reaching higher and persistent levels of growth.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006713, ucf:51892
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006713
A Study of the Relationship Between Trade Liberalization and Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa's Least Developed Countries
Title
A Study of the Relationship Between Trade Liberalization and Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa's Least Developed Countries.
Creator
Rash, Stephanie, Sadri, Houman, Morales, Waltraud, Kinsey, Barbara, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between trade liberalization, measured using the Heritage Foundation's Trade Freedom indicator, and human development, measured using the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index, in sub-Saharan Africa's Least Developed Countries between 1990 and 2011 as data allows. In addition to exploring the relationship between these two variables, alternative factors that influence human development are examined in bivariate...
Show moreThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between trade liberalization, measured using the Heritage Foundation's Trade Freedom indicator, and human development, measured using the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index, in sub-Saharan Africa's Least Developed Countries between 1990 and 2011 as data allows. In addition to exploring the relationship between these two variables, alternative factors that influence human development are examined in bivariate correlations with human development as well as used as control variables in a multiple regression analysis. Namely, this study includes government effectiveness, the percentage of the labor force employed in the agricultural sector, the percent of Gross Domestic Product made up of the sale of agricultural products, geography, and armed conflict as control variables.By conducting a cross-national bivariate correlation analysis as well as a cross-national multiple regression analysis for the years between 1990 and 2011, this study highlights how, when included in a model with control variables, trade liberalization goes from being a statistically significant predictor of human development index scores to losing its significance altogether. The results from this study indicate that trade liberalization, government effectiveness, and geography, more specifically being landlocked or not, do not have statistically significant effects on human development for LDCs in the region. However, this study finds that for every unit increase in the percentage of the labor force working in agriculture as well as the percentage of GDP made up by agricultural products, a lower human development score can be expected. Armed conflict also has a statistically significant, negative effect on human development.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004427, ucf:49362
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004427
MIGRANT WORKERS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA:ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN INDONESIA, MALAYSIA, AND SINGAPORE
Title
MIGRANT WORKERS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA:ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN INDONESIA, MALAYSIA, AND SINGAPORE.
Creator
Hajek, Patricia, Morales, Waltraud, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis explores migrant labor in South-East Asia by addressing the topic of migration, specifically its causes and consequences. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are countries that experienced rapid industrialization from the mid-1960s throughout the 1990s. Simultaneously, the migration of people within the region increased. A key focus is how regional development has contributed to migration flows and to the position of migrants in these countries. Using a migration systems framework...
Show moreThis thesis explores migrant labor in South-East Asia by addressing the topic of migration, specifically its causes and consequences. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are countries that experienced rapid industrialization from the mid-1960s throughout the 1990s. Simultaneously, the migration of people within the region increased. A key focus is how regional development has contributed to migration flows and to the position of migrants in these countries. Using a migration systems framework from Castles' and Miller's The Age of Migration (2003) that draws on theoretical elements from economics, historical-structuralism and transnationalism, this thesis finds that several factors explain the causes of migration in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore and the lasting implications migration had in their respective societies. Both macro- and micro-structures influenced industrialization and a migratory labor market. The historical, political, and economic linkages shared among the countries, alongside regional integration and attractive government-led industrialization strategies contributed to large-scale flows of migrant workers within the region. These same factors made migration and settlement increasingly difficult. Consequently, human rights violations of migrants in these countries became more pronounced. Singapore's dominance of Indonesia and Malaysia in the semi-periphery of South-East Asia conditioned the environment that migrants faced in their host societies. Migrant workers from Indonesia and Malaysia enjoyed better treatment in Singapore, because of its targeted labor, immigration, and social policies. In all three countries, settlement patterns of migrant workers were virtually similar to government commitments to prevent assimilation.
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Date Issued
2008
Identifier
CFE0002152, ucf:47929
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002152
The role of freedom in assessing the relationship between tourism competitiveness and quality of life: The case of Central America
Title
The role of freedom in assessing the relationship between tourism competitiveness and quality of life: The case of Central America.
Creator
Kubickova, Marketa, Croes, Robertico, Nusair, Khaldoon, Rivera, Manuel, Robinson, Edward, Santana, Maria, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The purpose of this dissertation study is to investigate the relationship among tourism competitiveness, quality of life, and freedom. The main premise is that the degree of freedom shapes the relationship between tourism development and quality of life. The study hypothesized that the greater the degree of freedom is, the greater impact tourism development will have on quality of life of residents of a destination. The theoretical framework of this study is based on combining Sen's...
Show moreThe purpose of this dissertation study is to investigate the relationship among tourism competitiveness, quality of life, and freedom. The main premise is that the degree of freedom shapes the relationship between tourism development and quality of life. The study hypothesized that the greater the degree of freedom is, the greater impact tourism development will have on quality of life of residents of a destination. The theoretical framework of this study is based on combining Sen's capability approach with the tourism competitiveness theory. Tourism competitiveness aims at enhancing the quality of life, while Sen's capability approach provides the ingredients for how to improve quality of life through freedom. Thus, the main premise is that the combination of the two theoretical frameworks is possible through the construct of quality of life. The study is applied to the Central American region as tourism has become an important driver for socio-economic progress and growth. The study applied panel data analyses and comparative regression analyses to decipher and understand the context of tourism competitiveness and quality of life. The study built a tourism competitiveness index and investigated the intertemporal effects of tourism competitiveness, quality of life, and freedom.The major findings of this study are as follow. First, long term bi-directional causality was found between tourism competitiveness and quality of life. In other words, tourism not only positively impacts quality of life, but high levels of quality of life have positive influence on tourism competitiveness in the Central American region. This is a major contribution as such assumptions have been mainly hypothesized. Second, economic freedom was found to act as a moderating variable between tourism competitiveness and quality of life. This finding allows us to further understand what impact such relationship between tourism competitiveness and quality of life. Third, economic freedom was found not to have an impact on quality of life as originally thought. However, quality of life was found to have a short-term impact on economic freedom. Finally, economic freedom had a bi-directional relationship with tourism competitiveness. This is a major contribution as such relationship was not previously discussed in the academic literature. The theoretical implication of this study is in terms of combining the capability approach and the competitiveness theory. In terms of managerial implications, governments of the Central American region can work on strategies, such as marketing, to promote tourism which in turn will improve residents' quality of life. At the same time, the government can work on improving residents' well-being while impacting tourism competitiveness.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005364, ucf:50476
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005364
Transferability and Calibration of the Highway Safety Manual Performance Functions and Development of New Models for Urban four-lane Divided Roads
Title
Transferability and Calibration of the Highway Safety Manual Performance Functions and Development of New Models for Urban four-lane Divided Roads.
Creator
Al Kaaf, Khalid, Abdel-Aty, Mohamed, Oloufa, Amr, Tatari, Omer, Lee, JaeYoung, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Many developing countries have witnessed fast and rapid growth in the last two decades due to the high development rate of economic activity in these countries. Many transportation projects have been constructed. In the same time both population growth and vehicle ownership rate increased; resulting in increasing levels of road crashes. Road traffic crashes in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considered a serious problem that has deep effects on GCC's population as well as on the national...
Show moreMany developing countries have witnessed fast and rapid growth in the last two decades due to the high development rate of economic activity in these countries. Many transportation projects have been constructed. In the same time both population growth and vehicle ownership rate increased; resulting in increasing levels of road crashes. Road traffic crashes in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considered a serious problem that has deep effects on GCC's population as well as on the national productivity through the loss of lives, injuries, property damage and the loss of valuable resources. From a recent statistical study of traffic crashes in Oman, it was found that in 2013 there were 7,829 crashes occurred for a total of 1,082,996 registered vehicles. These crashes have resulted in 913, 5591, and 1481 fatal, injury and property damage only crashes, respectively (Directorate General of Traffic, 2014), which is considered high rates of fatalities and injuries compared to other more developed countries. This illustrates the seriousness and dangerousness of the safety situation in GCC countries and Oman particularly. Thus, there is an urgent need to alleviate the Severity of the traffic safety problem in GCC which in turn will set a prime example for other developing countries that face similar problems. Two main data sources from Riyadh, the capital city of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Muscat, the capital city of Sultanate of Oman have been obtained, processed, and utilized in this study. The Riyadh collision and traffic data for this study were obtained in the form of crash database and GIS maps from two main sources: the Higher Commission for the Development of Riyadh (HCDR) and Riyadh Traffic Department (RTD). The Muscat collision and traffic data were obtained from two main sources: the Muscat Municipality (MM) and Royal Oman Police, Directorate General of Traffic (DGC). Since the ARC GIS is still not used for traffic crash geocoding in Oman, the crash data used in the analysis were extracted manually from the filing system in the DGC.Due to the fact that not all developing countries highway agencies possess sufficient crash data that enable the development of robust models, this problem gives rise to the interest of transferability of many of the models and tools developed in the US and other developed nations. The Highway Safety Manual (HSM) is a prime and comprehensive resource recently developed in the US that would have substantial impact if researchers are able to transfer its models to other similar environment in GCC. It would save time, effort, and money. The first edition of the HSM provides a number of safety performance functions (SPFs), which can be used to predict collisions on a roadway network. This dissertation examined the Transferability of HSM SPFs and developing new local models for Riyadh and Muscat.In this study, first, calibration of the HSM SPFs for Urban Four-lane divided roadway segments (U4D) with angle parking in Riyadh and the development of new SPFs were examined. The study calibrates the HSM SPFs using HSM default Crash Modification Factors (CMFs), then new local CMFs is proposed using cross-sectional method, which treats the estimation of calibration factors using fatal and injury data. In addition, new forms for specific SPFs are further evaluated to identify the best model using the Poisson-Gamma regression technique. To investigate how well the safety performance model fits the data set, several performance measures were examined. The performance measures summarize the differences between the observed and predicted values from related SPFs. Results indicate that the jurisdiction-specific SPFs provided the best fit of the data used in this study, and would be the best SPFs for predicting severe collisions in the City of Riyadh. The study finds that the HSM calibration using Riyadh local CMFs outperforms the calibration method using the HSM default values. The HSM calibration application for Riyadh crash conditions highlights the importance to address variability in reporting thresholds. One of the findings of this research is that, while the medians in this study have oversize widths ranging from 16ft-70ft, median width has insignificant effect on fatal and injury crashes. At the same time the frequent angle parking in Riyadh urban road networks seems to increase the fatal and injury collisions by 52 percent. On the other hand, this dissertation examined the calibration of the HSM SPFs for Urban intersections in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the development of new set of models using three year of collision data (2004-2006) from the city of Riyadh. Three intersection categories were investigated: 3-leg signalized, 4-leg signalized, and 3-leg unsignalized. In addition, new forms for specific SPFs are further evaluated to identify the best model using the Poisson-Gamma regression technique. Results indicate that the new local developed SPFs provided the best fit of the data used in this study, and would be the best SPFs for predicting severe crashes at urban intersections in the City of RiyadhMoreover, this study examined the calibration of the HSM SPFs for Fatal and Injury (FI), Property Damage Only (PDO) and total crashes for Urban Four-lane divided roadway segments (U4D) in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman and the development of new SPFs. This study first calibrates the HSM SPFs using the HSM methodology, and then new forms for specific SPFs are further evaluated for Muscat's urban roads to identify the best model. Finally, Riyadh fatal and injury model were validated using Muscat FI dataset.Comparisons across the models indicate that HSM calibrated models are superior with a better model fit and would be the best SPFs for predicting collisions in the City of Muscat. The best developed collision model describes the mean crash frequency as a function of natural logarithm of the annual average daily traffic, segment length, and speed limit. The study finds that the differences in road geometric design features and FI collision characteristics between Riyadh and Muscat resulted in an un-transferable Riyadh crash prediction model.Overall, this study lays an important foundation towards the implementation of HSM methods in multiple cities (Riyadh and Muscat), and could help their transportation officials to make informed decisions regarding road safety programs. The implications of the results are extendible to other cities and countries and the region, and perhaps other developing countries as well.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005452, ucf:50378
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005452
Infectious Disease Risks in Developing Countries: A Non-Market Valuation Exercise
Title
Infectious Disease Risks in Developing Countries: A Non-Market Valuation Exercise.
Creator
Samajpati, Shreejata, Gerking, Shelby, Dickie, Mark, Caputo, Michael, Roy, Joyashree, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This dissertation focuses on the non-market valuation of health-risks of malaria, an infectious disease that imposes a substantive public health burden across the globe, hitting particularly hard the tropical developing nations of Africa and Asia. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals include malaria control as a priority and large investments are underway to promote effective prevention and treatment. Despite such concerted supply-side efforts, malaria-related mortality and...
Show moreThis dissertation focuses on the non-market valuation of health-risks of malaria, an infectious disease that imposes a substantive public health burden across the globe, hitting particularly hard the tropical developing nations of Africa and Asia. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals include malaria control as a priority and large investments are underway to promote effective prevention and treatment. Despite such concerted supply-side efforts, malaria-related mortality and morbidity still abound due to a complex interface of factors like climate-change, poverty, inadequate control behavior, infection and prevention externalities, parasite resistance etc. This research project digs into the demand-side of the health problem, considers the "externality" dimension to prevention, and primarily asks the question: how do individuals in developing countries view competing disease-control (prevention) measures, viz. a publicly-administered community-level malaria control measure as against private preventive choices. A theoretical model is developed to help explore the public-private interplay of health risks of malaria. The malaria-endemic regions of Kolkata (India) and its rural fringes comprise the site for an empirical investigation. A field survey (Malaria Risk and Prevention Survey, October-December, 2011) incorporating a mix of stated and revealed preference techniques of health valuation is implemented. Risk-perceptions of respondents are elicited using a measurable visual-aid and individuals' perceived valuations of health-risk reductions, randomly offered with the public and private health treatments, are empirically ascertained. Using a Likelihood Ratio Test on the structural risk parameters, it is seen that individuals' valuations of health risk reductions are the same across the private and public treatments. The comparative valuation exercise, thus, corroborates the externality dimension to malaria control, calling for greater public action to combat malaria. The viability of such a scaled-up public malaria program, in the context of Kolkata, is discussed by comparing the public treatment willingness to pay estimates with the annual estimated costs that the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the civic body in the city of Kolkata, maintains on account of vector control. Results from the comparative valuation exercises also support the idea that private prevention is generally responsive to prevention costs, indicating the importance of price incentives to induce greater prevention. The issues of health valuation and price sensitivity are further explored across various split-samples differentiated on the basis of socio-economic attributes, disease exposure, actual prevention efforts and perceived malaria risks of survey respondents. Such auxiliary exercises help analyze the valuation question in greater depth, and generate policy insights into the potential factors that shape private prevention behavior.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004594, ucf:49195
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004594