This paper evaluates village-level micro nance institutions in rural and semi-urban Thailand using data from a large strati ed, clustered cross-sectional survey. As is typically the case, micronance institutions have emerged in Thailand without the bene t of experimental controls. Thus, the data has neither randomized participation nor program placement. In addition, we do not study a pre-speci...

The idea of utilizing computer games for educational purposes is not new and grounds on the simple fact that playing is one of the most natural forms of learning. Advantages of digital games are that they offer a meaningful context, rich visualizations, and interactivity. Successful educational games, however, require a subtle balance between learning and gaming as well as challenge and ability...

The topic of corruption has recently attracted a great deal of attention, yet there is still a lack of micro level empirical evidence regarding the determinants of corruption. Furthermore, the present literature has not investigated the effects of political interest on corruption despite the interesting potential of this link. We address these deficiencies by analyzing a cross-section of indivi...

We combine two unique data sets to document and explain a time varying price rigidity. The first data set consists of the time series of actual retail and wholesale transaction prices, and a measure of upstream commodity cost for 12 products in refrigerated and frozen orange juice categories collected weekly over a three-year period, 1989–1992, at a large midwestern supermarket chain. A special...

Due to the CPU limitation of the computer hardware currently available, the threedimensional full-scaled finite element model of wafer level packaging is impractical for the reliability analysis and fatigue life prediction. In order to significantly reduce the simulation CPU time, an equivalent beam method based on the micro-macro technique with multi-point constraint method is proposed in the ...

Most mechanisms in current superscalar processors use instruction granularity information for speculation, such as branch predictors or prefetchers. However, many of these characteristics can be obtained at the basic block level, increasing the amount of code that can be covered while requiring less space to store the data. Furthermore, the code can be profiled more accurately and provide a hig...

With advances in solid-state power electronic devices and microprocessors, various pulse-width-modulation (PWM) techniques have been developed for industrial applications. This paper presents the comparison of two different PWM techniques, the sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) technique and the space-vector PWM (SVPWM) technique applied to two level VSI for micro grid applications. These two methods are co...

The paper investigates the relationship between human capital diversity measured in terms of occupational diversity and a rm's likelihood to innovate. The empirical analysis is based on a linked employer-employee panel dataset of German rms over the period 1998 to 2007. Despite notable di erences between service and manufacturing rms, our results clearly indicate a positive relationship between...

A series of technological steps concentrating around photolithography and UV polymer on glass replication in a mask-aligner that allow for the cost-effective generation of rather complex micro-optical systems on the wafer level are discussed. In this approach, optical functional surfaces are aligned to each other and stacked on top of each other at a desired axial distance. They can consist of ...

objective: in patients with diabetes mellitus, increased rate of lipoprotein oxidation and oxidative stress have important role in diabetic angiopathy, including nephropathy. we designed a study for comparing the level of ox-ldl in diabetic patients with macro-albuminuria, micro-albuminuria, versus normo-albuminuric. materials and methods: one hundred and thirty five patients with type 2 diabet...