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Do trading activities matter for a firm's profitability? This study uses administrative data to examine the relationship between trade activities and profitability for Taiwanese manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2016. Our result shows that trading firms (two-way trade, exporter only, and importer only) have higher profitability than local firms, which do not engage in trade. Moreover, our findings indicate that firms with diversified products and diverse countries as trading partners can increase firm profitability have profit advantages. In addition, we find that country diversification has a stronger effect on profitability than product diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine how malaria eradication in Taiwan during the 1950s, which successfully wiped out malaria within a short period, affected long-term health. Relying on three data sets covering the entire population of Taiwan, we construct diverse measures of health, including health-care utilization, functional abilities, chronic diseases, and catastrophic illnesses. Our results indicate that people who experienced larger reductions in early-life malaria exposure tend to have better health status as adults, especially women. Our results suggest a sizable cost saving from the eradication program that improves early-life environment and helps to avoid costly diseases at a later point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of access to tap water in early childhood on children's university admission using data from Taiwan in the years 1978–80. Because access to tap water is managed by a water operation station in a household's county, our identification strategy relies on two geographic attributes: (i) our instrumental variable is the distance from the house to the nearest water operation station, and (ii) our sample is of children born to families that live on the border of a county. We find that access to tap water in early childhood significantly increases the probability of university admission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Our research provides evidence on the intergenerational fetal programming effect by examining associations in the low birth weight (LBW, birth weight, Author(s): Mengcen Qian [sup.1] [sup.5] , Shin-Yi Chou [sup.2] , Lea Gimenez [sup.3] , Jin-Tan Liu [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) Department of Health Economics, Fudan University School of Public Health, [...]

Between 1968 and 1973 the Taiwanese government undertook the most extensive expansion on record of the public junior high school system in Taiwan. This study analyzes the effects of the 1968 education reform and subsequent high school expansion on gender disparities in employment generally, as well in different sectors and classes of employment. Our results show that the education expansion exerted a major influence on the reallocation of female workers across various sectors and types of employment, thereby contributing to the efficient reallocation of females in the Taiwan economy. (Contains 4 tables.)

A unique data set on Taiwan was employed to investigate the socioeconomic family backgrounds of students attending universities. Our empirical study found that individuals attending university are more likely to come from better-educated families than are those who do not attend university. Students attending public universities, which receive higher government subsidies, tend to come from wealthier families. Furthermore, our results show that the relationship between the size of the government subsidies and family background is not purely progressive. Students attending normal universities/teacher training colleges received the highest subsidies but tended to come from the least-educated families. Students attending the top five public universities come from the most affluent families of Taiwanese society.

This paper sets out to examine the impacts of schooling and health knowledge on the level of obesity in Taiwan. The results obtained from a sample of Taiwanese females support the hypothesis of Grossman that schooling has a direct positive effect on health by reducing the likelihood of a person being obese. The awareness of obesity-disease relationships and the intake of fiber are negatively associated with obesity; however, the observed schooling-obesity correlation cannot be attributed solely to any differences existing between the health knowledge and awareness of different individuals. Furthermore, in common with the developed nations, the stigma attached to the obesity of women is also found to be widespread within Taiwanese society. (Contains 10 notes.)

Including family background variables in the wage equation significantly decreases estimated returns to a worker's own schooling. Using data on family members' schooling, this paper identifies family background's substantial effects on returns to schooling in Taiwan. The father's schooling is more important than the mother's in explaining wage variations. (Contains 27 references.) (MLH)