The studies on human capital and technological progress have given incredible insights on how countries in the world differ from one another. Yet there are more than those two reasons to account for differences among countries. There is a third reason why a country would differ in terms of its economic development progress, namely institutional factors. Hence developing institutional indices would give a deeper explanation than a mere theory. On the other hand, we can corroborate the institutional index with the general theory that low-quality institutions will impact an economy negatively. This study seeks to broaden the understanding of causes of economic growth by incorporating institutional index into a semi-endogenous growth model and finds a relationship between that index with human capital and technological progress

This article analyses the effectiveness of trade unions' electoral engagement in the union-dense electoral localities of Bekasi and Tangerang in Indonesia's 2009 legislative elections. Our analysis reveals that legacies of authoritarianism, electoral rules, and union fragmentation pushed unions to pursue an ineffective electoral strategy of running union cadres on various party tickets. In Bekasi, local leaders within the Federation of Indonesian Metalworkers Unions (FSPMI) chose not to mobilize resources to support union candidates because the union's national leadership had failed to convince them of the soundness of its strategy. In Tangerang, local leaders embraced the National Workers Union's (SPN) national electoral strategy, but had inadequate membership data to conduct electoral mapping and did not provide candidates with financial and leadership support. Neither union, meanwhile, gave much consideration to the problem of translating membership to votes: survey data reveal that most members could not name union candidates, and many of those who could did not vote for them. The article argues that, despite its flaws, trade unions' strategy of engagement in the electoral arena constitutes an important step forward in the consolidation of Indonesia's democracy.

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Semi-endogenous growth model emphasizes human capital accumulation and technological advances in supporting economic growth. While most countries in the world lack the ability to accumulate their human capital and advance in technology, the privilege of research and development lies on part of developed nations. The increase in the stock of knowledge can come from different interactions with other countries in the world. But the crucial point to make is what underlies these differences among nations in the world. This study modifies Jones model by embedding characteristics that different countries in the world. Such an attempt is directed to produce a more general model of semi-endogenous growth to be applicable to all countries in the world. The end result of this study is to present a more general model that will be easily applicable to different countries in the world.

One important component in a vehicle is the braking system. The main function of the braking system is to provide deceleration to stop the vehicle speed. One important part of the braking component is the brake lining. But to know the physical condition of the brake lining, it is necessary to dismantle the wheel and brake components. So that one of the initial stages of development is to make an application that can predict the remaining life of the brake lining without having to do the demolition. Therefore, this study will design the calculation with the physical condition monitoring approach of the brake lining itself. In addition, in this study, the author will try to find a relationship between driving behaviour and its effect on the wear rate of the brake lining. After testing the road with 3 different driving behaviours, it was found that the driver with eco behaviour would consume 0.42%, normal behaviour as much as 1.65% and sport behaviour as much as 44.96% of the thickness of the original brake lining. There was a significant result in sports driving behaviour because in this behaviour the braking pressure and temperature will be very high when compared to eco and normal. Furthermore, the application error which obtained from the application was higher than the other two behaviour.