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The paper sets out a conceptualisation of the housing cycle centring on households' desire to upgrade their housing consumption.

The paper begins by studying house price trends and cycles in OECD countries since 2000 to identify housing cycle patterns. It then assesses existing theories partly in relation to these patterns. It then proposes a new conceptualisation of the housing cycle.

The paper finds the central role of supply lags in housing cycles is not warranted. Instead, a demand cycle generated by upgrading desires better explains an initial boom followed by a slow recovery.

The paper challenges existing orthodoxy on housing cycle dynamics and proposes an alternative perspective.

Why is the “education to industrial innovation” equation not working in China? Why has education development contributed to South Korea’s success but not promoted technology development and industrial upgrading in China? The purpose of this paper is to compare South Korea and China and try to address that puzzle. The author will also identify which mediating factors are crucial in linking education development to industrial innovation and industrial upgrading.

This study will use the historical comparative method to compare South Korea and China. The author will try to explore the differences in education and industrial upgrading in the two countries, and identify which factors are producing different educational development effects, mainly by narrative comparison. Data will mainly come from online databases such as Statistics Korea, the Center on International Education Benchmarking, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, China Education Statistics and the World Bank, as well as from second-hand resources.

In summary, this research has revealed that education itself or the production of human capital may not be sufficient conditions for technology innovation or industry upgrading. For human capital to affect industrial upgrading positively, it is not enough for the Chinese government just to invest in education. Other intermediating market and social contexts are crucial too, especially the allocation of resources between the private and the public sectors, and the existence of a proper employment structure.

The role of education in economic development for the developing world is debated a lot. However, there is little development study research which directly explores the relationship between education and industrial upgrading via macroeconomic analysis. In a globalized world, the situation of international industrial value chains is an important element for sustainable long-term development. Industrial structures and their transformation are becoming more and more important for developing countries. While most past research has treated the absorbing economy’s structure as a condition that determines education’s contribution to development, this paper will treat the industrial structure as the dependent variable, and analyze how education would contribute to the upgrading of industrial structure and, in turn, be of benefit to sustainable economic development.

The concept of the “global production network” (GPN) has emerged as a framework for analyzing the intricate connections between a dominant or pivotal firm and its suppliers across various countries. ¹ The expansion of GPNs signifies that trade encompasses not only the final products but also the parts and components (P&C) involved in their production. The reduction of tariff barriers and advancements in transportation and communication technology have facilitated the fragmentation of production processes across different countries. This has led to a significant transformation in the nature and structure of global trade. This chapter aims to synthesize and present this literature. By identifying the key drivers, determinants, and consequences of fragmentation trade through a literature-based approach, this study aids in assessing the opportunities and challenges those lagging countries, like India, encounter in terms of increased participation in GPNs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of environmental pollution and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution in different stages based on the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of economic development level and industrial structure upgrading level in eastern, central and western regions of China and discuss whether there is adjustment effect and threshold effect in the process of economic growth affecting environmental pollution, and finally realizes sustainable economic development.

Based on panel data from 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China (excluding Tibet and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2019, this paper uses the environmental Kuznets curve, regulating effect model and panel threshold model to analyze the impact of economic growth and industrial structure upgrading on environmental pollution.

The results present that the uneven distribution of natural resources leads to different levels of economic development and industrial structure upgrading in eastern and western regions, and its impact on environmental pollution is also different. Economic growth and industrial structure upgrading have a positive effect on environmental pollution, and the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is inverted U-shaped. At present, the eastern, central and western regions of China are at the right end of the inverted U-shaped relationship. In general, industrial structure upgrading in eastern, central and western regions has a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. Industrial structure upgrading has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, and the regulating effect is most significant in the central region, followed by the eastern region, and not significant in the western region. The results of panel threshold model show that the industrial structure upgrading can slow down the positive impact of economic growth on environmental pollution and strengthen the negative moderating effect of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution.

The innovation of this study is to bring economic growth, industrial structure upgrading and environmental pollution into a unified analytical framework, analyze the impact of economic development and industrial structure upgrading levels in different periods on environmental pollution, and select industrial structure upgrading as the moderating variable and threshold variable. It provides a thought for the influence mechanism of different levels of industrial structure upgrading on economic growth and environmental pollution. Based on the panel data in China, this study emphasizes the concept of sustainable development, adheres to green development and proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution. And this paper proposes relevant policies to improve environmental pollution from the perspective of transforming economic growth mode and optimizing industrial structure in China, which also has reference significance for developing countries to realize sustainable economic development.

Due to greater returns to high skill and desirable amenities, high-skilled workers are increasingly agglomerating in metropolitan areas and form path dependence. This chapter explores whether the land supply policy of China constraining big cities' urban construction land quota strengthens the spatial divergence of human capital. Using city-level land supply data, population census data, and land transaction micro data, we find that the higher the degree of a city's land supply lagging behind land demand, the greater the enlargement effect of the initial share of population with college degrees on the increase in share of population with college degrees. Further research reveals that the main mechanism causing this phenomenon is the rapidly rising housing prices hindering low-skill labor flows to big cities.

This paper, with the tobacco industry as the background, establishes an indicator system for tobacco supply chain performance evaluation using the FAHP method.

Based on the relevant data of tobacco enterprises in Guangxi, the paper calculates the performance values of tobacco companies in various cities of Guangxi, and through the analysis of each indicator and the performance values of each city, the authors find that the improvement ability has a major impact on tobacco supply chain performance. Then, the paper establishes a system dynamics model to further demonstrate the impact of information digitalization on the performance of the tobacco supply chain in Guangxi, thus providing theoretical support for building digital tobacco logistics in Guangxi.

The findings of the study show that the performance of the tobacco supply chains in various cities of Guangxi is generally at the level of “Pass–Good,” which can barely meet the requirements of tobacco supply chain operation, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

The authors show that digital and IT-based empowerment can maximize the performance of Guangxi's tobacco logistics performance.

The purpose of this paper is to econometrically examine whether indigenous enterprises can upgrade under open economy by using micro-firm data.

In order to make clear the impact of outward development on the indigenous manufacturing export enterprises' productivity from micro level and to propose policy recommendation, the research group selected indigenous manufacturing export enterprises in Kunshan China as research objects and made a large-scale survey. Based on micro-firm data from survey, the paper carries out empirical analysis.

After controlling some other variables including innovation activity, human capital and enterprises scale, empirical result shows that export activity, establishing connections with FDI enterprises, industry clusters formed under open economy all have significant and positive effect on upgrading of indigenous enterprises.

This paper is the first to use micro-firm data obtained from survey to examine factors affecting indigenous enterprises' upgrading capability of China.

Currently, China’s economy is in the critical phase of transforming economic development patterns and replacing old growth drivers with new ones. Whether it can successfully overcome the “middle-income trap” has become a significant issue attracting wide attention.

Driven by underlying digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data, the fourth industrial revolution featuring the booming digital economy has provided significant opportunities for China’s economy to “overtake” and overcome the “middle-income trap”. The transformation of economic development pattern, the optimization of industrial structure, and the change of growth drivers, brought by the deep integration of digital and real economies are the keys to leaping over the “middle-income trap”.

From the supply side, the digital economy can improve the quality and efficiency of the supply side and promote the supply-side structural reform and economic growth from the following three aspects: First, promote the quality, efficiency and diversification of the supply system; second, promote networking, opening-up and synergy in the innovation system and third, promote the socialization, modularization and flexibility of production pattern. From the demand side, the digital economy can boost the new drivers of the “troika” of economic growth consisting of consumption, exports and investment by changing the market investment direction, promoting consumption upgrade and fostering export strengths. However, once these two attributes interact with each other, especially when data is combined with capital, the most adhesive factor in the market economy, a series of new social relations will then be produced based on the technical attribute, resulting in significant adjustments in social relations, involving both positive and negative externalities.

To overcome the “middle-income trap”, it is necessary to adapt to the laws of economic evolution and promote a fundamental change in economic growth drivers; boost the high-quality development of the digital economy by strengthening the support role of data in the digital economy; and accelerate digital industrialization and industrial digitalization to realize the integration of digital and real economies.

In order to survive and thrive in today’s global economy, firms of all sizes must be able to use information as a competitive weapon. Manufacturing firms must be able to receive and process customer orders, schedule shop orders, and place purchase orders efficiently to be effective members of their supply chain. Information technology can be used to facilitate the exchange of order information between business functions and supply chain members. Two information technologies that are used for this information exchange are enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic commerce (e‐commerce). This article discusses the results of a survey of Midwestern manufacturers on their current and future use of and investment in information technology to support their supply chain activities. The results of the study show that there is a difference in the use of and investment in information technology between small/medium manufacturers and large manufacturers. Large manufacturers are placing more emphasis on supply chain technologies than small manufacturers. Manufacturers’ investment in information technologies for the supply chain were found to lag those for the manufacturing/operations function. The results also show that use of e‐commerce is greater than the use of ERP.