Search results

As technical barriers gradually become the important tools of trade protection, it is important to understand whether intensified enforcement of border controls is adopted as a hidden tool of trade protectionism and differs across periods and industries.

This article applies a panel structural vector autoregression (PSVAR) model to investigate the potential role of trade protectionism motives in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) import refusals on China's agricultural exports, utilizing newly constructed monthly data at the industry level.

The results show that import refusal is mainly driven by the inspection history, highlighting the importance of the intrinsic product quality and maintaining an excellent inspection history in border inspection. The novel finding is that US employment contractions would also lead to a small increase in FDA import refusals, especially those taking place within ten months and made without sampling tests. Such an association is driven by industry-specific employment shocks and becomes stronger after the financial crisis. It is also more evident in industries where the US lacks competitiveness against China, being manufactured without mandatory safety regulations, and with negative skewness of employment growth.

This research is one of the preliminary attempts to understand whether the de facto border controls are worked as a hidden tool of protectionism to agricultural products, and what the specific trajectory and duration of the impacts at the monthly level. This study provides empirical evidence showing the role of protectionism motives in FDA import refusals and is heterogeneous across industries, which generate new insights and policy implications to predict and cope with additional barriers on agricultural trade.

This study aims to provide a model to predict the service life of a thick organic coating.

A series of thin coating films are rapidly tested under the same exposure condition as the thick coating in its service condition by means of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction.

The validity of the model is successfully verified. The long-term protectiveness or service life of a thick organic coating can be rapidly predicted.

The prediction model does not require long-term experiments or any test that may alter the degradation mechanism of the thick coating.

The purpose of this paper evaluates the effects of the Great Western Development (GWD) policy on agricultural intensification, land use, agricultural production and rural poverty in western China.

The authors collect county-level data on land use, input application, grain crop production, income, poverty and geophysical characteristics for 1996–2005 and use a quasi-natural experimental design of difference-in-differences (DD) in the empirical analysis.

Results suggest that the GWD policy significantly increased the grain crop production in western China. This increase resulted from higher yield, with increased fertilizer use and agricultural electricity consumption per hectare, and more land allocated to grow grain crops. The policy also increased land-use concentration, reduced crop diversity and alleviated rural poverty in western China.

This paper makes three contributions. First, the authors add to the growing literature on the GWD policy by evaluating its effects on farm household decisions and exploring the mechanisms and broad socioeconomic impacts in western China. Second, the authors take advantage of a quasi-natural experimental design to improve the identification strategy where input use, land allocation, production and off-farm labor participation are all endogenous in a farm household. Third, the authors explore a long list of variables within one integrated dataset to present a comprehensive picture of the impact of the GWD policy.

This paper aims to explore the effect of fairness concerns on supply chain members' optimal decisions and profits, to compare their profits under different policies, and to investigate the impact of each policy on members, consumers, and the environment with fairness concerns.

Considering government policies and fairness concerns in recycling management, this paper develops five recycling and remanufacturing decision models (anarchy policy model, reward-penalty mechanism model, recycling investment subsidies model, government tax model, and fund subsidy system model). In each model, the manufacturer and the online platform form the Stackelberg game. This research further discusses comprehensive environmental benefits and consumer surplus under five scenarios.

First, the fairness concerns of the online platform inhibit the recovery rate and supply chain members' profit while increasing the platform's utility. Second, fairness concerns increase the profit gap between the manufacturer and online platform, and the higher the degree of fairness concerns, the greater the profit gap; however, the four policies reduce the profit gap. Finally, when there are fairness concerns, environmental taxes damage the interests of supply chain members and consumers, but are most beneficial to the environment; recycling investment subsidies are on the contrary; the fund subsidy system depends on the relative size of the treatment fund and the subsidy fund.

This paper provides useful insights on how to regulate government policy to improve supply chain management with fairness concerns.

This study aims at developing a better understanding of the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability and further examines the moderating effect of open innovation.

This paper adopts hierarchical regressions to validate the theoretical model and collect the patent data of the top 54 firm patentees in the smartphone industry as empirical sample. Using patent citation network data, this paper estimates the relationship between open innovation, network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper empirically shows that structural embeddedness exerts a negative effect on incremental innovation capability, while relational embeddedness is positively related to incremental innovation capability. And open innovation strengthens the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper shifts the focus of the determinants of incremental innovation capability from internal factors to the external network features by exploring the linkage between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. A counterintuitive conclusion is that structural embeddedness shows a negative effect on firm's incremental innovation capability. Furthermore, in contrast to most previous studies, which only focus on the direct effect of open innovation on the firm's incremental innovation capability, our study examines the moderating effect of open innovation on the relationships between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. At last, the results provide practical guidance for firms to occupy the beneficial network positions and adopt appropriate open innovation strategies to improve their incremental innovation capability.

Under the pressure of environment degradation and energy consumption rises, solar photovoltaic power generation (SPPG) has been seen as a strategic emerging industry in China. However, the SPPG projects have many uncertain factors in the process of the life cycle. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the investment risk comprehensively.

Specifically, this paper firstly identified the risk factors and consequences of SPPG project investment and constructed the investment risk factor evaluation index system. Secondly, the factor analysis method was used to reveal the key investment risk factors and risk consequences. Then, the research hypotheses and conceptual model were proposed, and the empirical analysis was conducted based on the structural equation model (SEM).

The results showed that the six key risk factors (political, economic, technological, management, market and natural) have a significant impact on the risks during the whole period. The influence degree of risk factors in the operational period is such that market factor > political factor > economic factor > management factor > natural factor > technical factor. In addition, the risk of constructional period has a significant impact during the risk of operational period. Except for natural factors, all risk factors are correlated among the mutual influence relationship of risk factors. Finally, this paper puts forward management implications based on the above conclusions: effectively identify investment risk factors and comprehensively improve risk management ability; (refine the risk factors of SPPG project investment and develop targeted risk prevention and control strategies; define risk management objectives and make relevant strategic plans.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

It can also help stakeholders propose risk prevention strategies throughout the entire process, to promote the sustainable development of SPPG projects.

This study focuses on the investment risk of SPPG projects, by building an evaluation index system to identify key risk factors, and then establishes a SEM covering constructional period risks and operational period risks to better explore SPPG project risks, in an effort to reveal the mutual influence relationship and influence path of investment risk factors of the projects.

To explore how the blockchain affects the pricing and financing decisions in a low-carbon platform supply chain.

Considering the dual roles of the e-commerce platform as a seller and an initiator, a typical game-theoretical method is applied to analyze the behavior of supply chain decision-makers and the impact of key variables on equilibriums.

When loan interest rates are symmetric, whether blockchain is used or not, the e-commerce platform financing mode will always produce higher wholesale price and unit carbon emission reduction, while the retail price is the opposite. Higher unit additional income brought by the blockchain can bring higher economic and environmental performances, and the e-commerce platform financing mode is superior to bank financing mode. The application of blockchain may cause the manufacturer to change his/her financing choice. For bank financing, with the increase of loan interest rates, the advantages brought by blockchain will gradually disappear, but this situation will not occur under e-commerce platform financing.

Blockchain is known for its information transparency properties and its ability to enhance user trust. However, the impacts of applying blockchain in a low-carbon platform supply chain with different financing options are not clear. The authors examine the manufacturer's strategic choices for platform financing and bank financing, whether to adopt blockchain, and the impact of these decisions on carbon emissions reduction, consumer surplus and social welfare. The research conclusion can provide reference for the operation and financing decisions of platform supply chain under the carbon reduction target in the digital economy era.

The purpose of this study was to solve the problem of most woven-fabric self-lubricating bearings that find it difficult to function at temperatures above 320°C, by designing a new type of new nuclear joint bearing. The results of this study will help designers to achieve accurate stress distribution, displacement deformation, fatigue life and damage of bearings. All of these can be a guide for designing self-lubricating joint bearings.

Finite element analysis is undertaken to simulate the new design bearings. To get the most appropriate and accurate results, the room temperature simulation (Simulation A), the modulus of elasticity that changes with temperature (Simulation B) and the thermal-structure-coupled simulation (Simulation C) are compared. The fatigue simulation is conducted to verify whether the self-lubricating method is reasonable and whether the bearing can function for over 60 years in an enclosed environment.

Stress distribution and displacement deformation of joint bearing can be accurately achieved via the thermal-structure coupled simulation. Work life and damage results have been achieved via the fatigue analysis, and the suggested working loads can be calculated via safety factors.

The newly designed joint bearing in which the graphite is laid on the outside of the inner ring functions and self-lubricates at temperatures above 320°C.