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The exact process of construction projects performance assessment and benchmarking still remains subjective relying on qualitative techniques, which does not allow stakeholders to address the issues and the drawbacks of their respective projects as effectively as possible for performance improvement purposes. Hence, this research aims to establish a unified project performance score (PPS) for assessing and comparing projects performance.

Data were collected from Construction Industry Institute (CII) members and through University of Wisconsin active research projects. Exploratory data analysis was done to investigate the calculated performance metrics and the collected data characteristics. Data were converted into six performance metrics which were used as the independent variables in creating the PPS model. Logistic regression model was developed to generate the unified PPS equation in order to explain the variables that significantly affect construction projects successful post-completion performance. The PPS model was then applied on the collected dataset to benchmark projects in terms of project delivery systems, compensation types and project types in order to showcase the PPS capabilities and possible applications.

The model revealed that construction cost and schedule growth are the most important metrics in assessing projects performance, while RFIs’ processing time and change orders per million dollars were the features with the least effect on the PPS value. The authors found that integrated project delivery (IPD) and target value (TV) projects outperformed all other project delivery and compensation types. While, industrial projects showed the worst performance, as compared to commercial or institutional projects.

The PPS model can be used to assess the performance of any pool of executed projects, and introducing a novel addition to the field of construction business analytics which is a supplementary tool to successful decision making and performance improvement. Additionally, the bidding selection system can be revolutionized from a cost-based to a performance based one using the PPS model to improve the outcomes of the buyout process.

This paper attempts to study the relationship between the level of urban innovation and subjective well-being (SWB). The following questions are discussed: (1) Does improving the level of innovation in cities affect the SWB of residents? (2) If urban innovation levels affect residents' SWB, can improving urban innovation level improve residents' SWB? (2) If urban innovation level improves residents' SWB, what is the possible mechanism? (3) Is there any difference in the effect of urban innovation level on the SWB of different groups?

This paper chooses the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression method for baseline regression with robust standard errors, and the regression results of Oprobit will be presented in detail in the robustness test section. The model is constructed by matching the micro data and the macro data. Meanwhile, the instrumental variable (IV) method is also used to deal with the possible endogeneity problem.

This paper finds that urban innovation has significantly improved the SWB of residents. This finding still holds after considering the endogeneity issue and conducting a series of robustness tests. Moreover, the level of innovation positively influences residents' SWB mainly through the paths of increasing income levels, improving environmental quality and promoting convenience in life. What's more, urban innovation has a more significant effect on the SWB of low-income groups and those with low education levels. Finally, based on the findings, this paper also proposes some policy recommendations to further improve the SWB of residents.

Given the limitations of the data, the above study deals with China. In the future, international data can be further used to further explore the impact of the innovation level of international cities on the SWB of residents and then the research conclusions can be applied to the international community to provide theoretical basis and empirical support for policy makers of various countries, which will help improve the SWB of residents of various countries and enrich the theoretical and empirical research on the impact of innovation on the SWB of residents.

Well-being is a goal constantly pursued by human beings. This paper shows that urban innovation has significantly improved the SWB of residents. The findings provide guides to improve the SWB of residents and provide a certain theoretical basis and empirical reference for policy makers.

The possible innovations or contributions of this paper include: (1) based on the China Household Income Survey (CHIP) and the “Report on Innovation of Chinese Cities and Industries”, this paper studies the impact of urban innovation levels on residents' SWB, supplementing the gaps in existing literature; (2) through group analysis, the heterogeneity of the impact of urban innovation level on groups with different incomes and education levels was discussed and (3) the mechanism of urban innovation level on residents' SWB was identified. These studies and discussions provide a basis for more effective improvement of residents' SWB and provide a valuable reference for promoting people's pursuit of a better life.

This paper aims to test the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap and further examine the moderating role of government intervention.

Based on the provincial Government Work Reports and the long-term policy practice of implementing the target responsibility system, the authors construct a unique indicator of urban-biased policy in China. Further, applying the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces in 2003–2018, the authors explore the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap.

The results show that urban-biased policy has contributed to the widen urban-rural income gap in China, which supports Lipton's urban-biased hypothesis. Further research shows that the stronger the government intervention, the bigger the role of urban-biased policy in widening urban-rural income gap.

On the one hand, this study not only investigates the direct effect of urban-biased policy on urban-rural income gap, but also examines the moderating effect from the perspective of government intervention, which helps to enrich the relevant studies of urban-biased theory. On the other hand, the authors' findings provide the latest empirical evidence for urban-biased policy to widen urban-rural income gap and presents a reference and warning for China and other developing countries about balancing the relationship between equity and efficiency during economic development.

This study aims to investigate the influence and impact mechanism of capital tax incentives on firm innovation.

This study employs the difference-in-differences (DID) method, in conjunction with the exogenous impact of accelerated depreciation (AD) pilot policy. This study selects Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2017 as the research sample.

Firstly, AD exerts a substantial positive effect on the quantity and quality of the innovation output of firms, and the positive impact results primarily from heightened investment in fixed assets, particularly, machinery and equipment. Secondly, the influence of the policy is pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, mature enterprises, less capital-intensive enterprises and non-high-tech industries, which all exhibit strong innovation incentives. Lastly, the tax incentive policy significantly stimulates firm innovation in the short term, but its long-term impact on innovation incentives lacks statistical significance.

This study highlights the significance of capital tax incentives in facilitating the innovation process in firms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the accounting system reform on corporate innovation behavior and the heterogeneity and underlying mechanisms of this impact. This paper further aims to study the impact of accounting system reform on corporate value.

This study takes China's A-share listed corporates as a sample and uses the exogenous policy shock of the implementation of the New Accounting Standards in 2007 to design the identification strategy of propensity score matching and difference-in-differences method. By comparing the differences between the innovation level of corporates in high-tech industries and non-high-tech industries before and after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards, the impact of the accounting system reform on corporates' innovative behavior can be identified.

Results show that compared with corporates in traditional industries, high-tech corporates obtained higher patent output after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards. This reform mainly affects corporate innovation by improving corporate risk-taking. In addition, this paper finds that the reform of the accounting system has increased the market value of high-tech corporates in the long run.

This study provides new empirical evidence for addressing the insufficient innovation incentives for market entities and enriches the existing literature on the economic effects of the change of accounting systems and the influencing factors of corporate innovative behavior from the accounting system perspective.

The manufacturing industry and the producer service industry have a high degree of industrial correlation, and their integration will cause changes in the complex industrial network topology, which is an important reason for the synergistic effect. This paper describes the topology of industrial systems using complex network theory; further, it discusses how to identify the criticality and importance of industrial nodes, and whether node characteristics cause synergistic effects.

Based on the input-output data of China in 2007, 2012 and 2017, this paper constructs the industrial complex network of 30 Chinese provinces and cities, and measures the regional network characteristics of the manufacturing industry. The fixed-effect panel regression model is adopted to test the influence of agglomeration degree and centrality on synergies, and its adjustment mechanism is explored.

The degree of network agglomeration in the manufacturing industry exerts a negative impact on the synergistic effect, while the centrality of the network exerts a significant promoting effect on the synergistic effect. The results of adjustment mechanism test show that enhancing the autonomous controllable ability of the regional industrial chain in the manufacturing industry can effectively reduce the effect of network characteristics on the synergistic effect.

Based on input-output technology, this paper constructs a complex industrial network model, however, only basic flow data are used. Considerable in-depth and detailed research on the economic and technological connections within the industry should be conducted in the future. The selection of the evaluation index of the importance of industrial nodes also needs to be further considered. For historical reasons, it is also difficult to obtain and process data when carrying out quantitative analysis; therefore, it is necessary to make further attempts from the data source and the expression form of evaluation indicators.

In a practical sense this has certain reference value for the formulation of manufacturing industrial policies the optimization of regional industrial layout and the improvement of the industrial development level. It is necessary to formulate targeted and specialized industrial development strategies according to the characteristics of the manufacturing industry appropriately regulate the autonomous controllable ability of the industrial chain and avoid to limit the development of industries which is in turn limited by regional resources. Industry competition and market congestion need to be reduced industry exchanges outside the region encouraged the industrial layout optimized and the construction of a modern industrial system accelerated.

The above research results hold certain reference importance for policy formulation related to the manufacturing industry, regional industrial layout optimization and industrial development level improvement. Targeted specialized industrial development strategies need to be formulated according to the characteristics of the manufacturing industry; the autonomous controllability of the industrial chain needs to be appropriately regulated; limitation of regional resources needs to be avoided as this restricts industrial development; and industry competition and market congestion need to be reduced. Agglomeration of production factors and optimization of resource allocation is an important part of a beneficial regional economic development strategy, and it is also an inevitable choice for industrialization to develop to a certain stage under the condition of a market economy. In alignment with the research conclusions, effective suggestions can be put forward for the current major industrial policies. In the process of promoting the development of the manufacturing industry, it is necessary for regional governments to carry out unified planning and guidance on the spatial layout of each manufacturing subsector. Regional governments need to effectively allocate inter-industry resources, better share economies of scale, constantly enhance the competitive advantages and competitiveness of development zones and new districts and promote the coordinated agglomeration and development of related industries with input industries. Industrial exchanges outside the region should be encouraged, the industrial layout should be optimized and the construction of a modern industrial system should be accelerated.

Complex network theory is introduced to study the industrial synergy effect. A complex industrial network of China's 30 regions is built and key network nodes are measured. Based on the dimensionality of the “industrial node – industrial chain – industrial complex network”, the research path of industrial complex networks is improved.

This paper evaluates the level of the digital economy in Chinese cities based on digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. The research focuses on the effects of spatial mechanism of the urban digital economy on the quality of firms’ exported products.

The authors use the principal component analysis method to evaluate the level of China’s urban digital economy, and spatial metrology to measure the spatial effects of the digital economy on product quality.

The findings suggest that the urban digital economy can expand the quality of firms’ exports. The digital economy has spatial dependence, spatial spillover and spatial heterogeneity on product quality. At the same time, the spatial effect has a significant nonlinear effect and threshold effect. Further decomposition shows that industrial digitalization is the core factor of enterprises’ export products quality, and the micro-mechanism of this impact is mainly manifested in optimization of resource allocation.

The innovation of this paper is reflected explicitly in exploring the quality upgrading of export products from the background of the digital economy, providing a reference for the improvement of China’s export trade competitiveness and the cultivation of a trade power. The authors studied two different mechanisms (specialization division of labor and optimization of resource allocation) to explain the spatial imbalance of export product quality to provide empirical support for enterprises and government departments to formulate quality upgrading policies accurately.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on company innovation, specifically centering on the quantity and quality of innovation. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of whether the epidemic inhibits innovation and the role of digital transformation in mitigating this negative impact.

The paper uses a quasi-experimental study of the COVID-19 pandemic and constructs a differential model to analyze the relationship between the epidemic and firm innovation in three dimensions: total, quantity and quality. The paper also uses a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to test whether digital transformation of firms mitigates the negative impact of the epidemic and its mechanism of action.

The results show that COVID-19 significantly reduced the overall level of firm innovation, primarily in terms of quantity rather than quality. Furthermore, this study finds that digital transformation plays a pivotal role in mitigating the pandemic’s adverse impact on innovation. By addressing financing constraints and countering demand insufficiency, digital transformation acts as a catalyst for preserving and fostering innovation during and after the pandemic.

This study extends the current research on the pandemic’s impact on firm innovation at the micro level. It offers valuable insights into strategies for fostering digital transformation among Chinese enterprises in the post-pandemic era.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between tourism development and urban housing prices in Chinese cities. Specifically, the study aimed to explore whether there is a relationship between the two variables in tourist and non-tourist cities and whether there is a non-linear relationship between them.

In this study, the entropy method was used to construct the China City Tourism Development Index, which provides a more comprehensive measure of the level of tourism development in different cities. In total, 45 major cities in China were studied using the panel data approach for the period of 2011 to 2019.

The empirical analysis conducted for this study found that tourism development affects urban house prices, and that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship. However, this varies across cities, with house prices in tourist cities tending to be more influenced by tourism development than non-tourist cities. Also, foreign direct investment, population size, fixed asset investment and disposable income per capita were found to have an impact on house prices in both tourism and non-tourism cities.

There are significant differences in tourism development and urban house prices in different cities in China. This study considers these differences when examining the impact of tourism on house prices in 45 major cities in China by dividing the sample cities into tourist and non-tourist cities.

This study aims to explore whether top management team (TMT) faultlines affect corporate digitalization and what the impact mechanism is, thus effectively promoting the digital transformation of enterprises from the perspective of optimizing TMT structure.

This study sampled companies that were listed in China between 2011 and 2020. Using the two-way fixed effect model, it empirically tests the impact of TMT faultlines on the digital transformation of enterprises.

TMT task-related faultline significantly positively impacts enterprise digital transformation, while the bio-demographic faultline has a significant negative effect. The regulatory role played by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power intensity in the relationship between the bio-demographic faultline and digital transformation is a negative one. The above relationship is strongly influenced by industry technical sophistication, corporate location and listing board.

The research has promoted the development of the upper echelons theory in the context of digitalization. Moreover, it enlightens the research of digital transformation’s influencing factors and mechanisms. However, no suitable mediating variable was found.

This research has significant implications for managers to optimize the internal structure of the TMT according to different enterprises’ business strategies in order to establish an efficient management team.

This study provides a new theoretical framework for TMT’s role in enterprise digital transformation. Further, it makes a beneficial exploration of the boundary and situational conditions of their relationship.