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The purpose of this paper is to examine China's approach to circular economy (CE) and investigate how the foreign concept of CE has been turned into a national strategy for implementation in production, circulation and consumption. This study aims to highlight the Chinese characteristics in the implementation of CE from central to local levels including the “trial and test” by pilot schemes and the role of local governments in CE transformation of industrial parks and in building CE cities. Based on what has been achieved, this paper aims to identify the gaps to be filled in the next stage of CE implementation.

This paper engages in critical analysis of state policies, plans, laws and regulations and case studies of Suzhou New District and Shanghai city in the building CE-oriented industrial park and CE city, respectively.

China has taken a top-down approach to CE characterised by strong government involvement in both policy and plan making and implementation at local levels. The government’s financial investment and administrative assistance proved to be crucial in the early stage of CE implementation to close the loop at industrial parks and in cities. In comparison, participation by enterprises and individuals is still weak and limited, which should be the focus of the next stage of CE implementation.

There is an absence of legal literature that studies circular economy in China. This paper fills the gap by examining the development of CE law and policy as well as CE implementation at local levels from industrial parks to cities.

Smog and other environmental effects of accelerated industrialisation are increasingly driving China towards more restorative economic models. One of these is the circular economy (CE), which encourages the design of products and systems that can be returned and the materials recycled, reused or remanufactured. This chapter discusses the experiences with China’s policies for promoting the CE over the past decade as well as future plans. It is based on a thorough review of China’s policies originally available in Chinese. Exemplary CE projects with success stories are also presented. The aim is to present a more comprehensive understanding of China’s CE efforts. Other developing countries also facing environmental and resource challenges can draw on China’s experiences in developing their own CE.

This study examines how circular economy (CE) performance indicators are constructed in an urban context characterised by a multitude of conflicting interests and visions of urban development. It explores the process of constructing a shared consensus about the performance indicators in conditions of low contractibility, where intervention objectives and outcomes are not easily quantifiable because the object is ambiguous and cannot be fully specified in advance.

The construction of performance indicators at the urban level is examined through the lens of an action net. Using group interviews, observations and documentary analysis, this study investigates the case of a CE initiative in the city of Milan.

The study demonstrates that in cases of low contractibility, the development of CE solutions requires actions that span across organisational boundaries, organised in an action net. As the action net unfolds, it is closely knotted with the construction of performance indicators, indicating a co-constitutive relationship between the two processes.

This interdisciplinary study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by exploring the complexity of performance indicator construction at the urban level. It further recognises performance measurement in cities as a dynamic and flexible process, in which the interconnected actions and involvement of multiple actants shape the composition of the indicators.

To understand the role of the unorganized sector in the push toward a circular economy (CE), the authors consider the case of the unorganized tire retreading industry in India and examine the barriers it faces in contributing to a circular tire supply chain in India.

The authors used grounded theory methodology (GTM) to understand the barriers to realizing the CE in the Indian unorganized tire retreading industry. This methodology facilitates the acquisition of new insights into an existing phenomenon or in studying emerging areas that require investigation.

Through the analysis, the authors tease out ten critical barriers that impede the Indian unorganized tire retreading industry. The two most vital barriers are the lack of effective promotional methods and the poor implementation of standards.

This study emphasizes the importance of further investigating the potential role of the unorganized sector in fostering the transition to a CE in emerging economies.

The research provides useful policy prescriptions to regulators and insights to original tire manufacturers (OTMs) that enable the unorganized tire retreaders in India to contribute to the movement toward a circular supply chain (CSC).

This study is the first to systematically examine the unorganized sector to understand the barriers to CE. This study provides an original theoretical contribution by expanding the scope of stakeholder and institutional theories.

Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.

In the 21st century, multilingual tools are gaining importance as increasingly diverse user groups from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds seek access to equally diverse pieces of information. The authors of this paper believe that most current forms of multilingual information access are inadequate for this role, and that a new form of multilingual thesaurus is required. The core of this paper introduces their pilot thesaurus InfoDEFT as a possible model for new online thesauri, which are semantically structured, encyclopedic and multilingual. The authors conclude that while the manual construction of such thesauri is labour intensive and hence costly, pilot thesauri can be used as training sets for artificial learning programmes, thus increasing their volume considerably at relatively little extra cost.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the demand for crop insurance. Moreover, farmer willingness to pay (WTP) for crop insurance was derived. Factors affecting the demand were also examined in a country where crop insurance products are not currently available. Sensitivity analysis was conducted by studying the price-anchoring effect.

Data from a choice experiment (CE) were analyzed with mixed logit models and the distribution of farmer WTP for crop insurance was derived. A split sample approach with varying premium vectors was used to analyze the price-anchoring effect.

Demand was revealed for crop insurance products in Finland. The demand was higher among younger farmers and farms with more arable land. WTP for crop insurance products was very sensitive to the premium interval presented in the CE design.

The price-anchoring effect may disrupt the market development of crop insurance products, because insurance companies may take advantage of the lack of awareness among farmers of crop insurance pricing.

The insurance product expected indemnity was a more important factor than the deductible in determining farmer WTP for crop insurance. Therefore, the 30 percent deductible level set for subsidized crop insurance products is not an obstacle for the development of such products in the EU.

The study applied a well-known method (CE) to crop insurance in a country where these products are non-existent. The split sample approach was used to examine the price-anchoring effect on crop insurance.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.