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The purpose of this paper is to investigate market power in the Chinese pork supply chain. The authors aim to explain why a steady rise in prices is observed in the sector, apart from existing evidence on incomplete/asymmetric cost pass-through and concerns of growing concentration and consolidation in the sector.

This study uses a new empirical industrial organization model for both oligopoly and oligopsony power to measure the degree of market power exerted on consumers and hog farmers simultaneously.

By examining annual panel data across provinces in China, the authors find that both oligopoly and oligopsony powers exist in the pork supply chain. In particular, the authors determine that a higher degree of market power is found to influence prices paid to hog farmers than prices paid by pork consumers. Estimates of key elasticities in the Chinese pork supply chain are also updated based on the structural model estimation and the latest data.

Due to the lack of data at a more granular level of geography, the authors are only able to estimate market power by three major economic regions.

The findings provide useful information for future policy analyses of Chinese food markets. First, the pork-packing industry should be of great concern in terms of market power and its influence on consumers’ and farmers’ welfare. It is essential to take into consideration market power in the pork supply chain before making any public policy regarding the pork market. Furthermore, following economic theory and experience from developed countries, large meat packers will eventually vertically control hog farmers given their stronger oligopsony power over the upstream. Vertical integration may be the next important issue in terms of food market competition. Finally, the results may also draw the government’s attention to investigating market competition in all major food markets.

The empirical evidence draws attention to the issue of food market competition in one of the largest and most important meat-packing markets in China. The authors hope to encourage further discussions on pork and hog market regulations and related public policies.

A proliferation of articles surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic is calling for new insights through review. This paper aims to bibliometrically analyze the current progress of research around hospitality and tourism to define the research directions on herd immunity and the prevention of disease under the “new normal.”

This paper analyzed 326 articles regarding COVID-19 published in SSCI hospitality, leisure and tourism journals in 2020 and 2021 by combining manual analysis and bibliometrics to reveal research topics and to gain insight into research structures.

The results of this paper summarized topics related to stakeholders’ mentality and behavior, responses of travel suppliers to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic impact and demand forecasting, social issues of human rights and racism and reflection on tourism and transformation of the industry. More research is called for in the future to focus on a better response to the crisis, including crisis management education and training and the improving the resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

A three-dimensional consideration was proposed to promote the sustainable development of hospitality and tourism.

In the “new normal” phase of herd immunity and disease prevention, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that provides an up-to-date systematic overview of the evolution of COVID-19 research in tourism and hospitality and encourages more conceptual, practical and futuristic studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting Vietnamese people’s sustainable tourism intention (IN) with extended the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Preliminary quantitative research was carried out before large-scale formal quantitative research with a sample size of 628 Vietnamese people. Using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method with the SmartPLS tool, measurement and structural models 3.0 were evaluated before testing the research hypotheses about the influence of factors on the IN of sustainable tourism.

This study uses the extended TPB model with original constructs and two additional constructs, travel motivation (TM) and moral reflectiveness (MR), to find out the factors affecting the sustainable tourism IN of Vietnamese people. All hypotheses are accepted, except for the hypothesis about the relationship between TM and attitude toward sustainable tourism. MR has been shown to have a more positive and stronger (insignificant) effect than other factors of the proposed research model on sustainable tourism IN. Thereby, this study contributes both theoretically and practically to policymakers, researchers and tourism enterprises in promoting sustainable tourism IN.

The main limitation of this paper is the deliberate sampling method and targeting the demographic proportion corresponding to the population has lost the randomness of the survey sample.

The findings indicate that state management agencies and tourism enterprises in Vietnam need to pay attention to communication to raise awareness of environmentally oriented tourism and promote the ability to participate in sustainable tourism at a reasonable price as well as the opportunity for easy access and, at the same time, take measures to influence TM and have communication strategies that address the ethical value of participating in sustainable tourism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study to contribute to the existing literature on tourism by integrating TPB constructs with TM and MR to predict sustainable tourism IN.

This paper examines credit composition and income inequality reduction in Vietnam. In particular, the authors focus on the distinction between policy and commercial credits and investigate whether these two types of credit adversely affect on income inequality. The authors also examine whether the educational level and institutional quality condition the impact of policy credit on income inequality.

The authors use the primary data set, which contains a panel of 60 provinces collected from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam from 2002 to 2016. The authors employ the generalized method of moments to solve the endogenous problem.

The authors show that while commercial credit increases income inequality, policy credit reduces income inequality in Vietnam. In addition, we provide evidence that the institutional quality and educational level condition the impact of policy credit on income inequality. Based on the findings, the paper implies that it was not the size of the private credit but its composition that mattered in reducing income inequality due to the asymmetric effects of different types of credit.

The government should focus on credit for the poor by helping them to exit poverty through investing in human capital, health and micro enterprises activities.

This is the first study that examines the links between the two components of credit and income inequality as well as the constraints of the links. The authors argue that analyzing the separate effects of commercial and policy credits is more important for explaining the role of credit in income inequality than the size of total credit.

The purpose of this paper is to calculate the bank efficiency of removing potential risks that are hidden from the extreme portfolio of bank’s assets and further compare the differences and causes of bank’s efficiency and potential risk level between China’s representative banks and OECD representative banks in 2011-2015.

Based on the weight-limited DEA model, this paper calculates the bank’s efficiency and further compares the differences between China’s representative banks and OECD representative banks by using commercial banks’ transnational data.

By analyzing US representative banks’ data, the authors find that the excessive expansion of the scale of banks’ investment for the non-real economy shrinks after the bubble burst and would not improve the efficiency of banks immediately. The OECD representative banks rather prefer to extreme asset portfolio so that the potential risks gradually increase, while there is a diminishing effect on investments in non-real economies to improve bank efficiency. On the other hand, China’s representative banks have the signs of reducing investment in the real estate market, but the existence of the bubble in the market led to a lagged effect on the impact of adjustment of bank asset portfolio on efficiency.

This paper has practical significance for commercial banks to improve efficiency and reduce credit risks. This is conducive to the implementation of targeted supervision by the banking supervision department.

Based on the lesson that the financial crisis created by the real estate bubble burst in the USA in 2008 and the financial market active guidance of the developed economies, faced with the reality of Chinese real estate market bubble rising and the continuous improvement of Chinese financial market, this paper compares the differences between representative banks in China and OECD, and explores the causes by using the cross-country data of commercial banks.

By adjusting the weight of the input variables in the efficiency measurement, quantifying the risk is often overlooked by the changes in bank efficiency. This potential risk is caused by the bank’s investment preferences in the non-real economy represented by real estate and tradable financial assets.

This study aims to using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive Xray spectrometer to identify different automotive coatings for forensic purpose.

Two four-layered samples in a hit-and-run case were compared layer by layer with three different methods. FTIR spectroscopy was used to primarily identify the organic and inorganic compositions. Raman spectrum and scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive Xray spectrometer (SEM-EDS) were further used to complement the FTIR results.

Two weak and tiny peaks in one layer found between two samples by FTIR, Raman microscope and SEM-EDS verified the result of differences. The study used the three instruments in combination and found it’s effective in sensing coatings, especially in the inorganic additives.

Using these three instruments in combination is more accurate than individually in multilayered coating analysis for forensic purpose.

The three different instruments all present unique information on the composition, and provided similar and mutually verifiable results on the two samples.

With this method, scientists could identify and discriminate important coating evidences with tiny but characteristic differences.

To address the gap of divergent conclusions on the impact of knowledge search (KS) on performance, this paper aims to discuss the nonlinear relationships between KS and reverse internationalization enterprise (RIE) performance, and the co-moderation of causation and effectuation (C&E) on KS–performance.

The proposed theoretical model is developed by integrating the theory of knowledge-based view and decision rationality theory. The empirical study is based on survey data collected from 245 RIEs of the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions in China. Hierarchical multiple regression and the appropriate U-test method are used to test the hypotheses.

Empirical results suggest that both focused and multi-focus searches have inverted U-shaped effects on RIE performance. Furthermore, causation weakens the curvilinear effect between multi-focus search and RIE performance, whereas effectuation strengthens the curvilinear effect but weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship between focused search and RIE performance. Results also indicate that the integration of C&E positively moderates the relationship between focused or multi-focus searches and RIE performance.

Findings reveal the nonlinear effects of focused and multi-focus searches on RIE performance and clarify the dispute over the mechanism of KS on performance by proposing the different moderating role of C&E. Moreover, this research provides deeper insight into contingency mechanisms between KS and performance by integrating the co-moderating role of C&E in RIEs.

Based on core description, gas logging and laboratory analysis, this paper aims to study the controlling effect of the types of shale sedimentary microfacies in coal formations over shale reservoirs using the example of Shanxi formation in Northern Ordos Basin.

According to core observation, the authors selected typical samples of rock types for thin section analysis to determine the micro features and compositions of rocks.

By using core observation, we found that fine lithology in Shanxi formation included major shale, carbonaceous shale, partially carbonaceous shale, partially silty shale and silty shale with colors of gray, dark gray, black and/or gray. Shanxi Formation shale are deposited in plant-rich and plant-poor swamps, interdistributary depressions of delta plains, interfluvial depressions of meandering rivers as well as microfacies environment of natural levees and the distal crevasse splay.

Currently, the research on the shale gas in Shanxi Formation in the Ordos Basin is still in its infancy. There is yet no research on the fine-grained partition of the sedimentary facies in coal accumulation environment of Shanxi formation and the controlling effect of sedimentary microfacies over shale reservoirs.

This study aims to evaluate the use of polyoxyethylene lauryl ether (PLE) as a dispersant in the preparation of novel pigment dispersion with enhanced dispersion ability, which can find application in the printing industry.

To obtain a good dispersion, PLE was used as a dispersant in pigments dispersion. The colloidal and rheological properties of the PLE-based dispersion, such as particle distribution, zeta potentials and apparent viscosity were evaluated.

The particle sizes of the pigment dispersions were within the range of 150 to 200 nm. The measurement of zeta potentials varied between −24 to −32 mV, revealing a strong surface charge interaction between pigments and PLE. Subsequently, its stability to high-speed centrifuge and freeze-thaw treatment was carefully investigated. To demonstrate the coverage of pigment particles by PLE, thermogravimetric analysis was carried out. Moreover, X-ray diffraction was used to disclose the combined impacts of PLE and ultrasonic power on the crystal structures of the pigments. Finally, the coloring performance and leveling properties of pigment dispersions on cotton substrates were evaluated by measuring their K/S values (color strength), rub and color fastness properties, which possessed good results.

The dispersant used is incompatible with strong oxidizing agents and strong bases. More so, modification to improve its dispersion properties can be studied.

The use of PLE as a dispersant could be readily used in pigment dispersion processes and other suitable applications. PLE could also be used as a co-surfactant in synergy with other surfactants or dispersants in the dispersion process.

The use of PLE in pigment dispersion as well as investigating its coloring properties on cotton fabric is novel and can find various applications in the dying, printing and coating industry.

Suggests that misunderstandings frequently occur when trying to understand Chinese language and culture, and so gives the implied meaning of various Chinese expressions and sayings such as greetings, thanks, respect, age, congratulations and taboo subjects.