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The purpose of this paper is to design a contract to coordinate the biomass molding fuel supply chain consisting of a supplier with uncertain supply and a producer with cyclical demand as well as improve the profit of this supply chain.

In this paper, the supply chain model was build and all the variables and assumptions are set. Stackelberg game model was used to analyze and solve the problem. Furthermore, the authors give numerical examples and result analysis on the basis of data coming from field study and online information about a real biomass fuel supply chain.

The wholesale price with shortage penalty contract the authors proposed can coordinate the supply chain. And as the dominator of the supply chain, the producer can realize the redistribution of profits within the supply chain by determine the contract parameters.

This one-to-one supply chain is a basic of complex supply chain system. Multi-to-one, one-to-multi and multi-to-multi supply chain can be studied in the future.

The results obtained in this paper can be used as a reference for enterprises in biomass energy supply chain to make contracts and realize the long-term co-operations among supply chain members.

European countries are likely to increasingly adopt integrated reporting (IR) voluntarily, after the 2014/95/EU Directive is revised and other initiatives are implemented. Therefore, the present study provides insights on the relevance of IR in voluntary contexts by exploring analysts' reactions to the release of integrated reports in diverse institutional settings.

Drawing on voluntary disclosure theory, a quantitative empirical research method is used to explore the moderating role of country-level institutional characteristics on the associations between voluntary IR release and analyst forecast accuracy and dispersion.

IR informativeness is not uniform in the voluntary context and institutional settings play a moderating role. IR release is associated with increased consensus among analyst forecasts. However, in countries with weak institutional enforcement, a reverse association is detected, indicating that analysts rely largely on IR where the institutional setting strongly protects investors. Although a strong institutional setting boosts the IR release usefulness in terms of accuracy, it creates noise in analyst consensus.

Academics can appreciate the usefulness of voluntary IR across the institutional enforcement contexts.

Managers can use these findings to understand opportunities offered by IR voluntary release. The study recommends that policymakers, standard setters and regulators strengthen the institutional enforcement of sustainability disclosure.

This study is a unique contribution to recent calls for research on the effects of nonfinancial disclosure regulation and on IR “impacts”. It shows on the international scale that IR usefulness for analysts is moderated by institutional patterns, not country-level institutional characteristics.

Given the limited studies that have started to focus on contexts where integrated reporting (IR) is voluntarily adopted, this paper aims to explore the moderating role of institutional characteristics on the association between voluntary report release and analyst forecast accuracy.

This study uses a quantitative empirical research method grounded on voluntary disclosure theory to provide empirical evidence on an international sample of companies choosing to release integrated reports. Preliminarily, a cluster analysis is used to group countries according to institutional patterns. Multivariate analyses detect the associations between report release choice and analysts’ forecast accuracy across clusters. Multiple econometric approaches are used to address the endogeneity concerns.

IR release is not informative for the market unless considering systematic variations across different institutional settings. Analysts’ forecast is more accurate for IR adopters located in strong institutional enforcement settings than for all the other companies. In the strong institutional setting that is also characterized by a pluralistic society, IR release benefits for the market are conditioned by the fact that the choice to release IR depends on environmental, governance and social disclosure-based managers remuneration and disclosure requirements. In weak institutional settings, IR release is not beneficial for the forecast accuracy.

Academics and practitioners can gain understanding of the usefulness of voluntary IR across different institutional settings.

The study advances the understanding of the IR’s informativeness, overcoming the common dichotomous distinctions between strong and weak institutional settings.

This study aims to take advantage of the unprecedented anti-corruption campaign launched in China in December 2012 and examine the effect of improved public governance on tunneling.

This study uses a sample of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange listed companies from 2010 to 2014 and conduct regression analyses to investigate the effect of improved public governance attributed to the anti-corruption campaign on tunneling.

This study finds that the level of tunneling decreased significantly after the anti-corruption campaign, suggesting that increased public governance effectively curbs tunneling. Cross-sectional results show that this mitigating effect is more pronounced for non-SOE firms, especially non-SOE firms with political connections, firms audited by non-Big 8 auditors, firms with a large divergence between control rights and cash flow rights and firms located in areas with lower marketization.

This study highlights the importance of anti-corruption initiatives in improving public governance and in turn reducing tunneling. This study provides important implications for many other emerging economies to improve public governance.

This study contributes to the literature on the role of public governance in constraining corporate agency problems and advances the understanding of the economic consequences of China's anti-corruption campaign in the context of tunneling.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.

This paper takes advantage of information disclosure during the bond issuance and examines the spillover effect of unlisted bond issuers' information disclosure on listed firms in the stock market. The sample is composed of A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2018. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and WIND databases. The impact of bond market information disclosure on price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry is identified through multivariate regression analyses.

Empirical results show that price informativeness of listed firms has a significantly positive association with the information disclosure of same-industry unlisted bond issuers. Further analyses show that the above finding is more significant when information disclosure of bond issuers is a more important channel for acquiring industry information (i.e. when industry is more concentrated, when economic uncertainty is high, and when industry information is less transparent) and understanding the industry competitive landscape (i.e. when bond issuers are relatively large, when bond issuers and listed firms have more direct product competition, when bond issuance firms are large-scale state-owned business groups), and when there are more cross-market information intermediaries (i.e. more cross-market institutional investors and more sell-side analysts). This paper indicates that information disclosure of bond issuers has a positive spillover effect on the stock market.

The novelty of the research is that the authors examine industry information spillover from unlisted firms to listed firms leveraging on unlisted firms' information disclosure in bond markets.

The purpose of this study is to extend the research on fashion renting (FR) by investigating how personal and social motives (i.e. “subjective norms”, “perceived behavioural control”, “sustainable orientation” and “FR benefits”) affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions towards it. In addition, personality traits are investigated as potential antecedents of FR, resulting in the proposal of an overall framework that combines the theory of planned behaviour with the trait theory approach.

Data were collected in Italy from a sample of 694 consumers, mainly females (88%), with an average age of 28.8 years and coming from all over the country. The collected data were then processed via structural equation modelling.

The results indicated that intention towards FR is influenced by attitude, which, in turn, is affected by social norms, perceived behavioural control, sustainable orientation and FR benefits. Furthermore, only fashion leadership acts as a direct antecedent of FR attitude, while the need for uniqueness and materialism plays critical roles as predictors of personal and social motives. Subjective norms and perceived behavioural control also serve as mediators of the significant relationships between personality traits and attitudes towards FR.

The study provides useful implications for fashion rental companies in attracting consumers and offers a foundation for further research on transforming traditional consumption into a more sustainable one.

The study presents new knowledge on the rental phenomenon in the fashion sector by responding to the call to deepen the analysis of factors that influence consumers’ adoption of FR from the perspectives of personal and social motives and personality traits.

The article aims to investigate the effects of ownership and capital structure on postacquisition operating performance.

The article extends the ongoing literature from an operating loss perspective and provides empirical evidence on the probability of acquirers’ operating loss in relation to ownership and capital structure. The operating performance of publicly listed manufacturing firms in China was tracked up to five years since the completion of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) during 2003–2014.

The empirical results show that, in a five-year postacquisition period, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely to experience operating loss than non-SOEs. The likelihood of the operating loss is negatively associated with ownership concentration, implying that concentrated ownership may serve as an effective corporate governance mechanism in the emerging economy and improve postacquisition performance. The rise in leverage increases the likelihood of postacquisition operating loss, indicating that the costs of debt may outweigh the benefits.

The findings contribute to the literature on ownership, debt governance and post-M&A performance from an emerging economy perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a statistical-based model to forecast future domestic water demand in the context of climate change, population growth and technological development in Yellow River.

The model is developed through the analysis of the effects of climate variables and population on domestic water use in eight sub-basins of the Yellow River. The model is then used to forecast water demand under different environment change scenarios.

The model projected an increase in domestic water demand in the Yellow River basin in the range of 67.85 × 10⁸ to 62.20 × 10⁸ m³ in year 2020 and between 73.32 × 10⁸ and 89.27 × 10⁸ m³ in year 2030. The general circulation model Beijing Normal University-Earth System Model (BNU-ESM) predicted the highest increase in water demand in both 2020 and 2030, while Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques Climate Model v.5 (CNRM-CM5) and Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate- Earth System (MIROC-ESM) projected the lowest increase in demand in 2020 and 2030, respectively. The fastest growth in water demand is found in the region where water demand is already very high, which may cause serious water shortage and conflicts among water users.

The simple regression-based domestic water demand model proposed in the study can be used for rapid evaluation of possible changes in domestic water demand due to environmental changes to aid in adaptation and mitigation planning.

The purpose of this study is to address a significant gap in the understanding of entrepreneurship at the microfoundation level. It focuses on how individual entrepreneurs, specifically Hongbang entrepreneurs in China from 1896 to 1949, shape and transform their contexts. The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate entrepreneurial success.

The study adopts a microhistorical approach, investigating the case of Hongbang entrepreneurs in China during 1896-1949. It involves an in-depth examination of historical records to explore the strategic interactions between these entrepreneurs and core stakeholders such as consumers, financial intermediaries, government regulators, and human resources. The research methodology emphasizes a process-oriented view, examining the evolution of personalized networks into extensive connections.

The research reveals that Hongbang entrepreneurs successfully reshaped their unfavorable embedded contexts by strategically collaborating with key stakeholders. They influenced consumer tastes, allied with financial intermediaries, negotiated with governments on regulation policies, and developed human resource stocks. The transformation was facilitated by the evolution of their networks from personalized to extensive connections. These findings highlight the localized strategies such as cronyism in resource acquisition within China’s private property development industry.

This study contributes to the field by offering insights into entrepreneurial contextualization and networking. It sheds light on the complex interplay between entrepreneurs and their contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of localized strategies in the Chinese context. The findings add value to the discourse on entrepreneurship by elucidating the strategic and processual acts through which entrepreneurs engage with stakeholders and reshape their environments.

This paper aims to examine the effect of dividend regulation on cost stickiness (i.e. the asymmetric change in firm expense between sales increase and sales decrease) and explore the underlying mechanism.

Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the Guideline for Dividend Policy of Listed Companies issued by the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) in 2013, the authors employ a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impact of dividend regulation on cost stickiness.

The authors find that the cost stickiness of treatment group firms has decreased significantly when compared with control group firms after the dividend regulation. Moreover, this effect is more pronounced among firms in lower marketization regions, in lower competition industries and those with less analyst coverage and lower cash flow levels. Further analyses show that dividend regulation reduces the cost stickiness of firms by mitigating agency problems. Finally, the conclusion holds after several robust tests, including controlling for firm fixed effect, propensity score matching (PSM), placebo test and reconstruction of expense variable.

This paper confirms that dividend regulation serves an important role in corporate governance, which reduces firms' agency costs and thereby decreases cost stickiness. The conclusions shed light on the dividend policies of listed companies and capital market regulation in the future.