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The purpose of this paper is to study convergence and income mobility of China’s rural households.

The data of rural household income per capita are employed to compute the transitional dynamics in the rural sector. The analyses are conducted at two spatial levels, namely, the national and provincial levels. Ergodic distributions are computed to provide a forecast of future income distributions, whereas Mobility Probability Plots are constructed to offer detailed information on the transitional dynamics.

The income distributions are found to have considerable persistence. Another finding is that most of the households (except the extremely low-income households) have a tendency of moving downwards in the income distribution though they are more likely to remain in the same levels of relative income because of their high persistence. Convergence to a unimodal income distribution is possible in the long run, however, the households will converge to a value which is far below China’s per capita gross domestic product.

Since a lot of the rural households would congregate to the lower part of the income distribution if the transitional dynamics remain unchanged, therefore, it calls for government intervention.

More resources should be diverted to the rural sector.

The finding also shows that the provinces have very different transitional dynamics even if they are situated in the same economic zone. Thus, the government should formulate province-specific development polices so as to promote greater equality.

Given that no recent research has been conducted on convergence and transitional dynamics of rural household income. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill the gap in the literature by investigating the pattern and future development of rural household income in China through the use of stochastic kernel approach.

This paper aims to study the transient flow characteristics in a mixed-flow pump during the start-up period.

In this study, numerical calculation of the internal flow field in a mixed-flow pump using the sliding mesh method was carried out. The regulation of the pressure, streamline and the relative speed during the start-up period was analyzed.

The trend of the simulated head is consistent with the experimental results, and the calculated head is around 0.3 m higher than the experimental head when the rotation speed reached the stable stage, indicating that the numerical method for the start-up process simulation of the mixed-flow pump has a high accuracy. At the beginning, the velocity inside the impeller changes little along the radius direction and the flow rate increases slowly during the start-up process. As the rotation speed reached the stable stage, the flow inside the impeller became steady, the vortex reduced and transient effects disappeared gradually.

The study results have significant value for revealing the internal unsteady flow characteristics of the mixed-flow pump and providing the reference for the design optimization of the mixed-flow pump.

This paper aims to explore the influences of leadership and work stress on employee behavior, and the moderating effects of transactional and transformational leadership on the relationship between work stress and employee negative behavior.

Using convenience sampling method, the authors investigated employees from 20 firms in different places and industries, and 347 valid questionnaires were collected. SPSS18.0 statistical analysis software was used for reliability and validity analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesis.

The empirical results show that there is a positive correlation between work stress and employee negative behavior. Transformational leadership has negative impacts on work stress and employee negative behavior, whereas transactional leadership has positive influences. Moreover, transactional leadership strengthens the influence of work stress on employee negative behavior, whereas transformational leadership has no moderating effect.

First, enterprises should take employees’ stress tolerance into account in selection and recruitment, and enhance stress management. Second, by demonstrating inspirational vision and personal charisma, open leadership style, rather than short-term transactional behavior, will motivate subordinates more effectively. Finally, distribution system should be improved to achieve principle and procedural justice.

The paper extends the research on employee behavior by investigating the impacts of leadership and work stress. According to Chinese social, economic and cultural characteristics, this research examines the influence of contemporary Chinese mindset and pluralistic values on employee behavior. Open leadership is proposed as a new leadership style, which contributes to improving leadership behavior and preventing negative behavior in workplace.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) dominated by Chinese enterprises have become increasingly conspicuous and prevalent in recent years. However, many of them were obstructed by foreign governments on the ground of “Threating National Security”. Overseas acquisition is a crucial step of Chinese Government’s “Going-Out” strategy, so analyzing the attribution of its success and failure is very important.

This paper adopts empirical study method to analyze the factors from political and cultural perspectives based on a sample of 327 cross-border M&A transactions made by all listed companies in China from 1997 to 2010.

The result shows higher failure rate for those acquisition targets which could be classified as political sensitive assets; meanwhile, positive diplomatic relations and higher bilateral trust between China and the host country will facilitate the M&A transaction.

This paper offers a new research angle on cross-border M&As, which is the impact of culture factors, as well as diplomatic relationship, bilateral trust and war history between China and the host country on M&A transactions. This paper also constructs several ways of measuring the diplomatic relationship between countries.

Waste management is one of the vital objectives for the EU since it has a substantial effect on the environment. European Commission expects annual waste creation on Earth to increase by 70% by 2050. European Commission also estimates that efficient waste management might boost the EU economy's gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.5% by 2030. Hence, it is essential to conduct research including both efficiency and influencing factors analysis for effective waste management. First, we employ both slack-based measure (SBM) and super-SBM data envelopment analysis approaches to investigate the waste management efficiency of the EU region and distinguish between efficient countries. The countries with small areas such as Luxembourg and Ireland have demonstrated super efficiency. Second, we maintain our empirical research with ordinary least square analysis to explore the determinants of waste management. We also conclude that population density, GDP per capita, and tourism rise the amount of waste generated in the EU region.

Road transport networks might face the most significant transformation in the following decades, mostly due to the anticipated introduction of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). The introduction of connectivity and automation will be realised gradually. There are distinctive levels of automation starting from single-dimension automated functionalities, such as regulating the vehicle’s longitudinal behaviour via Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems. Although the technological readiness level is undeniably far from full vehicle automation, there are already commercially available lower-level automated vehicles. The penetration rate of vehicles equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as ACC or Cooperative-ACC is constantly increasing bringing new driving behaviours into existing infrastructure, especially on motorways. Lately, several experiments have been conducted with platoons of ACC and CACC-equipped vehicles aiming to study the characteristics and properties of the traffic flow composed by them. This chapter aims to gather the most significant efforts on the topic and present the recent status of research and policy. The impact analysis presented within this chapter is multi-dimensional spanning from traffic flow oscillations and string stability, traffic safety to driving behaviour, energy consumption, and policy, all factors where automation has the potential to contribute to a more sustainable transport system. Investigations through analytical approaches and simulation studies are discussed as well, in comparison to empirical insights, attempting to generalise experimental conclusions. At the end of this chapter, the reader should have a clear view of the existing and potential benefits of CAVs but also the existing and future challenges they can bring.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate doctoral candidates’ innovative ability tendency.

This study uses the theory of gray target contribution to analyze the influence degree of doctoral candidates’ individual personality factor toward their innovative ability and calculate gray impact quantitative values.

Based on the theory of contribution degree of gray target, a nine-factor model of innovative personality of doctoral candidates is built. IP=f (B, H, G, Q1, Q2, A, I, F, O), (therein: B – intelligence, H – social boldness, G – perseverance, Q1 – experimental, Q2 – independence, A – gregariousness, I – sensibility, F – excitability, O – anxiety).

This study based on gray target contribution theory builds nine-factor doctoral candidates’ innovative personality model to test the innovative ability tendency of doctoral candidates, which makes cultivating units, mentors and doctoral candidates to know their innovative ability tendency well, perfecting their own knowledge structure in time, effectively improving their innovative ability. The system can also be applied to the work of doctoral candidates as a reference tool to evaluate the innovative ability of applicants.

This study quantitatively evaluates the influence of doctoral candidates’ personality index on the tendency of doctoral candidates’ innovative ability.

Given the rapid growth of the Chinese cruise market, several Chinese cities are attempting to become a hub for cruise ships. The aim of this study is to evaluate the competitiveness of those cities with regard to hosting cruises. It employs a cloud model that transforms the qualitative description of competitive indicators into quantitative measurement and assesses the competitive advantage and specialization of the top homeports in China. Questionnaires are delivered to experts from eight cruise ports in China and the cloud model based on 14 evaluation factors is used to analyze the competitiveness of the ports under investigation. The result shows that the city’s scale, population, and development have been the main factors for assessing the competitiveness of port cities. The research provides insight about the Chinese cruise port cities’ competitiveness, which is particularly useful for future development decision and marketing strategies of ports and prospective destinations.

This study aims to explore the government’s subsidy preference and pricing decisions of a manufacturer who produces traditional and green product simultaneously under different government subsidy policies.

The authors establish a model consisting of a government, a set of heterogeneous consumers and a manufacturer. Three government subsidy policies are investigated without government subsidy (NS), government subsidy to consumer (CS) and government subsidy to the manufacturer (MS).

The results show that the government subsidy can increase both the green product’s demand and the manufacturer’s profit. The subsidy level and government’s utility under the CS policy are equal to those under the MS policy. Furthermore, if the government’s subsidy level is exogenous, there exists a Pareto improvement region when social welfare for unit greenness level is high. That is, if the government’s subsidy level under the CS policy is higher than that under the MS policy, both government and manufacturer prefer the CS policy; otherwise, they prefer the MS policy.

This paper considers the market where there is a monopoly green manufacturer and a government that only provides subsidy policy. In fact, competition from traditional manufacturers and carbon taxes are also worth exploring in future research.

This study provides some suggestions for government subsidy and provides guidance for the manufacturer’s pricing decisions under different government subsidy policies.

This paper is the first to compare government subsidy to consumer with a government subsidy to the manufacturer and investigate the pricing decisions of a manufacturer who produces traditional and green product simultaneously by considering an endogenous subsidy level of government.