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The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the geographic market size of businesses and the competitiveness of being able to bid at low prices.

The design of this study is based on a natural experiment approach. Firstly, after controlling for the firm size and other factors, the author sees that firms participating in bidding in a large region are more competitive to bid at lower prices than firms doing business in a smaller region. The author then tests for causality in a natural experiment of the exogenous event.

The results show that firms participating in the bidding process in a large area are more competitive to bid at lower prices than firms doing business in a small area. This is tested in a natural experiment, and the result is that they are more competitive because they do business in a larger area.

The practical implication is that, when aiming for competitiveness, it is most important to consider the nature of the business and to see the essence of the business, for example, that networks are important in the construction industry, and that doing business over a wide area is the way to become competitive.

The social implications are that to make firms more competitive, we must look at the characteristics of the industry and come up with policies that fit the reality, such as encouraging them to do business in a wide area.

The originality of this study is that this study viewed competitiveness as being able to bid low prices for public procurement and found that doing business in a wide area is competitive. Furthermore, the causal effect of the study was to test the fact that doing business in a wide area does not mean doing business in a wide area because it is competitive, but that doing business in a wide area creates a competitive advantage.

Sustainable/Green building materials (SBMs/GBMs) offer a wide range of benefits which cut across the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The incorporation of these materials in construction projects in most developing countries is still low owing to some factors. This study assessed the major barriers to the incorporation of SBMs in the delivery of construction projects in developing countries, with Nigeria as a case in point.

The well-structured quantitative questionnaire was used to gather data from the key players in the construction industry, using the snowball sampling method and electronic means of questionnaire administration. Frequencies, percentile, relative importance index, Kruskal–Wallis H test, Kendall's coefficient of concordance and exploratory factor analysis were used to analyse the gathered data.

The study revealed that the major constructs of barriers to SBM adoption in construction projects are: (1) resistance and information barriers (Eigenvalues = 5.237; % of V = 23.806), (2) regulation and funding of R&D (Eigenvalues = 2.741; % of V = 12.457), (3) cost and market barriers (Eigenvalues = 2.223; % of V = 10.105), (4) government incentive and suppliers' availability (Eigenvalues = 1.728; % of V = 7.852) and (5) GB experts and labour barriers (Eigenvalues = 1.307; % of V = 5.942).

This study assessed the view of construction experts in the five states of the south-eastern geo-political zone of Nigeria, particularly as regards the barriers to the incorporation of sustainable building materials in construction projects in the region.

Western economics came into being with the rise of the capitalist market economy. It had a nature of duality beginning from its birth: the justificativeness of providing theoretical pillars for the capitalist market economy system and the scientificity of revealing the internal relations and operating rules of the capitalist market economy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

However, after the 1830s, this justificativeness gradually evolved into vulgarity. Since the 1930s, modern western mainstream economics has mainly explored the general market economy on the assumption that the capitalist system remains unchanged, and many outcomes of such research are positive and beneficial.

Political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, at the present stage, is mainly a Chinese socialist market economics. It is guided by the Marxist political economy and rooted in the great practice of China’s reform and opening up and socialist modernization.

According to political complexion, western economic theories can be divided into political economic theory, mainstream economic theory and basic economic theory. By subjecting these theories to what we term “elimination,” “transformation” and “transplantation” surgeries, respectively, we can absorb and accommodate their beneficial elements in building a political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which in turn is conducive to the development and prosperity of such an economy.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

This study focused on investigation of the critical challenges the general contractors are facing in executing green building (GB) projects in Vietnam.

The study conducted a literature review and three in-depth interviews to define 31 potential challenges hindering success of GB projects. Data was collected from 163 respondents through the questionnaire survey and was analyzed by the mean ranking technique, EFA and PLS-SEM.

The result found general contractors in Vietnam are facing the four components of challenges, namely “Planning activities-related challenges”, “Organizational activities-related challenges”, “Onsite management and control activities-related challenges” and “Green supply chain-related challenges”; and all of them have statistically significant effects on success of GB projects in Vietnam. Furthermore, the most dominant component was related to the non-readiness of external GB supply chain.

The findings suggest for practical measures to enhance success of GB projects in Vietnam, including (1) completing the system of legal regulations and technical codes, standards, guidelines on GB, (2) providing incentive policies to promote the R&D activities on GB and (3) providing educational programs to improve the awareness and capacity on GB in domestic construction organizations, especially medium and small subcontractors.

This study seeks to gain a better understanding on critical challenges hindering success of green building projects under the view point of general contractors with reference to the context of Vietnam – a developing economy. This study is the first study to identify potential challenges and evaluate the impact of the key components of challenges on success of GB projects.

Services trade has registered a dynamic evolution in almost all developing countries. Despite the rising share in world services trade by developing countries, the gap between developed and developing countries in service exports have been widening. Developed economies have become service exporters, while developing economies are found to be more receptive towards service imports. This paper attempts to gain some insight into the actual nature and extent of exports of services from developing countries, and examines their emergence as significant players of services trade as well as the underlying factors and broader implications. One of the conclusions of this paper is that developing countries successfully export a variety of services to both developed and developing countries, whereas a relatively limited number of developing countries seem to be heavily involved in services exports trade across a range of sectors. This, alternatively, indicates that services exports, on a large international level, are associated with higher levels of development and that not all developing countries are yet in a position to be large-scale exporters.

The paper aims to explore the impact of marketization on forestry economic growth. Firstly, the development process of forestry marketization was summarized. Secondly, from the three dimensions of forestry production factor marketization, production marketization and product marketization, the framework of marketization is constructed by the authors.

Based on the yearbook data from 1978 to 2016, the relationship between forestry marketization and forestry growth was demonstrated through multiple regression and Granger test in this paper.

The results showed that forestry marketization was one of the important driving factors that impacted on China's forestry economic growth. Since the reform and opening up, China's forestry marketization degree has been constantly strengthened, but there is still room for improvement. China has provided an important model as forestry marketization reform and development sample for the world.

Many useful references and inspirations have been provided from China such as gradually promoting market-oriented reforms; paying attention to the important role of reform and opening up in the construction of market mechanism; dynamic coordination of market and government relations; developing and connecting the relationship between domestic and international market; and coordinating the development of forestry state-owned economy, private economy and mixed ownership economy.

This paper creates a measure index of forestry marketization from three dimensions of forestry production factor marketization, production marketization and product marketization.

In the past 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s economic studies have been constantly centered on major issues such as national modernization, social economic development and the establishment, reform and improvement of socialist economic system. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

It has experienced a process of transition from the establishment of traditional Soviet’s paradigm of political economics to that of modern economics, during which drastic changes have been observed in various aspects of China’s economics, including research content, scope and methods.

Based on that, a discipline system of economics in line with international economics has been initially established. Currently, under the guidance of Marxism, scholars in China’s economics actively draw on the beneficial knowledge system and analytical methods from modern economics, emancipate their minds, seek truth from facts and constantly fortify confidence in the socialist path, theory, system and culture, continuously enhance the discourse power of China’s economics in global economic governance system, so as to push forward to the building of a theoretical system of socialist economics with Chinese Characteristics in the new era.

Economics is a discipline that studies resource allocation and human’s behavior of making a choice based on rationality. Emerged in the industrial revolution and developed in the exploration of a large-scale socialized mode of production and resource allocation system, this discipline has gradually become a broadly explanatory force in social sciences which profoundly affects the economic decision-making behaviors of the government and various economic entities.

The core of the micro–macro paradigm of mainstream Western economics is the assumption that a rational economic man with complete freedom of economic behaviors living in a fully competitive, free-market economy pursues maximum personal benefits. The purpose of this paper is to show the reasons for failure of mainstream Western economics explaining the “mystery of China’s economic growth” and the necessity of understanding the mystery from the paradigm of realm economics.

The system of socialism with Chinese characteristics led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the local governments that play a crucial role in the reform and opening-up has the realm attribute. It is necessary to develop a new paradigm for realm economic analysis and promote the creation of new economic globalization and international political and economic order.

According to the fourth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, “Since the New China was founded 70 years ago, our Party has led our people to create the rarely-seen miracle of rapid economic development and miracle of long-term social stability”. The authors find that it is effective and necessary to explain the miracle of China’s economic growth from the paradigm of realm economics.

As proven by practice, the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the governance system of China are guided by Marxism, rooted in China with a deep Chinese cultural foundation, and sincerely supported by the people.

For a public project leader charged with a construction project, it can be crucial to meet the budget, while maximizing the qualities within a construction project. A method to achieve this is to use the “opposite design build” procurement method, in which the price is fixed and the contractors compete on adding a wide range of qualities to the project. However, such procurement approaches are rare, and it is difficult to find models on how to implement such an approach.

This study firstly looks at the literature on design-build, quality-only as the main selection criterion and to some degree on constructors’ bidding behaviour. Secondly, it explains a model for a design-build, quality-only procurement designed within the public tendering legislations. Thirdly, it investigates the outcome of the model applied to a specific case in Norway.

There seems to be a research gap within literature and cases on design-build, quality-only selection with a fixed price. The developed model allowed for negotiations, which led to more comparable and improved bids. In the investigated case, and the client was able to implement more qualities in the project than expected within the budget.

The researcher was himself partly involved in the process as an advisor.

The developed method is relatively simple and might readily be applied by any client to maximise a project’s qualities within a given fixed price.

The long-term value should be to widen the range of useful procurement methods.