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The purpose of the study is to evaluate the impact of China's current coal‐to‐liquids (CTL) activities on its coal and oil markets from 2005 to 2025.

A partial equilibrium multi‐equation model of China's oil and coal markets is developed based on data obtained from the existing literature. The impact of CTL technologies on China's oil and coal markets is evaluated using computer simulations by solving the model under scenarios with and without CTL production.

The simulation results show that on average, the planned CTL activities will decrease crude oil prices by 5.73 percent and China's oil imports by 6.09 percent and increase China's domestic oil supply by 9.26 percent over the 20 year period. Also, China's demand for oil will increase by 0.35 percent on average, suggesting that CTL production will slightly stimulate China's demand for oil because of the drop in oil prices. China's demand for coal will also increase by 1.02 percent because of the additional demand for coal created by CTL production. Surprisingly, both coal prices and China's coal supply will decline by 0.51 percent while the demand for coal and coal supply of the rest of the world will be reduced by 1.63 percent and 0.28 percent, respectively.

The paper is the first study on the implication of CTL conversion from an economist's point of view. It applies an economic model to quantify the impacts of such technology on overall energy prices and supplies.

With the analysis of the causes of corruption, this study aims to investigate specific anti-corruption measures that can be implemented to reform the political system and the social climate of China.

This study examines 97 severe corruption cases of high-ranking officials in China, which occurred between 2012 and 2015. As this insinuates that both institutional and social corruption are major problems in China, the analysis delves into multiple facts of corruption, including different types, four primary underlying causes, and suggestions regarding the implementation of three significant governmental shifts that focus on investigation, prevention tactics and legal regulations.

China’s corruption is not only individual-based but also it has developed into institutional corruption and social corruption. Besides human nature and instinct, the causes of corruption can be organised into four categories, namely, social customs, social transitions, institutional designs and institutional operations. For the removed high-ranking officials, the formation of interest chains was an important underlying cause behind their corruption.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature because this study provides a well-rounded approach to a complex issue by highlighting the significance of democracy and the rule of law as ways to regulate human behaviour to combat future corruption.

Lean manufacturing is one of the leading paradigms for fast and proficient manufacturing but its proper implementation is a foremost task due to certain barriers affecting lean and can be handled when utilized with RFID technology. With this aspect in view, the purpose of this paper is to enlighten and present a thorough literature study that can show how RFID-based lean manufacturing is helpful for handling barriers affecting lean manufacturing in light of previous literature available.

In order to achieve this purpose a systematic literature review is conducted to justify the impacts of RFID technology for handling barriers. The aim of this systematic literature review is to initially find the barriers affecting lean implementation and then to explain the properties of RFID-based lean manufacturing which are highly feasible to handle detected barriers.

An interrelation is generated in this study which provides a clear indication that the properties of RFID carry significant effects to handle detected barriers in the operational, managerial and financial regime of manufacturing companies. The detected barriers that affect lean implementation are company’s cultures, top management commitment, poor employee administration, lack of finances, unbalanced inventory control, unstable customer handling and longer lead times. The properties of RFID-based lean manufacturing like operational visibility, inventory control, production control, minimized lead times and the real-time data information (to facilitate top management and employees on shop floor) are extremely helpful to control these barriers.

The originality of this study is the provision of clarity provided to both academicians and practitioners by citing and utilizing previous research studies which undoubtedly indicates positive impacts of RFID on lean implementation.

Paying to view others' answers is a new mode for question and answer (Q&A) platforms. The purpose is to build a model to explore the determinants of the number of listeners and further explore certain meaningful characteristics of the model in the context of different types of questions and answerers.

The authors develop an empirical model and use real panel data to test the hypothesis. Specifically, cues from the answerer and from the question elicit the listener's trust in the answerer (including direct and indirect trust) and perceived value in the question (including intrinsic and extrinsic attributes), respectively.

The authors find that cues from answerers (experience for paid Q&As and popularity for free Q&As) and questions (length, sentence structure, value and number of likes) all have positive effects on the number of listeners. The impact of answerer authentication is more significant than the popularity of free Q&As. Moreover, the length of the question matters only for subjective questions, while sentence structure matters only for objective questions. In addition, the answerer's own attributes and the behavior and feedback of others have greater impacts when the answerer is below average in popularity.

The authors summarize the unique features of the mode of paying to view others' answers in contrast with the traditional mode of paid Q&As. In addition, the authors focus on the characteristics of the question (including the subjectivity and the sentence structure of the question), a topic which has not been studied previously. Our research provides a reference for exploring user behavior patterns. The practical implications for knowledge platforms are also concretely described.

The purpose of this paper is to show how intelligence techniques have been used in information management systems.

The results of a literature review on intelligence decision systems used in enterprise information management are analyzed. The intelligence techniques used in enterprise information management are briefly summarized.

Intelligence techniques are rapidly emerging as new tools in information management systems. Especially, intelligence techniques can be used to utilize the decision process of enterprises information management. These techniques can increase sensitiveness, flexibility and accuracy of information management systems. The hybrid systems that contain two or more intelligence techniques will be more used in the future.

The intelligence decision systems are briefly introduced and then a literature review is given to show how intelligence techniques have been used in information management systems.