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The purpose of this paper is to reveal the distributional characteristics and evolutional patterns in source periodicals, topics, authors, funding, and institutes of research papers in Chinese Agricultural Economics so as to understand the current situations and developmental tendency of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

Using the citation analysis method, this paper analyzed the distributional characteristics and evolution of source periodicals, fields, authors and topics of 2,203 highly cited journal papers from the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and 189 cited journal papers from database of Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in agricultural economics first-authored by Chinese scholars from 2006 to 2015.

First, over the past decade, agricultural economics research in China has seen a rapid development. Specially, 103 scholars and 42 institutes have played key roles in the development, and 12 Chinese periodicals and 3 international journals have been the most influential outlets. Second, the coverage of the topics in Chinese agricultural economics research is broad and has expanded over the past decade. The rural land issue has been the most popular topic, while the issues regarding rural institutional arrangements and industrialization in rural areas have been explored extensively. However, issues in other fields, such as agricultural markets and trade, rural labor, food safety, etc. have to be further studied. Third, the improvements of economic theory and quantitative analytic techniques, the supports from research funding, and an increase in the collaboration between Chinese scholars and those from other countries have made great contribution to the rapid development of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

This paper is an original work that identifies the most influential journal papers including highly cited journal papers from CNKI and cited journal papers from SSCI, using citation frequency and standard Essential Science Indicators method. This is a contribution relative to the methods used by previous studies, which did not account for frequency of citation of a paper. Moreover, this study is based on data from two databases, CNKI and SSCI, suggesting that the coverage of sample papers is broader compared to those of previous studies.

Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter argues that while institutional allies are heavily constrained and unlikely to give open endorsement to grassroot activists, some institutional activists indirectly facilitate movement mobilization and favorable outcomes in the process of advancing their own political agendas. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2012, I illustrate this argument by examining the Anti-PX Movement – a landmark grassroots environmental movement against a chemical plant – in Xiamen, China. I find that the environmental institutional actors were constrained and divided, yet some still fostered opportunities for movement mobilization and in turn exploited the opportunity created by the protesters to pursue their policy interests, thus facilitating positive movement outcomes. As long as the claims are not politically subversive to the authoritarian rule, this type of tacit and tactical interaction between institutional activists within the state and grassroot activists on the street is conducive to promoting progressive policy changes.

This study aims to investigate whether firms engage in earnings management behavior that attempts to manipulate Credit Rating Agency (CRA) perceptions during the Watchlist process and, if so, whether earnings management behavior appears to influence CRAs’ decisions.

To measure earnings management activities, this paper computes accrual-based and real earnings management measures in the year or in the quarter immediately before the Watchlist resolutions for all negative and positive Watchlist firms. To examine the association between the levels of earnings management and Watchlist resolutions, a logit model is applied to the data obtained from a sample of Watchlist firms.

Some evidence suggests that managers in Watchlist firms manage earnings in attempts to gain favorable Watchlist treatment. The findings are consistent with the Graham et al.’s (2005) survey evidence, which shows that one of the primary reasons for earnings management is to gain (or preserve) a desirable rating. In addition, CRAs appear to be misled by these attempts during the negative Watchlist process period.

The findings support SEC’s (2011, 2013a, 2013b) rules to reduce its reliance on credit ratings and the recent regulation reforms concerning the competition in the rating industry [the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act (2006)], and concerning conflicts of interest of CRAs among others [Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)].

While many studies examine whether managers use discretionary accruals as a tool to manage earnings to obtain favorable ratings, those studies do not consider manipulation of real operating activities to manage earnings and CRA perceptions.