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The increase in population in the world has brought an overpopulation in various parts of the world, with those cities where their countries are developing being most affected, mainly because these usually have corrupt governments that make urban planning difficult in an optimal way. The increase in the construction of urban areas generates problems in the environment due to the increase in carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, and the extraction of natural resources. Therefore, governments must promote urban innovation based on compliance with sustainable development that allows for preserving the ecosystem and the population's quality of life. Urban innovation must incorporate technologies that allow sustainable activities to be carried out efficiently and monitor the progress of environmental regulations.

For more than 20 years, genome editing has been one of the numerous technologies developed for the study and manipulation of the genome. However, since the relatively recent appearance of the so-called precision approaches, and especially through the “CRISPR revolution,” the modification of the genome of any living beings on our planet has become possible, despite recent results showing some unexpected and undesirable effects of this technology. The objective of this chapter is to illustrate how a mobilization of the scientific community through the setting-up of an association should allow a responsible and ethical use of these technologies with considerable impacts for our society.

This chapter examines the main methodological issues involved in the comprehension of the cost structure of the airport industry and suggests considerations for future airport cost analyses. Such understanding has become a crucial concern for policy makers, regional planners, and managers in order to deal with optimal market design (e.g., regulation and market configuration) and airport strategies (e.g., pricing, investments, and alliances). An in-depth analysis of the economics of cost functions is presented, together with a description of the relevant multi-output cost economies measures (average incremental costs, scale and scope economies, and cost complementarities). We also discuss the assumptions underlying estimates of total versus variable cost functions and the importance of estimating a sufficiently flexible functional form. Moreover, we provide a critical survey of the international empirical literature on the cost structure of the airport industry, which highlights how econometric estimates strongly depend on the sample choice and the empirical model considered. Indeed, while econometric studies on international samples based on long-run cost function estimates show that long-run scale economies are never exhausted, single country studies mostly estimate variable cost functions and find lower values for scale economies at median sample points that tend to decrease with size. We discuss why we believe that studies based on the estimation of short-run variable cost functions offer more reliable results, given the reasonable assumption of airport overcapitalization in the short run. We conclude our work by noting that underlying policy issues related to planning and regulation, as well as to the optimal market structure of the airport sector, need to take into account the role played by vertical relationships between airports and airlines.

This research investigated the market conditions caused by IPO advertising by examining the impact of IPO advertising, based on the US stock market from 1986 to 2009. The relationship between advertising intensity in the IPO year and the degree of IPO underpricing was examined. It was found that an increase in advertising intensity around an IPO event increases the initial returns. Simultaneously, however, advertising intensity around an IPO event also increases the degree of overvaluation, which raises the question as to whether advertising serves primarily as a mechanism to convey a firm’s true value to investors. The theoretical valuation of IPO and the relation between IPO advertising and the degree of stock overvaluation are discussed. Based on the Peasnell’s (1982) residual-income valuation framework (henceforth RIV), IPO advertising was proved to cause stock price to be more overvalued in the secondary market: a positive relationship was found between advertising and the degree of stock overvaluation relative to its theoretical value. Accordingly, an alternative hypothesis, that advertising inflates the short-run stock price, was proposed. The results of this study are consistent with the view of Purnanandam and Swaminathan (2004), namely that the stock price of newly listed firms can be overvalued.

China has witnessed the emergence and rapid development of private higher education in the past three decades. As private higher education gradually takes on a more significant role in the Chinese educational system, due to the inability of the government to accommodate the growing demand for higher education, educational reform, influenced by the success of private higher education, will inevitably affect the quality and quantity of education overall.

This chapter focuses on several aspects of this development: the growth of private higher education in China, issues of finance and access, its relationship to the national system and to government policy, issues of ownership and the autonomy of private higher education, as well as the advantages and challenges of Chinese private higher education and the larger significance of its emergence in China. This study concludes that with proper management private colleges and universities will benefit from and contribute to Chinese society through multiple roles and responsibilities at their mature stage.

This research estimates a multi-product flexible cost function of airport variable costs. Data for the analysis are a panel of 50 airports from 1996 to 2008. Output includes domestic and international departures, non-aeronautical operating revenues, and the number of transport workload units, where a workload unit is a passenger or the equivalent of a 220 pound packet of cargo. The quasi-fixed factor is the equivalent number of 10,000′ × 150′ runways at an airport. After correcting for first-order serial correlation, the analysis finds that airports operate under constant returns to runway utilization and multi-product decreasing returns to scale, production technology is consistent with product specific returns to capacity utilization and anti-complementarity across outputs, and general airport operations have input substitution possibilities with personnel and contractual repair/maintenance inputs. The study also finds 1.05% technology progress over the sample period, due to strong growth prior to 2001, with similar productivity growth rates for large and medium hubs.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

This chapter reviews the key results obtained in previous studies of airline mergers. It is found that the effect of mergers on airfares is dependent on the network configurations of merging airlines. Fare increases are frequently observed on overlapped routes. However, if the networks of two merging airlines are complementary, the expanded network after the merger leads to cost savings, increase in travel options, and improvement in service quality. Therefore, in a deregulated market, with few entry barriers, relaxing merger regulations is likely to improve welfare. However, most welfare evaluations do not incorporate quality changes or dynamic competition effects. Empirical investigations are primarily ex post analysis of mergers that have already passed antitrust reviews. The relationship between market concentration and welfare might be nonlinear and market specific. Therefore, airline mergers and alliances should be reviewed case by case. Methodological improvements are needed in future studies to control for the effects of complicating factors inherent in ex post evaluations.