Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects of recent demographic transition and rising labor costs on agricultural production structure and pattern in China during 1998-2012.

The authors, first, theoretically discuss the effects of changing relative input prices due to rising labor cost on producers’ decisions regarding input mix (substitution effect), output level, and product quality (output effect). A logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition method is then applied to empirically identify these effects at aggregated levels, followed by an analysis based on the visualization of land use indicators on changing cropping patterns across Chinese provinces.

The authors find that tightened effective agricultural labor supply and rises in rural labor costs are associated with divergent changes in input mixes and output choices across products. Producers of land-intensive products focusing more on input mix adjustment, while those of labor-intensive products seem to more likely to adjust output choices. Producers’ adaption strategies also varied across Chinese provinces due to natural conditions, leading to shifts and concentrations in the regional distribution of agricultural products, with lower-value bulk products concentrating in the plain areas, whereas higher-value horticulture products increasingly prevailing in sloped areas.

This paper illustrates how adjustments in input mixes and output choice in Chinese agriculture counteracted disadvantages caused by rising labor costs and how such adjustments are product and region specific. Based on these observations, implications regarding further innovations in production technology and institutional arrangements needed within China’s agricultural sector are highlighted in the paper.

This paper therefore aims at systematically estimating the agricultural trade induced farm employment effects in China.

Using detailed agricultural trade and production data during 1994‐2009, the authors estimate the “labor contents” of agricultural trade flows and use these estimates to compute the farm employment effects.

The authors find that China's agricultural trade has indeed generally developed along its widely believed comparative advantages and disadvantages; however, the farm employment “creation” effect due to labor‐intensive exports has actually been dominated by the employment “substitution” effect due to increased land‐intensive imports, thereby mostly resulting in negative net farm employment in the post‐WTO accession era.

Findings from this first systematic attempt to estimate the trade‐induced farm employment effects do not lend support to the popular notion that increased agricultural trade would help increase farm employment and have important implications for evaluating current and future trade policy in China and elsewhere.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question: does a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) lead to an improvement in the security of a member country and greater peace between two member countries in the developing world?

This paper reviews existing literature and uses the idea of non‐economic gains from regional trading agreements to explain how Sri Lanka managed to use FTAs to neutralise India and obtain military assistance from Pakistan using its FTAs with two countries during the recently concluded war.

Even though political objectives were not explicitly outlined in Sri Lanka's two FTAs with its big rival neighbours (India and Pakistan), the FTAs helped Sri Lanka to successfully execute the war against the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) by neutralising India on the one hand and gaining military assistance from Pakistan on the other.

The research approach is basically qualitative. However, there is need to develop a comprehensive theoretical model to capture non‐economics gains from FTAs.

Although there is a growing body of literature on the underlying political and strategic motivations of countries forming regional and bilateral trading arrangements, this paper adds to understanding of what motivates small developing countries to form trade agreements with big neighbours.

In the long-term network operation, the power distribution network will be subjected to the effects of ultra-high voltage, strong electromagnetic interference and harsh natural environment on the power system, which will lead to the occurrence of different faults in the distribution network and directly affect the normal operation of the power grid.

The purpose of this study is to solve the problems of labor intensity, high risk and low efficiency of distribution network manual maintenance operation, this paper proposed a new configuration of the live working robot for distribution network maintenance, the robot is equipped with dual working arms through the mobile platform, which can realize the coordination movement, the autonomous reorganization and replacement of the end tools, respectively, so as the robot power distribution maintenance function such as stripping, trimming, wiring and the operation control problem of the distribution network-robot with small arms and in small operation space can be realized.

To effective elimination or reduce the adverse effects of the internal forces in the closed chain between the working object and manipulator under the typical task of the 10 kV distribution network, this paper has established the robot coordinated control dynamics model in the closed-chain between the dual-working object and proposed the dynamic distribution method of closed-chain internal force and the effectiveness has been proved by simulation experiments and 10 kV field operation.

The force-position hybrid control can realize the mutual compensation of force and position so as to effectively reduce the internal force in the closed chain. Finally, the engineering practicality of the method is verified by field operation experiment, the effective implementation of this control method greatly improves the robot working efficiency and the operation reliability, the promotion and application of the control method have great theoretical and practical value and maintenance management system, so as to achieve automation of electric.

Wheeled mobile robots (WMR) are the most widely used robots. Avoiding obstacles in unstructured environments, especially dynamic obstacles such as pedestrians, is a serious challenge for WMR. This paper aims to present a hybrid obstacle avoidance method that combines an informed-rapidly exploring random tree* algorithm with a three-dimensional (3D)-object detection approach and model prediction controller (MPC) to conduct obstacle perception, collision-free path planning and obstacle avoidance for WMR in unstructured environments.

Given a reference orientation and speed, the hybrid method uses parametric ellipses to represent obstacle expansion boundaries based on the 3D target detection results, and a collision-free reference path is planned. Then, the authors build on a model predictive control for tracking the collision-free reference path by incorporating the distance between the robot and obstacles. The proposed framework is a mapless method for WMR.

The authors present experimental results with a mobile robot for obstacle avoidance in indoor environments crowded with obstacles, such as chairs and pedestrians. The results show that the proposed hybrid obstacle avoidance method can satisfy the application requirements of mobile robots in unstructured environments.

In this study, the parameter ellipse is used to represent the area occupied by the obstacle, which takes the velocity as the parameter. Therefore, the motion direction and position of dynamic obstacles can be considered in the planning stage, which enhances the success rate of obstacle avoidance. In addition, the distance between the obstacle and robot is increased in the MPC optimization function to ensure a safe distance between the robot and the obstacle.

Due to climate change and an increasing concentration of the world’s population in vulnerable areas, how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly is still a universal dilemma.

This paper applies a law and economic approach.

China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risk is in many ways unique. It emphasizes government responsibilities and works well in many respects, especially in disaster emergency relief. Nonetheless, China’s mechanism which has the vestige of a centrally planned economy needs reform.

I propose a catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework which marries the merits of both the market and government to manage catastrophe risks. There are three pillars of the framework: (i) sustaining a strong and capable government; (ii) government enhancement of the market, neither supplanting nor retarding it; (iii) legalizing the relationship between government and market to prevent government from undermining well-functioning market operations. A catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework may provide insights for developing catastrophe insurance in China and other transitional nations.

First, this paper analyzes China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risks and China’s approach which emphasizes government responsibilities will shed light on solving how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly. Second, this paper starts a broader discussion about government stimulation of developing catastrophe insurance and this framework can stimulate attention to solve the universal dilemma.