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This paper aims to investigate whether the cyclicality of local real estate prices affects the systematic risk of local firms using a geography-based measure of land availability as a quasi-exogenous proxy for real estate price cyclicality.

This paper uses the geography-based land availability measure as a proxy for the procyclicality of real estate prices and the location of a firm’s headquarters as a proxy for the location of its real estate assets. Four-factor asset pricing model (market, size, value and momentum factors) is used to examine whether firms headquartered in more land-constrained metropolitan statistical areas have higher systematic risks.

The results show that real estate prices are more procyclical in areas with lower land availability and firms headquartered in these areas have higher systematic risk. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher real estate holdings as a ratio of their tangible assets. Moreover, there are no abnormal returns to trading strategies based on land availability, consistent with stock market betas reflecting this local real estate factor.

This paper contributes to the literature on local asset pricing factors, the collateral role of firms’ real estate holdings and the co-movement of security prices of geographically close firms.

This paper has important managerial implications by showing that, when firms decide on the location of their buildings (e.g. headquarters building, manufacturing plant and retail outlet), the location’s influence on systematic risk should be part of the decision-making process.

This paper is among the first to use a geography-based measure of land availability to study whether the procyclicality of local real estate prices influences firm risk independent of the procyclicality of the local economy. Thus, both the portfolio formed and firm-level analyses provide a more direct evidence of the positive relation between the procyclicality of local real estate prices and firm risk.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the salient effects of apparel evaluativ1e cues in order to enrich our understanding of consumer preferences and behaviour in two different socio-cultural contexts – Canada from the west and China of the east.

Online and paper questionnaires were used to collect data from Canada and China. Based on the prior research, 14 hypotheses were developed, and SPSS statistical analyses were used for this study.

According to the findings, Canadian and Chinese participants used price as an indicator of product quality and/or monetary sacrifice. Overall, the consumers from both countries were more concerned about the garment fit and style than brand name and country of origin. It is imperative for fashion practitioners to prioritise their resources and focus more on product research/design and prototype development. Fit, comfort and fabric were strongly correlated except in the “fit and comfort” of the Canadian sample. In addition, durability, ease of care and wardrobe coordination play a relatively less significant clothing evaluative role than many other product cues.

There are relatively few research studies have focussed on apparel consumer behaviour, and the salient impact of product-evaluative cues – particularly from a cross-national perspective. This study covers a wide array of important evaluative cues, and provides meaningful insights to both fashion academicians and practitioners. This is one of the few studies provide an in-depth and comprehensive report on the role and effects of apparel product cues.

While the classic futures pricing tool works well for capital markets that are less affected by sentiment, it needs further modification in China's case as retail investors constitute a large portion of the Chinese stock market participants. Their expectations of the rate of return are prone to emotional swings. This paper, therefore, explores the role of investor sentiment in explaining futures basis changes via the channel of implied discount rates.

Using Chinese equity market data from 2010 to 2019, the authors augment the cost-of-carry model for pricing stock index futures by incorporating the investor sentiment factor. This design allows us to estimate the basis in a better way that reflects the relationship between the underlying index price and its futures price.

The authors find strong evidence that the measure of Chinese investor sentiment drives the abnormal fluctuations in the basis of China's stock index futures. Moreover, this driving force turns out to be much less prominent for large-cap stocks, liquid contracting frequencies, regulatory loosening periods and mature markets, further verifying the sentiment argument for basis mispricing.

This study contributes to the literature by relying on investor sentiment measures to explain the persistent discount anomaly of index futures basis in China. This finding is of great importance for Chinese investors with the intention to implement arbitrage, hedging and speculation strategies.

This paper aims to investigate whether single-name options trading prior to earnings announcements is more informative when there exist real activity manipulations.

Using 5,419 earnings announcements during 2004–2018 made by 208 public US companies with relatively high options volumes ranked by the CBOE, the authors uncover two regularities using predictive regressions for stock return.

First, the total options volume up to twenty days pre-announcement is significantly higher than that in other periods only for earnings management firms; moreover, after detailing options characteristics, the authors find these intensive pre-announcement trading to be concentrated in transactions of in-the-money call and long-term maturity put options. Second, an increase in the single-name call minus put options volume can positively predict the underlying stock’s next-day excess return much better in real earnings management firms, with a larger magnitude of effect in periods right before regular earnings announcement dates.

This paper makes a marginal and novel contribution by showing that real earnings management can serve as a proxy for the potential profit from informed trading in options as the return predictability of options volume becomes stronger for firms that have the manipulation motive and indeed perform manipulative actions.

This paper aims to investigate the dynamics of repurchase-based earnings management vis-à-vis other real activities manipulations during the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

This paper adopts a Probit model to regress alternate real earnings management (REM) methods on a dummy variable indicating whether a firm falls in the crisis event window or not, during our 15-year sample period. This paper also detects switches made by suspected firms from repurchasing to other REM tools such as reducing discretionary expenditures.

This paper provides solid evidence indicating that firms suspected of earnings management have the tendency to decrease accretive share repurchases after the onset of the crisis. Conversely, the above pattern is neither observed in non-suspect firms nor over non-crisis periods. A further investigation documents that firms that switch REM during crisis can be characterized by less cash holding, smaller size, more severe liquidity shortage and/or tighter financial constraint.

This paper contributes to the literature on understanding the respective and interactive implications of both share repurchases and global financial crisis on firms’ REM activities.

Relatively little research explicitly considers how a firm’s channel decisions affect consumer tradeoffs between the cognitive costs of online search and the physical costs of visiting a retail store. This study aims to argue that opening a new retail store affects both cognitive and physical search costs, but that the magnitude of these effects depends on the location of the consumer relative to the new store. In addition, individual differences in consumers’ cognitive costs that should moderate these effects.

This study takes the opening of multiple retailer stores on the same day as the nature experiment. Combining with data from other sources, this study tests the hypotheses using conditional logit for the correction of incidental problem in the traditional fix-effect logit model. Endogeneity issue is tested with the control function approach.

This study finds that opening a new store leads to a 136% increase in the odds of online visiting by consumers who live in the broader metropolitan area of the new store, while it leads to a 43% decrease in the odds of online visiting by consumers who live in the nearby shopping region. However, the effect of store entry on increasing website search is weaker for consumers who are more loyal, and the effect of store entry on decreasing website search is weaker for consumers who are more efficient in searching online.

This study adds to prior research by identifying when, and for which consumers, opening a physical store has complimentary versus substitutive effects on online search behavior.

In order to verify the feasibility of different techniques, this chapter further studies the adaptability of two massive straw biomass applications in rural areas in China.

The methods of assessing biomass power generation project with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), survey and field test of one biogas station, and game-theoretic analysis are adopted.

The following conclusions can be drawn: The air pollution costs account for more than 60% of the total environmental cost, followed by depreciation expense and maintenance fee of 18%, compared to that of biomass power generation at 0.01711 CNY/kWh. The adopted greenhouse sunlight technology of Solar Biogas Plant in Xuzhou, China, raises the inside average temperature by 11.0 °C higher than outside and keeps the pool temperature above 16 °C in winter, ensuring a gas productivity of biogas project in winter up to 0.5–0.7 m³/m³ by volume. This chapter also analyzes the information cost incurred by asymmetric information in biomass power generation via game theory method and illustrates the information structure with game results. It provides not only a foundation for the policy research in promoting straw power generation but also theoretical framework to solve the problem of straw collection.

These studies will propose solutions to relevant problems arisen in the running process.

These studies are all based on real cases, field research, and appropriate theoretical analyses, so, they can reduce the relevant costs and promote the application of relevant technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of different amounts of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) introduced during the resin synthesis on the properties of bark‐phenol‐formaldehyde (BPF) adhesives aims at achieving a balance between storage life and other properties of BPF adhesives.

Based on the best synthetic technologies for the production of BPF adhesives obtained in a previous study, a new synthetic technology is developed for the production of BPF adhesives that involve a three‐step addition of NaOH using different amounts of NaOH in the third charge. Gel permeation chromatography is used to evaluate properties of the phenol‐formaldehyde (PF) and BPF adhesives.

The amount of NaOH in the third charge has an important influence on many BPF adhesive properties. The paper determines that the synthetic technology involving three‐step NaOH additions with only water introduced in the third charge of NaOH produces a BPF adhesive with the longest storage life and best bonding strength.

BPF adhesives are very complex systems with many unknown variables.

The improved storage life of the BPF adhesive prepared with the new synthetic technology is comparable to that of a commercial PF adhesive, which indicates that this new technology shows greater potential for commercial applications.

A new synthetic technology is developed to produce a BPF adhesive that is more comparable to commercial PF adhesives than other BPF adhesives in terms of storage life and other resin properties.

Gear transmissions are widely utilized in practice. This paper aims to uncouple the crack feature from the cracked time-varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) and investigate the effects of the crack on the nonlinear dynamics of a spur gear pair.

An approximate method to simulate the cracked TVMS is proposed by using an amplitude modulation function. The ratio of mesh stiffness loss is introduced to estimate the TVMS with different crack depths and angles. The dynamic responses are obtained by solving a torsional model which takes the non-loaded static transmission error, the backlash and the cracked TVMS into account. By using the bifurcation diagram, the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE) and dynamic mesh force, the influences of crack on nonlinear behaviors are examined. The dynamic characteristics are identified from the phase diagram, Poincaré map, dynamic mesh force, time series and FFT spectra.

The comparison between the healthy and cracked gear pairs indicates that the crack affects the system motions, such as the obvious changes of impact force and unpredictable instability. Besides, the additive and difference combination frequencies can be found in periodic-1 and -2 motions, but they are covered in periodic-3 and chaotic motions. Deeper crack is an important determinant of the nonlinear behaviors at a higher speed.

The research provides an interesting perspective on cracked TVMS and reveals the connection between crack and nonlinear behaviors of the gear pairs.

The purpose of this paper is to study the positioning points of successful retail enterprises in China, and to try to conclude the general law for selecting the positioning points.

By analyzing the evaluation data of countrywide samples and the impact factors of customer satisfaction, the authors select some successful retail enterprises in China to be the study samples. On the base of that, the performance concerning positioning points of the samples are discussed.

The paper reaches five valuable conclusions: first, successful retail enterprises have definite positioning points; second, successful retail enterprises commonly have a main positioning point and a second best positioning point; third, successful retail enterprises could choose commodity, service, price or shopping environment as their positioning point; fourth, retail enterprises in the same retail format could have different positioning points; fifth, the non‐positioning points of successful retail enterprises are usually above the industry average level, while those of retail enterprises in successful tendency could hardly reach the industry average level.

The limitation of samples (only large‐scale supermarkets) might still make the practical applications on other retail formats limited. Meanwhile, the criteria for identifying the successful enterprises in this paper are mainly customer satisfaction and loyalty, without considering the financial performance.

The conclusions in this paper have great significance for Chinese retail enterprises to establish a unique competitive advantage.

The conclusion concerning positioning points of this paper might be the first to answer the key issues in Chinese retail enterprises' positioning strategies.