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The purpose of this paper is to investigate market power in the Chinese pork supply chain. The authors aim to explain why a steady rise in prices is observed in the sector, apart from existing evidence on incomplete/asymmetric cost pass-through and concerns of growing concentration and consolidation in the sector.

This study uses a new empirical industrial organization model for both oligopoly and oligopsony power to measure the degree of market power exerted on consumers and hog farmers simultaneously.

By examining annual panel data across provinces in China, the authors find that both oligopoly and oligopsony powers exist in the pork supply chain. In particular, the authors determine that a higher degree of market power is found to influence prices paid to hog farmers than prices paid by pork consumers. Estimates of key elasticities in the Chinese pork supply chain are also updated based on the structural model estimation and the latest data.

Due to the lack of data at a more granular level of geography, the authors are only able to estimate market power by three major economic regions.

The findings provide useful information for future policy analyses of Chinese food markets. First, the pork-packing industry should be of great concern in terms of market power and its influence on consumers’ and farmers’ welfare. It is essential to take into consideration market power in the pork supply chain before making any public policy regarding the pork market. Furthermore, following economic theory and experience from developed countries, large meat packers will eventually vertically control hog farmers given their stronger oligopsony power over the upstream. Vertical integration may be the next important issue in terms of food market competition. Finally, the results may also draw the government’s attention to investigating market competition in all major food markets.

The empirical evidence draws attention to the issue of food market competition in one of the largest and most important meat-packing markets in China. The authors hope to encourage further discussions on pork and hog market regulations and related public policies.

This study investigates the extent to which a firm’s centrality and autonomy in its supply network are associated with the intensity and complexity of its competitive actions.

Utilizing social network analysis and dynamic panel data models, this study analyzes a comprehensive panel dataset with 10,802 firm-year observations across various industries between 2011 and 2018 to test the hypotheses.

Our findings show that a firm’s level of centrality in its supply network has an inverted U-shaped relationship with both competitive intensity and competitive complexity. In addition, the turning points of these two inverted U-shaped relationships differ in that firms with a lower level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching more actions within fewer categories, while firms with a higher level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching fewer actions that cover a larger range of categories. Finally, we find that a firm’s structural autonomy has a positive relationship with competitive complexity.

This study bridges the gap between the supply chain management literature and strategic management literature and investigates how supply networks shape competitive aggressiveness. In particular, this research investigates how a firm’s structural position in its supply network affects its competitive actions, an important intermediate mechanism for competitive advantage that has been overlooked in the supply chain management literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify medical service quality factors that patients care about and establish a medical service quality evaluation index system by analyzing online reviews of medical and healthcare service platforms in combination with a questionnaire survey.

This study adopts a combination of review mining and questionnaire surveys. The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was used to mine hospital reviews on the medical and healthcare service platform to obtain the medical service quality factors that patients pay attention to, and then the questionnaire was administered to obtain the relative importance of these factors to patients' perception of service quality. Finally, the index system was established.

The medical service quality factors patients care about include medical skills and ethics, registration service, operation effect, consulting communication, drug therapy, diagnosis process and medical equipment.

The identification of medical service quality factors provides a reference for medical institutions to improve their medical service quality.

This study uses online review mining to obtain medical service quality factors from the perspective of patients, which is different from previous methods of obtaining factors from relevant literature or expert judgments; then, based on the mining results, a medical service quality evaluation index system is established by using questionnaire data.

Ti6Al4V is a widely used metal for biomedical application due to its excellent corrosion resistance, biocompatibility and mechanical strength. However, a coupling reaction of friction and corrosion is the critical reason for the failure of implants during the long-term service in human body, shortening the life expectancy and clinical efficacy of prosthesis. Hence, this study aims to find a feasible approach to modify the service performances of Ti6Al4V.

Selective laser melting (SLM), as one of the emerging metal-based additive manufacturing (AM) technologies is capable for fabricating patient-specific personalized customization of artificial prosthesis joints, owing to its high adaptability for complex structures. This study is concerned with the tribocorrosion behavior of SLM fabricated Ti6Al4V substrate enhanced by laser rescanning and graphene oxide (GO) mixing. The tribocorrosion tests were performed on a ball-on-plate configuration under the medium of simulated body fluid (SBF). Moreover, the surface morphologies, microstructures, microhardness and contact angle tests were used to further reveal the in-situ strengthening mechanism of GO/Ti6Al4V nanocomposites.

The results suggest that the strengthening method of GO mixing and laser rescanning shows its capability to enhance the wear resistance of Ti6Al4V by improving surface morphologies and promoting the generation of hard phases. The wear volume of R-GO/Ti6Al4V is 5.1 × 10⁻² mm³, which is 25.0% lower than that of pure SLM-produced Ti6Al4V. Moreover, a wear-accelerated corrosion of the Ti6Al4V occurs in SBF medium, leading to a drop in the open circuit potential (OCP), but R-GO/Ti6Al4V has the lowest tendency to corrosion. Compared to that of pure Ti6Al4V, the microhardness and contact angle of R-GO/Ti6Al4V were increased by 32.89% and 32.60%, respectively.

Previous investigations related to SLM of Ti6Al4V have focused on improving its density, friction and mechanical performances by process optimization or mixing reinforcement phase. The authors innovatively found that the combination of laser rescanning and GO mixing can synergistically enhance the tribocorrosion properties of titanium alloy, which is a feasible way to prolong the service lives of medical implants.

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.

This study contributes to the understanding of the health effects of pesticides exposure and of how pesticides have been and should be regulated.

This study presents literature reviews for the period 2000–2013 on (i) the health effects of pesticides and on (ii) preference valuation of health risks related to pesticides, as well as a discussion of the role of benefit-cost analysis applied to pesticide regulatory measures.

This study indicates that the health literature has focused on individuals with direct exposure to pesticides, i.e. farmers, while the literature on preference valuation has focused on those with indirect exposure, i.e. consumers. The discussion highlights the need to clarify the rationale for regulating pesticides, the role of risk perceptions in benefit-cost analysis, and the importance of inter-disciplinary research in this area.

This study relates findings of different disciplines (health, economics, public policy) regarding pesticides, and identifies gaps for future research.

The purpose of this study is to find the influence of brand experience on brand equity with the mediation of hedonic emotions, utilitarian emotions and brand personality among the smartphone users in Pakistan.

The survey based on empirical method was used to administrate the questionnaire. The data were collected from a millennial generation in Sargodha city. Skewness, Kurtosis’s, correlation and regression techniques were used to analyze data.

The finding of this study shows that the hedonic emotions, utilitarian emotions and brand personality mediate the relation between brand experience and brand equity. The study will help brand managers and academia in understanding the hedonic and utilitarian emotional pattern, and the congruence between the personality and smartphone brand users and behavior pattern of young users.

Research support the argument that promoting emotional aspects is significant for the sustainability of brand equity of the smart-phone brands. Segments other than young consumers would be more interesting to study.

This paper provides implications for smart phone marketers on smart phone consumption behavior. Marketing managers must link products attributes to the personality of the user and promote them that will emotionally attach users to the product.

This paper presents key findings on smart phone buying experience using utilitarian value approach followed by hedonic consumption approach and found to be significant predicators.

The development of tourism around Wolong Nature Reserve changes the local communities' ways of life. This study discusses how ecotourism affects the households' use of their capitals, the livelihood strategies as well as illustrates the impact on the habitats in the reserve through Department for International Development’s (DFID) Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with data collected during fieldwork.

The study focuses on (1) Calculating Livelihood Capital Index. (2) The effects of livelihood capitals on livelihood strategy were calculated by multinomial logistic regression.

The study has yielded the following results: (1) In general, tourism promotes people's livelihood capitals. The growth in different types of households under tourism settings is ranked as full-time tourism operators > part-time tourism operators > traditional living households. (2) Tourism development mainly shifts livelihood strategies in two ways. Firstly, travel operating replaces some traditional practices that make livings; secondly, increased needs for potherbs and herbs from tourists let households enter into the hills to pick the plants more actively, which intensifies the destruction of giant panda's habitats. (3) Nine types of livelihood capitals indicators, namely farmland quality, distance between house and roads, number of laborers, average housing area, average income per person, whether family members being village cadres, and ever having received skills training shape livelihood strategies in different levels.

Three discussions are drawn from the study: (1) Enhancing the exploit for tourism resources to form a diversified competition. (2) Introducing herb growing to fulfill tourists' needs and improve people's livelihood in the meantime. (3) Optimizing the tourism surveillance and management system and improving the rules and regulations.