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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how auditors’ pricing decisions are affected by their clients’ offshore trading activities, which are comprehensively measured through a textual analysis technique.

The authors identified a sample of 32,264 firm-year observations from publicly listed firms in the US during 2004 to 2015. The authors then used multivariate regressions to examine the effect of offshore trading activities on audit fees. In the regression models, the authors also control for a series of factors that are documented to influence audit pricing.

The authors find that offshore trading activities are positively associated with audit fees, suggesting that offshore activities are likely to increase a client firm’s business risk and/or the extent of client complexity. The authors also find that auditors charge higher audit fees only to firms purchasing inputs produced by their own assets overseas but not to firms buying inputs produced by local firms overseas. Moreover, the association between offshore trading activities and audit fees is more pronounced for offshore activities that are in countries with high trading centrality, for Big 4 auditors, or for auditors with industry expertise.

This paper extends the literature on the consequences of offshore activities by providing evidence on how auditors react to offshore activities. Moreover, it contributes to the audit fee literature. Prior studies largely focus on client-level determinants, while this study complements this line of literature by identifying firm’s offshore activities as an important risk indicator, which is perceived by auditors in their pricing decisions. A firm’s offshore activity is unique because the risk implication of the offshore activities depends not only on factors within the firm, but also on factors outside the firm in foreign nations.

Unlike traditional industries, the e-cigarette is an epoch-making innovative product originating in China and occupying an absolute competitive advantage in the international market. The traditional A-U model describes the laws and characteristics of technological innovation in developed countries. In contrast, the inverse A-U model depicts the process of “secondary innovation” in late-developing countries through digestion and absorption. This paper aims to find out that if the e-cigarette, as a “first innovation” industry in a late-developing country, conform to the A-U model or conform to the “inverse A-U model”.

This paper takes the patent data of e-cigarettes from 2004 to 2021 as the research object, and uses Python’s Jieba segment words to divide product innovation and process innovation, and then uses statistical analysis methods to conduct empirical analyses on these data.

Thus, an improved A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry is proposed. In this model, product innovation in the e-cigarette industry appeared earlier than process innovation, but the synchronous development of product and process innovation is not lagging. The improved A-U model in the e-cigarette industry is not only different from the traditional A-U model but also does not conform to the inverse A-U model.

It is conducive to expanding and clarifying the theoretical contribution and applicable boundaries of the A-U model and has sparked thinking and exploration of the A-U model in e-cigarettes and emerging industries.

On this basis, suggestions on the development path and countermeasures of the e-cigarette industry are put forward.

Based on the e-cigarette industry, this paper takes patents as the research object and provides the method of dividing product innovation and process innovation, and proposes an A-U model suitable for the e-cigarette industry on this basis. By comparing the traditional A-U model with the inverse A-U model in latecomer countries, the background and causes of e-cigarette A-U model heterogeneity are analyzed from different stages and overall morphology. Based on this, the heterogeneity characteristics of e-cigarette innovation are summarized and sorted out.

This study aims to investigate the influence of three key categories of perceived entrepreneurial obstacles (perceived loss of financial resources, perceived loss of customer demand and perceived loss of social support) on entrepreneurial behavior tendency through fear of failure and negative emotion to shed light on why Chinese entrepreneurship has fallen into a decline from the individual level.

A sample of 256 Chinese makers who were achieving their innovative ideas in makerspaces was used to test the research model. Then, the structural equation modeling was adopted for data analysis.

The results indicate that fear of failure is the strongest psychological barrier to entrepreneurial behavior tendency and the strongest trigger for negative emotion; both negative emotion and fear of failure are affected by entrepreneurial obstacles of perceived loss of financial resources and perceived loss of social support. However, perceived loss of customer demand is not the inducement for both fear of failure and negative emotion.

This study adopts stressor-strain-outcome framework in studying entrepreneurship to help understand what prevent potential entrepreneurs from stepping into entrepreneurship. In addition, this study offers a new insight into entrepreneurship by emphasizing the decisive impact of inhibitive factors on personal entrepreneurship.

The stability characteristics of an oil film directly influence the safety and service life of mill oil-film bearings. However, very limited work has been done to address the stability characteristics of mill oil-film bearings. To this end, this paper aims to investigate the stability characteristics of mill oil-film bearings through theoretical and experimental analysis.

For the first time, a special designed experiment platform was developed to investigate the stability characteristics of mill oil-film bearings. In addition, a theoretical model of lubricating film of the tested bearings was established to analyze the oil-film stability. The theoretical results were compared with the experimental results.

The comparison results demonstrate that the critical influential factors on the bearing stability were the eccentricity ratio and the ratio of bearing length to diameter. The mill bearing was likely to be unstable under a small load and at a high rotational speed.

The paper includes implications for suitable operation conditions in practical use of mill oil-film bearings.

This paper fulfills an identified need to investigate oil-film stability of mill bearings for practical applications.

This study aims to explore the extent to which Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) rely on supranational institution – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – versus host country institutional quality to navigate their foreign location choice.

This study uses a conditional logit regression model using a sample of 1,302 greenfield investments by Chinese MNEs in 54 BRI participating countries during the period 2011–2018.

The results indicate that as a supranational institution, the BRI serves as a substitution mechanism to address the deficiencies in institutional quality in BRI participating countries, thereby attracting Chinese MNEs to invest in those countries. In addition, the BRI’s substitution effect on host country institutional quality is more pronounced for large MNEs, MNEs in the manufacturing industry and MNEs in inland regions.

This study expands the understanding of the BRI as a supranational institution for MNEs from emerging markets and reveals its substitution effect on the host country institutional quality. Furthermore, it highlights that MNEs with diverse characteristics gain varying degrees of benefits from the BRI.

To solve the problem of oil film thinning when hydrostatic thrust bearings are overloaded or rotating at high speed, the dynamic pressure formed by tiny oil wedges is used to compensate, and the optimum height of oil wedges is determined by the compensation rate to improve the bearing capacity of hydrostatic thrust bearings.

This research method is aimed at the new type of double rectangular cavity static bearing with microbevel surface of q1-205. The wedge parameters of oil film were defined. The oil film lubrication performance of the bearing with the wedge parameters of 0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08 and 0.10 mm was simulated by the finite volume method, the comprehensive influence law of the wedge-shaped parameters on the vorticity and flow rate of the oil cavity pressure fluid was revealed. Finally, the oil cavity pressure changes of oil films with different wedge parameters under certain load and speed were tested by design experiments, and the theoretical analysis and simulation were verified.

This study found that the oil film wedge shape can well compensate the static pressure loss caused by the high-speed or heavy-duty operation of the bearing, but the dynamic pressure effect of the wedge shape does not always increase with the increase of the wedge height. The oil film exhibits superior lubrication performance in the range of 0.06–0.08 mm.

The original hydrostatic oil pad was designed as a microinclined plane, and the dynamic pressure caused by the microwedge of the oil pad was used to compensate the static pressure loss of the bearing. The lubrication performance of the oil film under the condition of varying viscosity was obtained by using the simulation method.

The purpose of this paper mainly is to examine the relevant rules concerning documentary letter of credit (L/C) fraud under criminal law in England and China.

The paper analyses the regulations about such crime and relevant literature.

The similarities and differences of such rules have been identified briefly. L/C fraud is considered a conduct crime; and unspecific or vague provisions concerning this crime may cause difficulties of application in judicial practice in both England and China. But the possible punishment for L/C fraud criminals under Chinese criminal law seems more severe than that under English law. Dealing with L/C fraud in international trade under national criminal laws is not effective. Regional and international efforts on legal assistance in cross-border criminal cases still remain to be improved.

The limitation is that it examines merely relevant substantial rules in legislation. This opens the paths to future research on the approach towards L/C fraud demonstrated in court cases in England and in China.

The research underlies the need to take serious attitude and make more effective efforts towards cross-border criminal cases, although different countries may have different rules concerning specific economic crimes.

This paper fills the gap of a comparative study on how L/C is regulated under criminal law regime in England and China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine, in a systematic manner, possible preventive measures that commercial parties can take in order to prevent or reduce documentary letter of credit (L/C) fraud in international transactions.

In the context of international transactions, considering documentary L/C fraud as a risk, the paper searched preventive measures that different parties involved can adopt, from both business perspective and legal perspective.

The paper provides a number of specific measures which buyers, sellers, and banks in international L/C transactions can take in business to reduce L/C fraud. The option of banks providing additional services of checking further the validity or authenticity of some documents under the L/C, by charging additional prices, has reflected the needs of some business parties. However, this is proposed to be optional rather than compulsory for banks. The lawyers can also play an important role by adopting preventive legal mentality to help and provide advice to different parties in applying the preventive and proactive approach. More importantly, the author recommends that buyers or sellers maintain close cooperation with their banks and lawyers in implementing preventive and proactive measures.

The paper can be a helpful source of advice for business enterprises likely to be involved in international documentary L/C transactions.

This paper fulfils the gap of a holistic study on how to prevent international documentary letter of credit fraud.

The papers in this issue make a significant original contribution which will result in the better understanding of Chinese corporate finance management challenges from both theoretical and practical perspective. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The papers of this issue have a wide range of coverage related to corporate finance, such as CSR disclosure, organizational structure, earnings management, ownership structure, media impact, corporate accidents, and institution background. Those papers selected are all based on empirical researches with the original designs of their modeling, by the real and fundamental data from the latest Chinese market and enterprises.

The author believes that such in-depth analysis and discussion will enhance the understanding for both researches and practitioners on the behavior of managing corporate finance in China. Those findings will contribute to the establishment of Chinese management theories and to the building of a wide range of Chinese management practices.

Although the angle of each paper varies, they are all trying to have a deep analysis which may unveil the behavior of corporate finance decision. Some of such behaviors will be beneficial to the long-term sustainable growth of the company, while others, though, may have the negative impact on the corporate value creation.