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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the non-linear threshold effects between trade openness and female labours to participate in the labour markets.

The authors consider data for nine Asian countries from 1990 to 2016 period and perform the panel threshold regression method.

Empirical results indicate that the threshold value is occurred. With the increase of trade openess, the female labour force participation rate shows a trend of rising first and then declining. Furthermore, exports also have an asymmetric threshold effect on female labour force participation, which is partly in accordance with the discrimination model (Becker, 1957). On the other hand, imports dependency will hinder female labour force participation regardless of a threshold effect. The authors obtain similar results when the authors consider the female employment rate as substitution.

Specifically, increased trade openness may contribute positively or negatively towards overall female labour force participation rate (FLFPR), attributed to the relative importance of these opposing effects. Thus, when the cost reduction effect, resulting from intensified competitive pressure and comparative advantages would enhance the participation rate, the technology channel operates in the opposite direction. Therefore, from the perspective of female employment, trade openness is not the more the better.

This study innovatively discusses the non-linear correlation between trade openness and FLFPR and distinguishes the different contributions from exports and imports. The advanced threshold regression model assumes the existence of threshold value from trade to female employment. Thereby, targeted policies for the government should be applied to promote active female in the labour market.

This is a special issue of Chinese Management Studies and this study aims to engage with debates on innovation in China and to provide new insights for innovation research in the context of China, seeking to develop a greater understanding of the concept of “innovation with Chinese characteristics”.

This study reviews the Chinese innovation management literature in general and the selected papers in this special issue in particular and proposes two new directions for future research.

The nine papers that constitute this special issue present research on important aspects of innovation in China, ranging from the effectiveness of government subsidisation for innovation, the impact of fiscal decentralisation on innovation, the role of management behaviour in promoting (or discouraging) innovation and the effects of differing business models on innovation. These papers shed valuable new light on the theory and practice of innovation in China. The papers are discussed in the context of four primary arguments about innovation management in China identified from the broader literature in the field. These relate to the pattern of China’s innovation performance over time, the reasons for its effectiveness, the role of alliances and influences of indigenous factors. It is also shown that management of the internationalisation of innovation and of efficient internal innovation are two important directions for future research on Chinese innovation in an era of de-globalisation.

The studies presented here provide valuable contributions to theory building in innovation research, as well as some important ideas for directions of future research on innovation in China in the new era of de-globalisation.

In an integrated circuit (IC) substrate, more fillers, including talcum powder and aluminium hydroxide, are added, which leads to much higher rigidity and hardness compared with a traditional printed circuit board. However, the micro drilling of IC substrates is harder. This paper aims to test the drilling process of IC substrates to improve the drilling process and the micro hole quality.

Substrate drilling by a micro drill with 0.11-mm diameter was used under several drilling conditions. The influence of drilling conditions on the drilling process was observed. Drilling forces, drill wear and micro hole quality were also studied.

The deformation circle around holes, hole location accuracy, bugle hole and burrs were the major defects of micro holes that were observed during the drilling of the substrate. Reducing the drilling force and drill wear was the effective way to improve hole quality.

The technology and manufacturing of IC substrates has been little investigated. Research data on drilling IC substrates is lacking. The micro hole quality directly affects the reliability of IC substrates. Thus, improving the drilling technology of IC substrates is very important.

This is a survey paper of the recent literature on the application of semiparametric–econometric advances to testing for functional form of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The EKC postulates that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth (typically measured by income) and pollution; that is, as economic growth expands, pollution increases up to a maximum and then starts declining after a threshold level of income. This hypothesized relationship is simple to visualize but has eluded many empirical investigations. A typical application of the EKC uses panel data models, which allows for heterogeneity, serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, data pooling, and smooth coefficients. This vast literature is reviewed in the context of semiparametric model specification tests. Additionally, recent developments in semiparametric econometrics, such as Bayesian methods, generalized time-varying coefficient models, and nonstationary panels are discussed as fruitful areas of future research. The cited literature is fairly complete and should prove useful to applied researchers at large.

The purpose of this investigation was to synthesize a doped polyaniline‐containing coating and investigate the anti‐corrosion properties of the coating on Mg‐Li alloy.

The doped polyaniline pigments were prepared by two different methods using ammonium persulphate as oxidant and hydrochloric acid, phosphoric acid, p‐toluene sulfonic acid and sulfosalicylic acid as doping agents. The doped polyaniline was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) analysis, X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The coatings consisted of polyaniline, epoxy resin and other additives that were formed on Mg‐Li alloy. The anti‐corrosion properties of the polyaniline‐containing coating on the Mg‐Li alloy were investigated in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution using open circuit potential logging and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

The results of the electrochemical tests indicated that the polyaniline‐containing coatings showed better anti‐corrosion properties, as compared to conventional epoxy coatings on Mg‐Li alloy when exposed in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The coating containing 2 wt.% polyaniline (relative to the mass of epoxy resin) doped with hydrochloric acid had the best anti‐corrosion properties on the Mg‐Li alloy.

Previous reports on the anti‐corrosion properties of polyaniline‐containing coatings focused mainly on the surface of iron, steel, aluminum and magnesium, and there have been few studies on the anti‐corrosion properties as protective coatings for Mg‐Li alloy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether fiscal decentralization has impacts on city innovation level and to examine the moderating effects of the preference for government innovation in China.

Using a panel data of China’s 278 cities from 2003 to 2016, the authors first use fixed-effect model and quantile regression to analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on city innovation level and the variations of impacts conditional on different innovation levels, followed by a mediating effect model to test the moderating effects of the preference for government innovation and its temporal and spatial heterogeneity.

The paper finds that fiscal decentralization significantly inhibited city innovation, and with the improvement of city innovation level, the inhibition demonstrated characteristics of “V” type variation. When the degree of fiscal decentralization is between 0.377 and 0.600, the inhibition of fiscal decentralization on city innovation level is the weakest. We further show that fiscal decentralization also inhibits the government's preference for innovation, reduces the proportion of fiscal expenditure on innovation and has a negative impact on city innovation. In addition, the influence of fiscal decentralization on city innovation present clear heterogeneity in space and in time. On one hand, the inhibition of fiscal decentralization on city innovation level in eastern China is significantly weaker than that in central and Western China; on the other hand, after the implementation of China’s innovation-driven development strategy in 2013, the negative impact of fiscal decentralization on city innovation disappeared.

The research findings have certain policy implications. That is, in the process of decentralization reform, on the one hand, the central government should strengthen the supervision over the fiscal expenditure of local governments and ensure that the central government can play a leading role in the local development strategy, on the other hand, the central government should guard against the distortion of fiscal decentralization on local governments' fiscal expenditure behavior. In addition, the central government should also focus on the heterogeneity of the impacts of fiscal decentralization on cities under different strategic backgrounds and different levels of innovation.

This paper extends prior research by bringing the decentralization system reform into the study of city innovation system and analyzing its mechanism and its temporal and spatial heterogeneity.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of policies and practices of innovation in China for the past 40 years.

This is a review paper. It adopts a different multi-dimensional, qualitative methodology to examine China’s trajectory of innovation from the economic reform since 1978, highlighting “China” experiences in the developing innovation-driven economy, also pointing the challenges that China faces in this transition process and future prospects. The analysis of China’s innovation performance was based mostly on secondary data from sources and institutions that use statistical data to build country rankings, such as the global innovation index and global competitiveness index.

It is found that the institutional foundations of the national innovation system in China are already being laid, and so far, China has made extraordinary progress regarding innovation performance from country to region and from business to individual. However, some critical challenges in its innovation-driven development still need urgent attention and effective efforts to reinforce them.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing an overview of the evolution of the policies and practices of innovation development in China since the 1978 economic reforms and explores the Chinese experiences in transforming into an innovation-driven economy.

This study develops a framework to examine how, why and when different traits of employee curiosity affect service creativity by considering the roles of knowledge sharing and task autonomy.

To reduce common method bias, this work separated the variables investigated into three parts, each of which was randomly used to collect data at three different periods. A total of 822 matched questionnaires obtained from frontline employees of service firms provided useable data for hypothesis tests. A moderated mediation approach was employed to analyse the data.

Results are as follows: (1) Deprivation sensitivity, joyous exploration and social curiosity have positive effects on knowledge collecting (KC) and knowledge donating (KD). (2) KD mediates the relationships between the three curiosity traits and service creativity. (3) Task autonomy enhances and suppresses the mediating effects of KC and KD, respectively, on the curiosity–service creativity relationship.

This study has two main research implications: First, as different types (traits) of employee curiosity have different effects on service creativity, a single-dimensional view of employee curiosity may mask the differences of individual dimension and lead to a oversimplified conclusion. Second, lifting the vein from employee curiosity to service creativity has to consider the roles of knowledge sharing and task autonomy.

This research is the first to contribute to the service innovation literature by revealing the underlying mechanisms through which different types of employee curiosity affect service creativity and uncovering the moderating roles of task autonomy in the process mechanisms.

The study aims to explore the composition and microstructure of clay functionally graded materials under the process of double-gradient direct ink writing (DIW).

The investigation focused specifically on the pore characteristics of barite-kaolin clay composite after three-dimensional (3D) printing and sintering as well as its bionic application in geophysical model.

The model with pore and material variations brought about spatial and nonlinear mechanical properties. Moreover, the vertical gradient and connected pores in the upper kaolin part simulated the natural phenomenon of the landslide model (take Chinese Majiagou landslides as an example). Both the thermal debinding behavior and the kaolin powder particles characteristics [large pore volume (0.019 cm³g^–1) and pore size (29.20 nm)] were attributed to the interconnection channels.

Hence, the macroscopic and microscopic pores achieved by dual-gradient DIW process make it possible to control the permeability and details of properties, precisely in the geological model.