Search results

In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the performance of the Chinese construction industry seems to be more successful, especially in total factor productivity growth (TFPG) and its contribution (TFPGC). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate and reveal the potential successful lessons in this regard.

This study is conducted innovatively based on a special comparative analysis of TFPG and TFPGC between pre- and post-2008 financial crisis. Solow Residual Approach is used to measure TFPG and TFPGC for the period 2002–2016. Given that the crisis hit China at the end of 2008, the pre-2008 financial crisis period is from 2002 to 2008, and the post-2008 financial crisis period is limited to 2009–2016.

The results indicate that the industry indeed has better performance in promoting TFPG and TFPGC, TFP thus achieved significant accumulative growth before and after the crisis. However, from an evolutionary perspective, both TFPG and TFPGC presented an overall downward trend from before the crisis to after the crisis. Further, the game between the centrally planned economy and the market-oriented economy was identified and revealed as the essential reason behind the evolution of TFPG and TFPGC.

Some valuable lessons for policies and practices in promoting TFPG and TFPGC were summarized and learned from the Chinese experience, such as reducing administrative intervention and making the construction market play a decisive role.

This study provides some new empirical evidence to enrich the overall body of knowledge on growth theory, especially in promoting TFPG and TFPGC.

Since China's accession of the World Trade Organization (WTO), its construction industry has attained unprecedented growth. However, for the sources of this enormous growth, a controversy regarding the total factor productivity growth (TFPG) still remains in production practice and extant studies. In view of this, the purpose of this paper is to measure TFPG and to explore its sources in the industry post-WTO accession.

This study presents an innovative source analysis of TFPG. Stochastic frontier approach is adopted to measure TFPG and to explore its sources by decomposing TFPG into technical progress (TP), technical efficiency change (TEC), allocative efficiency change (AEC) and scale efficiency change (SEC). Although China joined WTO in 2001, to provide an effective baseline, the study period is from 2000 to 2017.

The empirical results reveal that TFPG presented an overall downward evolutionary trend, but it still maintained a high growth post-WTO accession. From the perspective of decomposition, TP was the main source of TFPG. Furthermore, as a neglected source, interaction effects among TP, TEC, AEC and SEC have been demonstrated to have a significant influence on the cumulative TFPG.

To make the results be reliable, the authors discuss the empirical findings mainly by revealing the reasons behind the evolutions of TFPG and its sources. Based on these revealed reasons, government and policy makers can further refine and summarize some more detailed and targeted policy implications to improve TFPG.

By providing many empirical evidences to solve the aforesaid TFPG controversy, this paper, therefore, enriches the body of knowledge on growth theories, especially at the level of industrial economics.

In any time and space and under any circumstance, we find peasants are never passive actors in their livelihoods and rural development. Instead, they always create space for manoeuvre in order to make changes. This chapter analyses the innovative actions taken by the majority of rural inhabitants in rural areas during the overwhelming modernization process, so as to affirm that peasants are the main actors of rural development. It is they who have shaped the transformation of rural societies and the history. Through the analysis, this chapter concludes that rural development is not an objective, a blueprint nor a design. It is not the to-be-developed rear field in modernization. It is not the babysitter for cities, nor a rehearsal place for bureaucrats to testify their random thoughts. Rural development is what peasants do. The path they have chosen reveals scenery so different from modernization. If we regard development as a social change, or a cross with influential meanings, we could understand rural development as peasants’ victories over their predicament. Villages accommodate not only peasants, but without peasants villages would surely vanish. In this sense, the most important part in rural development or rural change is peasants – their conditions and their feelings.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of knowledge management (KM) enablers on KM processes in research universities and testing the direct relation between KM processes and OP. This study also proposes to examine the mediating role of intellectual capital (IC) and innovation in the relationship between KM processes and performance of universities.

Using a sample of 217 academic and administrative personnel from research universities of Pakistan, the hypothesized relationships were tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results reveal that KM enablers have a significant impact on KM processes. The results also indicate that KM processes influence organizational performance (OP) directly and indirectly through innovation and IC.

Findings of this study reinforce the corporate experience of KM and suggest how administrators of research universities and higher educational institutions can promote innovation and IC, which in turn enhance OP.

Despite the augmented importance of KM in higher education institutions or research universities, there is a dearth of studies that investigate the interplay of KM, innovation, IC and OP. This is one of the earliest studies that not only empirically investigate the interaction of KM enablers, KM processes and performance of research universities but also shed insights into the existing literature by simultaneously investigating mediating role of IC and innovation in the underlying relationship.

This paper aims to examine the influence of different self-presentation strategies (cultural, personal and informational posts) and interactivity on luxury brands’ social media advertising.

Three pre-tests and a main experiment collected responses from 459 Chinese participants in total.

Cultural posts significantly influenced brand attitudes, interest and purchase intention, and the effects were mediated by perceived reinforcement of the brand’s social media account. Informational posts added to perceived informativeness of the brand’s social media account, but were more likely to trigger a perception that the brand was conservative and distancing itself from consumers. Interactivity increased perceived closeness and reduced perceived inactiveness and conservativeness of the brand’s social media account and subsequently improved brand attitudes. Perception of brand’s social media accountfully mediated the effects of self-presentation strategies and interactivity on brand attitudes, interest and purchase intention.

Self-presentation transfers desirable brand associations to luxury brands, reinforces brand image, and subsequently influences responses to luxury brands. Interactivity largely influences relational perceptions and brand attitudes.

Curating content about brand heritage and culture creates a social media self-presentation that is effective and influential on consumers. Brand and product information satisfies informational needs. Interactivity maintains customer relationship.

A theoretical model of luxury brands’ advertising was generated from the findings.

The purpose of this study is uncovering the connotative and symbolic meaning of “luxury-lite brands” [轻奢].

Applying mixed methods, this study conducted two studies: (1) a semiotic analysis of a focus group discussion and 10 interviews on luxury-lite brands and (2) a content analysis of 248 Weiblog posts from 10 luxury-lite brands in a two-month period.

Study 1 showed that luxury-lite brands are interpreted as foreign brands that serve people's needs for social presence, and symbolize youthfulness, tastefulness, and aspirations. Other descriptors of luxury-lite brands included unique design, and less than the best quality offered by luxury brand. Study 2 suggested brands are missing out on a wide range of stories that resonate with their core segments in their social media advertising.

Based on the definition of luxury-lite brands in the context of China proposed by the researchers, we recommend that managers broaden topics of stories, make more effort to create desirable symbolic brand meaning, and use social media to excite these young crowds.

Luxury-lite brands have been a cultural sign in the Chinese market projected to grow into an over 90 billion USD business by 2025. Therefore, an insightful understanding of the masstige market of China is a must for any Western masstige brand to be successful and competitive.

From a more general point of view the initiatives and novel practices of farmers represent ‘seeds of transition’. They are the ‘sprouts’ out of which new socio-technical modes for organizing production and marketing emerge – ‘sprouts’ that, taken together can be described under the term ‘rural development’. The examples are, on the whole, well-known; they include agro-ecological production, on-farm processing, agro-tourism, new credit associations and cooperative forms of commercialization. But it remains important to develop a more sociological interpretation of these new forms: since they are produced by social actors and are constantly redefined and modified through the relations and interactions implied by these new forms. This chapter defines the outline on actors and practices that will be discussed in later chapters of the book.

Understanding farmers’ preferences for crop insurance attributes is crucial in designing better insurance products and guiding government policies but such research is lacking, particularly in developing countries. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study uses a survey featuring a discrete choice experiment and policy simulation.

Overall, crop insurance has positive values to farmers, although preference is heterogeneous based on socioeconomic characteristics and risk position. Policy simulation confirms the roles of liability in strengthening insurance participants’ welfare and premium subsidy in encouraging participation. Introducing one more product into the market can accommodate farmers’ diverse needs and lead to increases in both aggregated social welfare and participation while maintaining the current level of government expense in subsidy – a potential Pareto improvement.

Methodology employed is not the most novel in the choice experiment literature as many of the advances in choice experiment design could not be applied due to the actual condition in rural China and Chinese farmers’ capability in understanding the experiment.

The results indicate that the current single-product market structure using “low liability with high premium subsidies” cannot accommodate the diverse needs among farmers. Providing more varieties of liability-subsidy combinations, e.g. a high liability with low premium subsidy insurance product, can substantially improve participants’ welfare with little impact to the probability of participation.

The authors believe that this is one of the very few studies that that analyze farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay for the attributes of crop insurance products. It also shows how crop insurance product design can build upon farmers’ choices to achieve a potential Pareto improvement in aggregated social welfare in the context of a fast-developing crop insurance market.

Previous research has little specific guidance on how to improve large infrastructures’ risk analysis. This paper aims to propose a practical risk analysis framework across the project lifecycle with Bayesian Networks (BNs).

The framework includes three phases. In the qualitative phase, primary risks were identified by literature reviews and interviews; questionnaires were used to determine key risks at each project stage and causal relationships between stage-related risks. In the quantitation, brainstorming and questionnaires, and techniques of ranked nodes/paths, risk map and Bayesian truth serum were adopted. Then, a BN-based risk assessment model was developed, and risk analysis was conducted with AgenaRisk software.

Twenty key risks across the lifecycle were determined: some risks were recurring and different risks emerged at various stages with the construction and feasibility most risky. Results showed that previous stages’ risks significantly amplified subsequent stages’ risks. Based on the causality of stage-related risks, a qualitative model was easily constructed. Ranked nodes/paths facilitated the quantification by requiring less statistical knowledge and fewer parameters than traditional BNs. As articulated by a case, this model yielded very simple and easy-to-understand representations of risks and risk propagation pathways.

Rare research has developed a BN risk assessment model from the perspective of project stages. A structured model, a propagation network among individual risks, stage-related risks, and the final adverse consequence, has been designed. This research provides practitioners with a realistic risk assessment approach and further understanding of dynamic and stage-related risks throughout large infrastructures’ lifecycle. The framework can be modified and used in other real-world risk analysis where risks are complex and develop in stages.

This paper aims to discuss whether the attention of investors to abnormalities can serve as a mechanism for the influence of online media coverage on earnings management.

Based on Baidu index data of China’s A-share listed companies between 2014 and 2018, this paper studies influencing mechanism of online media reports on earnings management from the perspective on abnormal investor attention.

The results show that internet media reports can impose pressure on managers of companies by inducing abnormal focus of the public on listed companies and further force the latter to generate more actions on the management of earnings. It is the abnormal rather than normal investor attention that mediates network media reports and earnings management.

This research enriches and refines the theory on influencing mechanism of media effects on earnings management and provides significant empirical evidence for future researches. Meanwhile, the conclusion of the research is of great practical importance for instructing listed firms dealing with media reports, guiding rational investment of investors and intensifying precision regulation of regulators.

By categorizing abnormal investor attention into active spontaneous abnormal attention which is not guided by media report and passive guided abnormal attention which is guided by media reports, the authors clarify the difference between the two categories. The result indicates that it is only the latter that is the influential mechanism of media report on earnings management.