Operating efficiency in Chinese universities: An extended two-stage network DEA approach

The result shows that it accepts the null hypothesis. Namely, there is no significant difference in the operating efficiency of universities in different regions. That is to say, although the efficiency of the central and western universities is slightly better than that of the eastern universities in terms of the average efficiency, there is no significant efficiency difference among the eastern, central, and western regions statistically. Therefore, it shows a balanced development trend for the efficiency of universities in different regions.     

Should Cookie Monster adopt a healthy lifestyle or continue to indulge? Insights into brand icons

Developing a brand icon has been a way for marketers to humanize and forge relationships with consumers. Icon development takes time. During this time, marketers have to face how much they stay true and consistent with their icons and how much they allow their icons to adapt to cultural changes in the marketplace. Little is known about how consumers respond to changing icons, and even less is known about whether there may be certain consumer groups that are more or less receptive to such changes. Four experiments and qualitative interviews were undertaken to gain insights into these issues. People who have a low need to belong were most impacted by changes in the icon, with effects most evident among consumers with a fearful attachment style. Feelings of rejection were found to amplify these effects. These findings have implications both for theory and practice.     

《般若波罗密多心经》汉译英初探随笔

将《般若波罗蜜多心经》翻译成英文，旨在让西方人正确了解佛教的同时，了解中国文化。这部经典自唐朝玄奘法师从西域带回翻译成汉文并在中国世代流传以来，成为佛教弟子及善男信女日夜吟诵的佛经。《般若波罗蜜多心经》集合了《大般若经》的精华，蕴含着深刻的佛教思想，佛法核心。佛教的因果观。空性。菩提心，善念，修行，般若智慧一一体现在言简又深的《般若波罗蜜多。经》当中。     

印尼火山岩地区中国岩土技术应用

自2011年至今,笔者所在公司在印尼爪哇岛先后进行了多个工程的岩土技术工作,很全面成功地应用到我国岩土勘察、设计、监理、咨询、监测、检测及测试、桩基施工等多个的岩土专业规范。利用中国规范的全面、先进、安全、可靠、经济、合理,很好地解决了当地项目上的岩土问题。本文就爪哇岛地处火山岩地区拟建一条5000T/D水泥线所遇到的岩土问题、方法对策和取得的成果进行浅述,对后来者有所借鉴。     

The global faces of China’s incomplete reforms: a perspective from China’s new intellectual property regime

ABSTRACT

The paper probes into an antithetical aspect of China’s economic reforms in the global context by focusing on the recent developments of China’s intellectual property regime. By analyzing this cutting-edge legal system, it highlights China’s political divergence against its economic convergence in its decade-long reforms, in particular, its state-oriented innovation system as against the world’s neo-liberal economic order. The last decade witnessed China’s preeminent transformation from a passive follower to a proactive advocator of IP standards. However, certain entrenched limits characterizing China’s state-oriented economy and cultural systems such as information blockade and coercive technology transfer serve as catalysts that are apt to provoke acrimonious confrontation between China and major economies. In this sense, China’s incomplete reforms have taken on a new form: as China’s influence on the global economy grows, conflicts of diverse national priorities become more palpable than simple-minded economic cooperation.     

Gender and herding

This study uses a unique dataset from a large anonymous brokerage firm to examine the herding behavior of Chinese individual investors. The empirical evidence reveals that females are more inclined to follow the behavior of ‘same-sex’ investors. Market conditions and stock characteristics affect females and males similarly in that individual investors herd more intensively in the bull market, on stocks with better liquidity and larger market capitalization. We find female investors generally yield lower returns than males when they herd intensively, and this finding is more pronounced during a bull-market period. Outcomes from individual-level herding measurements suggest that portfolio turnover drives the difference in herding between genders.     

Corporates' strategic responses to economic policy uncertainty in China

Using a novel news‐based index of economic policy uncertainty, this paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate strategic positioning and corporate risk in China from 2009 to 2015. The study also investigates the impact of corporate strategic positioning on corporate risk. The results show that corporate strategic positioning and economic policy uncertainty have a significant positive impact on corporate risk. The results also explain that economic policy uncertainty increases the market risk of the firms irrespective of their corporate strategy. However, it increases the business risk of prospector firms and decreases the business risk of defensive firms. The study may help the firms to formulate and improve their strategic positioning while considering economic policy uncertainty. Our results are robust to alternate proxies of economic policy uncertainty and corporate risk.     

The international market selection of Chinese SMEs: How institutional influence overrides psychic distance

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the ongoing debate about whether psychic distance still plays a vital role in the internationalisation of SMEs from emerging markets. Drawing on the prior research which suggests the salient impact of institutional factors on internationalisation, we investigate the role of home country institutions in international market selection. Adopting a multi-case methodology, we collected semi-structured interview data from six small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in China. Our findings suggest that while psychic distance is still important in some circumstances, both formal institutions, such as government support, and informal institutions, such as business and political guanxi, enable Chinese SMEs to choose psychically distant markets. Our findings also indicate that informal institutions interact with formal institutions to further influence SMEs’ international market selection. This research contributes to SME internationalisation studies by revealing how formal and informal institutional factors override psychic distance in influencing international market selection.     

Measuring destocking performance of the Chinese real estate industry: A DEA-Malmquist approach

This paper aims to measure the evolution of destocking performance of the Chinese Real Estate Industry based on a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)-Malmquist approach, which is seldom used in this industry in existing literature. In 2016, the Chinese government introduced a unified national destocking policy to reduce real estate inventory to save the downturn in the real estate market, but the effect was less than expected and led to soaring house prices in first-tier cities. By analysing the destocking performance over the period from 2005 to 2015, we find the following: (1) It is impossible to use a unified policy to effectively address the national destocking issue because of the difference of DMUs' destocking efficiency, input redundancy and total factor productivity score changes. (2) With the current destocking performance and investment status, the government is still ignoring the existing commercial real estate problems. (3) The redundancy of firm assets and staff indicates that zombie firms may exist and risk future unemployment in the real estate industry. (4) Despite the recently repeated government interventions in this industry, destocking performance remains falling since 2008, and problems in other regions is more severe than in central cities. (5) The financial crisis triggered by the US subprime mortgage crisis has had a great impact on China's real estate industry. The destocking performance dropped sharply in 2008, forcing the Chinese government to introduce policies to stimulate the real estate market. Policy recommendations are also put forward based on the findings.     

Does gender matter? The association between gender and the use of management control systems and performance measures

Literature shows that female (male) managers are more likely to adopt a transformational (transactional) leadership style, as well as make greater (lesser) use of information for decision-making. We draw on this research to investigate whether gender is related to a manager's use of management control systems (MCS) and performance measures. We surveyed the head of school of all schools across all Australian public universities. Our results indicate that females use MCS in an interactive manner to a greater extent than their male counterparts and make greater use of non-financial performance measures. We conclude with contributions to theory and practice.