State ownership and the structuring of lease arrangements

The existing literature provides extensive evidence that firms intentionally structured lease arrangements to achieve off-balance-sheet accounting treatment prior to ASU 842 (FASB, 2016) and IFRS 16 (IASB, 2016). However, this study finds the opposite for Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs): compared to non-SOEs, SOEs in China have a higher tendency to use finance leases rather than operating leases. This result remains significant after we control for the possibility that Chinese capital providers are discriminatively extending credit to SOEs in the form of finance leases. We explain SOEs' preference for finance leases by their executives' empire building incentives. Such incentives are created by the executives' hunger for compensation, promotion and subsidies, which are determined by the government. Consistently, we find that SOEs' engagement in finance leases increases with their incentives to expand the firms' size. And indeed, SOE executives obtain more compensation and subsidies by growing their firms with finance leases. Finally, we find that SOEs with higher borrowing costs structure more finance lease arrangements. Such structuring further increases SOEs' financial leverage and, to some extent, decreases their corporate value. Taken together, these results suggest that the benefit of the ASU 842 (or IFRS 16), which aims to bring leased assets onto the balance sheet, may be impaired in situations where executives have strong incentives to build empires.     

基于AD9361的掌上型LTE RRU设计与开发

当前小体积远端射频单元（Remote Radio Unit,RRU）主要是皮站级别的Pico-RRU，其重量和体积仍然难以满足掌上型的要求。为此，采用高集成度的AD9361芯片来实现长期演进（Long Term Evolution，LTE）宽带收发信机功能，配合时钟同步模块、放大器模块和控制接口电路等一起构建低成本的掌上型RRU。主要解决了基于AD9516的时钟同步、低相位噪声设计和高灵敏度接收机设计三个技术难点，成功实现了掌上型、高性能、低成本的设计目标。整个RRU样机尺寸为18 cm×10 cm×2 cm，质量约500 g，量产成本千元以内。测试表明，该RRU下行误差向量幅度（Error Vector Magnitude，EVM）小于3%，优于3GPP要求的8%；10 MHz带宽时上行接收机灵敏度优于3GPP要求的-93.5 dBm。     

高质量发展视角下区域创新能力的提升路径 ——以南京市江宁区为例

我国经济已由高速增长阶段转变为高质量发展阶段,实现高质量发展是新时代我国经济发展的根本要求。高质量发展与创新驱动紧密关联,必须多举措协同提升区域创新能力。区域创新能力是指一个地区将知识转化为新产品、新工艺、新服务的能力,代表了创新要素在一定区域内聚集、整合以及推动区域可持续发展的基本能力。为了有效提升区域创新能力,必须强化区域创新的综合保障、构建区域创新综合生态体系、促进创新创业项目孵化与成果转化、强化区域制造业发展相关的创新活动等。以南京市江宁区为例对此进行了分析,该区积极实施战略科技引领计划,不断强化创新工作,通过促进区域创新平台建设、区域创新的服务支撑体系构建、高端创新资源在区域的聚集、区域制造业创新发展及合理布局等,不断增强区域创新能力,有效支撑了区域高质量发展。     

To walk or not to walk? Examining non-linear effects of streetscape greenery on walking propensity of older adults

Population aging is a conspicuous demographic trend shaping the world profoundly. Walking is a critical travel mode and physical activity for older adults. As such, there is a need to determine the factors influencing the walking behavior of older people in the era of population aging. Streetscape greenery is an easily perceived built-environment attribute and can promote walking behavior, but it has received insufficient attention. More importantly, the non-linear effects of streetscape greenery on the walking behavior of older adults have not been examined. We therefore use readily available Google Street View imagery and a fully convolutional neural network to evaluate human-scale, eye-level streetscape greenery. Using data from the Hong Kong Travel Characteristic Survey, we adopt a machine learning technique, namely random forest modeling, to scrutinize the non-linear effects of streetscape greenery on the walking propensity of older adults. The results show that streetscape greenery has a positive effect on walking propensity within a certain range, but outside the range, the positive association no longer holds. The non-linear associations of other built-environment attributes are also examined.     

Optimization of postal express line network under mixed driving pattern of trucks

Details about the movement of trucks on postal express lines are investigated to improve the performances of mail distribution. A mixed driving pattern of trucks is introduced to minimize the transportation cost of a postal express line network with a service level requirement. We formulate this problem as a mixed p meeting depots location with shipment scheduling problem and build a MINLP model. A two-level tabu search procedure based on shipment grouping method is developed. Through a series of computational experiments and sensitivity analysis on different instances, some managerial insights of the network under mixed driving pattern are revealed.     

Fulfillment source allocation,inventory transshipment,and customer order transfer in e-tailing

We consider an inventory fulfillment-allocation and transshipment problem in an e-tailing environment. For a typical e-tailer, each customer demand is fulfilled from the closest fulfillment center if there are enough inventories. Otherwise, the e-tailer would transship stock from a nearby facility or transfer the customer order so it is fulfilled from another facility, depending on the economics of transportation. We develop a mixed-integer programming model to help e-tailers optimally fulfill customer orders while minimizing logistics costs. We propose a Benders decomposition-based approach to efficiently find optimal solutions. Our computational results demonstrate the importance of considering inventory transshipments in online deliveries.     

The interaction between foreigners' trading and stock market returns in emerging Europe

This paper presents the first comprehensive study of foreigners' trading in European emerging stock markets, using complete data compiled at the destination. We also compare European results to Asia, to which available evidence is mainly confined. The findings provide new insight on foreigners' trading: in addition to rebalancing, risk appetite and global information are global drivers of net foreign flows. Foreigners' negative-feedback-trade with respect to local returns at longer horizons. They do so with an asymmetry: they sell following increases but do not buy following declines. Net foreign flow persistence decreases with local return volatility.     

Power transformations of absolute returns and long memory estimation

Different power transformations of absolute returns of various financial assets have been found to display different magnitudes of sample autocorrelations, a property referred to as the Taylor effect. In this paper, we consider the long memory stochastic volatility model for the returns, under which, the asymptotic rate of decay of the autocorrelations of powers of absolute returns is governed by their long memory parameter. Although the true long memory parameter of powers of absolute returns is the same across different powers, we show that the local Whittle estimator of the long memory parameter has finite-sample bias that differs across the power transformations chosen. A Monte-Carlo experiment provides evidence in support of our theoretical finding that the reported variation of the estimates of the long memory parameter for power transformations of returns could be due to finite-sample bias of the estimator. The local Whittle estimates of powers of absolute returns for the S&P500 index and the DM/USD exchange rate are also examined.     

Exploring the relationship between truck load capacity and traffic accidents in the European Union

Applying econometric techniques to EU28 panel data and controlling for explanatory variables such as road types, we find that increased truck load capacity does not necessarily aggravate road traffic safety. Specifically, heavy trucks do not seem to be linked with greater numbers of traffic fatalities/accidents, medium trucks appear to be the worst performers in terms of fatalities, and light trucks seem to be the worst for accidents. In summary, our results clarify the complex relationship between truck load capacity and road safety, pointing to the existence of a negative correlation for accidents per capita and an inverse U-shaped curve for fatalities per capita.