Organization,technology and management innovations through acquisition in China’s pork value chains: The case of the Smithfield acquisition by Shuanghui

This paper reviews the changes in Shuanghui’s operations after the Smithfield acquisition as well as transformations in China’s pork industries. As income grows and diets change, there has been an increasing demand for high-quality pork and more processed pork products. However, China’s swine and pork industries are still at an early stage of development as evidenced by the low market concentration, intensive use of labour, a proliferation of intermediaries, and low levels of technology. Bounded by the established consumer preferences for freshness and the status quo in the midstream and upstream segments, Shuanghui is in a slow process of upgrading its domestic operations with Smithfield’s leading brands, import of chilled and frozen pork, advanced technologies, and the vertically integrated business model after this acquisition. In particular, it remains unclear whether Shuanghui can follow Smithfield’s experience to establish stable and safe hog supplies by multiplying self-owned hog farms, maintain and expand its current contracts with large-scale commercial hog farms, or rely more on global sourcing of pork primarily from the U.S.     

Being Good Parents or Being Good Citizens: Dilemmas and Contradictions of Urban Families in Middle‐Class Enclaves and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Germany

In recent years, cities have become ever more attractive to middle‐class families. On the one hand, middle‐class families tend to withdraw into (often newly built) socially homogeneous middle‐class neighbourhoods. On the other hand, they are also known to move into inner‐city and socially mixed areas, thus triggering processes of gentrification. Academic literature has often denounced these housing choices as being either ‘separatist’ or ‘revanchist’, more broadly categorized as strategies of ‘middle‐class disaffiliation’. Although there is a grain of truth in these interpretations, the reality is certainly more complicated. In our research on middle‐class parents’ housing and neighbourhood choices as well as their patterns of neighbourhood use, carried out in each of the two types of residential area mentioned above, we have only very rarely found an explicit desire to draw boundaries that exclude those ‘beneath’ them. We rather argue that the housing choices and neighbourhood‐related activities of middle‐class family households are heavily influenced by the specific dilemmas the interviewees face as (working) urban parents. While a significant number of respondents worry about the social sustainability, justice and cohesion of urban society, they are also concerned about the future prospects of their children. Many find it difficult to reconcile these conflicting normative demands under the prevailing circumstances.     

Co-movement in Stock Prices in Emerging Economies: The Case of the Caricom Region

The Grand Anse Declaration of 1989 recognised the need for financial integration within the emerging economies that comprise the CARICOM region, as a way of furthering the wider process of economic integration and, indeed, economic development in that region. Using co-movement as a measure of financial integration, this paper investigates the co-movement in stock prices among the Barbados, the Jamaica and the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchanges, the three major exchanges within the CARICOM region. It also examines how integrated these exchanges are with the New York Stock Exchange. The GARCH-Copula methodology and, to a lesser extent, estimated correlation coefficients, are used to attain this objective. There appears to be co-movement in stock prices and returns within the CARICOM stock markets and significant dependence structures between the returns of the three CARICOM stock markets. However, there is considerably less evidence of integration between the CARICOM markets and the New York Stock Exchange.     

Engineering the Financialization of Urban Entrpreneurialism: The JESSICA Urban Development Initiative in the European Union

Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance‐dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an ‘urban sensitive’ policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy—how urban governance is shaped by the broader political‐economic context—with questions of governmentality—how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi‐scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi‐scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.     

城镇群空间结构与要素集聚

依据城镇化发展过程中要素空间集聚理论，展开区域经济发展的空间经济结构研究。通过城市引力、克鲁格曼指数计算，比较分析城镇群内部城市吸引力和城市产业分布的差异性，通过人口与生产空间分布集中度指标和不一致系数的测算，分析了山西省城镇群空间要素集聚效应。研究表明，山西省的城镇群规划与要素空间集聚趋势整体一致，城市间产业分工体系基本形成，城镇群的要素集聚效应明显，但人口与生产分布仍存在不一致性。研究认为，山西省城镇群发展应该继续明确各城市的产业分工和特色，引导劳动力和资本要素的合理流动，实现人口与生产空间分布的一致。     

Capital market integration in ASEAN: A non-stationary panel data analysis

Motivated by the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, we examine saving-investment relationship in various subgroups of ASEAN to assess their capital market integration. The results from second generation panel unit-root and cointegration tests that account for cross-sectional dependence as well as estimates of long-run saving-retention rate provide some evidence of market integration in ASEAN. The analysis of short-run dynamics suggests that capital mobility in ASEAN during 1980–2014 appears similar to that in OECD countries during 1970–1999. More importantly, across different panel estimators and subgroups of membership, there is considerable heterogeneity among the member countries. The saving-investment association is very weak, thereby implying very high capital mobility, in more developed members such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei; the association is very strong, implying very low capital mobility, for much less developed members such as Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The results call for renewed effort to develop capital markets in less developed nations and integrate them with the rest of the membership in ASEAN. In this paper, we also address several major shortcomings of the original Feldstein-Horioka framework.     

市域(郊)铁路车辆选型方案探讨

随着城镇化进程的加快和城市经济辐射能力的增强,以特大城市中心城为核心的都市圈逐渐形成,都市圈内的经济联系更加紧密,都市圈核心区与外围的出行需求迅速增长,市域(郊)铁路的概念被引进,选择符合市域(郊)铁路特点的车辆类型是设计的重点。     

海南城乡居民消费水平差异性分析和预测

从1985-2018年海南城乡居民收入、消费数据出发，分别建立消费关于收入、消费差距关于收入差距的自回归模型，结果表明农村居民当期消费更易受近期收入和消费水平的影响，具有不稳定性。再利用GM(1,1)模型预测城乡居民收入差距，结合自回归模型，完成未来10年海南城乡消费差距的预测：收入差距和消费差距将呈直线递增趋势，收入差距的增幅高于消费差距增幅。缩小海南城乡居民消费差距的根本途径在于缩小收入差距，应因地制宜，切实提高农民收入水平。     

Street-level new public governances in integrated services-as-a-system

The paper explores the emergence of street-level public service integration in eight cities, in five countries using a new framework: services-as-a-system to explore new public governances in health and social care integration. Data is analysed from eight cities in six countries (Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, UK, and USA) gathered in over 100 semi-structured interviews with key agents. We show that whilst culture and context shape the form and processes of governances there are underlying processual drivers of new public governances, in particular where users are involved in the co-design and co-production of integrated services.     

China and international market integration: Evidence from the law of one price in the Middle East and Africa

We model market integration in the Middle East and Africa by analyzing price dispersion and testing the law of one price (LOP) on highly-comparable actual local retail prices of 135 goods and services across 23 countries in the region over the period of 1990–2016. Second-generation panel estimators are applied to four price benchmarks: Regional average, South Africa, China, and US prices. Cross-regional price dispersion diminishes considerably over time up to 2008, particularly for non-tradeables around China price. The test of LOP indicates the percentage of convergent prices is highest in China price benchmark, followed by US, South Africa, and regional average benchmarks. Direct estimation of the convergence speed confirms this order. Overall, the results show evidence of increasing market integration in Middle East and Africa but it appears to be driven by global forces and, especially, the rise of China as a new economic power. The results show that some emerging market economies, such as China, can step up and promote integration while traditional economic powerhouses, such as the USA and UK, disengage from international economic relations.