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Against the background of the rapid increase of total imported food in China, China's imported high-quality food has increased more than low-quality ones, and China's imported food quality structure has continuously improved. It is a new issue that needs further examination.

Based on the assumption of non-homothetic preference, this paper apply the method provided by Eaton and Kortum (2002) in a new theoretical model and empirically analyzes the impact of per capita income on the quality structure of imported food by using SYS-GMM with firm import data from Chinese customs.

The study finds that income is a significant factor which affects the imported food quality structure in China. The higher the per capita income, the higher the imported food quality structure. Furthermore, per capita income has a significant positive impact on the imported food quality structure in different quality groups. The research confirms that China import more food with the highest quality as its per capita income increases.

Chinese policymaker needs to reconsider the role of food imports in improving food quality structure. The aim of the Chinese food industry's supply-side reform should be not only to remove excess capacity but also to produce high-quality products that meet the demand of discriminating consumers.

This paper constructs a new theme for imported food quality structure and investigates import food quality structure improvement from the perspective of demand by incorporating non-homothetic preferences. Another feature of this paper is that it conducts an empirical analysis with unique and highly disaggregated firm import data from Chinese customs to measure imported food quality, which is more refined than the national-product dimension data.

This paper takes the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experiment and investigates the impact of capital market liberalization on the corporate debt maturity structure. It also aims to provide some policy implications for corporate debt financing and further liberalization of the capital market in China.

Employing the exogenous event of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect and using the data of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the relationship between capital market liberalization and corporate debt maturity structure. To validate the results, this study performed several robustness tests, including the parallel test, the placebo test, the Heckman two-stage regression and the propensity score matching.

This paper finds that capital market liberalization has significantly increased the proportion of long-term debt of target firms. Further analyses suggest that the impact of capital market liberalization on the debt maturity structure is more pronounced for firms with lower management ownership and non-Big 4 audit. Channel tests show that capital market liberalization improves firms’ information environment and curbs self-interested management behavior.

This research provides empirical evidence for the consequences of capital market liberalization and enriches the literature on the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure. Further this study makes a reference for regulators and financial institutions to improve corporate financing through the governance role of capital market liberalization.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the social cognitive theory to identify the determinants of online knowledge community user continuance, which reflects a user’s continued use.

Based on the 271 valid responses collected from a survey, structural equation modelling was employed to examine the research model.

The results indicated that the cognitive factors of outcome expectation and the environmental factors of system quality and knowledge quality significantly affect a user’s continuance intention, which, in turn, affects continuance usage.

The results imply that service providers need to enhance community platforms and improve knowledge quality in order to retain users and facilitate their continuance.

Although previous research has examined online knowledge community user behaviour from multiple perspectives such as the social exchange theory and the motivational theory, it has seldom explored the relative effects of personal cognitions and environmental factors on user behaviour. This research fills the gap.

Taoist thought is not easily penetrable for Westerners, though it has growing importance with the globalisation of Chinese commerce. The purpose of this paper is to explore some aspects of Chinese and Taoist thought, and how they can be expressed in cybernetic terms, using a knowledge cybernetics (KC) schema.

KC operates through metaphor the role of which is considered with respect to its application to the specific area of urban landscaping.

A new methodological approach is indicated that is capable of linking Western landscape theory with Taoist feng shui. The traditional approach to critical planning has been in principle enhanced through the idea of landscape canonical harmony that comes from Taoist feng shui. It is also shown that the activity phases in urban landscape design are ontologically different, and use distinct types of energy measures.

The research uses KC as a vehicle for the development of a landscaping methodology that draws on both traditional Western and Chinese Taoist approaches. It requires application to real situations to draw out its practical capacities.

This is apparently the first time that a synergy between Western and Chinese approaches to landscape design and development has been attempted that results in the proposal of a complete methodology.

The successful use of this methodology could demonstrate that Western and Chinese approaches to landscape design are relatable.

This study aims to verify the respective and interactive effects of subnational formal and informal institutions (i.e. legal effectiveness and social trust) on foreign firm performance, and further identify the contingent factor (i.e. institutional experience) that moderates these relationships.

Drawing on the institutional-based view, this study develops several hypotheses that are tested using a comprehensive dataset from four main data sources. The authors’ unit of analysis is foreign firms operating in China. The authors ran ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model to investigate the effects. A series of robustness tests and endogeneity tests were performed.

The results show that both legal effectiveness and social trust at subnational level positively affect foreign firm performance respectively. Legal effectiveness and social trust at subnational level have complementary effect in promoting the performance of foreign firms. Foreign firm's institutional experience in target region of emerging economies host country strengthens the positive impact of subnational legal effectiveness on performance, but weakens the positive impact of subnational social trust on performance.

It is important to fully understand the impact of heterogeneous institutional environments of subnational regions in emerging economies on foreign firm performance, which would help foreign firm make a more suitable secondary choice decision of investment destinations at the subnational regional level.

First, drawing on institutional-based view, the authors incorporate the subnational formal and informal institutional factors to investigate their impacts on foreign firm performance by switching the attention from national level to subnational level in emerging economy host countries. Second, this research furthers existing studies by bridging a missing link between both subnational formal and informal institutional environments and foreign firms' outcomes. Third, the authors prove that the model of subnational formal and informal institutions in influencing foreign firms' performance is contingent on their institutional experience in target subnational region of emerging economy host country.

Grey modeling technique is an important element of grey system theory, and academic articles applied to agricultural science research have been published since 1985, proving the broad applicability and effectiveness of the technique from different aspects and providing a new means to solve agricultural science problems. The analysis of the connotation and trend of the application of grey modeling technique in agricultural science research contributes to the enrichment of grey technique and the development of agricultural science in multiple dimensions.

Based on the relevant literature selected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Web of Science, SpiScholar and other databases in the past 37 years (1985–2021), this paper firstly applied the bibliometric method to quantitatively visualize and systematically analyze the trend of publication, productive author, productive institution, and highly cited literature. Then, the literature is combed by the application of different grey modeling techniques in agricultural science research, and the literature research progress is systematically analyzed.

The results show that grey model technology has broad prospects in the field of agricultural science research. Agricultural universities and research institutes are the main research forces in the application of grey model technology in agricultural science research, and have certain inheritance. The application of grey model technology in agricultural science research has wide applicability and precise practicability.

By analyzing and summarizing the application trend of grey model technology in agricultural science research, the research hotspot, research frontier and valuable research directions of grey model technology in agricultural science research can be more clearly grasped.

The purpose of this research is to address the existing gap in the study of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) by focusing on its impact on human health throughout the entire life cycle. And this research provides a comprehensive assessment model that incorporates the release of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter during the whole life cycle of C&DW, thereby contributing to a more holistic understanding of its impact on human health.

The research was conducted in two stages. Firstly, the quantitative model framework of pollutants emitted by C&DW was established. Three types of pollutants were considered, namely nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and inhalable particulate matter (PM10). Second, disability-adjusted life year (DALY) and willingness to pay (WTP) assessments were used to provide a monetary quantified health impact for pollutants released by C&DW.

The results show that the WTP value of PM10 is the highest among all pollutants and 8.68E+07 dollars/a, while the WTP value in the disposal stage accounts for the largest proportion compared to the generation and transportation stage. These findings emphasize the importance of PM10 and C&DW treatment stage for pollutant treatment.

The results of this study are of great significance for the management department to optimize the construction management scheme to reduce the total amount of pollutants produced by C&DW and its harm to human health. Meanwhile, this study fills the gap in existing research on the impact assessment of C&DW on human health throughout the whole life cycle, and provides reference and basis for future research and policy formulation.

Carbon emission is one of the most important problems of today. In this framework, it is important for countries to take the necessary actions to solve this problem. Energy use is one of the most important causes of carbon emissions. Choosing fossil fuels in this process increases the carbon emission problem. Therefore, it is understood that countries should be more sensitive about energy types. In this context, renewable energy (RE) sources are recommended by experts. However, due to some problems of these energy types, it does not seem possible to meet all energy needs from these sources. It is thought that nuclear energy will produce a permanent solution to the carbon emission problem. In this context, it is recommended that the use of nuclear energy be put on the agenda by countries.