Search results

This theoretical paper aims to illustrate that tourism economies differ substantially with respect to market conditions, such as demand elasticity and industrial structure, which have a clear effect on the distribution of the tax burden.

This paper has used partial and general equilibrium frameworks to study the effects of a production tax on the overall welfare of a tourism economy. The two frameworks are linked via the relative price of tourism based on the assumption that it is influenced by a typical tourism economy that is able to enjoy a certain degree of market power in its tourism exports.

We have discovered that the division of the tax burden is significantly affected by local market conditions, such as demand elasticity and industrial structure. Generally, tourism economies differ with respect to those characteristics, which can be crucial in determining the success of a tourism tax. This line of research has enabled us to determine why different tourism tax rates have been adopted in various markets and to provide a justification for government selection of a particular tax in a given market. The rational criterion for tax choices is to maximize the likelihood of enhancing welfare or to minimize the risk of reducing efficiency.

This paper argues that those conditions are crucial to determining the success or failure of a tourism tax and may thus be able to explain why each tourism economy has adopted a different tax.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediator role of product innovation in the relationship between political and business ties (independent variables) and firm performance (dependent variable).

In this study, research hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling method.

The findings from 267 manufacturing companies in Iran show that business ties have an effect on firm performance through product innovation, while the role of innovation is not proved as a mediating variable in the relationships between political ties and firm performance. In addition, business ties have an effect on product innovation and firm performance, whereas political ties have no such effect.

These results provide useful points for developing economies, theoretically and practically.

Despite the increasing attention to the role of managerial ties (political and business ties) in improving product innovation and firm performance, there is no study conducted on the mediating role of product innovation in the relationship between managerial ties and firm performance.

This study examines the effect of employees' perceptions of political connections on performance measurement systems (PMS) design choice and firm performance. In addition, this study explores the moderating effect of social networking, a very common and widely used factor by domestic and foreign multinational firms operating in China, and its joint effect with political connections or PMS design choice on firm performance. We collected survey responses from a sample of 110 managers from manufacturing firms in China. Our results reveal that highly politically connected managers use nonfinancial measures, leading to improved firm performance. Our results suggest that social networking interacts significantly with political connections, and nonfinancial and financial measures on firm performance. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Although the differential roles of political and business ties are recognized in the literature, the interplay between political and business ties remains unclear. This study aims to explore how political ties affect the formation of business ties with unfamiliar partners by analyzing how a buyer’s political ties affect the market-based selection of suppliers, an important channel through which the buyer forms business ties with unfamiliar suppliers.

A survey of 204 Chinese manufacturing firms was conducted to elucidate the relationship between political ties and the market-based selection of suppliers.

The findings suggest that buyers with strong political ties are more likely to engage in the market-based selection of suppliers; this positive relationship is diminished when social control is preferred over contractual control in the buyer’s supplier governance and is enhanced when technological uncertainty is high.

First, this study sheds light on the interplay between political and business ties by revealing how the buyer’s political ties affect the formation of business ties with unfamiliar suppliers, as represented by the market-based selection of suppliers. Second, it uncovers the boundary conditions of the effect of political ties by revealing the moderating effect of social control preference and technological uncertainty. Third, it extends the interorganizational governance structure literature from its focus on the complement-substitute debate on social control and contractual control to examine the contingent effect of a hybrid governance structure.

As part of the mobility of global talent, returnee entrepreneurs from emerging markets with advance technology are particularly challenged by the increasing geopolitical tension. Returnee entrepreneurs have a stronger reliance on the political relationship when establishing successful business at the home countries. Yet this connection with home-country political actors can negatively affect their technology competence obtained from the host countries during geopolitical uncertainty and turbulence. We empirically investigate the challenges that technology-advanced returnee entrepreneurs encountered in the home market from the changes occurred while they were away, as well as the needs to obtain critical resource and gain market entry for adapting the advance technology possessed from aboard. Our aim, nevertheless, is to expand the discussion of the returnee entrepreneurs in the context of current world where unpredictable geopolitical tensions can jeopardize the success of their business. Our study contributes a nuanced understanding of the key factor that driving business success may turn to a trap that constrains returnee entrepreneurship, and accordingly proposes a future research agenda for returnee entrepreneurship and international human mobility in general.

Multicasting is a necessity for a broadband metro‐area‐network. Discusses the security problems with current multicast protocols. To make the multicast delivery infrastructure more secure and reliable, a stateful multicast access control mechanism, based on MAPE, is proposed. This mechanism expands the current forwarding procedure of a layer 2 switch so that stateful multicast access control can be carried out at the very edge of the metro area network. The architecture of MAPE is discussed in detail, as well as the states maintained and messages exchanged. Further explains that the scheme is flexible and scalable.

The purpose of this paper is to study the seismic performance of the energy-saving block and invisible multi-ribbed frame composite walls (EBIMFCW), changing the shear-span ratio as the test parameter, the low-cycle reciprocating loading tests of six 1/2 scale wall models were carried out.

The test design method and analysis are used for the seismic performance of the EBIMFCW.

With the increase of shear-span ratio: the walls tend to occur bending failure even more, the initial stiffness of the wall decreases, the overall ductility of the wall is improved and the walls tend to occur bending failure.

The previous studies do not involve the seismic performance of EBIMFCW under different shear-span ratios. Therefore, the paper studies the hysteresis behavior, ductility, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation performance of EBIMFCW under different shear-span ratios.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the smooth path planning problem for a mobile robot based on the genetic algorithm (GA) and the Bezier curve.

The workspace of a mobile robot is described by a new grid-based representation that facilitates the operations of the adopted GA. The chromosome of the GA is composed of a sequence of binary numbered grids (i.e. control points of the Bezier curve). Ordinary genetic operators including crossover and mutation are used to search the optimum chromosome where the optimization criterion is the length of a piecewise collision-free Bezier curve path determined by the control points.

This paper has proposed a new smooth path planning for a mobile robot by resorting to the GA and the Bezier curve. A new grid-based representation of the workspace has been presented, which makes it convenient to perform operations in the GA. The GA has been used to search the optimum control points that determine the Bezier curve-based smooth path. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been verified by a numerical experiment, and some performances of the obtained method have also been analyzed.

There still remain many interesting topics, for example, how to solve the specific smooth path planning problem by using the GA and how to promote the computational efficiency in the more grids case. These issues deserve further research.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the existing results by making the following three distinctive contributions: a rigorous mathematical formulation of the path planning optimization problem is formulated; a general grid-based representation (2n × 2n) is proposed to describe the workspace of the mobile robots to facilitate the implementation of the GA where n is chosen according to the trade-off between the accuracy and the computational burden; and the control points of the Bezier curve are directly linked to the optimization criteria so that the generated paths are guaranteed to be optimal without any need for smoothing afterwards.

The rapid development of e-commerce has caused not only explosive growth of the express delivery industry, but also ever-greater operational pressures. Models from the sharing economy may provide new ideas for operational improvement. The purpose of this paper is to consider an optimization method that reduces costs and increases efficiency. The proposed method enables a shared distribution system based on revenue-sharing and cooperative investment contracts.

The authors design a two-echelon supply chain (SC) of the shared distribution system with one shared distribution company and N express companies. In this SC, the express companies provide only inter-city transportation, and they outsource internal-city transportation to a shared distribution company. This distribution system differs from that of the traditional express delivery industry. The traditional system of delivery requires large numbers of empty trips (with no load to deliver), because the operating mode of urban distribution has been the franchise. To offer greater efficiency and performance, the authors introduce the sharing economy mode of express delivery. The authors examine the potential of a joint optimal decision-making strategy that involves revenue-sharing and cooperative investment contracts based on an order flow proportion (OFP) and a revenue-sharing factor (RSF). In this shared distribution system, the most important innovation is that all of the express companies jointly invest in and establish a shared distribution company based on OFP or RSF principles.

The profitability of an SC with revenue-sharing contracts based on an OFP system is much higher than that of a decentralized SC, and it is very close to the profitability of a centralized SC. In SCs with revenue-sharing contracts that are based on RSFs, there are many possible combinations of RSFs that can increase the overall profitability. The analyses indicate that the OFP system offers the best solution in designing revenue-sharing contracts based on RSFs.

This study indicates that revenue-sharing contracts based on both OFP and RSF principles can increase overall SC returns by 0.21 to 0.44 percent. In sum total, this improvement could mean a 0.84 to 1.76bn Yuan increase in revenues for the 400+ bn-Yuan express delivery industry.

The authors find that a combination of equity investment and SC coordination contracts makes the cooperation between SC members much more stable. Through this kind of shared distribution system, the scale of economy can further reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of the express delivery industry.

This chapter reviews three main issues in the interactions between air transport and high-speed rail (HSR) in China, namely the interaction between low-cost carriers (LCCs) and HSR, HSR speed effect on airlines, and airline–HSR integration. Studies on these three aspects of airline–HSR interactions have yet been well reviewed, and our chapter aims to fill in this gap. In this chapter, we comprehensively survey literature on the topics, especially studies on Chinese markets that have recently witnessed major HSR developments (and have planned further large-scale HSR expansion in the coming years). Our review shows that, first, compared to full-service carriers, LCCs face fiercer competition from HSR. However, the expansion of HSR network in China can be better coordinated with LCC development. Second, HSR speed exerts two countervailing effects on airline demand and price (the “travel-time” effect and “safety” effect, respectively). Specifically, an HSR speed reduction can have a positive effect on airlines due to longer HSR travel time, but a negative effect on airlines due to improved perception on HSR safety. Third, airline–HSR integration can be implemented through cooperation between airlines and HSR operators and through co-location of airports and HSR stations and can have important implications for intermodal transport and social welfare.