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It is argued that the evolution of trade between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the European Union (EU) falls into three phases: limited contact; both sides seeking rapid growth and becoming mutually dependent; and high mutual trade levels with political considerations re‐emerging, China being kept at arm’s length by GATT/WTO and the EU restraining trade through increasing quotas, tariffs and anti‐dumping actions. Nevertheless, high levels of Intra Industry Trade (IIT) demonstrate mutual dependence. Cultural and political differences, as well as incompatible statistical records, prevent trade reaching its full potential at present.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate China's import‐demand function for steel products within the context of globalisation.

The research used the monthly data for the period 1996‐2004 and a cointegration procedure is applied in the estimation.

The results show that the price and income elasticities of China's import demand for steel are no different from those of other countries investigated by other researches. Specifically, the results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that China's import of steel products is strongly correlated with its economic activities and the fluctuation of its real exchange rate.

The empirical results obtained are important both for government policy and for employment. On the one hand, the magnitude of imports may adversely affect employment in China's steel industry. On the other hand, any changes in China's domestic macroeconomic activity and its exchange rate will generate great uncertainty in the world steel market.

This paper may be the first of its kind to apply the cointegration technique in estimating China's import‐demand function for steel products. It is important, given China's dominant position as both the biggest producer and the biggest consumer of steel products.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiencies of China's foreign and domestic life insurance providers and to explore the relationship between ownership structure and the efficiencies of insurers while taking into consideration other firm attributes.

The data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is used to estimate the efficiencies of the insurers based on a panel data between 1999 and 2004.

The results indicate that the average efficiency scores for all the insurers are cyclical. Both technical and scale efficiency reached their peaks in 1999 and 2000 and gradually reduced for the rest of the period under examination until 2004 when average efficiency were improved again. The Tobit regression results show that the insurers' market power, the distribution channels used and the ownership structures may be attributed to the variation in the efficiencies.

Based on the research findings and the discussion, the study provides several recommendations for policy makers, regulators and senior executives of insurers.

The research results highlight the importance of deregulating the sector to allow a further expansion of each individual insurer or encourage mergers and acquisitions of insurers so more efficient resource utilization can be achieved through economies of scale. It also suggests that it is imperative for insurers to recruit motivated insurance agents and offer them on‐the‐job training as a part of the management strategies for gaining technical efficiency.

The paper reports the development within China's insurance industry and is one of the few studies analyzing the efficiencies of China's insurers.

The increasing “globalisation” and complexity of construction design implies that the project team may involve subcontractors in the construction supply chain from widely distributed geographic areas. Thus communication is a vital process for the design. The aim of the present work is to investigate how construction design under supply chain partnering can be improved through a study of communication issues and problems.

A questionnaire survey is initially conducted to investigate communication issues and problems in construction design. Based on the survey results, a case study is carried out to gain further insights into these issues and problems, exploring how the procurement like supply chain partnering influences the multi‐team communications in construction design.

The paper finds that partnering can eliminate many communication barriers and has a positive impact on social collaboration in the design process. It could have a negative impact on the team communications if proper procedures have not been put in place. In addition, co‐location can increase the degree of interaction, communication and technical collaboration in the partnership.

This paper may help construction project practitioners to focus their attention on the necessary respects of multi‐team communications between supply chain partners in construction design, leading to high cooperation and ultimately improving the quality of the design outcomes.

This research is designed to explore Chinese customers' wine purchasing behaviours and to investigate the effect of country‐of‐origin (COO) information on their wine evaluations.

Data were collected from the shopping malls both in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China, using the systematic sampling method. A total 148 usable questionnaires were returned and analysed by SPSS.

The results confirmed that Chinese customers consider COO as the most important factor in their wine evaluation when a single‐cue approach is applied. When a multi‐cue approach is used however the results showed that there was no significant difference in the importance in COO and price as indicators. This research also revealed some salient characteristics of Chinese consumers buying behaviour associated with Chinese culture. When the Chinese are evaluating wine for gift giving and consuming wine in public, they tend to attach more importance to COO than to other variables and are more likely to purchase foreign or imported wine instead of domestic brands.

Only respondents from Shanghai and Hangzhou were chosen, limiting the representativeness of the sample. Future research will be benefited from increased sample size from different geographical regions and by examining the relationship between the consumer demographic characteristics and the COO effects.

The results from this study stand in contrast to previous studies relating to the role of COO in product evaluation. It illustrates the importance of culture in relation to COO.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a special issue about the construction industry and the management of its supply chains. It aims to discuss and point to some differences and possible similarities with traditional manufacturing and its supply chains.

The paper is mostly a literature review and contains official statistics.

The market of the construction company is mostly local and highly volatile. The long durability of the construction “product” contributes to the volatility. The product specification process before the customer order arrives shows different degrees of specifications: engineer to order, modify to order, configure to order, select a variant. (The common make‐to‐stock in traditional manufacturing does not exist.) A construction company only executes a small part of the project by its own personnel and capacity. This is a way of risk spreading and risk mitigation and to compensate for an unstable market. If a construction company wants to establish a new concept, from “engineer to order” to e.g. “configure to order”, it must be engaged earlier in the business process and with other than usual customers, which might complicate the process.

Experiences from Sweden and Swedish developments are the main source of information.

The paper introduces the articles that are a source of scientifically generated knowledge regarding various problems and opportunities associated with supply chain management in the project‐based construction industry.

The paper examines the cultural differences in consumers' evaluations of vertical brand extensions.

A 2 (extension types: upward, downward) × 2 (nationality: USA, China) × 2 (ownership: owner, non-owner) between-subjects design with thinking styles as a covariate was employed to test consumers' evaluations of vertical brand extensions. A total of 228 subjects from the US and 194 from China participated in the two experimental studies.

The paper finds that consumers prefer downward extensions to upward extensions. Furthermore, Chinese consumers have even more favorable evaluations of downward extension products than do American consumers. In addition, analytic thinkers exhibit a stronger ownership effect than holistic thinkers.

The research contributes to the understanding of culture differences in vertical brand extension evaluations.

Previous studies on social influence and virtual product adoption have mainly taken users’ purchase behavior as a dichotomous variable (i.e. purchasing or not). Given the prevalence of competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product in online communities, this paper investigated the differences in the effect of social influence on users’ adoption of basic and upgraded choices of a virtual product. It also examined how the effect varies with users’ social status and user-level network density.

A natural experiment was conducted in an online game community. Two competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product were provided for in-game purchase while a random set of users selected from 897,765 players received the notification of their friends’ adoption information. A competing-risk model was used to test the hypotheses.

Social influence exerts a stronger positive effect on users’ adoption of the upgraded virtual product than of the basic virtual product. Middle-status users have the greatest (least) susceptibility to social influence in adopting the upgraded (basic) virtual product than low- and high-status users. User’s network density enhances the effect of social influence on adoption of both virtual products, even more for the upgraded one.

This research contributes to the social influence and product adoption literature by disentangling the different effects of social influence on basic and upgraded versions of a virtual product. It also identifies the boundary conditions that social influence works for each version of the virtual product.

This paper aims to exploit shape memory polymer (SMP) composite as multifunctional coatings for protecting substrates from surface wear and bacterial. The efficiency of added nano or micro-sized particles in enhancing the properties of SMP was investigated. This study also attempts to use a low-cost and effective spraying approach to fabricate the coatings. The coatings are expected to have good conformability with the substrate and deliver multi-functional performance, such as wrinkle free, wear resistance, thermal stability and antimicrobial property.

High-performance SMP composite coatings or thin films were fabricated by a home-made continuous spray-deposition system. The morphologies of the coatings were studied using the scanning electron microscope and the transmission electron microscope. The abrasion properties were evaluated by Taber Abraser test, and thermo-gravimetric analysis was carried out to investigate the thermal properties of prepared composites. The antimicrobial property was determined by the inhibition zone method using E. coli. The thermally responsive shape memory effect of the resulting composites was also characterized.

The morphology analysis indicated that the nanoclay was distributed on the surface of the coating which resulted in a significant improvement of the wear property. The wear resistance of the coatings with nanoclay was improved as much as 40 per cent compared with that of the control sample. The thermo-gravimetric analysis revealed that the weight loss rate of composites with nanoclay was dropped over 40 per cent. The SMP coating with zinc oxide (ZnO) showed excellent antimicrobial effect. The shape recovery effect of SMP/nanoclay and SMP/ZnO composites can be triggered by external heating and the composites can reach a full shape recovery within 60 s.

This study proposed a continuous spray-deposition fabrication of SMP composite coatings, which provides a new avenue to prepare novel multi-functional coatings with low cost.

Most studies have emphasized on the sole property of SMP composites. Herein, a novel SMP composite coating which could deliver multi-functionality such as wrinkle free, wear resistance, thermal stability and antimicrobial property was proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between investors' divergence of opinions and the asset prices of foreign stocks and also examine the effect of home market country-level factors on the influence of divergency of opinions on stock price.

The authors employ panel data estimation with fixed effects to examine the host market response in divergent opinions to the earnings announcements. The paper uses the American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of 42 countries from 1985 to 2011.

The authors find a negative relationship between differences of opinions and excess quarterly earnings announcement returns, and investors do process information asymmetrically based on good and bad earnings shocks. In addition, the authors find the negative relationship between divergent opinions and excess earnings announcement returns in ADRs is more pronounced in countries with short-sales restrictions, while other home-market country-level factors – the enforcement of insider trading law, legal origin, investor protection and rating on accounting standard – do not influence the relationship between investors' divergency of opinion and stock returns.

This paper is among the first to bring asymmetric effects on convergence in Miller framework and enhance the understanding of price convergence documented in Miller (1977). In addition, this study incorporates home-market country-level factors in explaining the relationship between investors' divergency of opinions and stock returns.