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This study aims to examine the determinants of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations and consequences of FCPA enforcements.

This paper uses publicly available data from Compustat, I/B/E/S and Thomson Reuters databases, combined with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) cases, to extract insights on FCPA violations and enforcements using econometric approaches.

The main determinants of FCPA violations appear to be firm size, multinational structure, country corruption and Sarbanes-Oxley Act control weaknesses. Traditional misreporting risks (F-score and M-score) do not predict FCPA violations. This study discovers significant differences between FCPA violations by motivation, as in, sale generation, rent extraction or cost evasion. Bribes motivated by sale generation or rent extraction are partially driven by the extent of the firm’s global operations, whereas bribes motivated by cost evasion relate to internal influences. This study also finds that enforcement is more salient for criminal violations (DOJ enforcement), compared to civil violations (SEC enforcement).

This research provides new insights into the determinants of FCPA violations while underscoring the need for effective measures to combat bribery and promote ethical business practices. This research contributes to the ongoing efforts to curtail bribery, offering valuable insights into the characteristics of firms more likely to engage in bribery and contexts in which these activities occur. It provides critical implications for regulatory bodies, highlighting the differential responses of firms to varying types of enforcement, namely, criminal versus civil, as the authors observe greater decreases in internal control weaknesses following DOJ enforcement compared to SEC enforcement.

For enforcement agencies, the findings underscore the importance of rigorous criminal enforcement against FCPA violations, highlighting the improved control environments prompted by DOJ actions. Managers will find this research relevant, as it demonstrates that a firm’s entry into international markets substantially elevates the risk of its representatives engaging in bribery with foreign officials. In addition, the results are of interest to regulators, revealing that the underlying motivations driving a firm’s activities can significantly alter the factors to consider that might lead to an FCPA violation.

This paper is the original work of the authors and explores the determinants and consequences of FCPA violations and enforcement actions since 2002. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore bribe determinants by their motive and documents industry-wide benefits arising from criminal enforcement.

To introduce the Securities Law of the People's Republic of China (the “Securities Law 2019”) revised on 28 December 2019, and provide a detailed analysis on its key implications to the securities regulatory regime and market activities, especially securities issuance and trading activities in China.

This article starts from a historical overview of the Securities Law and its several revisions and amendments, highlights the notable core revisions in the Securities Law 2019, analyzes the key legal and regulatory impacts to the securities-related activities and market players, and finally, provides an outlook to the future developments of securities regulatory regime in conformity with the Securities Law 2019.

This article concludes that the revisions made to the Securities Law 2019 cover a broad range of issues including the issuance and trading of securities, acquisition of a listed company, information disclosure, securities registration and settlement, etc. Such revisions to the Securities Law will lead to far-reaching and profound implications on the securities regulatory system and industry practice in China.

The Securities Law 2019 attracts broad attention from securities market players as well as relevant professionals of the industry, including securities lawyers. As this is a novel and hot topic within the industry, it is important for securities lawyers to keep on track.

High-level guidance from experienced lawyers in the Capital Markets and Financial Regulation practices.

The purpose of this paper is to apply firework optimization algorithm to optimize multi-matching selective assembly problem with non-normal dimensional distribution.

In this paper, a multi-matching selective assembly approach based on discrete fireworks optimization (DFWO) algorithm is proposed to find the optimal combination of mating parts. The approach introduces new operator with the way of 3-opt and also uses a stochastic selection strategy, combines the discrete selective assembly problem with firework optimization algorithm properly and finds the best combination scheme of mating parts with non-normal dimensional distributions through powerful global search capability of the firework optimization algorithm.

The effects of different control parameters, including the number of initial fireworks and the coefficient controlling the total number of sparks generated by the fireworks on the evolution performance, are discussed, and a promising higher performance of the proposed selective assembly approach is verified through comparison with other selective assembly methods.

The best combination of mating parts is realized through the proposed selective assembly approach, and workers can select suitable mating parts under the guidance of the combination to increase the assembly efficiency and reduce the amount of surplus parts.

A DFWO algorithm is first designed to combine with multi-matching selective assembly method. For the case of an assembly product, the specific mapping rule and key technologies of DFWO algorithm are proposed.

Traditional visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems are primarily based on the assumption that the environment is static, which makes them struggle with the interference caused by dynamic objects in complex industrial production environments. This paper aims to improve the stability of visual SLAM in complex dynamic environments through semantic segmentation and its optimization.

This paper proposes a real-time visual SLAM system for complex dynamic environments based on YOLOv5s semantic segmentation, named YLS-SLAM. The system combines semantic segmentation results and the boundary semantic enhancement algorithm. By recognizing and completing the semantic masks of dynamic objects from coarse to fine, it effectively eliminates the interference of dynamic feature points on the pose estimation and enhances the retention and extraction of prominent features in the background, thereby achieving stable operation of the system in complex dynamic environments.

Experiments on the Technische Universität München and Bonn data sets show that, under monocular and Red, Green, Blue - Depth modes, the localization accuracy of YLS-SLAM is significantly better than existing advanced dynamic SLAM methods, effectively improving the robustness of visual SLAM. Additionally, the authors also conducted tests using a monocular camera in a real industrial production environment, successfully validating its effectiveness and application potential in complex dynamic environment.

This paper combines semantic segmentation algorithms with boundary semantic enhancement algorithms to effectively achieve precise removal of dynamic objects and their edges, while ensuring the system's real-time performance, offering significant application value.

In confronting the challenge of climate change and progressing towards dual carbon goals, China is actively implementing low-carbon city pilot policy. This paper aims to focus on the potential impact of this policy on enterprise green governance, aiming to promote the reduction and balance of carbon emissions.

Based on the panel data of China's large-scale industrial enterprises from 2007 to 2013, this paper uses the Difference-in-differences (DID) method to study the impact and path mechanism of the implementation of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance. Heterogeneity analysis is used to compare the effects of low-carbon city pilot policy in different regions, different enterprises and different industries.

The low-carbon pilot can indeed effectively enhance corporate green governance, a conclusion that still holds after a series of robustness tests. The low-carbon city pilot policy mainly enhances enterprise green governance through two paths: an industrial structure upgrade and enterprise energy consumption, and it improves green governance by reducing enterprise energy consumption through industrial structure upgrade. The impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance shows significant differences across different regions, different enterprises and different industries.

This paper examines the impact of low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance. However, due to availability of data, there are still some limitations to be further tackled. The parallel trend test in this paper shows that the pilot policy has a significant positive effect on the green governance of enterprises. However, due to serious lack of data in some years, the authors only selected the enterprise data of a shorter period as our experimental data, which leads the results to still have certain deficiencies. For the verification of the impact mechanism, the conclusions obtained in this paper are relatively limited. Although all the mechanism tests are passed, the reliability of the results still needs to be further tested through future data samples. In addition, as the pilot policy of low-carbon cities is still in progress, the policy can be tracked and analysed in the future as more data are disclosed, and further research can be carried out through dimensional expansion.

Low-carbon city pilot policy plays an important role in inducing the green governance of enterprises. Therefore, policy makers can continue to strengthen the construction of low-carbon city pilots by refining pilot experience, building typical cases, actively promoting pilot policy experience, expanding pilot scope and enhancing the implementation efficiency of pilot policy nationwide, which will contribute to the optimization and upgrading of the regional industrial structure at the urban level and will provide experience and reference for the synergistic implementation plan of pollution reduction and carbon reduction.

The impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on enterprise green governance not only exists in two separate paths of urban industrial upgrading and enterprise energy consumption but also exists in a chain transmission path from macro to micro. The authors find that the effect value of each influence path is different, and there is an obvious leading influence path for the role of enterprise green governance. Therefore, in the process of implementing a low-carbon city pilot policy, policies should be designed specifically for different mechanisms. Moreover, complementing and coordinating several paths should be advocated to give full play to the green governance effect of enterprises brought by different paths and to further expand the scope of industries and enterprises where policies play a role.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this paper connects macro mechanisms with micro mechanisms, discovering a macro-to-micro transmission mechanism in the process of low-carbon city pilot policy affecting enterprise green governance. That is, the low-carbon city pilot policy can facilitate industrial structure upgrading, resulting in reduced enterprise energy consumption, ultimately enhancing enterprise green governance.

Real-time monitoring of the critical physical fields of core components in complex equipment is of great significance as it can predict potential failures, provide reasonable preventive maintenance strategies and thereby ensure the service performance of the equipment. This research aims to propose a hierarchical explicit–implicit combined sensing-based real-time monitoring method to achieve the sensing of critical physical field information of core components in complex equipment.

Sensor deployable and non-deployable areas are divided based on the dynamic and static constraints in actual service. An integrated method of measurement point layout and performance evaluation is used to optimize sensor placement, and an association mapping between information in non-deployable and deployable areas is established, achieving hierarchical explicit–implicit combined sensing of key sensor information for core components. Finally, the critical physical fields of core components are reconstructed and visualized.

The proposed method is applied to the spindle system of CNC machine tools, and the result shows that this method can effectively monitor the spindle system temperature field.

This research provides an effective method for monitoring the service performance of complex equipment, especially considering the dynamic and static constraints during the service process and detecting critical information in non-deployable areas.

This paper traces the incorporation of western educational histories in the development of normal-school curricula during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China (1901–1944). It uses publication networks to show how the study of comparative educational history facilitated the international circulation of knowledge in the teaching profession, and how the “uses” of educational history were shaped by larger geopolitical forces.

This paper analyzes the international exchange of texts between normal schools in China and Japan and, subsequently, between normal schools in China and the United States. A database of 107 publications in the field of western educational history that were adopted in China reveals specific patterns of textual citation, cross-reference, and canon-formation in the field of educational historiography.

With conclusions derived from a combination of social network analysis and clustering analysis, this paper identifies three broad stages in China's development of normal-school curricula in comparative educational history: “Japan as Teacher,” “transitional period” and “America as Teacher.”

Statistical analysis can reveal citation and reference patterns but not readers' understanding of the deeper meaning of texts – in this case, textbooks on the subject of western educational history. In addition, the types of publications analyzed in this study are relatively limited, the articles on the history of education in journals have not become the main objects of this study.

This paper uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover the transnational circulation of knowledge in the field of comparative educational history during its formative period in China.