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This paper utilizes an improved undesirable output DEA model to measure the eco-efficiency of cities in five major urban agglomerations in China during 2006–2020. It employs the Theil Index and Geodetector to investigate the spatial-temporal distribution differentiation characteristics and driving factors of urban eco-efficiency. The main findings are as follows. Firstly, the eco-efficiency of all urban agglomerations showed a fluctuating upward trend, but the eco-efficiency performance of different urban agglomerations in China shows a stratification characteristic. Specifically, the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration consistently ranks first in China, while the mean values of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration are lower than the national average. Secondly, the overall differences in the urban eco-efficiency of all sample cities show a consistently fluctuating downward trend. The factor that affects the level differences of eco-efficiency in different cities is the intra-regional differences. Last but not least, the top three factors affecting the spatial distribution difference of urban eco-efficiency in the whole sample are environmental pollution control investments, innovation level, and environmental infrastructure investments. In the end, this paper proposes that reducing the intra-regional differences is the primary task to achieve the coordinated improvement of urban eco-efficiency in urban agglomerations, and then puts forward some policy suggestions to improve eco-efficiency for the five major urban agglomerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildfires cause great losses to the ecological environment, economy, and people's safety and belongings. As a result, it is crucial to establish wildfire susceptibility models and delineate fire risk levels. It has been proven that the use of remote sensing data, such as meteorological and topographical data, can effectively predict and evaluate wildfire susceptibility. Accordingly, this paper converts meteorological and topographical data into fire-influencing factor raster maps for wildfire susceptibility prediction. The continuous convolutional neural network (CCNN for short) based on coordinate attention (CA for short) can aggregate different location information into channels of the network so as to enhance the feature expression ability; moreover, for different patches with different resolutions, the improved CCNN model does not need to change the structural parameters of the network, which improves the flexibility of the network application in different forest areas. In order to reduce the annotation of training samples, we adopt an active learning method to learn positive features by selecting high-confidence samples, which contributes to enhancing the discriminative ability of the network. We use fire probabilities output from the model to evaluate fire risk levels and generate the fire susceptibility map. Taking Chongqing Municipality in China as an example, the experimental results show that the CA-based CCNN model has a better classification performance; the accuracy reaches 91.7%, and AUC reaches 0.9487, which is 5.1% and 2.09% higher than the optimal comparative method, respectively. Furthermore, if an accuracy of about 86% is desired, our method only requires 50% of labeled samples and thus saves about 20% and 40% of the labeling efforts compared to the other two methods, respectively. Ultimately, the proposed model achieves the balance of high prediction accuracy and low annotation cost and is more helpful in classifying fire high warning zones and fire-free zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2015 China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) this paper examines the effect of culture on the gender gap in financial literacy. We exploit geographical differences in culture in China, comparing outcomes between rural and urban areas and between areas in the east and west (Shanghai and Chongqing). Using the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition we show that, nationally, the gender gap in financial literacy is entirely the product of differences in the way men and women acquire financial literacy. It is a result consistent with cultural effects. When considering just women in Shanghai and Chongqing we observe a raw financial literacy differential of 13% (favoring Shanghai). This gap is also the product of differences in the way financial literacy is acquired. It provides additional evidence as to the importance of culture when it comes to understanding financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To addreess the challenge of overcrowding in the urban rail transit system, this paper proposes a novel joint optimization strategy that optimizes the timetable and the passing facility's working status (PFWS) simultaneously according to the passenger demands. To this end, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is formulated to jointly minimize overcrowding on trains and platforms, as well as the passenger travel time. The passing facility setting and the passenger flow activities depiction are particularly taken into account by the rigorous constraints. Subsequently, we design a simulation-based hybrid variable neighborhood search (SHVNS) algorithm to efficiently generate near-optimal solution. This algorithm incorporates a variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm, a randomly reset strategy, and a simulation-based algorithm. The VNS algorithm includes five neighborhood operators to enhance search efficiency. Finally, various experiments with the real-world data from Chongqing rail transit line 6 in China are tested to prove the applicability and the performance of our proposed model and algorithm. The computational results show that the joint optimization strategy outperforms a current operation strategy in terms of the overcrowded situation on trains and platforms, often by more than 60%, and some management implications and theoretical support can be obtained for the urban rail transit operator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A composite index named GLCDES is developed to dynamically assess the level of Green Low-carbon Circular Development. • The combined-assignment VIKOR model based on game theory is developed to thoroughly estimate the construction level of GLCDES. • Southwest China's Green Low-carbon Circular Development Economic System construction level is examined from 2012 to 2021, showing how the long-side principle governs each region's value. • Selecting and strengthening the long side in combination with its reality is an effective way to improve the construction level of GLCDES. Emission peak and carbon neutrality are critical components of China's overall ecological civilization, and the establishment of a sound Green Low-carbon Circular Development Economic System (GLCDES) is a fundamental countermeasure for solving China's resource, environmental, and ecological problems. This paper used the new development concept as entry points to establish a comprehensive evaluation index system encompassing six subsystems: development dynamics, production and living systems, green benefits, low-carbon benefits, circularity benefits and socio-economic benefits. The combined-assignment VIKOR model, based on game theory, was used to thoroughly estimate the construction level of GLCDES by combining panel data from four southwestern provinces, including Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan, from 2012 to 2021. The study discovered that: the construction level of GLCDES in all four southwestern provinces increased over the past ten years, but the increase was not significant, the four development effectiveness indices, including green, low-carbon, circularity and socio-economic, were significantly improved, the development dynamics index was not significantly enhanced, and the index of production and living systems declined in fluctuation from year to year. The construction level of GLCDES between regions was very uneven and can be divided into two echelons, with the gap between Chongqing and Guizhou being particularly obvious. Regions can be categorized into three major categories based on the number of dominant subsystems. According to the above results, the total value of the dynamic comprehensive evaluation of each region is governed by the principle of the long side, which is an effective way to improve the construction level of GLCDES by selecting and strengthening the long side in combination with its reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]