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Global warming and greenhouse gas emissions pose severe threats to environmental sustainability. A sustainable environment is a prerequisite for long‐term socioeconomic growth and human survival. Green technology is brought about by a country's economic and financial openness, and education provides knowledge to the public and labor, contributing to environmental sustainability. Thus, this research aims to unveil the liaison between human capital, trade openness, and environmental quality for Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries from 1998 to 2018. Several econometric methods, including the Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin causality approaches, reveal long‐run and causal relationships among the modelled indicators. The Driscoll–Kraay standard error results show that human capital is negatively related to carbon dioxide emissions (CO2 emissions). Imposing high tariffs and excise duties, changing tax structures, discouraging the inflow of polluted commodities, and encouraging green trade can help BRICS combat high environmental pollution. The results show that a one‐point increase in human capital in models 1 and 2 can reduce CO2 emissions by 1.5279 and 0.1538 points, respectively. In contrast, a 1% growth in trade can lead to a rise in CO2 emissions of 0.3731% and 0.2384%, respectively. Similarly, financial development and energy consumption result in high CO2 emissions in the long run. Moreover, a feedback effect of the human capital index on CO2 emissions is discovered. As a result of the findings, the government and responsible authorities should provide financial support and encourage investments in the region's energy‐resourceful and sustainable green projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a two-period game theoretic model to investigate a seller's quality claims in a cheap-talk setting. In this model, consumers are reference-dependent with respect to product quality, and consumers who have purchased items can share their quality assessments via online ratings; additionally, consumers may be naive or experienced: naive consumers simply believe the quality claims and quality assessments, whereas experienced consumers can accordingly make rational quality inferences. We find that, in the scenario with only naive consumers, when the reference effect is weak, the seller will always claim the highest quality; when the reference effect is strong, the low-quality seller will claim the highest quality, whereas the high-quality seller will understate its products' quality. In the scenario with only experienced consumers, the seller will claim some moderate quality levels. In the scenario with both types of consumers, in period one, the low-quality seller will always claim some moderate quality levels to serve both types of consumers, whereas the high-quality seller will claim the highest quality when the reference effect is extremely weak and thus serve only naive consumers, or it will adopt truth-telling otherwise; in period two, the low-quality seller will charge a higher price to serve only experienced consumers, whereas the high-quality seller will charge a lower price to serve both types of consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and extreme weather threaten food security and farmers' livelihoods in several regions, and are increasingly affecting production. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches, which attempt to strike a balance between food security, climate change resilience, and agricultural carbon emissions, have achieved significant results in many parts of the world but are still in urgent need of replication in China. In this study, we developed a protector–victim–perpetrator (PVP) analytical framework to analyse the complex links between climate change and agricultural production for the first time and constructed the first climate-smart agriculture development index (CSADI) in China through a modified GPCA-EWM methodology. The evaluation results showed that the CSA development level in most provinces and regions in China continuously improved from 2010 to 2020 but that the overall level was still low, with only four provinces and regions reaching a highly distinct level. The development level of climate-smart agriculture in China was constrained by the insufficient adaptation of agriculture to climate change, the overreliance of most regions on the innate advantages brought about by resource endowment, and the lack of acquired management and protection. Food security was often negatively correlated with agricultural carbon emissions, but the potential for reducing carbon emissions was quite limited, with ecological degradation and livestock overload in Tibet being of particular concern. In summary, mitigating agricultural carbon emissions by improving adaptability, drawing a bottom line for natural resource protection, popularising climate-smart agricultural technologies, and cross-regional integrated ecological management will help enhance the development of climate-smart agriculture in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations have widely begun to adopt remote working since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the effect of remote work on team performance remains unknown. A multi-layer interaction system based on organizational systems theory was designed to assess how remote working affects team performance. Individual performance was computed using a positively skewed stochastic performance model and a modified NK model was used to simulate the team performance under specialized and collaborative conditions. The results showed a complex relationship between task complexity and remote rate and that collaborative teams require a higher remote rate when the probability of employees benefiting from remote work is low to avoid potential detriments from excessive competition. Further results considering agent heterogeneity suggest that individual-level gains are magnified or reduced at the team level and that assessing individual heterogeneity and task complexity is significant for designing remote strategies. In addition, differential mechanisms in team structure and the hierarchy of authority are discussed. This study presents the design and application of a novel business system that helps teams make optimal remote decisions in addition to responding to conflicting discussions in the literature and in practice and providing new insights into decision-making systems in a digital context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]