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How does transport infrastructure spur innovation? This article examines the knowledge spillover effects of the construction of high-speed railways (HSR) in China. Using a database listing patent application information and Chinese city samples over the period 2005–2015, we find that the connection to HSR networks significantly increases the number of patents at the city level. Moreover, our results show that more collaborative or radical innovations and those operating in technologically complex industries benefit more from HSR. Our findings extend prior work on transport infrastructure and the literature on the geography of innovation and provide a comprehensive understanding of how various innovation outcomes benefit in different ways from reduced travel costs.

Facing severe environmental degradation around the world, green innovation is considered as an effective way to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. How to motivate firms to engage in green innovation is becoming increasingly important for both the practice and academics. Grounded in upper echelons theory, this study establishes a link between humble CEOs and corporate green innovation. The developed theoretical framework argues that CEO humility, an important but unexplored virtue and psychological trait, has positive effects on green innovation. Furthermore, we also propose that green business strategy mediates this relationship and the successful integration of marketing and technology could strengthen strategy implementation and make being green worthwhile. Supportive evidence is found for these ideas with empirical results based on a moderated mediation analysis of a sample of Chinese manufacturing firms. These findings extend the understanding of the importance of CEO characteristics for firm-level strategies and green achievements.

This study focuses on the effects of megaproject social responsibility (MSR) on participating organizations’ performance. Using a survey of the participating organizations in Chinese megaprojects, this study reveals that the impact of MSR on a participant’s performance goes beyond the scope of the current megaproject. The empirical results indicate that MSR positively affects both financial and social performance of the participating organizations. The interactions of primary stakeholders weaken the positive effects of MSR on both financial and social performance, whereas the interactions of secondary stakeholders strengthen the positive effects of MSR on social performance.

This study investigates the relationship between governors' partisanship and the corporate environmental performance of firms in South Korea. According to political ideology perspective, governors' partisanship closely influences the policy directions and preferences of the provincial administration. Conservative (red) governors tend to induce and encourage competition among firms by deregulating and offering policy benefits to businesses at the provincial level. In response to increased competition in provinces governed by red governors, firms commit to aggressive environmental initiatives as a strategic differentiation tool, in contrast to their behavior in provinces controlled by liberal (blue) governors. Moreover, we examine a contingent role of the provincial Congress. According to the principle of checks and balances, the positive impact of red governors on a firm's environmental performance is stronger when the provincial Congress is controlled by the liberal (blue) party, with its checks and balances on the red governors. This study extends an institutional theory by exploring institutional setting mechanisms at the provincial level.

Transportation infrastructure plays a fundamental role in reducing pollution emissions to avert global environmental degradation. However, the mechanisms behind these effects remain unclear. This paper aims to provide empirical evidence by investigating the effects of roads on the intensity of air pollutant emissions. Using a city-level data set for the period 2003–2015, we find that roads help to reduce the intensity of pollution emissions in China and induce greener growth performance. Specifically, we test two possible mechanisms through which roads improve environmental performance, and the results suggest that roads have a more positive and significant impact on air pollution reduction when an eco-industrial park is located in a nearby city. There is also evidence that roads can spur green innovation and hence can contribute to regional green performance.

Environmental information transparency is a key policy instrument in environmental governance, which has been emphasized in most of the literature. Although a large body of research has focused on its role at the national or industrial level in the developed countries, few studies have extended it to emerging economies and tested its role in the subnational context. In this paper, we have empirically examined how government environmental disclosure shapes corporate environmentalism in the context of China. It is argued that the information transparency of government environmental disclosure can promote corporate environmentalism by providing supports for governments' decision‐making of environmental governance, the activeness of environmental nongovernment organizations, and the participation of general public in environmental issues. Especially, we have highlighted two kinds of influences on focal relationship: booster role of bureaucratic capability in the diffusion of environmental institutional pressure and receiver role of organization slack and industrial competition in the perception of environmental institutional pressure. Using a panel dataset of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2008 to 2015, a positive relationship between government's environmental information transparency and corporate environmentalism is found. In addition, our result has shown that this relationship will be stronger for regions where government bureaucracy capabilities are stronger. This study contributes to understanding of the process of firms' strategic choice facing environmental and institutional changes in emerging economies.

This study is to examine the cost-effectiveness of deployment strategies of oral cholera vaccines (OCVs) in controlling cholera in Bangladesh. We developed a dynamic compartment model to simulate costs and health outcomes for 12 years for four OCVs deployment scenarios: (1) vaccination of children aged one and above with two doses of OCVs, (2) vaccination of population aged 5 and above with a single dose of OCVs, (3) vaccination of children aged 1-4 with two doses of OCVs; and (4) combined strategy of (2) and (3). We obtained all parameters from the literature and performed a cost-effectiveness analysis from both health systems and societal perspectives, in comparison with the base scenario of no vaccination.The incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for the four strategies from the societal perspective were $2,236, $2,250, $1,109, and $2,112 per DALY averted, respectively, with herd immunity being considered. Without herd immunity, the ICERs increased substantially for all four scenarios except for the scenario that vaccinates children aged 1-4 only. The major determinants of ICERs were the case fatality rate and the incidence of cholera, as well as the efficacy of OCVs. The projection period and frequency of administering OCVs would also affect the cost-effectiveness of OCVs. With the cut-off of 1.5 times gross domestic product per capita, the four OCVs deployment strategies are cost-effective. The combined strategy is more efficient than the strategy of vaccinating the population aged one and above with two doses of OCVs and could be considered in the resource-limited settings.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the expression and clinical significance of N6-methyladenosine demethylase FTO in thyroid cancer. Bioinformatic analysis showed that FTO expression was downregulated in thyroid cancer tissues and correlated with lymph node metastasis in thyroid cancer patients. We conducted experimental verification by collecting Asian samples. The results of quantitative reverse transcription-PCR showed that the mRNA expression of FTO in the blood of 30 thyroid cancer patients was lower than that of the control population. At the same time, we found that FTO expression was negative in tissues of 16/56 (28.57%) thyroid cancer cases and 4/40 (10.00%) nontumor thyroid cases through the immunohistochemical method, indicating a lower FTO expression in thyroid cancer tissues than nontumor thyroid tissues (

Pollution has been a global concern in recent decades, promoting related actions in an increasing number of areas. While pollution can lead to unhappiness, will pollution abatement simply increase people's happiness? We analyze relevant happiness data collected before and after China's South-to-North Water Diversion Eastern Route Pollution Control Project to test this idea. The empirical results indicate that the pollution abatement project may not enhance happiness in its duration. Some residents may temporarily sacrifice something (such as employment or income), which offsets the positive effect of environmental improvement on their happiness. In subgroup analyses, rural people are found to benefit more from environmental improvement and suffer less in happiness compared with the urban, and so are low-income people compared with the high-income ones. The findings offer new insights into the costs of pollution in terms of happiness and highlight the need to abate pollution meticulously. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

How does infrastructure within national innovation systems spur innovation diffusion? Using the expansion of high-speed railways (HSR) in China as a quasi-experimental design, we theorize that conn...

Informal institutions can significantly shape the behaviors of various economic organizations within a society by creating unique business infrastructure and value orientation. While the existing l...

ObjectivesTo examine the impact and cost-effectiveness of user fee exemption by contracting out essential health package services to Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) facilities through service-level agreements (SLAs) to inform policy-making in Malawi.MethodsThe analysis was conducted from the government perspective. Financial and service utilisation data were collected for January 2015 through December 2016. The impact of SLAs on utilisation of maternal and child health (MCH) services was examined using propensity score matching and random-effects models. Subsequently, the improved services were converted to quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained, using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) were generated.FindingsOver the 2 years, a total of $1.5 million was disbursed to CHAM facilities through SLAs, equivalent to $1.24 per capita. SLAs were associated with a 13.8%, 13.1%, 19.2% and 9.6% increase in coverage of antenatal visits, postnatal visits, delivery by skilled birth attendants and BCG vaccinations, respectively. This was translated into 434 lives saved (95% CI 355 to 512) or 11 161 QALYs gained (95% CI 9125 to 13 174). The ICER of SLAs was estimated at $134.7/QALYs gained (95% CI $114.1 to $164.7).ConclusionsThe cost per QALY gained for SLAs was estimated at $134.7, representing 0.37 of Malawi’s per capita gross domestic product ($363). Thus, MCH services provided with Malawi’s SLAs proved cost-effective. Future refinements of SLAs could introduce pay for performance, revising the price list, streamlining the reporting system and strengthening CHAM facilities’ financial and monitoring management capacity.

Prior studies on institution theory have tested the various innovative consequences of those formal institutions, but have paid less attention to how informal institutions shape firms’ strategical ...

In an effort to improve health service delivery and achieve better health outcomes, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for improved efficiency of health care systems to better use the available funding. This study aims to examine the efficiency of national health systems using longitudinal country-level data. Data on health spending per capita, infant mortality rate (IMR), under 5 mortality rate (U5MR), and life expectancy (LE) were collected from or imputed for 173 countries from 2004 through 2011. Data envelopment analyses were used to evaluate the efficiency and regression models were constructed to examine the determinants of efficiency. The average efficiency of the national health system, when examined yearly, was 78.9%, indicating a potential saving of 21.1% of health spending per capita to achieve the same level of health status for children and the entire population, if all countries performed as well as their peers. Additionally, the efficiency of the national health system varied widely among countries. On average, Africa had the lowest efficiency of 67%, while West Pacific countries had the highest efficiency of 86%. National economic status, HIV/AIDS prevalence, health financing mechanisms and governance were found to be statistically associated with the efficiency of national health systems. Taking health financing as an example, a 1% point increase of social security expenses as a percentage of total health expenditure correlated to a 1.9% increase in national health system efficiency. The study underscores the need to enhance efficiency of national health systems to meet population health needs, and highlights the importance of health financing and governance in improving the efficiency of health systems, to ultimately improve health outcomes.

A two-photon sensor for the silver ion derived from 3,9-dithia-6-azaundecane as the receptor is reported. The sensor exhibits high sensitivity to and selectivity for silver ion, and emits strong two-photon fluorescence when excited by 810 nm laser photons. Moreover, the binding constants measured by the one- and two-photon fluorescence are similar. This result may be useful for the design of efficient two-photon fluorescence probes for biological substrates.

Based on the experience of operations and support, the criticality class of spare parts (SPs) is usually uncertain and may result in excess or insufficient inventory. So it’s an urgent issue to devise a way to evaluate the criticality class of SPs accurately. The investigation applied back-propagation network (BPN) to evaluate the criticality class (???,???,???,???) of spare parts. By using group-discussing and anonymous questionnaire methods, the index set for the evaluation of criticality class of SPs was put forward. Then the implementation of the evaluation model was depicted in detail. The results show that the model can evaluate the criticality class of SPs effectively, which can avoid the influence of human factors and fuzzy-random city. The proposed BPN will successfully decrease inventory holding costs by modifying the unreasonable target service level setting which is decided by the criticality class and can provide some references for the inventory management.

To investigate the gene expression of nuclear transcriptional factor-kappa B (NF-kappa B) p65 and its inhibiting factor I kappa B in autogenous vein graft.The right common jugular vein was transplanted to infrarenal abdominal aorta by microsurgical technique among 80 Wistar rats so as to establish an autogenous vein graft model. Ten vein graft samples were harvested 6 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, 7 days, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and 8 weeks after surgery. NF kappa B p65 mRNA and I kappa B beta mRNA were measured by reverse transcription-PCR and in situ hybridization. Western blotting and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the protein expression of NF kappa B p65 and I kappa B.The expressions of NF kappa B p65 mRNA and I kappa B beta mRNA 6 hours after the surgery were 16% +/- 4% and 31% +/- 9% respectively (P0.01 vs. control vein). The expression of NF kappa B p65 mRNA reached in peak during the period 3 days to 7 days after the surgery (37% +/- 12% and 34% +/- 10% respectively, P0.01 vs. other teams), however, the I kappa B beta mRNA expression reached its peak during 1 to 2 weeks after the surgery (53% +/- 17% and 49% +/- 10% respectively, P0.01 vs. other teams). The expressions of NF kappa B p65 mRNA and I kappa B beta mRNA recovered to their baseline values 6 weeks after surgery. The expression of p65 protein reached its peak 1 week after the surgery (32% +/- 13%) and then decreased gradually. The expressions of I kappa B alpha and I kappa B beta decreased to 1/3 to 1/2 of the normal vein 6 hours to 24 hours after the surgery and then increased to 5 times that of the control vein 2 weeks after surgery (35% +/- 11% and 44% +/- 13% respectively).The NF-kappa B/I kappa B system is activated in autogenous vein graft. The NF kappa B may become a new target for the prevention and therapy of intimal hyperplasia and stenosis after vein graft.