Export Requirements and Special Features of Inward Foreign Direct Investment in China

The paper investigates the relationship between the policy of export requirements and special features of China's inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and examines how trade-related investment measures affect the investment decisions of multinational firms. A theoretical model is constructed that allows us to analyse how location advantages affect the equilibrium regime under which multinational firms and government policy toward FDI co-exist endogenously. The model also exam the welfare effects of export requirements policy by comparing with an alternative policy - production tax. The findings from this study accord well with the evidence regarding China's inward FDI. The main results indicate that the policy of export requirements is sub-optimal.

Expanding to outward foreign direct investment or not? A multi-dimensional analysis of entry mode transformation of Chinese private exporting firms

This research examines the factors determining whether or not exporting firms expand to outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) as part of their internationalisation strategy, using a recent survey of Chinese private-owned enterprises. We carry out a multi-dimensional analysis to investigate the impact of firm productivity, internal resources and the external environment on OFDI decisions, including both the decision to undertake OFDI and the volume of OFDI flows. It is found that productivity, technology-based capability, export experience, industry entry barriers, subnational institutions and intermediary institutional support affect firms’ OFDI decisions. The findings have important policy and managerial implications

Smart Procurement of Naturally Generated Energy (SPONGE) for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Buses

We discuss a recently introduced ECO-driving concept known as SPONGE in the context of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Buses (PHEB)'s.Examples are given to illustrate the benefits of this approach to ECO-driving. Finally, distributed algorithms to realise SPONGE are discussed, paying attention to the privacy implications of the underlying optimisation problems.Comment: This paper is recently submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineerin

A Distributed and Privacy-Aware Speed Advisory System for Optimising Conventional and Electric Vehicles Networks

One of the key ideas to make Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) work effectively is to deploy advanced communication and cooperative control technologies among the vehicles and road infrastructures. In this spirit, we propose a consensus-based distributed speed advisory system that optimally determines a recommended common speed for a given area in order that the group emissions, or group battery consumptions, are minimised. Our algorithms achieve this in a privacy-aware manner; namely, individual vehicles do not reveal in-vehicle information to other vehicles or to infrastructure. A mobility simulator is used to illustrate the efficacy of the algorithm, and hardware-in-the-loop tests involving a real vehicle are given to illustrate user acceptability and ease of the deployment.Comment: This is a journal paper based on the conference paper "Highway speed limits, optimised consensus, and intelligent speed advisory systems" presented at the 3rd International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE 2014) in November 2014. This is the revised version of the paper recently submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems for publicatio

Optimal Distributed Consensus Algorithm for Fair V2G Power Dispatch in a Microgrid

Among the many motivations to encourage the use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) there is the attractive possibility to implement Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) functionalities. They are attractive both for EV owners, who can sell their own energy to the grid when they do not need to travel, and also for the power grid, as the stored energy can be used to back-up the fluctuating energy produced from renewable sources or to improve the grid stability at critical times. In this paper we illustrate a distributed algorithm that solves the V2G problem in a fair manner, trying to achieve an optimal trade-off between power generation costs and inconvenience to the vehicle owner. Results are shown and discussed for a case study simulated in the OpenDSS power system environmen

A Mathematical Model for Ballast Tamping Decision Making in Railway Tracks

Ballast tamping is considered as an important maintenance process for railway infrastructures and has a large influence on the capacity of any railway networks. But optimizing the plan of that process is a complex problem with a high cost. This paper discusses optimizing tamping operations on ballasted tracks to improve the track geometry and reduce the total maintenance cost. A mathematical model for this problem in the literature is improved here by including the restriction on the resources (tools, workers and budget) in the model and including constant/variable values for track possession cost and available resources. The optimal solutions obtained for all instances are found by using the global optimization. Besides, a numerical study is presented to test and evaluate the model performance. The results show that the proposed model can be adopted by the infrastructure manager (IM) to make suitable tamping scheduling decisions under normal or private conditions; however, the private conditions lead to an increase of the final cost compared to that of the normal ones. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2020-03091601 Full Text: PD