Does Competition Encourage Unethical Behavior? The Case of Corporate Profit Hiding in China

This paper investigates whether market competition enhances firms’ incentives to hide profits. We develop a theoretical model of firms’ profit hiding behavior in competitive environments and derive several testable hypotheses. We then test the model using a database that covers more than 20,000 large-and-medium-sized industrial firms in China during the period 1995-2002. Our findings show that firms in more competitive market environments – as well as firms in relatively disadvantageous positions – hide a larger share of their profits. This suggests that policies intended to promote competition should be accompanied by policies aiming at strengthening institutional infrastructure and at leveling playing fields.preprin

Optimal manufacturing/remanufacturing policies with fixed investment for the underdeveloped remanufacturing system

© 2017, Strojarski Facultet. All rights reserved. In an underdeveloped remanufacturing system, poor infrastructure and low technical level impede further development of remanufacturing. To overcome this obstacle, a huge amount of fixed investment is required to improve the remanufacturing system. However, this investment inevitably influences the manufacturer’s manufacturing/remanufacturing decision-making economically. The relationship between fixed investment and recycling ratio was investigated, and the two- and multi-period manufacturing/remanufacturing mixed optimization models were developed. Based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions, the optimal manufacturing/remanufacturing and fixed investment policies were obtained in closed-form expressions. Moreover, the influences of the fixed investment were analysed. Results show that the optimal policies are significantly influenced by the degree of underdevelopment of the remanufacturing system. When the remanufacturing system is underdeveloped, the manufacturer shows a lack of enthusiasm in remanufacturing, thereby resulting in the decrease of the investment and the recycling ratio. The manufacturer raises the sale price to alleviate the loss caused by fixed investment, but the total manufacturing quantity and profit decrease. In the multi-period case, the manufacturer gradually increases the investment for continuously improving the remanufacturing system to increase the recycling ratio and obtain additional profits from remanufacturing. The proposed models can effectively provide the reference for determining the reasonable manufacturing/remanufacturing and fixed investment policies in the underdeveloped remanufacturing system

Differential Effects of Lipid-lowering Drugs in Modulating Morphology of Cholesterol Particles.

Treatment of dyslipidemia patients with lipid-lowering drugs leads to a significant reduction in low-density lipoproteins (LDL) level and a low to moderate level of increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol in plasma. However, a possible role of these drugs in altering morphology and distribution of cholesterol particles is poorly understood. Here, we describe the in vitro evaluation of lipid-lowering drug effects in modulating morphological features of cholesterol particles using the plaque array method in combination with imaging flow cytometry. Image analyses of the cholesterol particles indicated that lovastatin, simvastatin, ezetimibe, and atorvastatin induce the formation of both globular and linear strand-shaped particles, whereas niacin, fibrates, fluvastatin, and rosuvastatin induce the formation of only globular-shaped particles. Next, purified very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and LDL particles incubated with these drugs showed changes in the morphology and image texture of cholesterol particles subpopulations. Furthermore, screening of 50 serum samples revealed the presence of a higher level of linear shaped HDL cholesterol particles in subjects with dyslipidemia (mean of 18.3%) compared to the age-matched normal (mean of 11.1%) samples. We also observed considerable variations in lipid-lowering drug effects on reducing linear shaped LDL and HDL cholesterol particles formation in serum samples. These findings indicate that lipid-lowering drugs, in addition to their cell-mediated hypolipidemic effects, may directly modulate morphology of cholesterol particles by a non-enzymatic mechanism of action. The outcomes of these results have potential to inform diagnosis of atherosclerosis and predict optimal lipid-lowering therapy

Community succession analysis and environmental biological processes of naturally colonized vegetation on abandoned hilly lands and implications for vegetation restoration strategy in Shanxi, China

Data were collected simultaneously at different succession stages using a space-for-time substitution, and were analyzed using the quantitative classification method (TWINSPAN) and the ordination technique (DCA). The community succession of natural colonized plants on abandoned hilly lands in Shanxi are below: Assoc. Potentilla chinensis + Setaria viridis ¨ Assoc. Artemisia sacrorum + S. viridis + Oxytropis caoraloa ¨ Assoc. A. sacrorum + Artemisia capillaries ¨ Assoc. A. capillaries + Pedivularis shansiensis + Echinops pseudosetifer ¨ Assoc. Hippophae rhamnoides. A. sacrorum + Cleistogenes squarrosa ¨ Assoc. H. rhamnoides + Ostryopsis davidiana.A. sacrorum ¨ Assoc. O. davidiana.A. sacrorum + Dendranthema chanetii ¨ Assoc. Populus davidiana.Caragana korshinskii.A. sacrorum ¨ Assoc. Larix principis-rupprechtii.H. rhamnoides.A. sacrorum. This established a recovery model of natural vegetation on abandoned hilly lands in Shanxi. The structure, composition and life-forms changed significantly during succession. Four indices of species diversity were used to analyze changes in the heterogeneity, dominance, richness and evenness of species during the succession process. The species richness and heterogeneity of plant communities increased significantly, the dominance decreased obviously and the evenness decreased slightly. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) also proved the significance of these five indices. Pioneer species of S. viridis, A. sacrorum, O. caoraloa, A. capillaries, P. shansiensis, E. pseudosetifer, C. squarrosa, H. rhamnoides, O. davidia, C. korshinskii, P. davidiana and L. principis-rupprechtii, etc. colonize successfully and play important roles on the vegetation restoration of abandoned hilly lands.Keywords: Abandoned hilly lands, vegetation community succession, environmental biological process, soil quality

Design of a Third-party Reverse Logistics Network under a Carbon Tax Scheme

© 2016 Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology. Reverse logistics network involves significant inherent uncertainties, which cannot be completely characterized because of a lack of adequate historical data. In this study, a multi-product and multi-period interval programming model was developed on the basis of partial information to design an effective reverse logistics network. In addition, the trade-offbetween economic benefits and the environmental burdens from carbon emissions was analyzed by considering the effect of a carbon tax scheme on the reverse logistics network design. Through an improved and modified interval linear programming method, the optimal interval solution was obtained with LINGO. Finally, numerical simulations were conducted to explore the effectiveness of the model and the effect of the carbon tax scheme. Results show that the optimal solution of the reverse logistics network design is robust. The effect of the carbon tax scheme is trivial when the carbon tax is low and significant when the carbon tax is high. As carbon tax gradually increases, carbon emissions effectively decrease, but sharply declines the total profit sharply declines. The findings indicate that the proposed model can effectively solve the reverse logistics network design with partial information under a carbon tax scheme

Measurement and Modeling of Wireless Off-Body Propagation Characteristics under Hospital Environment at 6-8.5 GHz

© 2013 IEEE. A measurement-based novel statistical path-loss model with a height-dependent factor and a body obstruction (BO) attenuation factor for off-body channel under a hospital environment at 6-8.5 GHz is proposed. The height-dependent factor is introduced to emulate different access point (AP) arrangement scenarios, and the BO factor is employed to describe the effect caused by different body-worn positions. The height-dependent path-loss exponent is validated to fluctuate from 2 to 4 with AP height increasing by employing both computer simulation and classical two-ray model theory. As further validated, the proposed model can provide more flexibility and higher accuracy compared with its existing counterparts. The presented channel model is expected to provide wireless link budget estimation and to further develop the physical layer algorithms for body-centric communication systems under hospital environments