Riding the Tide of Urbanization: Corporate Investment in Bigger Cities

Urbanization has powered China’s economic growth in recent decades. Local investment opportunities arise with profound social and economic impacts of rapid urban expansion. In this study, I explore the real effects of cities’ spatial expansion on corporate investment decisions and the economic consequences. I find that corporate investment expenditures are responsive to local investment opportunities changes catalyzed by urban expansion. This result is robust to the use of instrumental variable based on geographical characteristics. Leveraging the enriched investment environment, firms also improve their investment efficiency and experience increases in future sales, employment, and firm value. A channel analysis shows that urban expansion influences corporate investment decisions through supplying labor and promoting industry agglomeration. In addition, pursuing urban-expansion investment opportunities should be supported by strong and well-developed market institutions. Collectively, the evidence supports the narrative that firms can grab opportunities for growth when investment environment changes during urbanization

Dialectics of Spontaneity

In Dialectics of Spontaneity, Zhiyi Yang examines the aesthetic and ethical theories of Su Shi, the primary poet, artist, and statesman of Northern Song. Readership: All interested in Chinese literature, aesthetics and ethics, in particular Su Shi, in the comparative discussion about spontaneity, and those concerned with the reception history of Tao Qian or with inner alchemy

WHEN SHOULD FIRMS BE “OPEN”? THE MODERATING ROLE OF IT COMPETENCY IN INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL OPEN INNOVATION COLLABORATION

Open innovation has gained momentum in recent years. Prior research has shown the critical role of openness in understanding the inter-organizational collaboration process. However, existing studies largely focus on search openness instead of the openness in actual collaboration. In addition, it remains unclear how the new emerged organizational competencies on information technology will shift the role of openness in collaboration. In this study, we investigate the role of collaboration openness in open innovation collaboration and explore the moderating role of information technology competencies. Drawing on the theory of inter-organizational relationship and resource-based view, we examine the conditions under which firms should be “open” in the actual collaboration. We develop hypotheses on network uncertainty, collaboration openness and open innovation performance. The model also incorporates the moderating effects of competitive IT capability and IT intensity. The proposed hypotheses will be tested using firm-level survey and objective data. We also discuss our research method and expected implications

Thatched Cottage in a Fallen City: The Poetics and Sociology of Survival under the Occupation

This article examines the construction of lyric identities by Li Xuanti, a classical-style poet, cultural celebrity and prominent civil servant in collaborationist regimes based in Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It argues that Li used his poetry to explore the confusion, ambivalence and sense of cultural pride while living with the occupiers. Despite his collaboration, a frequent identity that appears in Li’s poetry is that of a yimin (loyalist), who has retreated to the inner world of reclusion. With the progress of the war, however, another identity eventually emerged in Li’s poetry, namely that of a patriot. Historical allusions in Li’s poems thus acquire double-entendre, expressing his ambivalent loyalty. Li was also at the social centre of a group of like-minded collaborators and accommodators in Nanjing, bound by their common practice of classical-style poetry and arts. Their community thus becomes a special case of study for the sociology of survival under the Japanese occupation

Winner Takes All? The “Blockbuster Effect” in Crowdfunding Platforms

Crowdfunding has gained momentum in recent years. Although an increasing amount of research has been devoted to the economic value of crowdfunding, the interactions and effects among crowdfunding projects have yet to be fully studied. The current study strives to bridge this gap by examining the impacts of blockbuster projects — i.e., overwhelmingly successful projects – on the crowdfunding platform. Hypotheses are formulated based on the theory of network effects. Our preliminary results suggest the blockbuster projects exhibit positive spill-over effects within project category but cannibalization effects across categories. We also find evidence of lasting positive/negative network externality within/across category/categories. Further analysis suggests that fresh backers who are attracted to the platform by the blockbuster projects tend to be more engaged and more active. Our research aims to extend the emergent crowdfunding literature by examining network externalities among projects. We also provide practical implications for project creators and platform administrators

The Role of Online Peer-to-Peer Lending in Crisis Response: Evidence from Kiva

Online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, a new form of microfinance, has been touted as to its prominent potential for reducing world poverty. Although a growing body of research has been devoted to examining online P2P lending, how such platforms actually make a difference in curbing poverty has yet to be fully explored. The Ebola outbreak of 2014 provides us a unique empirical opportunity to explore such broader impacts of online P2P lending. We investigate how the demand and supply sides of P2P lending platforms react to an unpredictable crisis. Employing a difference-in-difference identification strategy with data from Kiva.org, we conduct country- and loan-level estimations. Results show upward trends on both demand and supply sides of P2P lending; borrowers request more financial capital and lenders are more active in their lending behaviors in the post-crisis period. We extend online P2P lending literature by investigating the influences of “off-platform shocks on within-platform behaviors

Spiking Inception Module for Multi-layer Unsupervised Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking Neural Network (SNN), as a brain-inspired approach, is attracting attention due to its potential to produce ultra-high-energy-efficient hardware. Competitive learning based on Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) is a popular method to train an unsupervised SNN. However, previous unsupervised SNNs trained through this method are limited to a shallow network with only one learnable layer and cannot achieve satisfactory results when compared with multi-layer SNNs. In this paper, we eased this limitation by: 1)We proposed a Spiking Inception (Sp-Inception) module, inspired by the Inception module in the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) literature. This module is trained through STDP-based competitive learning and outperforms the baseline modules on learning capability, learning efficiency, and robustness. 2)We proposed a Pooling-Reshape-Activate (PRA) layer to make the Sp-Inception module stackable. 3)We stacked multiple Sp-Inception modules to construct multi-layer SNNs. Our algorithm outperforms the baseline algorithms on the hand-written digit classification task, and reaches state-of-the-art results on the MNIST dataset among the existing unsupervised SNNs.Comment: Published at the 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN); Extended from arXiv:2001.0168

Numerical analysis of pressure fluctuation in a multiphase rotodynamic pump with air–water two-phase flow

International audiencePressure fluctuation in single-phase pumps has been studied widely, while less attention has been paid to research on multiphase pumps that are commonly used in the petroleum chemical industry. Therefore, this study investigates the pressure fluctuation for a multiphase rotodynamic pump handling air–water two-phase flow. Simulations based on the Euler two-fluid model were carried out using ANSYS_CFX16.0 at different Inlet Gas Void Fractions (IGVFs) and various flow rate values. Under conditions of IGVF = 0% (pure water) and IGVF = 15%, the accuracy of the numerical method was tested by comparing the experimental data. The results showed that the rotor–stator interaction was still the main generation driver of pressure fluctuation in gas–liquid two-phase pumps. However, the fluctuation near the impeller outlet ascribe to the rotor–stator interaction was weakened by the complex gas–liquid flow. For the different IGVF, the variation trend of fluctuation was similar along the streamwise direction. That is, the fluctuation in the impeller increased before decreasing, while in the guide vane it decreased gradually. Also, the fluctuation in the guide vane was generally greater than for the impeller and the maximum amplitude appeared in the vicinity of guide vane inlet

Economic Dispatch of an Integrated Microgrid Based on the Dynamic Process of CCGT Plant

Intra-day economic dispatch of an integrated microgrid is a fundamental requirement to integrate distributed generators. The dynamic energy flows in cogeneration units present challenges to the energy management of the microgrid. In this paper, a novel approximate dynamic programming (ADP) approach is proposed to solve this problem based on value function approximation, which is distinct with the consideration of the dynamic process constraints of the combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant. First, we mathematically formulate the multi-time periods decision problem as a finite-horizon Markov decision process. To deal with the thermodynamic process, an augmented state vector of CCGT is introduced. Second, the proposed VFA-ADP algorithm is employed to derive the near-optimal real-time operation strategies. In addition, to guarantee the monotonicity of piecewise linear function, we apply the SPAR algorithm in the update process. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct experiments with comparisons to some traditional optimization methods. The results indicate that our proposed ADP method achieves better performance on the economic dispatch of the microgrid.Comment: This paper has won the Zhang Si-Ying (CCDC) Outstanding Youth Paper Award in the 33 rd Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC 2021