In the mid-1990s, the concept of smart growth emerged in the United States as a critical response to the phenomenon of suburban sprawl. To promote sustainable urban development, it is necessary to further investigate the principles and applications of smart growth. In this paper, we proposed a Smart Growth Index (SGI) as a standard for measuring the degree of responsible urban development. Based on this index, we constructed a comprehensive 3E evaluation model—covering economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental sustainability—to systematically assess the level of smart growth. For empirical analysis, we selected two medium-sized cities from different continents: Wuhu County, China, and Colima, Mexico. Using an improved entropy method, we evaluated the degree of smart growth in recent years and analyzed the contributions of various policies to sustainable urban development. Then, guided by the ten principles of smart growth, we linked theoretical insights to practical challenges and formulated a development plan for both cities. To forecast long-term trends, we employed trend extrapolation based on historical data, enabling the prediction of SGI values for 2020, 2030, and 2050. The results indicate that Wuhu demonstrates a greater potential for smart growth compared with Colima. We also simulated a scenario in which the population of both cities increased by 50 percent and then re-evaluated the SGI. The analysis suggests that while rapid population growth tends to slow the pace of smart growth, it does not necessarily exert a negative impact on the overall trajectory of sustainable development. Finally, a study on the application of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) theory in Wuhu County was conducted. Based on this analysis, we proposed several policy recommendations aimed at enhancing the city’s sustainable urban development.

According to prospect theory [Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk, Eco- nometrica, 47, 263–292], gains and losses are measured from a reference point. We attempted to ascertain to what extent the refer- ence point shifts following gains or losses. In questionnaire studies, we asked subjects what stock price today will generate the same utility as a previous change in a stock price. From participants’ responses, we calculated the magnitude of reference point adapta- tion, which was significantly greater following a gain than following a loss of equivalent size. We also found the asymmetric adap- tation of gains and losses persisted when a stock was included within a portfolio rather than being considered individually. In studies using financial incentives within the BDM procedure [Becker, G. M., DeGroot, M. H., & Marschak, J. (1964). Measuring utility by a single-response sequential method. Behavioral Science, 9(3), 226–232], we again noted faster adaptation of the reference point to gains than losses. We related our findings to several aspects of asset pricing and investor behavior.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in 1895 and led to the deregulation of Chinese private enterprise investment in state monopolized industries. Newly founded enterprises necessitated cooperation amongst member-owners for access to primitive capital. A spirit of cooperative behavior thus resulted in the birth of enterprises in China. We used Chinese prefecture-level panel data between 1880 and 1899 to demonstrate that an increase in the number of enterprises brought by the deregulation is more likely to form in regions that culturally nurture cooperative behavior. We also found a persistent influence of cooperative culture on foundation of enterprises today.

In today’s global business landscape, successful cross-cultural collaboration is not just an asset but a necessity. This article explores essential strategies for achieving effective collaboration between Chinese and Canadian business teams, emphasizing the critical role of cultural intelligence. We delve into understanding cultural differences, their impact on decision-making and communication, and the keys to building high-performing cross-cultural teams. Real-world case studies highlight success stories, and actionable strategies for bridging cultural gaps are provided. By embracing these insights, businesses can unlock the potential of cross-cultural cooperation, leading to better decision-making, enhanced communication, and stronger, more effective teams.

The voluminous strategy research on the determinants of corporate scope is often premised on a well-established property rights regime, which contrasts with the weak property rights protection that still characterizes most countries today. We address this gap by applying property rights theory to theorize and empirically examine how the strengthening of the property rights regime affects corporate scope. Our analysis exploits the enactment of a property law that enhanced the formal protection of private properties in China as a quasi-experiment. We show that with a strengthened property rights regime, the horizontal relatedness among private firms’ businesses increases, but their vertical relatedness decreases, compared with state-owned firms. Further, these effects are less prominent for politically connected firms that are afforded informal protection of property rights. Our findings shed new light on the property rights regime as a critical determinant of firms’ horizontal and vertical scope.

Does the ancient farming culture shape the risk-taking behavior of households today? Using a dataset covering over 130,000 households from a Chinese national survey, our study examines the relationship between the culture of rice cultivation and the financial behavior of modern households. We find that households in regions with a higher rate of historical rice cultivation are more likely to invest in the financial market and buy lottery, but less likely to purchase insurance. We also find that the rice area has more households with risk preferences consistent with prospect theory expectations. To account for omitted variable bias, we use average regional rainfall and downstream distance to ancient irrigation systems as instrumental variables for rice cultivation, and our results remain robust. We find that the rice effect cannot be explained by regional economic development, traditional Confucian values, or ethnic diversity. To explore potential mechanisms, we find that households in rice regions are more likely to borrow money from friends and relatives and have interest waived, and historical commercial development has also been influenced by the rice culture.

This paper examines the effect of political favoritism on economic inequality in the short run and political polarization in the long run. We exploit the sudden death of an authoritarian leader – President Chiang Ching-Kuo of Taiwan – in 1988 to generate plausibly exogenous variation in partiality. We find that Chiang’s nationalist regime conducted political favoritism broadly toward political immigrants via cronyism (allocating public sector positions) and also differentially toward specific subgroups of political immigrants via wage discrimination (offering higher wages to these subgroups within the public sector). Favoritism led to a 7.2 percent immigrant wage premium, which accounted for nearly three quarters of the immigrant-native wage gap at the time. This in turn propelled overall income inequality by 4.5 percent. Moreover, political favoritism breeds political polarization in the long run by pulling apart the political views of immigrants and natives. Compared with natives, immigrants who were exposed to favoritism tend to adopt political positions that are aligned with the nationalist party today: they are more likely to support unification with China, and are more inclined to trust the mainland Chinese government and its citizens. Exposed immigrant (native) swing voters are also more (less) likely to vote for the nationalist party today.

The debate among various market partic-ipants on the short-selling of securities continues today. Opponents of short-selling argue that it disrupts orderly mar-kets by causing panic selling, high vola-tility, and market crashes. So this paper investigates what the impact of short sell-ing on the volatility and liquidity of Hong Kong stock market is, and the results in-dicate that short selling volumes do not Granger-cause market volatility, but volatility Granger-cause short selling volumes. Moreover Granger causality tests show that there is a double direc-tional causality relationship between short selling volumes and market liquidity.

The US dollar has been volatile and falling again and again in recent decades as well as recent years, and for many observers, it is going to be broken sooner or later. The central importance of the dollar is due to the fact that it is not just a currency for the US. Over half of all dollar bills in circulation are held outside of the US borders, and almost half of the US Treasury bonds are held as reserves by foreign central banks. The US dollar is supposed to be the anchor that stabilizes the global currency market. Instead, today it is a major source of instability. In the back ground, the US fiscal deficits have been running high again under Bush administration, once up to almost 3% of US GDP. And current account deficit is set to about 7% in 2005 and more volatility is widely expected. The situation is very challenging for the central banks of Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore which collectively hold about US$2.8 trillion worth of US Treasury bonds as part of their reserves. The moment that they reduce their purchases, the value of the dollar slips. Yet, the more they buy, the more they are exposed to a potential free fall of the US dollar. China has been blamed, not only by US congressmen who are understandably not very familiar with either the complicated currency issues or the domestic politics in any other country, but also many economists or business strategists. It was said that it was all because RMB did not reevaluate, as the source of this "global imbalance" and currency instability. How much revaluation of RMB would remove the US deficits of $700 billions, or at least the US-China trade deficits $200 billions (including Hong Kong)? 500% or 1000%? Of cause no body asked for that kind of magnitude now. Normally smart people say 30-50%, with the unsaid intention to blame-then-suggest again another 30-50% after some initial moves, then the third, the fourth. This seems not really new phenomena at all. It has been all so familiar before and since the Nixon shock in early 70s', and in 80s' when there was the Plaza Accord. The convenient targets to blame were the gold standard, the Dutch Mark, the Japanese Yen. Now it is turn for Chinese reminbi. So the question is what are the real causes of the global imbalance and currency instability? In this short paper, we first take a look at what is really going on with the Chinese economy and trade balance, and then try to identify sources of the current imbalance , and then, as a concluding remark, think again the possibilities to reform the global currency system.

Firms, which trade in today’s open economy often involved multi-currency transactions, will have their stock returns influenced by traded transaction currencies variations. Frequently, these firms also use derivatives for either active (hedging and speculative) or passive (hedging) currency risk management. It is therefore nontrivial to analyse empirically for these firms the relationship between stock return, currency risk exposure, and the motive of their derivatives use. This paper aims to test the relationships, via a two-factor market return model, which is based on the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (Ross, 1976). Descriptive and Inferential statistical tests are implemented on published accounting data (cross sectional and time series) for 69 Australian listed firms excluding non-financial institutions. Statistical test results reveal that there is a weak positive relationship between stock return and currency risk exposure level. The test results also suggest a negative relationship between the currency risk level and the motive (either hedging, speculative or both) of derivatives use. These findings are consistent with the modern finance theory.