Are digital technologies an effective inhibitor of depression among middle-aged and older adults? Micro-level evidence from a panel study.

The increased number of middle-aged and older adults leads to depression in this stratum of the population as a topical social and public health issue. However, the new generation of information technologies has exerted a profound impact on the lives of middle-aged and older adults, and offers potential solutions for alleviating their depression. This study utilizes data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) collected between 2011 and 2018 and combines them with city-level traits.

Measuring the carbon shadow price of agricultural production: a regional-level nonparametric approach.

Climate change poses an urgent threat, necessitating the implementation of measures to actively reduce carbon emissions. The development of effective carbon emission reduction policies requires accurate estimation of the costs involved. In situations where actual prices of commodities are not available in the market, shadow pricing provides a useful method to calculate relative prices between commodities with and without price information.

Energy productivity and GHG emission in the european agriculture: The club convergence approach.

The agricultural production plays an important role in food provision and income generation for the rural population. To mitigate the climate change and ensure food security, the agricultural sector has faced multiple initiatives, including the European Green Deal. Developing effective frameworks for measures under such initiatives requires identifying reasonable benchmarks.

Devising evidence-based strategies for progress towards zero-carbon energy at the country level: The by-production approach.

The development of the sustainable energy systems is crucial for economic growth and climate change mitigation. This paper proposes a nonparametric approach based on the by-production technology comprising the economic and environmental sub-technologies. We consider both renewable and fossil energy in the analysis.

Per capita CO emission inequality of China's urban and rural residential energy consumption: A Kaya-Theil decomposition.

With the increasing affluence, the differences in CO emission between urban and rural residential sectors are remarkable and show an increasing trend. In case of China, residential sector accounts for a substantial share of the national CO emission, bringing greater pressure to achieve the goal of carbon peak. Analyzing the emission inequality trend and its drivers is essential for formulating effective CO emission reduction policies.

Stochastic MCDM with normal approximation of the uniformly distributed variables for assessing sustainable insulation materials.

The sustainability-related decision-making oftentimes involves uncertain information. One of the key solutions in representing the interval information is the use of the interval information (numbers). This paper proposes a multi-criteria decision-making approach that relies on the algebra of random variables in handling the interval information.

Energy-space concept for the transition to a low-carbon energy society.

Urban and regional development is indispensable from energy systems that function in a sustainable and resilient manner. The generation of renewable energy has seen significant upturn in the last decade. Renewables can be exploited to meet the global energy needs and climate change mitigation goals.

Evaluating Green Productivity Gains with the Exponential By-Production Technology: an Analysis of the Chinese Industrial Sector.

The conventional convexity assumptions frequently placed on piecewise linear frontiers of production technologies modeled using data envelopment analysis imply non-increasing marginal products. Assuming geometric convexity in the context of the exponential technology represents a more general alternative that imposes no underlying restrictions on the marginal products, while simultaneously reducing the impact of the outlying observations. In this paper, we propose an exponential by-production technology capable of generating the outputs deemed undesirable from the society's point of view.

Capacity utilization and energy-related GHG emission in the European agriculture: A data envelopment analysis approach.

Capacity utilization (CU) measures may show the potential for production growth under improved availability of the (variable and fixed) inputs. However, the environmental constraints should be considered when taking the production decisions. These questions are important in the context of the agricultural sector that needs to ensure food security and sustainability.

Measuring self-reported food loss in primary production: Survey-based insights from Central and Eastern Europe.

Food loss and waste occur along the whole food supply chain and need to be addressed by dedicated strategies. Among all the stages of the food supply chain, food loss in primary production has been the least studied to date. In order to address this gap, this paper focuses on on-farm food loss, using Lithuania as a case study.

The challenges of COVID-19 control policies for sustainable development of business: Evidence from service industries.

Such large-scale disruptions as the pandemic increase the uncertainty and risk related to business. Therefore, the business continuity management (BCM) has become an essential technical solution for enterprise emergency response. Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 has spread worldwide at an alarming rate causing many threats to sustainable development of the business sector.

Assessment of agri-environmental situation in selected EU countries: a multi-criteria decision-making approach for sustainable agricultural development.

In recent years, humanity has faced with multiple crises, both of economic and environmental nature. Among the key reasons for such turbulences, the deteriorating agri-environmental situation appears as an important facet. This article evaluates agri-environmental situation of selected European Union (EU) countries using the multi-criteria decision making methods (SAW, TOPSIS, and EDAS) to identify the potential strategies for improvement of agricultural activities and environmental situation in general.

Comparison of improving energy use and mitigating pollutant emissions from industrial and non-industrial activities: Evidence from a variable-specific productivity analysis framework.

This paper seeks to account for differences in productivity of the industrial and non-industrial activities in the productivity analysis framework. The Luenberger productivity indicator is widely applied to analyze the productivity change, and can be decomposed as it follows the additive structure. But there have been few studies on sector operation performance and industrial structure involving both the industrial and non-industrial inputs, output and air pollutant emissions.

A novel hybrid evaluation framework for public organizations based on employees' performance factors.

Performance evaluation is a comprehensive process for comparing activities compared with predetermined organizational criteria. Based on the results of performance evaluation, organizations can embark on purposeful actions to improve their situation. Obviously, the success of organizations and the economic development of the country depend on the performance of human resources (HR).

Association between socioeconomic welfare and depression among older adults: Evidence from the China health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.

This study aims to examine the association between province-level socioeconomic welfare factors and depression symptoms among older adults in China. Province-level socioeconomic characteristics were merged with microdata for respondents over 65 years from the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) Wave 4 (N = 6657). Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to extract three socioeconomic welfare factors constructed from 14 province-level variables.

Technical Efficiency of Regional Public Hospitals in China Based on the Three-Stage DEA.

Many countries are facing the increasing cost of healthcare services and the low efficiency of public hospitals. These issues are also evident in China. This paper offers a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of public hospitals operating in China's 31 regions.

Productivity change and its driving forces in Chinese healthcare sector.

Since the last medical reform in 2009, China's public hospitals have been facing the changes in the institutional environment. However, the effects of reforms have not been received enough attention to deliver evidence-based implications. In this paper, we first assess the efficiency of regional public hospitals from 2011 to 2018, employing a proposed method based on an additive indicator and an aggregate directional distance function (DDF).

Are women neglected in the EU agriculture? Evidence from Lithuanian young farmers.

The agriculture in Eastern Europe has seen a number of economic and social transitions. This research examines the gender inequality in agriculture by taking the case of an Eastern European country - Lithuania - as an example. The questionnaire survey was employed in order to check the existence of gender inequality.

Is environmental regulation effective in promoting the quantity and quality of green innovation?

Green innovation (GI) is an important means of achieving a win-win outcome in the form of both economic development and environmental protection. Using a unique Chinese Patent Census Database to identify the quantity and quality of GI in each province and panel data for Chinese industrial sector in 30 provinces from 2002 to 2015, we investigated the impact of environmental regulation (ER) on GI in China. This study presents the first attempt to identify green innovation quality in China.

The impact of income inequality on consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions at the global level: A partially linear approach.

The differences in consumption levels across different strata of income and income inequality give raise to differences in the effects of income inequality on the level of the consumption-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. However, the impact of inequality on consumption-based emissions has been scarcely analysed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to test the relationship between income inequality and consumption-based GHG emission per capita by applying the country-level data for 1990-2014.

What Happens to the Health of Elderly Parents When Adult Child Migration Splits Households? Evidence from Rural China.

There is little understanding about the effects of adult child migration on the health of elderly parents left behind in the light of economic contribution and time allocation (farm work and emotional cohesion). Using the pooled data from three latest issues of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in the rural areas, this study assesses the impact of child migration on parents' health by employing instrumental variable approach to deal with the endogeneity problem. Overall, the evidence suggests that adult child migration impairs parental health as indicated by lower self-reported health (SRH), body mass index (BMI), physical activity of daily living (PADL), and higher depression score.

Ecological challenges in life cycle assessment and carbon budget of organic and conventional agroecosystems: A case from Lithuania.

The carbon footprint for organic and conventional crop farming systems was assessed in Kaunas district (Central Lithuania) using the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Data from field experiments were applied to define the effects of the organic and conventional crop farming systems. Both manure and mineral fertilizers were applied to the conventional and only manure in the organic rotations.

Optimizing crop mix with respect to economic and environmental constraints: An integrated MCDM approach.

This study develops an integrated framework for assessment of cropping sustainability at the aggregate (country) level. Such sustainability criteria as total water footprint, Shannon equitability index, total output, and downside coefficient of yield variation are used to rank the crop mixes, corresponding to different assumptions. Mathematical programming model is applied to generate the crop mixes.

Analysis of China's regional thermal electricity generation and CO emissions: Decomposition based on the generalized Divisia index.

Even though Chinese government has been promoting the development of renewable energy, coal-fired thermal electricity generation still accounts for nearly 70% of the total electricity generation, proving to be the largest carbon dioxide (CO) emitter in China. Uncovering the driving forces of CO emissions, thus, is of great significance to provide appropriate mitigation policies for the sustainable development of China's thermal electricity generation. In this regard, this study aims to fill a research gap by applying Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) approach via the Generalized Divisia Index Model (GDIM) to examine the driving factors behind the CO emission changes in China's thermal electricity generation during 2000-2016.