The impact of public demands on local environmental governance performance: Evidence from civil environmental complaints placed on leaders at different government levels in China.

The joint participation of multiple subjects is crucial for environmental governance. Using panel data for 273 Chinese cities during 2013-2019, this study investigates the impact and mechanism of public demands on environmental pollution. The results demonstrate that public demands measured by the number of environmental complaints placed on government leaders significantly reduce environmental pollution.

A structured iterative division approach for non-sparse regression models and applications in biological data analysis.

In this paper, we focus on the modeling problem of estimating data with non-sparse structures, specifically focusing on biological data that exhibit a high degree of relevant features. Various fields, such as biology and finance, face the challenge of non-sparse estimation. We address the problems using the proposed method, called structured iterative division.

Impact of Medical-Pharmaceutical Separation Reform on Hospitalization Expenditure in Tertiary Public Hospitals: Difference-in-Difference Analysis Based on Panel Data from Beijing.

Purpose: The medical-pharmaceutical separation (MPS) reform is a healthcare reform that focuses on reducing the proportion of drug expenditure. This study aims to analyze the impact of the MPS reform on hospitalization expenditure and its structure in tertiary public hospitals.

Methods: Using propensity score matching and multi-period difference-in-difference methods to analyze the impact of the MPS reform on hospitalization expenditure and its structure, a difference-in-difference-in-difference model was established to analyze the heterogeneity of whether the tertiary public hospital was a diagnosis-related-group (DRG) payment hospital.

Enhanced quantum secret sharing protocol for anonymous secure communication utilizing W states.

Quantum secret sharing (QSS) represents the fusion of quantum mechanics principles with secret information sharing, allowing a sender to distribute a secret among receivers for collective recovery. This paper introduces the concept of quantum anonymous secret sharing (QASS) to enhance the practicality of such protocols. We propose a QASS protocol leveraging W states, ensuring both recover-security and anonymity of shared secrets.

The analysis of pedestrian flow in the smart city by improved DWA with robot assistance.

With the acceleration of urbanization in China, the urban population continues to grow, leading to frequent occurrences of crowded public spaces, which in turn trigger traffic congestion and even safety accidents. In order to more effectively control pedestrian flow, enhance the efficiency and safety of public spaces, this experiment conducts in-depth research and improvement on the traditional Dynamic Window Approach (DWA), and applies it to the fine control of pedestrian flow. Specifically, this study comprehensively reviews and analyzes the characteristics of pedestrian traffic flow and the working principles of traditional DWA.

Wealthy individual investors and stock markets' tail risk.

This paper employs a unique data set to analyze the trading behavior of wealthy individual investors across Mainland China and their impact on Chinese stock markets' tail risk. Results show that the wealthy individual investors' trading behavior can explain Chinese stock markets' tail risk, and the daily investment portfolios based on the network density of wealthy individual investors have significant excess returns. This paper also investigates the determinants of wealthy individual investors' trading behavior with the social network method and the spatial econometric model, and reveals that wealthy individuals benefit from the spillover effect of their trading behavior through the investor networks.

Consumers' risk perception, market demand, and firm innovation: Evidence from China.

Major product safety incidents often cause widespread concern among consumers, and these product safety incidents will stimulate consumers' psychology, change their risk perception, and affect the demand for products and services of risk consumers. The change in consumer demand will eventually lead to a change in firm innovation decisions. Using Chinese firm-level data, this paper employs the news reporting of the Bawang event as a quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of risk perception changes on innovation.

Business culture impairs facial trustworthiness judgments.

Previous research has found that business culture has a detrimental impact on interpersonal trust. To understand whether this impact extends to rapid, automatic, bottom-up judgments of facial trustworthiness, we conducted 4 experiments involving 244 participants from economic and non-economic backgrounds. We presented participants with both trustworthy and untrustworthy faces and asked them to make judgments on trustworthiness.

Enhancing ESG learning outcomes through gamification: An experimental study.

This study investigates the effectiveness of gamification in enhancing learning outcomes in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) education. Employing a cluster randomized experiment, the research involved 22 classes from four universities, divided into gamified and traditional teaching groups. The gamified group engaged with ESG concepts through interactive, game-like elements, while the control group followed standard educational practices.

Consumers' variety-seeking behaviors under time pressure: Based on regulatory focus and excitement levels.

Variety-seeking behavior has received substantial attention in marketing literature. Although various explanations of the causes of variety-seeking explore the influence of consumers' internal psychological characteristics on behavioral decisions, few studies have been conducted on external factors. With the fast pace of modern life and the increasing trend of online shopping, consumers often face time constraints when making purchasing decisions.

Characteristics and spending patterns of high-cost child patients: findings from Fujian in China.

Background: The health condition during childhood has been shown to influence an individual's health and socioeconomic status in adulthood. Understanding the concentration and persistence patterns in children's healthcare expenditures is crucial for providing risk protection and promoting the well-being of children. Studies regarding the concentration and persistence of health expenditures have focused mainly on elderly individuals in developed regions.

Do political connections facilitate or inhibit firms' digital transformation? Evidence from China's A-share private listed companies.

Given the advent of the digital era, digital transformation has become necessary for enterprise development. Political connections are the most important resources for enterprise development in most countries. However, the impact of political connections on corporate digital transformation has yet to be verified.

Both parents migrating and left-behind children's cognitive ability in rural China: does it pay?

Introduction: While the well-documented negative correlation between both parents migrating and the academic performance of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China is widely acknowledged, it's important to recognize that statistical data reveals millions of children experiencing both parents migrating. This discrepancy between the documented negative impact and the prevalence of both parents migrating can be attributed to previous studies primarily focusing on the direct effects.

Methods: Employing national representative panel data and FE model, this study estimates the direct impact of both parents migrating and the indirect effects of both parents migrating through private tutoring, family tutoring, family income, and boarding school participation.

The Impact of Praise on Cooperative Behavior in Three-Player Public Goods Games and Its Gender Differences.

Previous research has primarily focused on static factors influencing cooperative behavior in social dilemmas, with less attention given to dynamic factors within group social interactions, such as positive feedback received during interactions, i.e., praise.

Impact of health investment on household income distribution: insights from China's longitudinal survey data.

This paper investigates the impact of health investment on household income distribution, drawing from data spanning over 10 years from the China Nutrition and Health Survey. The study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the nuanced pathways through which health investment influences income distribution. Utilizing a rich dataset, rigorous empirical methods including quantile regression and cross-sectional data modeling are employed to explore the relationship between health investment and income distribution.

Improving health and reducing health inequality: An innovation of digitalization?

Rationale: The association between digitalization and individual health has attracted increasing attention from both scholars and policymakers. Existing research, however, has not agreed on whether digitization can improve health or reduce health inequality.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to clarify whether and how the development of digitalization may be related to health and health disparities.

Parental Psychological Control and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Achievement Goal Orientation.

This study examined the multiple mediating roles of achievement goal orientation between three parental psychological control (PPC) strategies and adolescents' academic achievement. The study sample consisted of 2613 Chinese middle school adolescents (52.6% boys) who were followed for one and a half years; they completed questionnaires on PPC (including love withdrawal, guilt induction, and authority assertion), achievement goal orientation (involving the mastery approach, the performance approach, and performance-avoidance goals), and academic achievement.

A Good View for Graph Contrastive Learning.

Due to the success observed in deep neural networks with contrastive learning, there has been a notable surge in research interest in graph contrastive learning, primarily attributed to its superior performance in graphs with limited labeled data. Within contrastive learning, the selection of a "view" dictates the information captured by the representation, thereby influencing the model's performance. However, assessing the quality of information in these views poses challenges, and determining what constitutes a good view remains unclear.

Vulnerability Analysis Method Based on Network and Copula Entropy.

With the deepening of the diversification and openness of financial systems, financial vulnerability, as an endogenous attribute of financial systems, becomes an important measurement of financial security. Based on a network analysis, we introduce a network curvature indicator improved by Copula entropy as an innovative metric of financial vulnerability. Compared with the previous network curvature analysis method, the CE-based curvature proposed in this paper can measure market vulnerability and systematic risk with significant advantages.

Special economic zone and infant mortality: Evidence from China.

By exploiting the development of special economic zones (SEZs) in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper evaluates how such zones affect infant mortality. Difference-in-differences analysis reveals that SEZs significantly decrease the local infant mortality rate, and the impact is larger for male infants and infants with less-educated mothers. Further studies show that the SEZs, which acts as an economic growth shock, improve infant survival by increasing the local income.

How does air pollution affect household consumption? Evidence from China.

Increasing air pollution not only affects the population's health but also changes its consumption structures and patterns. Using China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the relationship between air pollution and household consumption. The findings reveal that household consumption is considerably affected by air pollution: One standard deviation rise of PM concentration will decrease the household consumption by 8.

Free school meals and cognitive ability: Evidence from China's student nutrition improvement plan.

The China Student Nutrition Improvement Plan (SNIP) covers 40.6 million students in the compulsory education stage, accounting for 42% of all students enrolled in rural compulsory education in 2021. This paper utilizes the county-by-county rollout of the SNIP and estimates the effect of this nutritional intervention on students' cognitive outcomes.

Medical insurance, vulnerability to poverty, and wealth inequality.

Background: China has made remarkable achievements in alleviating poverty under its current poverty standards. Despite these immense successes, the challenge of consolidating these achievements remains. In reality, health risks are among the significant factors causing rural households to fall into poverty, and medical insurance is the significant factor mitigating household vulnerability to poverty.