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Most comparative studies of media are undertaken between different countries. It is normally assumed that there are considerable commonalities between the media in a given country and it is usually argued that these are sufficient to form a 'media system', which can usefully be contrasted with that of another country. It is relatively unusual to find two sets of media within one country that are sufficiently distinct as be considered as different systems. This paper explores one of the exceptions to that general rule: the case of the Hong Kong media as compared with those of mainland China. Given the different historical and current situations of the two locations at the time the research was conducted, it is to be expected that the kinds of journalism practised would be radically dissimilar. The results of a content analysis of five mainland and three Hong Kong papers demonstrate that, at the aggregate level, there are indeed important differences. A more detailed analysis, however, demonstrates that each of the three Hong Kong papers is in fact closer to mainland groupings than they are to each other. One Hong Kong paper, Ta Kung Pao, is closest to the most 'official' grouping of mainland papers, while Ming Pao falls in to a grouping with the 'liberal' mainland paper. The now defunct Apple Daily, on the other hand, has the closest links with the 'popular official' mainland press. Taken together, these findings suggest that the common assumption that different forms of journalism are best compared on a national basis is incorrect and that factors like market position and ideological orientation have an important influence on the kinds of journalism practised across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greater Bay Area (GBA) is to become a major innovation and technology hub of global impact. Such a transformation is to take place in the midst of a policy-driven economy in GBA's Mainland region and a market-driven economy in Hong Kong and Macau. In this paper, we examine the uniqueness and complexities of logistics and trade facilitation in GBA. This study establishes a discourse in GBA's logistics and trade facilitation between government and non-government stakeholders. Based on the discourse, we provide a conceptual context on the unique aspects of GBA, pinpointing critical issues such as the coexistence of differing institutional systems and interplay between state planning and market economy. A major objective of the paper is to identify and conceptualize unique logistics and trade features of GBA development, and to highlight opportunities for academic and policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of a growing population and shrinking arable land, the world is facing a global food crisis. One important solution could be to subsidize farmers to sustain their production so that they can produce more food for consumers and earn more money for themselves. An efficient subsidy program should also aim to reduce income inequality among farmers, as measured by the Gini coefficient of farmers' income. In this paper, we examine and compare the effects of input and output farm subsidy programs. The input subsidy reduces the farmers' input purchasing costs, whereas the output subsidy reduces the farmers' output processing costs. By considering a continuum of infinitesimal price-taking farmers who are heterogeneous in their average yield rates, our equilibrium analysis of a game-theoretical model yields three results. First, both subsidy schemes reduce the aggregate income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient. However, they create the following "opposite" effects: the input subsidy decreases the income gap among farmers (under mild conditions), whereas the output subsidy increases it. Second, farmers with low yield rates prefer the input subsidy, whereas farmers with high yield rates prefer the output subsidy. Third, the output subsidy scheme is more effective in improving the total farmer income than the input subsidy scheme, whereas the input subsidy scheme is more effective in reducing income disparities and improving consumer surplus than the output subsidy scheme. Our results provide new insights for policymakers who are crafting subsidy schemes. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71971184, 71972025, and 72032001], the Departmental General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Grant P0008761], and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Grants 15504615 and 15500820]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4850. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a dynamic principal–agent setting in which the principal needs to dynamically schedule an agent to work or be suspended. When the agent is directed to work and exert effort, the arrival rate of a Poisson process is increased, which increases the principal's payoff. Suspension, on the other hand, serves as a threat to the agent by delaying future payments. A key feature of our setting is a switching cost whenever the suspension stops and the work starts again. We formulate the problem as an optimal control model with switching and fully characterize the optimal control policies/contract structures under different parameter settings. Our analysis shows that, when the switching cost is not too high, the optimal contract demonstrates a generalized control-band structure. The length of each suspension episode, on the other hand, is fixed. Overall, the optimal contract is easy to describe, compute, and implement. This paper was accepted by Ilia Tsetlin, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: The work of P. Cao is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72122019 and 71771202]. The work of F. Tian is financially supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) funding (RGC Early Career Scheme 2022/23) [Grant 27500822]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4845. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputes over transactions on two-sided platforms are common and usually arbitrated through platforms' customer service departments or third-party service providers. This paper studies crowd-judging, a novel crowdsourcing mechanism whereby users (buyers and sellers) volunteer as jurors to decide disputes arising from the platform. Using a rich data set from the dispute resolution center at Taobao, a leading Chinese e-commerce platform, we aim to understand this innovation and propose and analyze potential operational improvements with a focus on in-group bias (buyer jurors favor the buyer, likewise for sellers). Platform users, especially sellers, share the perception that in-group bias is prevalent and systematically sways case outcomes as the majority of users on such platforms are buyers, undermining the legitimacy of crowd-judging. Our empirical findings suggest that such concern is not completely unfounded: on average, a seller juror is approximately 10% likelier (than a buyer juror) to vote for a seller. Such bias is aggravated among cases that are decided by a thin margin and when jurors perceive that their in-group's interests are threatened. However, the bias diminishes as jurors gain experience: a user's bias reduces by nearly 95% as experience grows from zero to the sample median level. Incorporating these findings and juror participation dynamics in a simulation study, the paper delivers three managerial insights. First, under the existing voting policy, in-group bias influences the outcomes of no more than 2% of cases. Second, simply increasing crowd size through either a larger case panel or aggressively recruiting new jurors may not be efficient in reducing the adverse effect of in-group bias. Finally, policies that allocate cases dynamically could simultaneously mitigate the impact of in-group bias and nurture a more sustainable juror pool. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. Funding: S. A. Yang and A. Zhang acknowledge the support of the Hong Kong General Research Fund [Grant "Decentralizing Platform Governance: Innovations from China; Project 17614921]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4818. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stock market plays a leading and crucial role in the market mechanism, which connects the savers and investors. So far, there is no uniform regulation on the disclosure requirement of environmental protection information in China. But companies are increasingly concerned about environmental protection and are committed to disclosing more information about environmental protection. It is important to analyze the information on stock market opening and environmental protection by computing technology. For the stock market, as voluntary disclosure of non-financial information, environmental protection information is an important supplement to financial information and is essential for the investors to make decisions. And it is the important content of capital market information. This article through the capital market opening opportunity: Shanghai (Shenzhen) Hong Kong stock connect (the stock market opening mentioned later in this paper all refers to the Shanghai (Shenzhen) Hong Kong stock connect), empirically investigates the stock market opening that affects the environmental protection information disclosure of the company. Our conclusion supports the views that the stock market opening improved the environmental protection information disclosure of the company and promotes the environmental protection behavior of enterprises. Through further analysis, this paper finds that after the officially carried out the stock market opening policy, the attention of many analysts and the participation of foreign institutional investors urge the management to take the initiative to reduce agency costs, which is an important influence mechanism for the stock market opening to affect the disclosure of enterprises' environmental protection information. The evidence of this study indicates that the stock market opening has an important impact on enterprises in China from the following aspects: improving the information disclosure of environmental protection, thus enhancing the company's awareness of environment protecting, and improving the information quality of stock market in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As social media becomes a major channel of news access, emotions have emerged as a significant factor of news distribution. However, the influence of cultural differences on the relationship between emotions and news sharing remains understudied. This paper investigates the impact of cultural disparities on emotional responses to political news in Hong Kong. We introduce the notion of "emotional profile" to capture cultural differences in the level and structure of audiences' emotional responses to political topics on Facebook news pages. The study was conducted at a highly significant political moment in the former British colony when the National Security Law (NSL) was passed. The study found that readers of China-critical news pages on Facebook express the highest emotional intensity while readers of China's media in Hong Kong express the lowest emotional intensity, and readers of China-supporting media fall in between. Readers of China-critical Facebook news pages express the most anger, but their political news sharing is correlated the most with "wow" and "sad" reactions. In contrast, readers of Facebook pages of China's media in Hong Kong are more likely to react with "love", which is also the emotion most associated with their political news sharing. The notion of "emotional profile" helps discover similarities within and differences across political boundaries of the news ecosystem. We interpret the results with the help of recent scholarly understanding of emotional expression on social media within Hong Kong's political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to test whether the complete pass-through of exchange rate exists when there are almost no transaction costs and in the environment of competitive market. In general, the literature claims that the pass-through of exchange rate is incomplete due to imperfect market, i.e. the presence of transaction costs and imperfect competition. The quasi-experimental case of the food import to Hong Kong from Mainland China is considered in the analysis. The results show that the pass-through of the exchange rate of Chinese RMB against to US dollar to Hong Kong's food import price is complete in long-run equilibrium. Besides, the short-run adjustment significantly contributes to correcting the deviation from the long-run pass-through effect. Moreover, the complete pass-through still exists after accounting for the effects of asymmetry and volatility. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that the complete pass-through of exchange rate can exist in the real world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a cost-effective sequential route recommender system to provide real-time routing recommendations for vacant taxis searching for the next passenger. We propose a prediction-and-optimization framework to recommend the searching route that maximizes the expected profit of the next successful passenger pickup based on the dynamic taxi demand-supply distribution. Specifically, this system features a deep learning-based predictor that dynamically predicts the passenger pickup probability on a road segment and a recursive searching algorithm that recommends the optimal searching route. The predictor integrates a graph convolution network (GCN) to capture the spatial distribution and a long short-term memory (LSTM) to capture the temporal dynamics of taxi demand and supply. The GCN-LSTM model can accurately predict the pickup probability on a road segment with the consideration of potential taxi oversupply. Then, the dynamic distribution of pickup probability is fed into the route optimization algorithm to recommend the optimal searching routes sequentially as route inquiries emerge in the system. The recursion tree-based route optimization algorithm can significantly reduce the computational time and provide the optimal routes within seconds for real-time implementation. Finally, extensive experiments using Beijing Taxi GPS data demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed recommender system. History: Accepted by Ram Ramesh, Area Editor for Data Science and Machine Learning. Funding: This work was partially supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grants CityU 21500220, CityU 11504322] and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72201222]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0112) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0112). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of stock market liberalisation through the Mainland China–Hong Kong Stock Connect (CHSC) program on the corporate financialisation of listed firms in Mainland China using the generalised difference-in-difference model in this paper. The empirical results show that implementing the CHSC program significantly reduces corporate financialisation of the listed firms in Mainland China by mitigating internal agency conflicts and enhancing external monitoring. Further analysis indicates that the inhibiting effect of stock market liberalisation through the CHSC program on corporate financialisation is more pronounced for firms without cross-listing or qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) ownership and firms with a more remarkable change of foreign ownership brought by the CHSC program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of stock market liberalisation through the Mainland China–Hong Kong Stock Connect (CHSC) program on the corporate financialisation of listed firms in Mainland China using the generalised difference‐in‐difference model in this paper. The empirical results show that implementing the CHSC program significantly reduces corporate financialisation of the listed firms in Mainland China by mitigating internal agency conflicts and enhancing external monitoring. Further analysis indicates that the inhibiting effect of stock market liberalisation through the CHSC program on corporate financialisation is more pronounced for firms without cross‐listing or qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) ownership and firms with a more remarkable change of foreign ownership brought by the CHSC program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For an unbalanced cooperative game, its grand coalition can be stabilized by some instruments, such as subsidization and penalization, that impose new cost terms to certain coalitions. In this paper, we study an alternative instrument, referred to as cost adjustment, that does not need to impose any new coalition-specific cost terms. Specifically, our approach is to adjust existing cost coefficients of the game under which (i) the game becomes balanced so that the grand coalition becomes stable, (ii) a desired way of cooperation is optimal for the grand coalition to adopt, and (iii) the total cost to be shared by the grand coalition is within a prescribed range. Focusing on a broad class of cooperative games, known as integer minimization games, we formulate the problem on how to optimize the cost adjustment as a constrained inverse optimization problem. We prove NP -hardness and derive easy-to-check feasibility conditions for the problem. Based on two linear programming reformulations, we develop two solution algorithms. One is a cutting-plane algorithm, which runs in polynomial time when the corresponding separation problem is polynomial time solvable. The other needs to explicitly derive all the inequalities of a linear program, which runs in polynomial time when the linear program contains only a polynomial number of inequalities. We apply our models and solution algorithms to two typical unbalanced games, including a weighted matching game and an uncapacitated facility location game, showing that their optimal cost adjustments can be obtained in polynomial time. History: Accepted by Area Editor Andrea Lodi for Design & Analysis of Algorithms—Discrete. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72022018 and 72091210]; the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR, China [Grant 16210020]; Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Grant P0032007]; and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Grant 2021454]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0268. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature primarily examined the impact of unexpected events on the stock market at a single scale, posing the challenge of a lack of multiscale analysis. This paper investigates the impact of COVID-19 on stock markets (China, the U.S., and Hong Kong) from a multiscale perspective using an improved ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD)-based event analysis method. First, the stock price series is decomposed into several independent intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and a residue. Second, a novel composition method is proposed to reconstruct the IMFs into three components: high-frequency, low-frequency, and long-term trend. We find that the composition of low-frequency and long-term trend components is dominant, which is used to estimate the strength of COVID-19 impact on the stock markets. In addition, the outbreak of COVID-19 significantly increased the intensity of short-term fluctuations in stock prices. Finally, the high-frequency component is analyzed to capture the volatility spillover effects among the three stock markets by the BEKK(Baba-Engle-Kraft-Kroner)-GARCH model. The results show that before the outbreak, there are two-way volatility spillovers between any two of the three markets. After the outbreak, there is no spillover effect between China and Hong Kong, and Hong Kong has no spillover effect on the U.S. However, volatility in the U.S. market still has a significant spillover effect on the other two markets, implying that a mature market can absorb new information more quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let T=(V,A) be a tournament with a nonnegative integral weight w(e) on each arc e. A subset F of arcs is called a feedback arc set (FAS) if T\F contains no cycles (directed). A collection F of FASs (with repetition allowed) is called an FAS packing if each arc e is used at most w(e) times by the members of F. The purpose of this paper is to give a characterization of all tournaments T=(V,A) with the property that, for every nonnegative integral weight function w defined on A, the minimum total weight of a cycle is equal to the maximum size of an FAS packing. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 11801266 and 11971228]; the Chinese Academy of Sciences [Grants XDA27000000 and ZDBS-LY-7008]; the Ministry of Science and Technology of China [Grant 2018AAA0101002]; the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant 020314380035]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a container leasing firm that has elementary and premium containers, which are downward substitutable and for use by elementary contract customers (ECCs), premium contract customers (PCCs), as well as walk-in customers (WICs). ECCs can be satisfied by elementary containers or premium ones at discounted prices while PCCs only accept premium containers. WICs can be satisfied by any type of container at different prices. The objective is to maximise the expected total rental revenue by managing its limited capacity. We formulate this problem as a discrete-time Markov Decision Process and show the submodularity and concavity of the value function. Based on this, we show that the optimal policy can be characterised by a series of rationing thresholds, a series of substitution thresholds and a priority threshold, all of which depend on the system states. We further give conditions under which the optimal policy can be simplified. Numerical experiments are conducted to show the impact of the substitution of two items on the revenue, to compare the performance of the optimal policy with those of the commonly used policies and to investigate the influence of arrival rates on the optimal policy. Last, we extend the basic model to consider different rental durations, ECCs' acceptance behaviour and endogenous prices for WICs. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management. Funding: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China/Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme [Grant 71661167009, N_PolyU531/16], National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72171016, 71831001], and British Academy\Leverhulme Small Research [Grant SRG19\190059]. This work was also supported by Zhejiang Shuren University Research [Grant KXJ0121605] and Beijing Logistics Informatics Research Base. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4425. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

75.6% of land comprising Hong Kong remains undeveloped according to the special administrative region's planning department. In turn, Hong Kong's constricted real estate, now estimated to be the world's costliest, has created eye-popping living arrangements historically and contemporarily. Denizens' colorful reputation and imagination for flouting city ordinances, zoning laws, and spatial management stand emblematic of tenacious self-sufficiency and a free-spirited brand of runaway capitalist initiative. Why is this conspicuous trademark of Hong Kong's societal fabric very much alive in the 21st Century? Why does this matter in a rapidly urbanizing world witnessing the ascension of mega-urban centers alongside ever-widening socioeconomic chasms? This paper intends to illuminate the peculiar origins and longevity of the KowloonWalled City, an urban monolith of notoriety and autonomy that blossomed in a semi-legal grey zone unencumbered under British protectorate rule for nearly a century. Parallels will connect the linear trajectory between Kowloon's hardnosed living to today's comparable Chungking Mansions and the hundreds of thousands of cage homes appearing in all corners of the city. This paper aims to answer why these residential paradoxes continue to function with efficiency and relevancy, posing solutions for indigent housing while exacerbating the stigma of social and economic ostracism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many warehouses involved in e-commerce order fulfillment use robotic mobile fulfillment systems. Because demand and variability can be high, scheduling orders, robots, and storage pods in interaction with manual workstations are critical to obtaining high performance. Simultaneously, the scheduling problem is extremely complicated because of interactions between decisions, many of which must be taken timely because of short planning horizons and a constantly changing environment. This paper models all such scheduling decisions in combination to minimize order fulfillment time. We propose two decision methods for the above scheduling problem. The models batch the orders using different batching methods and assign orders and batches to pods and workstations in sequence and robots to jobs. Order picking and stock replenishment operations are included in the models. We conduct numerical experiments based on a real-world case to validate the efficacy and efficiency of the model and algorithm. Instances with 14 workstations, 400 orders, 300 stock-keeping units (SKUs), 160 pods, and 160 robots can be solved to near optimality within four minutes. Our methods can be applied to large instances, for example, using a rolling horizon. Because our model can be solved relatively fast, it can be used to take managerial decisions and obtain executive insights. Our results show that making integrated decisions, even when done heuristically, is more beneficial than sequential, isolated optimization. We also find that positioning pick stations close together along one of the system's long sides is efficient. The replenishment stations can be grouped along another side. Another finding is that SKU diversity per pod and SKU dispersion over pods have strong and positive impacts on the total completion time of handling order batches. Funding: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [72025103, 72361137001, 71831008, 72071173] and the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [HKSAR RGC TRS T32-707/22-N]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2022.0265. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ℓ 0 trend filtering ( ℓ 0 -TF) is a new effective tool for nonparametric regression with the power of automatic knot detection in function values or derivatives. It overcomes the drawback of ℓ 1 -TF that is known to have bias issues. To solve the ℓ 0 -TF problem, we propose an alternating minimization induced active set (AMIAS) search method based on the necessary optimality conditions derived from an augmented Lagrangian framework. The proposed method takes full advantage of the primal and dual variables with complementary supports, and decouples the high-dimensional problem into two subsystems on the active and inactive sets, respectively. A sequential AMIAS algorithm with warm start initialization is developed for efficient determination of the cardinality parameter, along with the output of solution paths. Theoretically, the oracle estimator of ℓ 0 -TF is justified to behave like regression splines under the continuous time setting with mild conditions. Our numerical experiments include simulation studies for comparing ℓ 0 -TF to ℓ 1 -TF and free-knot splines on several synthetic examples, and a real data application of time series segmentation on Hong Kong PM2.5 indexes. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms – Continuous. Funding: This work was supported in part by Hong Kong General Research Fund [No. 17306519]. C. Wen's research is partially supported by National Science Foundation of China [12171449] and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [WK3470000027, YD2040002019]. X. Wang's research is partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72171216, 12231017, 71921001, and 71991474], and the National Key R&D Program of China [No. 2022YFA1003803]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0313. The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0313) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0313). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend the notion of globalized robustness to consider distributional information beyond the support of the ambiguous probability distribution. We propose the globalized distributionally robust counterpart that disallows any (respectively, allows limited) constraint violation for distributions residing (respectively, not residing) in the ambiguity set. By varying its inputs, our proposal recovers several existing perceptions of parameter uncertainty. Focusing on the type 1 Wasserstein distance, we show that the globalized distributionally robust counterpart has an insightful interpretation in terms of shadow price of globalized robustness, and it can be seamlessly integrated with many popular optimization models under uncertainty without incurring any extra computational cost. Such computational attractiveness also holds for other ambiguity sets, including the ones based on probability metric, optimal transport, ϕ-divergences, or moment conditions, as well as the event-wise ambiguity set. Numerical studies on an adaptive network lot-sizing problem demonstrate the modeling flexibility of our proposal and its emphases on globalized robustness to constraint violation. History: Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms—Continuous. Funding: Z. Chen was supported by [General Research Fund Grant 9043424, NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme N_CityU105/21] from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. S. Wang was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71922020, 72171221, and 71988101, entitled "Econometric Modeling and Economic Policy Studies"] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant UCAS-E2ET0808X2]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0274) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0274). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multidepot capacitated vehicle routing problem aims to serve customers' demands using a fleet of capacitated vehicles located in multiple depots, such that the total travel cost of the vehicles is minimized. We study a variant of this problem, the k-depot split delivery vehicle routing problem (or k-DSDVRP in short), for the situation where each customer's demand can be served by more than one vehicle, and the total number of depots, denoted by k ≥ 2 , is a fixed constant. This is a challenging problem with broad applications in the logistics industry, for which no constant ratio approximation algorithm is known. We develop a new approximation algorithm for the k-DSDVRP, ensuring an approximation ratio of (6 − 4 / k) and a polynomial running time for any fixed constant k ≥ 2. To achieve this, we propose a novel solution framework based on a new relaxation of the problem, a cycle splitting procedure, and a vehicle assignment procedure. To further enhance its efficiency for practical usage, we adapt the newly developed approximation algorithm to a heuristic, which runs in polynomial time even when k is arbitrarily large. Experimental results show that this heuristic outperforms a commercial optimization solver and a standard vehicle routing heuristic. Moreover, our newly proposed solution framework can be applied to developing new constant ratio approximation algorithms for several other variants of the k-DSDVRP with k ≥ 2 being a fixed constant. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71971177, 71725001, U1811462], Research Grants Council of Hong Kong SAR, China [Grant 15221619], and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation [Grant 2023A1515030260]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0193. The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0193) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0193). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study adjustable distributionally robust optimization problems, where their ambiguity sets can potentially encompass an infinite number of expectation constraints. Although such ambiguity sets have great modeling flexibility in characterizing uncertain probability distributions, the corresponding adjustable problems remain computationally intractable and challenging. To overcome this issue, we propose a greedy improvement procedure that consists of solving, via the (extended) linear decision rule approximation, a sequence of tractable subproblems—each of which considers a relaxed and finitely constrained ambiguity set that can be iteratively tightened to the infinitely constrained one. Through three numerical studies of adjustable distributionally robust optimization models, we show that our approach can yield improved solutions in a systematic way for both two-stage and multistage problems. History: Accepted by Pascal Van Hentenryck, Area Editor for Computational Modeling: Methods & Analysis. Funding: Financial support by the Early Career Scheme from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Project No. CityU 21502820], the CityU Start-Up Grant [Project No. 9610481], the CityU Strategic Research Grant [Project No. 7005688], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Project No. 72032005], and Chow Sang Sang Group Research Fund sponsored by Chow Sang Sang Holdings International Limited [Project No. 9229076] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2021.0181), as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2021.0181). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The new waves of COVID-19 outbreaks caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant are developing rapidly and getting out of control around the world, especially in highly populated regions. The healthcare capacity (especially the testing resources, vaccination coverage, and hospital capacity) is becoming extremely insufficient as the demand will far exceed the supply. To address this time-critical issue, we need to answer a key question: How can we effectively infer the daily transmission risks in different districts using machine learning methods and thus lay out the corresponding resource prioritization strategies, so as to alleviate the impact of the Omicron outbreaks? Methods: We propose a computational method for future risk mapping and optimal resource allocation based on the quantitative characterization of spatiotemporal transmission patterns of the Omicron variant. We collect the publicly available data from the official website of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government and the study period in this paper is from December 27, 2021 to July 17, 2022 (including a period for future prediction). First, we construct the spatiotemporal transmission intensity matrices across different districts based on infection case records. With the constructed cross-district transmission matrices, we forecast the future risks of various locations daily by means of the Gaussian process. Finally, we develop a transmission-guided resource prioritization strategy that enables effective control of Omicron outbreaks under limited capacity. Results: We conduct a comprehensive investigation of risk mapping and resource allocation in Hong Kong, China. The maps of the district-level transmission risks clearly demonstrate the irregular and spatiotemporal varying patterns of the risks, making it difficult for the public health authority to foresee the outbreaks and plan the responses accordingly. With the guidance of the inferred transmission risks, the developed prioritization strategy enables the optimal testing resource allocation for integrative case management (including case detection, quarantine, and further treatment), i.e., with the 300,000 testing capacity per day; it could reduce the infection peak by 87.1% compared with the population-based allocation strategy (case number reduces from 20,860 to 2689) and by 24.2% compared with the case-based strategy (case number reduces from 3547 to 2689), significantly alleviating the burden of the healthcare system. Conclusions: Computationally characterizing spatiotemporal transmission patterns allows for the effective risk mapping and resource prioritization; such adaptive strategies are of critical importance in achieving timely outbreak control under insufficient capacity. The proposed method can help guide public-health responses not only to the Omicron outbreaks but also to the potential future outbreaks caused by other new variants. Moreover, the investigation conducted in Hong Kong, China provides useful suggestions on how to achieve effective disease control with insufficient capacity in other highly populated countries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction between storm surge and concurrent precipitation is poorly understood in many coastal regions. This paper investigates the potential compound effects from these two flooding drivers along the coast of China for the first time by using the most comprehensive records of storm surge and precipitation. Statistically significant dependence between flooding drivers exists at the majority of locations that are analysed, but the strength of the correlation varies spatially and temporally and depending on how extreme events are defined. In general, we find higher dependence at the south-eastern tide gauges (TGs) (latitude < 30 ∘ N) compared to the northern TGs. Seasonal variations in the dependence are also evident. Overall there are more sites with significant dependence in the tropical cyclone (TC) season, especially in the summer. Accounting for past sea level rise further increases the dependence between flooding drivers, and future sea level rise will hence likely lead to an increase in the frequency of compound events. We also find notable differences in the meteorological patterns associated with events where both drivers are extreme versus events where only one driver is extreme. Events with both extreme drivers at south-eastern TG sites are caused by low-pressure systems with similar characteristics across locations, including high precipitable water content (PWC) and strong winds that generate high storm surge. Based on historical disaster damages records of Hong Kong, events with both extreme drivers account for the vast majority of damages and casualties, compared to univariate flooding events, where only one flooding driver occurred. Given the large coastal population and low capacity of drainage systems in many Chinese urban coastal areas, these findings highlight the necessity to incorporate compound flooding and its potential changes in a warming climate into risk assessments, urban planning, and the design of coastal infrastructure and flood defences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government bonds might provide reference entities that reduce corporate bond yields. We study China's 2017 issuance of two U.S. dollar (USD)-denominated sovereign bonds when there were (effectively) no outstanding USD sovereigns. We find that Chinese corporate USD bonds experienced a four- to nine-basis-point decline in yield spreads, whereas corporate renminbi (RMB) bonds did not. The effect was stronger for corporate bonds with maturities similar to those of the USD sovereigns. Further consistent with the reference effect, USD-denominated corporate bonds experienced declines in bid-ask spreads and volatility; corporate bond yield spread changes became more sensitive to sovereign yield innovations; and the less-informed foreign mutual funds significantly increased their holdings of offshore USD Chinese corporate bonds. Limited evidence indicates that new corporate bond maturities shifted toward the sovereign bonds' maturity after their issuance. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: B. Wang received financial support from Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. C. Y. Hong received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72003125]. Supplemental Material: The internet appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4499. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of implicit government guarantee (IGG) on Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). We find that SOEs reduce their investments by 2.4% of book assets, on average, relative to matched non-SOEs after the first SOE default in China's onshore bond markets in 2015. The investment reduction concentrates among SOEs that are financially constrained, yet SOEs financed by large state banks are hardly affected. Bondholders require more stringent default protection in newly issued SOE bonds. We also find that the investment reduction is more pronounced for SOEs with severe agency problems and that SOEs experienced more positive market reactions to acquisition announcements after 2015. Our results suggest that the reduction in IGG has confounding effects on Chinese firms. Although the weakening of IGG may help mitigate overinvestment, it exacerbates financial constraints of those with limited access to alternative sources of financing. This paper was accepted by Lucas Schmid, finance. Funding: Z. Zhang acknowledges the funding support by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Project 11503318]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4483. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that since China closes her asset markets, investors turn to Hong Kong instead. The initial public offerings (IPOs) of Chinese firms in the Hong Kong stock market and the local housing market of Hong Kong improve the prediction of each other, as they may serve as a coordinator of herds among investors. Alternative explanations such as the "production conjecture" and "underlying factor conjecture" are found to be inconsistent with the data. Our results are also consistent with the increasing importance of Chinese tourists in the world. Directions for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor adventure education (OAE) is philosophically rooted in Western values, yet it has been implemented in non-Western cultures, such as East Asia. This paper examines how OAE functions in East Asia, through data from Hong Kong. Although some cultural differences are clear, there is no compelling evidence that OAE cannot provide benefits in Eastern contexts. The data in our example support the premise that OAE can be a viable and valuable medium for the development of social and intrapersonal skills and may serve as a complementary approach to traditional schooling in East Asia. Implications from this paper include better aligning OAE with schools and teachers, understanding the merits of relationships developed through OAE, and appreciating that some traditional OAE practices should be questioned when exported to different cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the orderly promotion of the infrastructure construction in China, the number of coastal tunnels is increasing, but the coastal environment is accompanied by a large amount of groundwater and the designs of the waterproof and drainage system of coastal tunnels have always been a hot topic in the industry. If the waterproof and drainage system designs of the coastal tunnels are improper, the tunnel structure will easily be damaged and the stability and service life of the whole project will be affected. Based on the Gongbei tunnel project of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, this paper discusses the designs of the waterproof and drainage system, and the waterproof detail structures of the Gongbei tunnel. Indoor similarity tests were carried out to study the law of the free water discharge of the tunnel under variable water heads, the relationship between the water pressure outside the lining and the water discharge, the relationship between the water pressure outside the pipe roof and the water discharge, and the distribution of water pressure around the tunnel. The reliability of the indoor similarity test was verified by the field test. The results show that the whole waterproof system should be adopted in the Gongbei tunnel, that is, grouting ring + pipe roof freezing ring + initial lining + waterproof board + tertiary lining. In a certain range, the greater the water head, the greater the free water discharge of the tunnel. When the water head is large, the free drainage tends to a fixed value. When the tunnel is completely plugged, the water pressure outside the tunnel is distributed from the hydrostatic pressure. When the tunnel adopts drainage measures, the water pressure outside the lining will be reduced to a certain extent even the water discharge is very small. The above research can provide a reference for the design of the waterproof and drainage system similar to the coastal tunnel in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a mixed duopoly service system with two service providers (SPs): one private and the other public. The public SP's objective is welfare maximization, whereas the private SP is profit driven. Customers are heterogeneous in terms of their quality tastes and choose from three options, namely, joining the private queue, joining the public queue, and balking (or taking an outside option). We first consider the scenario where the private SP provides a premium service and the public SP provides a regular service. Paradoxically, we find that although the public SP's objective is welfare maximization, welfare in the system can be less than that obtained with only profit-seeking private SPs. We further demonstrate that the maximum social welfare is achieved by partially privatizing the public SP, that is, by including both welfare and profit maximization as arguments in its objective function. In extreme cases in which the public SP's capacity is very small, fully privatizing the public SP can be socially desirable. We then consider the alternate setting where the public SP provides a premium service and the private SP provides a regular service and obtain similar conclusions. These findings, however, rely on the assumption that an outside option exists for balking customers, and one should be cautious in generalizing to no-balking situations. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management. Funding: W. Zhou was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71925002 and 71731006]. W. Huang acknowledges the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71801096 and 72101090] and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation [Grant 2022A1515011983]. V. N. Hsu was supported by the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant CUHK14526216]. P. Guo received financial support from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant 15502820]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4424. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate bonds with large increases in implied volatility over the past month underperform those with large decreases in implied volatility by 0.6% per month. In contrast to existing studies that show implied volatility changes carry information about fundamental news, our evidence suggests that implied volatility changes contain information about uncertainty shocks to the firm. Our results are consistent with the notion that informed traders with new information about firm risk prefer to trade in the option market and the corporate bond market underreacts to this information. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance. Funding: We thank the Canadian Derivatives Institute for financial support. J. Cao and X. Zhan acknowledge generous financial support of the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Grants GRF 14501720, 14500919]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4379. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem definition: In this paper, we explore how a firm's concern about profit distribution and the size of downstream firms in supply chains affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment strategy. Methodology/results: In a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one manufacturer, both players decide whether to invest to reduce CSR violations, and they negotiate over a wholesale price. Distributive comparison behavior makes the manufacturer compare the profit with his equitable payoff, which is determined by the supplier's profit. Advantageous (resp. disadvantageous) inequality occurs when the manufacturer's profit is higher (resp. lower) than the manufacturer's equitable payoff. We compare this supply chain to the one without distributive comparison behavior. We find that when advantageous inequality occurs, or when neither inequality occurs and the manufacturer's sensitivity to the supplier's profit is low, the manufacturer's distributive comparison behavior makes the manufacturer less (resp. supplier more) likely to invest in CSR, which we call negative (resp. positive) impacts of distributive comparison behavior; otherwise, it makes the manufacturer more (resp. supplier less) likely to invest. In most cases, the weak bargaining power of the small manufacturer leads to larger positive or smaller negative impacts of distributive comparison behavior. Also, the low efficiency of the small manufacturer to reduce CSR violations leads to smaller negative impacts of distributive comparison behavior. Managerial implications: Our results show that governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should investigate firms' distributive comparison behavior in supply chains. When downstream firms show the aversion to lower (resp. higher) profits than ones from upstream firms, the measures to monitor and support upstream (resp. downstream) firms' CSR investments should be taken to avoid CSR violations. In the supply chains with small downstream firms, extra efforts should be made to induce firms' distributive comparison behavior. Funding: M. Wang was supported partially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71931009 and 71671023]; X. Fang is grateful for the support under a Lee Kong Chian Fellowship and Retail Centre of Excellence Research Grant; Z. Wang was supported partially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72010107002, 71671023, and 72171212]; and Y. Chen was supported partially by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [HKUST C6020-21GF]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1172. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a game-theoretic model to study the incentive for competing manufacturers to share supplier audit information. Based on the audit information, each manufacturer decides whether to source from a common supplier who has uncertain responsibility violation risk or to switch to a backup supplier who has no responsibility violation risk but charges a higher price. When supplier responsibility violation occurs, some consumers boycott the manufacturers involved. Audit information allows a manufacturer to reduce the uncertainty about the risk of the common supplier. We show that audit information sharing may make the manufacturers' sourcing strategies more or less differentiated. As a result, the information-sharing decision is not monotone in the model parameters. We fully characterize the manufacturers' equilibrium audit information-sharing and sourcing decisions and establish conditions under which audit information sharing induces the manufacturers to adopt more or less responsible sourcing strategies. We also show that a manufacturer could be better off when the cost premium of sourcing from the backup supplier or the risk of the common supplier becomes higher or the audit information becomes less accurate. We consider several extensions of the base model and demonstrate that the main insights remain mostly valid. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management. Funding: A. Y. Hawas supported by the Wei Lun Foundation. W. Shang was supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [GRF Project LU 13501415]. Y. Wang was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71901209]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4358. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms in many industries obtain superior knowledge of customer preferences through industry experience or data analytics, whereas customers often need costly efforts to learn their match values. In this paper, we examine the situations under which a customer chooses whether to inspect upon observing her personalized price from a firm with superior knowledge. On the surface, it seems that the firm can use personalized prices to directly communicate the customers' match value, and thus there is no need for customers to expend inspection efforts. However, we find that in equilibrium the firm may trick low-preference customers into overpaying more than their match value, even when the inspection cost is low. The opportunistic incentives induce customer suspicions, which may lead to excessive customer inspection that would be avoided if the firm were not capable of price discrimination. Therefore, personalized pricing cannot obviate customer inspection. Since inspection cost raises a deadweight loss in social welfare, public policies that prevent firms from price-discriminating against customers may benefit both firms and customers. History: Yuxin Chen served as the senior editor for this article and Zsolt Katona served as associate editor for this article. Funding: This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant 21500920] and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72172089]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1355. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the transmission mechanism of a loan-tovalue (LTV) policy to financial stability by providing three findings from Hong Kong. First, there is evidence that LTV cap tightening since 2009 has dampened both the leverage of borrowers and credit growth, and that lower leverage has played a major role in strengthening the resilience of banks to property price shocks. Second, the effect on loan growth is found to be state-dependent due to loan market disequilibrium, with a much stronger impact on loan supply than demand, which suggests that calibrating this tool to curb loan growth requires an accurate estimate of both loan demand and supply. Operationally, this could pose challenges for policymakers. Finally, we find evidence of the low responsiveness of housing demand to caps on LTV ratios, which is suggestive of the weak direct pass-through rate of the LTV policy to the property market. These findings together support the view that it would be operationally optimal for the LTV policy to primarily target household leverage, and that there are limitations in using this instrument to stabilise credit growth and property prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed 49,592 teleseismic receiver functions (RFs) recorded by 278 CEArray stations to image the mantle transition zone (MTZ) beneath the South China Block to understand the origins of deep velocity anomalies and their potential links to subduction and intraplate volcanism. We employed a fast‐marching method and a high‐resolution 3‐D velocity model (FWEA18) derived from full waveform inversion in computing P‐to‐S conversion times to better image the 410‐ and 660‐km discontinuities. Our results indicate that the common‐conversion‐point stacking of RFs using 3‐D conversion times yielded better migration images of the two discontinuities. The images revealed a slightly depressed 410‐km with a few small uplifted patches, and showed that the 660‐km beneath the western Yangtze Craton is depressed by 10–25 km, which is likely caused by the stagnant Paleo‐Pacific slab. The 660‐km beneath the southern Cathaysia Block has a 5–15 km high plateau with a topographic low at its central part. The lateral dimension of the topographic low is ∼150 km and is located beneath the central Pearl River Mount Basin near Hong Kong. We speculate that the topographic low occurs within the Hainan plume with a temperature excess of ∼300–400 K and is caused by the garnet phase transition. The displaced deep plume enters the MTZ and spreads nearly horizontally at the base. The plume evolves into two channels with a minor one toward the northeast and a major one toward the southwest, which keep moving upward to the 410‐km. The southwest channel is likely the source that feeds the Hainan volcanoes. Plain Language Summary: Using data from seismic stations in the South China Block, we investigated the mantle transition zone (MTZ) to understand the origins of deep velocity anomalies and their associations with subduction and intraplate volcanism. By applying advanced techniques and a ground‐truth reference model, we obtained clearer images of the 410‐ and 660‐km discontinuities. The images showed that the 410‐km discontinuity is slightly depressed with some small uplifted areas. Additionally, the 660‐km discontinuity beneath the western Yangtze Craton is depressed due to the presence of a stagnant slab from the ancient Pacific Ocean. In contrast, beneath the southern Cathaysia Block, the 660‐km discontinuity forms a high plateau with a central low area. This area located near Hong Kong may be related to a plume originating from the lower mantle. The plume, with elevated temperatures, enters the MTZ and spreads horizontally. It then evolves into two channels, with one moving toward the northeast and the other toward the southwest. The southwest channel likely supplies magma to the volcanoes in Hainan. These findings provide insights into the complex processes occurring deep within the Earth's mantle in the South China region. Key Points: FWEA18 is used in migrating CEArray receiver functions to image the mantle transition zone beneath the South China BlockThe 660‐km is depressed ∼10–25 km by stagnant slabs beneath the northwestern part of the blockThe Hainan volcanoes are fed by a displaced lower mantle plume beneath the central Pearl River Mouth Basin [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 13 June 2012 the Swiss collector Uli Sigg donated his collection of contemporary Chinese art to the new museum of visual art in Hong Kong: M+. In August 2012 Artprice published its report on contemporary art for July 2011 to June 2012 announcing that five out of the ten contemporary artists fetching highest prices at auction, were Chinese. On 29 November 2012 Xi Jinping delivered his first speech after taking office in which he set out his vision for China. This paper argues that in order to understand the Chinese art market and the political context in which it operates, it helps to look at three events which took place in 2012 and their context. Art, the art market and politics are closely interconnected here. The case study of M+ and its foundational donation, the Sigg collection of "contemporary Chinese art", helps to elucidate the relationships and the astonishing developments of the art market in China and Hong Kong during this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the changes that occurred in the rural area of the Sai Kung Peninsula in Hong Kong's New Territories from the 16th century, and uses it as a case-study to show the complex range of forces that can act on a locale. Throughout its history, land use and economic activities on the Sai Kung Peninsula have been driven to a great extent by non-local factors, including distant warfare leading to mass immigration and political decisions leading to mass emigration. However, once Hong Kong became an important outpost of Britain's colonial empire it became integrated into a global trade network and thus became sensitive to economic and technological changes taking place thousands of miles away. In the 20th century, the Sai Kung Peninsula developed in response to Hong Kong's growth as an international trade hub, finding its agricultural output overwhelmed by cheap foreign products, and its industry challenged by foreign technological advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hospital Authority (HA) is a statutory body managing all the public hospitals and institutes in Hong Kong (HK). In recent decades, Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HKHA) has been making efforts to improve the healthcare services, but there still exist some problems like unfair resource allocation and poor management, as reported by the Hong Kong medical legislative committee. One critical consequence of these problems is low healthcare efficiency of hospitals, leading to low satisfaction among patients. Moreover, HKHA also suffers from the conflict between limited resource and growing demand. An effective evaluation of HA is important for resource planning and healthcare decision making. In this paper, we propose a two-phase method to evaluate HA efficiency for reducing healthcare expenditure and improving healthcare service. Specifically, in Phase I, we measure the HKHA efficiency changes from 2000 to 2013 by applying a novel DEA-Malmquist index with undesirable factors. In Phase II, we further explore the impact of some exogenous factors (e.g., population density) on HKHA efficiency by Tobit regression model. Empirical results show that there are significant differences between the efficiencies of different hospitals and clusters. In particular, it is found that the public hospital serving in a richer district has a relatively lower efficiency. To a certain extent, this reflects the socioeconomic reality in HK that people with better economic condition prefers receiving higher quality service from the private hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It has been a long-standing tradition of using herbal tea for preventive and therapeutic healthcare in Hong Kong and South China and Five Flowers Tea is one of the most popular herbal teas. Based on the principle of traditional Chinese medicine, the pharmacological functions are to clear heat and dispel dampness in the body. Heat and dampness are thought to contribute to a range of health problems, especially during the hot and humid season in South China and Hong Kong. The most prevalent herbs in the formula contain bioactive compounds including flavonoids, alkaloids and terpenoids, which have a wide range of pharmacological properties including anti-inflammation, antivirus, antidiarrhoea, antibacteria, and antioxidation. However, with the composition varies widely, the ethnopharmacological benefits described may not be delivered uniformly. This study is to provide a comprehensive analysis on the composition of the Five Flowers Tea sold in Hong Kong and investigate the rationale behind the selection of herbs used in the formula. This study also provides information on the variation and quality of the Five Flowers Tea in the market. Methods: Thirty-three Five Flowers Tea samples were collected from various locations in Hong Kong. The size, texture, colour and organoleptic properties were documented. Macroscopic and molecular authentication methods were employed to identify the individual components. Results: Macroscopic identification revealed there were 23 herbs belonging to 18 plant families. The most prevalent herb was Bombax ceiba L., followed by Chrysanthemum morifolium. Ten adulterants and the existence of insect Lasioderma serricorne were confirmed by DNA barcoding techniques. Conclusion: This study employed a comprehensive approach to authenticate the herbs in Five Flowers Tea samples collected from various locations in Hong Kong. Macroscopic and molecular methods were used to identify the herbs and adulterants. The findings revealed the varied composition in Five Flowers Tea and the occurrence of adulterants in some samples. This shows that quality assurance of Five Flowers Tea is essential for the effective use of this popular folk medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of digital technology, the widespread use of virtual spokespersons to promote city images is becoming increasingly prevalent. This study responds to this trend by employing a factor analysis and entropy weight methodology to explore the different dimensions and priorities in shaping the image of virtual city spokespersons in China. The aim is to offer insights into the design strategies and directions for shaping the image of virtual city spokespersons. For the research, we first conducted a literature review and semi-structured interviews to investigate the requirements of users in mainland China and Hong Kong regarding the image shaping of virtual city spokespersons. Building upon this groundwork, a questionnaire was designed and distributed, and it successfully gathered 512 valid responses. Subsequently, a factor analysis was utilized to identify eight key dimensions in shaping the images of Chinese virtual city spokespersons: "Design elements", "Anthropomorphism", "Evolutionary", "Emotionalization", "Narrativity", "Culturalism", "Interactivity", and "Reliability". Then, the entropy weighting method was applied to analyze the weights of each indicator within these dimensions. The results revealed that "Design elements" have the highest priority in shaping the image of virtual city spokespersons, followed by "Anthropomorphism", "Emotionalization", "Evolutionary", "Culturalism", "Narrativity", "Reliability", and "Interactivity". Based on these findings, a series of design optimization strategies are proposed, including but not limited to shaping visually appealing images aligned with user perceptions, establishing emotional connections with users, and meeting the functional experience needs of users. These strategies not only contribute to the image shaping of virtual city spokespersons, but also provide vital guidance for innovative directions in promoting the publicity and marketing of Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong buildings account for 90% of total electricity consumption and over 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore buildings present both a challenge and an opportunity for reduction in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) and Net Zero Carbon Building (NZCB) are recognised as feasible strategies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions leading to a more sustainable built environment. While there is a growing number of NZEBs and NZCBs in relatively cool or temperate climates, there are relatively few examples in the subtropical climate, and in a densely populated city such as Hong Kong. This paper will examine the current progress towards a low carbon built environment in Hong Kong, zero energy/carbon design strategies and technologies applicable to building in a subtropical climate, and examines a case study of Hong Kong's first zero carbon building ZCB. ZCB's energy and carbon performance, experiences and lessons learned, and future directions are discussed. The paper will conclude with the challenges and opportunities for wider adoption of NZEBs and NZCBs in the Hong Kong construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on a collaborative project on fostering cross-cultural online discussion between two universities with one in Hong Kong and the other in Taiwan. Two online platforms-Moodle as a formal channel for course-related discussion and Facebook as an informal channel for social-oriented interaction-were employed. The study pays special attention to instructional design based on research-derived strategies and reflects on the effects of various strategies as well as students' experiences and perceptions. The results show that the students perceived the online discussion as valuable for exchanging perspectives and enhancing cross-cultural understanding. However, they were less motivated to use Facebook as the informal channel for socialization. The challenges encountered especially those concerning using Facebook in formal learning environments will be discussed. At the end, the recommendations for better utilizing and bringing together formal and informal online platforms will be suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flipped classroom teaching has become a significant trend in education in recent years, but there remain significant challenges in persuading some teachers to adopt this novel method. Through the lens of Ertmer's first- and second-order barriers to change, this paper presents a study began with the need to understand barriers to the adoption of flipped classroom in Hong Kong public secondary schools. Data collected from a questionnaire with open-ended opinion polls for secondary teachers in Hong Kong and their accompanying comments and feedback revealed that both first-order and second-order barriers were hindering their adoption of flipped classrooms into their teaching practices. While the first-order barriers are being resolved with school and government initiatives, a programme of professional development for teachers, as one of the most tangible approaches to capacity building, was provided throughout 2014-2015 school-year as a strategic intervention. Based on the feedback received, some attributes of effective teachers' capacity building are discussed, and a set of recommendations for catalysing teachers embracement of flipped classroom are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study on total suspended matter (TSM) in the Pearl River Estuary established a regression analysis model using Landsat 8 reflectance and measured TSM data, crucial for environmental management and engineering projects. High coefficients of determination (>0.6) were reported for the selected models. TSM concentration was notably high in 2013, peaking at 180 mg/L during the flood season and 80 mg/L in the dry season. In contrast, 2020 saw lower concentrations. Similar spatial distribution patterns were observed during dry and flood seasons, with high nearshore and low offshore TSM concentrations. Statistical analyses revealed natural factors (precipitation and runoff) as major influencers of the TSM distribution, with human activities presenting localized, limited impacts, except under long-term and large-scale conditions. Over time, the influence of large-scale water-based construction, such as the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, on TSM distribution became significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The loss of life and property in economically developed areas due to geological hazards caused by intense ground subsidence is incalculable. As one of the fastest growing areas in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the study of ground subsidence in Nansha will help to provide a scientific basis for urban planning and improve the capacity of monitoring and prevention of ground subsidence. The combination of coastal soft soil foundation and urbanization conditions creates a certain risk of land subsidence. We chose Nansha District, the geographical center of the Greater Bay Area, as the study area to analyze its surface subsidence characteristics in recent years. The 20-view Sentinel-1A data and SBAS-InSAR technique were used to monitor the ground subsidence in Nansha from 2017 to 2023. The main rate of ground subsidence in Nansha ranges from −19.4 to 7.7 mm/yr and is distributed in the urban area, along the rivers, in the construction area, and in the reclamation area. As of 4 May 2023, the average ground settlement in Nansha is 10.05 mm and the maximum settlement can be up to 142.45 mm. The 6-year total settlement at all four settlement intensities is greater than 60 mm, with the highest value exceeding 110 mm. The cumulative settlement increases with time, but inverse settlement and no settlement also occur at points where settlement is severe. For settlement caused by soft soil consolidation, it is recommended that drainage pipes be installed to accelerate drainage as a means of stabilizing settlement. For settlement caused by groundwater extraction and additional loads on the road surface, it is recommended to rationally extract groundwater and reinforce the foundation of the road surface with severe settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the market react when more or fewer investors are allowed to trade certain stocks? Stock Connect, a cross-border investment channel between mainland China and Hong Kong, provides a natural testing ground. Investors are allowed to trade a list of qualified stocks from the stock market on the other side, and when a stock is removed from the list, investors can only sell but cannot buy that stock. We find that the inclusion of stocks is correlated with abnormal returns, implying downward-sloping demand curves for stocks. The effect weakens over time and disappears in about 40 trading days. There are no abnormal returns when stocks are removed from the list. On the other hand, when investors can only sell some stocks, they have a significantly higher propensity to sell. Their trading style becomes more contrarian for such stocks, and they tend to trade in small amounts. After 6 months, their investment behavior returns to that before the removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]