Kin Keung Lai

This book provides insights into China’s energy consumption and pollution as well as its energy saving policies. It explores energy saving ways and argues for an energy consumption revolution, which includes technologies to improve transportation resource efficiency, modification of existing transportation infrastructure and structure.This book uses various analytical models to study the relationships within the transportation system. It also includes comparative analysis of China, Japan, the US and developing countries on traffic demand and transportation energy consumption. This book highlights the urgent need to review China’s current transportation policies in order to secure a breakthrough in energy saving and emissions reduction.

This book provides insights into China’s energy consumption and pollution as well as its energy saving policies. It explores energy saving ways and argues for an energy consumption revolution, which includes technologies to improve transportation resource efficiency, modification of existing transportation infrastructure and structure.This book uses various analytical models to study the relationships within the transportation system. It also includes comparative analysis of China, Japan, the US and developing countries on traffic demand and transportation energy consumption. This book highlights the urgent need to review China’s current transportation policies in order to secure a breakthrough in energy saving and emissions reduction.

This book discusses important issues related to managing supply chain disruption risks from various perspectives. It explores the essence and principles relating to managing these risks and provides the framework and multi-goal model groups for managing such risks. The book also discusses research development of managing supply chain disruptive risks, supply chain risk conduction and loss assessment methods of supply chain disruptive events. It also includes the consideration of supply chain coordinating models in the cases of demand and supply disruption risks. It also deals on the subject of managing models of supply chain disruption risks by looking at manufacturers and responding decision methods oriented towards demand in disruption and coordination. It also summarizes the relevant findings and provides future research questions and orientations. The book will contributes significantly to the growing body of knowledge concerning the theory of managing supply chains.

This book provides an overview of China’s financial markets and their latest developments. The book explores and discusses the difficulties in building modern financial markets that are compatible with an increasingly complicated market economy and examines the various strategies to reform China’s financial system. It covers a range of topics: China’s financial structure, financial regulation, financial repression and liberalization, monetary policy and the People's Bank of China, banking reforms, exchange rate policy, capital control and capital-account liberalization, and development of the stock markets. The book provides a basic understanding of the current issues related to the development of China’s financial markets. It enhances knowledge of China’s regulatory framework which has helped to shape China’s financial landscape. It provides specific, useful knowledge about investment in China, such as, market sense, to identify the investment opportunities in various asset classes.

This book provides an overview of China’s financial markets and their latest developments. The book explores and discusses the difficulties in building modern financial markets that are compatible with an increasingly complicated market economy and examines the various strategies to reform China’s financial system. It covers a range of topics: China’s financial structure, financial regulation, financial repression and liberalization, monetary policy and the People's Bank of China, banking reforms, exchange rate policy, capital control and capital-account liberalization, and development of the stock markets. The book provides a basic understanding of the current issues related to the development of China’s financial markets. It enhances knowledge of China’s regulatory framework which has helped to shape China’s financial landscape. It provides specific, useful knowledge about investment in China, such as, market sense, to identify the investment opportunities in various asset classes.

This book discusses important issues related to managing supply chain disruption risks from various perspectives. It explores the essence and principles relating to managing these risks and provides the framework and multi-goal model groups for managing such risks. The book also discusses research development of managing supply chain disruptive risks, supply chain risk conduction and loss assessment methods of supply chain disruptive events. It also includes the consideration of supply chain coordinating models in the cases of demand and supply disruption risks. It also deals on the subject of managing models of supply chain disruption risks by looking at manufacturers and responding decision methods oriented towards demand in disruption and coordination. It also summarizes the relevant findings and provides future research questions and orientations. The book will contributes significantly to the growing body of knowledge concerning the theory of managing supply chains.

This book comprehensively reviews existing literature on consumer panic stockpiling behaviour, suggesting strategies to effectively manage supply chains during such disruptions. The book examines the prevalent operation strategies for managing consumer stockpiling based on analytical models and numerical experiments. This includes retailers’ inventory preparation, pricing and quota policies, strategic disclosure of information, and persuasion techniques. The work also explores manufacturers’ robust sourcing strategies to mitigate disruption impacts. By incorporating real-world case studies from diverse sectors, including retail, manufacturing, and logistics, the book offers evidence-based guidance on which strategies prove most effective in different situations. An invaluable resource for researchers, supply chain managers, retail executives, and policymakers concerned with enhancing supply chain resilience and managing consumer behaviour during periods of uncertainty and disruption.

Examining the negative consequences that arise from supply chain risks, this book systematically explores firms’ responses to these risks in different situations. In particular, it focuses on sourcing strategies of firms under supply chain risks and the different mitigation tools they use, such as supplier development and multisourcing.Supply chains have expanded extensively because many firms try to take advantage of outsourcing of their raw materials and critical components. Though firms can reap significant benefits due to the widespread use of outsourcing, they have to deal with increasing supply chain risks. In general, supply chain risks are various and may be originated from natural disasters, labor strikes, fires, and so on. These risk incidents can cause serious damage to firms’ profit performance.The analysis and insights from this book can be utilized by firms to alleviate the impact of supply chain risks in the sourcing process. It will also be of interest to researchers and students studying supply chain management.

This book provides a better clue to apply quantum derivative instead of classical derivative in the modified optimization methods, compared with the competing books which employ a number of standard derivative optimization techniques to address large-scale, unconstrained optimization issues. Essential proofs and applications of the various techniques are given in simple manner without sacrificing accuracy. New concepts are illustrated with the help of examples. This book presents the theory and application of given optimization techniques in generalized and comprehensive manner. Methods such as steepest descent, conjugate gradient and BFGS are generalized and comparative analyses will show the efficiency of the techniques.

Examining the negative consequences that arise from supply chain risks, this book systematically explores firms’ responses to these risks in different situations. In particular, it focuses on sourcing strategies of firms under supply chain risks and the different mitigation tools they use, such as supplier development and multisourcing.Supply chains have expanded extensively because many firms try to take advantage of outsourcing of their raw materials and critical components. Though firms can reap significant benefits due to the widespread use of outsourcing, they have to deal with increasing supply chain risks. In general, supply chain risks are various and may be originated from natural disasters, labor strikes, fires, and so on. These risk incidents can cause serious damage to firms’ profit performance.The analysis and insights from this book can be utilized by firms to alleviate the impact of supply chain risks in the sourcing process. It will also be of interest to researchers and students studying supply chain management.

Public–Private Partnerships (PPP or 3Ps) allow the public sector to seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector during procurement processes. Such partnerships, if executed with due diligence, often benefit the public immensely. Unfortunately, Public–Private Partnerships can be vulnerable to corruption. This book looks at what measures we can put in place to check corruption during procurement and what good governance strategies the public sector can adopt to improve the performance of 3Ps.The book applies mathematical models to analyze 3Ps. It uses game theory to study the interaction and dynamics between the stakeholders and suggests strategies to reduce corruption risks in various 3Ps stages. The authors explain through game theory-based simulation how governments can adopt a evaluating process at the start of each procurement to weed out undesirable private partners and why the government should take a more proactive approach.Using a methodological framework rooted in mathematical models to illustrate how we can combat institutional corruption, this book is a helpful reference for anyone interested in public policymaking and public infrastructure management.

With the internationalization of Renminbi (RMB), the gradual liberalization of China's capital account and the recent reform of the RMB pricing mechanism, the RMB exchange rate has been volatile. This book examines how we can forecast exchange rate reliably. It explains how we can do so through a new methodology for exchange rate forecasting. The book also analyzes the dynamic relationship between exchange rate and the exchange rate data decomposition and integration, the domestic economic situation, the international economic situation and the public’s expectations and how these interactions would affect the exchange rate. The book also explains why this comprehensive integrated approach is the best model for optimizing accuracy in exchange rate forecasting.

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a channel through which the public sector can seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector to procure public infrastructure. Governments around the world are increasingly turning to Public-Private Partnerships to deliver essential goods and services. Unfortunately, PPPs, like any other public procurement, can be at risk of corruption. This book begins by looking at the basics of PPP and the challenges of the PPP process. It then conceptualizes the vulnerability of various stages of Public-Private Partnership models and corruption risk against the backdrop of contract theory, principal-agent theory and transaction cost economics. The book also discusses potential control mechanisms.The book also stresses the importance of good governance for PPP. It outlines principles and procedures of project risk management (PRM) developed by a working party of the Association of Project Managers. Finally, the book concludes by proposing strategies and solutions to overcome the limitations and challenges of the current approach toward PPP.

Public–Private Partnerships (PPP or 3Ps) allow the public sector to seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector during procurement processes. Such partnerships, if executed with due diligence, often benefit the public immensely. Unfortunately, Public–Private Partnerships can be vulnerable to corruption. This book looks at what measures we can put in place to check corruption during procurement and what good governance strategies the public sector can adopt to improve the performance of 3Ps.The book applies mathematical models to analyze 3Ps. It uses game theory to study the interaction and dynamics between the stakeholders and suggests strategies to reduce corruption risks in various 3Ps stages. The authors explain through game theory-based simulation how governments can adopt a evaluating process at the start of each procurement to weed out undesirable private partners and why the government should take a more proactive approach.Using a methodological framework rooted in mathematical models to illustrate how we can combat institutional corruption, this book is a helpful reference for anyone interested in public policymaking and public infrastructure management.

This book explores and analyzes influential predictors and the underlying mechanisms of individual content sharing/retweeting behavior on social networking sites (SNS) from an empirical perspective. Since Individual content sharing/ retweeting behavior expedites information dissemination, it is a critical mechanism of information diffusion on Twitter. Individual sharing/retweeting behavior does not appear to happen randomly. So, what factors lead to individual information dissemination behavior? What are the dominating predictors? How does the recipient make retweeting decisions? How do these influential predictors combine and by what mechanism do they influence an individual’s retweeting decisions? Furthermore, are there any differences in the process of individual retweeting decisions? If so, what causes such differences? In order to answer these previously unexplored questions and gain a holistic view of individual retweeting behavior, the authors examined people’s retweeting history on Twitter and obtained a real dataset containing more than 60 million Twitter posts. They then employed text mining and natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from social media content, and used various feature selection methods to identify a subset of salient features that have substantial effects on individual retweeting behavior. Lastly, they applied the Elaboration Likelihood Model to build an overarching theoretical framework to reveal the underlying mechanisms of individual retweeting behavior. Given its scope, this book will appeal to researchers interested in investigating information dissemination on social media, as well as to marketers and administrators who plan to use social networking sites as an important avenue for information dissemination.

The book examines a relatively unexplored issue in supply chain risk management, which is how long companies specifically take to respond to catastrophic events of low probability but high impact. The book also looks at why such supply chain disruptions are unavoidable, and consequently, all complex supply chains are inherently at risk. The book illustrates how companies can respond to supply chain disruptions with faster responses and in shorter lead-times to reduce impact. In reducing total response time, designing solutions, and deploying a recovery plan sooner after a disruption in anticipation of such events, companies reduce the impact of disruption risk. The book also explores the basics of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and how they contribute to both the quality of the financial economic decision-making process and the quality of the resulting decisions. The book illustrates through cases in the construction sector how this industry has become more complex and riskier due to the diverse nature of activities among global companies.

With the internationalization of Renminbi (RMB), the gradual liberalization of China's capital account and the recent reform of the RMB pricing mechanism, the RMB exchange rate has been volatile. This book examines how we can forecast exchange rate reliably. It explains how we can do so through a new methodology for exchange rate forecasting. The book also analyzes the dynamic relationship between exchange rate and the exchange rate data decomposition and integration, the domestic economic situation, the international economic situation and the public’s expectations and how these interactions would affect the exchange rate. The book also explains why this comprehensive integrated approach is the best model for optimizing accuracy in exchange rate forecasting.

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a channel through which the public sector can seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector to procure public infrastructure. Governments around the world are increasingly turning to Public-Private Partnerships to deliver essential goods and services. Unfortunately, PPPs, like any other public procurement, can be at risk of corruption. This book begins by looking at the basics of PPP and the challenges of the PPP process. It then conceptualizes the vulnerability of various stages of Public-Private Partnership models and corruption risk against the backdrop of contract theory, principal-agent theory and transaction cost economics. The book also discusses potential control mechanisms.The book also stresses the importance of good governance for PPP. It outlines principles and procedures of project risk management (PRM) developed by a working party of the Association of Project Managers. Finally, the book concludes by proposing strategies and solutions to overcome the limitations and challenges of the current approach toward PPP.

Apparel is one of the oldest and largest export industries in the world. It is also one of the most global industries because most nations produce for the international textile and apparel market. The changing global landscape drives cost volatility, regulatory risk and change in consumer preference. In today’s retail landscape, media and advocacy groups have focussed attention on social and environmental issues, as well as new regulatory requirements and stricter legislations. Understanding and managing any risk within the supply chain, particularly ethical and responsible sourcing, has become increasingly critical. This book first gives a systematic introduction to the evolution of SCRM through literature review and discusses the importance of SCRM in the apparel industry. Second, it describes the life cycle of the apparel supply chain and defines the different roles of the value chain in the apparel industry. Thirdly, it identifies the risk factors in the Apparel Life Cycle and analyses the risk sources and consequences and finally, extends the importance of selection of the suppliers and develops a supplier selection model and SCRM strategies solution by data analysis and case studies.