Many countries like China are in a dilemma between economic growth and environmental deterioration (e.g., smog weather). Simultaneously, a growing people concern the product's environmental ...performance along with their improving environment awareness. This paper focuses on the impacts of carbon footprint and low-carbon preference on the production decision of emission-dependent firms in the cap-and-trade system. The cap-and-trade system uses the total “cap” to attain environmental goals and allows “trade” to achieve the effective scheduling through market regulation. Under this mechanism, through analyzing the influence of carbon footprint and low-carbon preference on the market supply and demand, we build a production optimization model and develop the optimal decisions. Several interesting management insights on environmental preference and policy are concluded.
The number of patients with cardiovascular diseases is rapidly increasing in the world. The workload of existing clinicians is consequently increasing. However, the number of cardiovascular ...clinicians is declining. In this paper, we aim to design a mobile and automatic system to improve the abilities of patients' cardiovascular health management while also reducing clinicians' workload. Our system includes both hardware and cloud software devices based on recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. A small hardware device was designed to collect high-quality Electrocardiogram (ECG) data from the human body. A novel deep-learning-based cloud service was developed and deployed to achieve automatic and accurate cardiovascular disease detection. Twenty types of diagnostic items including sinus rhythm, tachyarrhythmia, and bradyarrhythmia are supported. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our system. Our hardware device can guarantee high-quality ECG data by removing high-/low-frequency distortion and reverse lead detection with 0.9011 Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC-AUC) score. Our deep-learning-based cloud service supports 20 types of diagnostic items, 17 of them have more than 0.98 ROC-AUC score. For a real world application, the system has been used by around 20,000 users in twenty provinces throughout China. As a consequence, using this service, we could achieve both active and passive health management through a lightweight mobile application on the WeChat Mini Program platform. We believe that it can have a broader impact on cardiovascular health management in the world.
Governments around the world are seeking an effective mechanism to cope with air pollution and climate change. The allocation of emission allowances, which is a key mechanism in the cap-and-trade ...system, is an important and intricate puzzle faced by environmental agencies. In this paper, we build a Stackelberg model to explore the emission allowance allocation mechanism design from an operations perspective. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a linear emission allowance allocation mechanism. The results show that the emission allowance allocated by the government should always be insufficient to satisfy the ex-post emission demand at the industry level, even with low-carbon investment. To analyze the impacts on firms’ decision-makings, we explore a scenario in which two firms in the same industry sell a homogenous product to the market. The optimal low-carbon investment and production decisions are significantly affected by these market and carbon-related factors. Numerical examples are presented to further demonstrate the results that our paper has derived and investigate the optimal operational decisions of the two firms. Several meaningful management insights on allocation mechanism design and low-carbon operations of firms are obtained.
This paper studies the impacts of risk inequity averse factor on supply chain performance in the newsvendor context. We apply a downside-risk approach to depict the risk caused by market demand ...uncertainty and develop the newsvendor model with a risk inequity averse agent. Contrary to the prior literature, we extend inequity averse profits to a broader range by including risk inequity aversion, and we find that risk inequity aversion has large impact on supply chain agents performance. Moreover, we attempt to consider the situation which a risk inequity averse retailer’s information is neglected by the supplier and performed a comparative analysis on different scenarios. If the supplier is only concerned with the risk inequity averse retailer while making decisions, the results range from worsening to improving. To mitigate the negative utilities caused by the factor of risk inequity aversion, we propose a mechanism that the risk-sharing parameter could achieve a better performance for a certain range. Several observations and managerial insights on risk inequity-averse newsvendor models are gathered.
The global warming problem has attracted worldwide attention. Cap-and-trade has been increasingly used in many countries to reduce carbon emissions. However, some firms are concerned about the ...additional costs required for carbon reduction, and another important concern comes from grandfathering in permit allocation. This paper incorporates these costs and cap-and-trade concerns into a multi-period carbon reduction problem in a Stackelberg game. The findings show that neither cap-and-trade nor the firm’s carbon reduction choice will always benefit the environment. From the government’s perspective, we identify the optimal grandfathering scheme to maximize social welfare that incorporates economic and environmental concerns. We demonstrate that the socially optimal emissions level depends on the level of low-carbon technology and the environmental recovery cost.
How to allocate initial emission permits is vital for the cap-and-trade system in controlling the total emission level and improving the operation efficiency of the trade mechanism. And data ...envelopment analysis (DEA) has been proved to be more suitable to fairly resolve the problem as a performance-based allocation is involved here. In this paper, we present a novel DEA approach for fair reduction and reallocation of emission permits for areas under administration. The presented DEA models are based on the ideas, where, according to their eco-efficiency and current emission levels, all decision making units (DMUs) compete with each other for the least reduction amount by introducing a bargaining game, on the other hand, the central authority can improve the overall efficiency by reallocating the remaining emission permits. The approach is applied on the dataset of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from 15 European Union members (EU15). The results of the application show that the reduction and reallocation mechanism is fair, which benefits the countries that work at the optimal scale operation while punishes those that fail to operate on the optimal scale. Furthermore, it is effective in improving the overall efficiency of the system.
•Consider dual fairness in a distribution channel with quantity discount contracts.•Compare effects between wholesale price contracts and quantity discount contracts.•Some interesting insights are ...different in different types of contracts.•Neither of two types of contracts can coordinate this dual-fairness channel.•Develop a mechanism to coordinate this channel.
This paper investigates quantity discount contracts in a dyadic supply chain that consists of one supplier and two retailers. We consider a setting in which two retailers sell a homogeneous product procured from the same supplier. The supplier sequentially offers the retailers similar quantity discount contracts by determining the optimal wholesale prices that maximize the total profits of the two games, whereas the retailers must choose the optimal retail prices to maximize their own utilities. The first retailer solely exhibits distributional fairness concern (i.e., when the payoff he receives is disproportionately smaller than that of the supplier) because he may not be aware of the second retailer’s existence. The second retailer simultaneously concerns over two types of fairness: peer-induced fairness concern (i.e., when his payoff is less than that of a peer retailer interacting with the same supplier) and distributional fairness concern; and he observes a noisy signal by which the retailer can infer the wholesale price that the supplier offered to the first retailer. This information may affect the second retailer’s decision. Equilibrium solutions under different conditions are subsequently derived. We demonstrate that this supply chain under behavioral concerns cannot be coordinated with quantity discount contracts in which the price breakpoints are dependent on the wholesale prices. Therefore, a coordination mechanism that combines quantity discount contracts with fixed fees is proposed. Furthermore, several interesting results derived from the wholesale price contracts cannot be applied to the quantity discount contracts.
Under the background of the Belt and Road Initiative, this paper constructs a measurement equation for China’s exports to the five Central Asian countries based on the gravity model of international ...trade for the purpose of forecasting China’s future export growth potential. This paper selects China’s GDP, trading partners’ GDP, geographical distance, borders, railway freight volume, population growth rate and WTO as explanatory variables, based on what we construct multiple measurement equations. We use panel data from 2010 to 2017 to perform multiple regression analysis under the random effects model. We find that the model using China’s GDP, trading partners’ GDP, geographical distance, and borders as explanatory variables has a higher degree of fitness and each key explanatory variable is significant. Basing on the obtained measurement equation and the World Bank’s forecast of the economic growth of various countries, we forecast that China’s exports to the five Central Asian countries can maintain stable growth in the short term. By 2022, China’s total exports to the five Central Asian countries will reach 2,353,510.82 million USD which will be 1.09 times that of 2017.
This paper considers a multi-product newsboy system that produces multiple products for fulfilling independently uncertain demands, which share the same production capacity. To deal with possible ...shortage of limited capacity, productions can be outsourced. We consider two outsourcing strategies: zero lead time outsourcing, and nonzero lead time outsourcing. The structural properties and solution procedures for the profit-maximization models are developed. Numerical results are provided for obtaining some managerial insights.
Membrane fouling during the high salinity wastewater treatment is a critical bottleneck restricting the sustainable application of membrane technologies. Developing advanced anti-fouling membranes ...and membrane processes is necessary, promising to solve the problem fundamentally and economically. Herein, this review focuses on nanofiltration (NF), reverse osmosis (RO) and membrane distillation (MD) applied for the high salinity wastewater treatment, and contrastively reviews membrane fouling processes and developing strategies of anti-fouling membranes and membrane processes. Types of foulants and membrane fouling mechanisms in different membrane processes are discussed, involving the most recent anti-fouling theory, and the difference caused by the separation mechanism, membrane property and operating condition is emphasized. Based on this understanding, to the material, the design and preparation of advanced anti-fouling membranes in NF, RO and MD process for different membrane foulants are reviewed. Then to the process intensification, the applications of external assistances such as the bubbling, ultrasonic, electric field and magnetic field for enhancing anti-fouling performance are also presented. Finally, the research status and existing problems in developing sustainable membrane processes are summarized, and future research needs are prospected. This review is expected to provide a valuable reference in the development of advanced membrane processes with improved sustainability for treating the high salinity wastewater.
•Design of advanced anti-fouling membranes in NF, RO and MD for high salinity wastewater are reviewed.•Applications of external assistances for enhancing anti-fouling performance are also presented.•Research status and existing problems in sustainable membrane processes are summarized.
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