This paper investigates the impact of a firm's annual report readability and ambiguous tone on its borrowing costs. We find that firms with larger 10-K file sizes and a higher proportion of uncertain and weak modal words in 10-Ks have stricter loan contract terms and greater future stock price crash risk. Our results suggest that the readability and tone ambiguity of a firm's financial disclosures are related to managerial information hoarding. Shareholders of firms with less readable and more ambiguous annual reports not only suffer from less transparent information disclosure but also bear the increased cost of external financing.

This paper investigates the relationship between technological progress in the energy sector and carbon emissions based on the Environment Kuznets Curve (EKC) and data from China during the period of 1995–2012. Our study confirms that the situation in China conforms to the EKC hypothesis and presents the inverted U-curve relationship between per capita income and carbon emissions. Furthermore, the inflection point will be reached in at least five years. Then, we use research and development (R & D) investment in the energy industry as the quantitative indicator of its technological progress to test its impact on carbon emissions. Our results show that technological progress in the energy sector contributes to a reduction in carbon emissions with hysteresis. Furthermore, our results show that energy efficiency improvements are also helpful in reducing carbon emissions. However, climate policy and change in industrial structure increase carbon emissions to some extent. Our conclusion demonstrates that currently, China is not achieving economic growth and pollution reduction simultaneously. To further achieve the goal of carbon reduction, the government should increase investment in the energy industry research and improve energy efficiency.

This paper investigates the relationship between energy consumption and technological innovation using a dynamic panel data model and regional-level data from China for the period 1995-2012. In contrast to previous studies, it examines the short and long-run bilateral relationship between technological innovation and energy consumption. The results show that in the short run, technological innovation leads to an increase in energy consumption, while energy consumption has no significant effect on technological innovation. In the long run, however, energy consumption is positively and bilaterally related to technological innovation. These findings suggest that although technological innovation does not directly lead to a reduction in energy consumption as mentioned in the extant literature, it could help achieve sustainability through improving energy efficiency and developing energy structure for developing countries.

The systematics of the viviparid freshwater snail genus Margarya endemic to the ancient lakes of Yunnan, China, is revised based on comparative analyses of morphological features, including shell, operculum, radula, and genital anatomy, and molecular phylogenetic analyses of partial sequences of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA (16S) and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) genes, as well as the nuclear Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 (ITS2). The taxonomic utility of key anatomical and morphological features in this group is evaluated. The genus Margarya as delimited previously is split into three genera in order to retain monophyletic taxa: (1) Margarya s.s., consisting of four species, i.e. the type species Margarya melanioides plus Margarya francheti, Margarya oxytropoides, and Margarya monodi; (2) the previously introduced subgenus Tchangmargarya is elevated to an independent genus containing two species, Tchangmargarya yangtsunghaiensis and the new species Tchangmargarya multilabiata sp. nov.; and (3) a new genus, Anularya gen. nov., is described, also containing two species, i.e. Anularya mansuyi and Anularya bicostata. Molecular phylogenies based on analyses of three gene fragments have identical topologies, supporting the monophyly of these genera. The sister group of Margarya s.s. is Cipangopaludina, whereas the sister group of Anularya is Sinotaia; Tchangmargarya is sister to a clade containing all the aforementioned groups. Features of the operculum and the right male tentacle (penis) are particularly informative on the generic level, whereas shell and radular characters are especially useful to differentiate species. The phylogenetic relationships recovered here are consistent with orogenic patterns of the Yunnan Mountains. Changes in the river system and water area of ancient lakes caused by tectonic activities probably play an important role in speciation and shaping the current pattern of species distribution in Yunnan.

The willingness to pay (WTP) for marine conservation is an important basis for the design of market-based marine protection strategies and sustainable marine environment development. Whether the individual was willing to pay and how much they would prefer to pay may be affected separately by different factors. Thus, we investigated the probability of paying for marine conservation and the payment amount to obtain evidence regarding the factors that influence the preferences of stakeholders. We considered two marine protected areas in Zhejiang Province, China, where we combined contingent valuation with logit and tobit models to measure the differences in the WTP for marine conservation between tourists and residents. The results showed that most respondents were willing to pay for marine conservation, but they were affected by different factors. The average amounts that the respondents were willing to pay were 216.20 CNY ($34.3) and 172.43 CNY ($27.4) in the Nanji Islands MPA and Putuo Islands MPA, respectively. The probability of respondents' WTP was closely related to their individual environmental awareness, whereas the payment amount was influenced mainly by personal income. Thus, our results suggest that increasing human environmental cognition and developing differential payment schemes for the marine environment among stakeholders may promote sustainable marine protection development and management.

The misallocation of production factors, with structural misallocation as an important aspect, is a key instigator of low total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate in China, but one important question is which structural misallocation of what factor is more serious in China. Using China’s manufacturing industrial enterprise data from 1998 to 2013, we calculated and compared the factors misallocation degree among industries, ownerships and regions. The results indicated that, the misallocation among industries was most serious, which led to a TFP loss of 8.12% annually. The misallocation among ownerships ranked second, which led to a TFP loss of 5.49%. The least degree of the misallocation recorded among provinces led to TFP loss of 3.05%. By using the relative severity index, the rank is the same. As to the capital, the misallocation among ownerships was most serious, which led to TFP loss of 4.62%. But as to the labor, the misallocation among industries was most serious, which led to TFP loss of 4.58%. Moreover, the misallocation among ownerships alleviated rapidly from 1998 to 2007, while alleviated slower among industries and regions. However, from 2008 to 2013, all three types of structural misallocation have become worse, especially in labor. These conclusions are important to identify the focus of structural reform in China.

Emergency shelters and open spaces play dual roles in providing locations for temporary accommodation and rescue activities during disaster situations. Over time, research has attempted to optimize site selection and design for emergency shelters and open spaces, though they rarely offered lessons to guide actual projects. In this regard, it is paramount to design emergency shelters or open spaces in a forward-looking and dynamic manner, especially when the country faces challenges due to extreme events (e.g. earthquake and floods) and large populations. The aim of this paper is to analyze the issues of this field in China while summarizing instructions for future construction based on the experience and expertise of other countries. Specific suggestions include: (1) combining the designs and plans of emergency shelters/open spaces into the construction of a resilient urban system; (2) embedding routine preparedness into disaster risk reduction approaches; (3) optimizing issues in site-selection using spatiotemporal patterns in refuge demand while designing the shelter system into a hierarchical structure; (4) shifting from a top-down approach to a bottom-up approach, which includes the participation of multiple aspects of shelter construction; and (5) designing and establishing emergency shelters/open spaces to fight against different types of disasters.

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