Intergenerational disparity in income and health violates the norm of equal opportunity and deserves the attention of researchers and policy makers. To understand changes in intergenerational disparity, we created the intergenerational mobility index (IMI), which can simultaneously measure...

In this article we examine how Chinese local officials impact rural business environment and market development since the late 1990s. If their power is not effectively checked by village elections, local political elite are able to manipulate reform policies in a way to serve their economic and...

We study the relationship between bank competition and stability for 145 countries over the period 1997–2010. We use three measures of bank competition, namely the Boone indicator, the Lerner and the adjusted Lerner indices, and two econometric methods. Our results show that bank competition...

Food and social safety nets have a history as long as human civilization. In hunter gatherer societies, food sharing is pervasive. Group members who prove unlucky in the short run, hunting or foraging, receive food from other households in anticipation of reciprocal consideration at a later time...

Regional spillovers offer prospects for accelerating Africa’s agricultural productivity growth, market development and food security. West Africa has recognised and embraced the importance of regional technology transfers, agricultural commodity trade, food security monitoring and...

In order to match the output capacity of a geothermal heat pump system (GHPS) with the actual load requirement, research has been carried out in finding the influence of two systematic parameters, the water flow rate inside the condenser and the compressor input frequency on the GHPS operation....

The rapid growth in coal and oil consumption has led to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases as well as air pollutants in China. In response to this, the Chinese government has begun to formulate policies to retard the increasing use of energy consumption and to improve air quality. This...

Crystal structural stability of V<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript> under high pressure has been investigated by first-principles calculations. Our results demonstrate that the phase-transition sequence of V<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript> is from corundum structure to Gd<Subscript>2</Subscript>S<Subscript>3</Subscript>-type structure at 30 GPa, then to the Th<Subscript>2</Subscript>S<Subscript>3</Subscript>-type structure at 52 GPa, finally to...</subscript></subscript></subscript></subscript></subscript></subscript></subscript></subscript>

The latent class model provides an important platform for jointly modeling mixed-mode data—i.e., discrete and continuous data with various parametric distributions. Multiple mixed-mode variables are used to cluster subjects into latent classes. While the mixed-mode latent class analysis is a...

Markov chains have been frequently used to characterize uncertainty in many real-world problems. Quite often, these Markov chains can be decomposed into a vector consisting of fast and slow components; these components are coupled through weak and strong interactions. The main goal of this work...