Plant Phenology and Its Anthropogenic and Natural Influencing Factors in Densely Populated Areas During the Economic Transition Period of China

As a sensitive, observable, and comprehensive indicator of climate change, plant phenology has become a vital topic of global change. Studies about plant phenology and its responses to climate change in natural ecosystems have drawn attention to the effects of human activities on phenology in/around urban regions. The key factors and mechanisms of phenological and human factors in the process of urbanization are still unclear. In this study, we analyzed variations in xylophyta phenology in densely populated cities during the fast urbanization period of China (from 1963 to 1988). We assessed the length of the growing season affected by the temperature and precipitation. Temperature increased the length of the growing season in most regions, while precipitation had the opposite effect. Moreover, the plant-growing season is more sensitive to preseason climate factors than to annual average climate factors. The increased population reduced the length of the growing season, while the growing GDP increased the length of the growing season in most regions (8 out of 13). By analyzing the impact of the industry ratio, we found that the correlation between the urban management of emerging cities (e.g., Chongqing, Zhejiang, and Guizhou) and the growing season is more significant, and the impact is substantial. In contrast, urban management in most areas with vigorously developed heavy industry (e.g., Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Beijing) has a weak and insignificant effect on plant phenology. These results indicate that different urban development patterns can influence urban plant phenology. Our results provide some support and new thoughts for future research on urban plant phenology.

Sustainability accounting and reporting: an ablative reflexive thematic analysis of climate crisis, conservative or radical reform paradigms

Every year the global financial system sends trillions of dollars to finance environmental destruction, but the climate crisis forces change. Notwithstanding vested interests and the unrecognised paradox of adopting environmental business strategies, the implementation of sustainability accounting and reporting (SAR) is imperative to catalyse economic transition away from fossil-fuel and plastic configurations to more sustainable ones. The research proceeded sequentially. First, it scanned the backdrop to the SAR problem and identified key associated institutions and a corpus of recent literature. An initial review to disentangle its conflicting threads generated three themes of ‘climate crisis’ and ‘conservative’ or more ‘radical’ SAR reform paradigms. Iteratively harnessing this thematic lens, the investigation re-examined the SAR literature corpus. It detected fragmented SAR responses to the climate crisis. Accordingly, the research reformulated its first theme to ‘dystopic climate crisis fragmentation’ but only refined the other two conservative or radical themes to take account of materiality and the split between Anglo-Saxon (IFRS, SSAB) or global and continental institutions (UN, EU, GRI). Conservatives defend incremental standard improvements but retain a single materiality investor-focus. Radicals seek to implement double materiality with a broader spectrum of stakeholders in mind. Both approaches have theoretical as well as pragmatic advantages and disadvantages, so the SAR contention rumbles on. Whilst the standard setting landscape is evolving, division, paradox and contention remain. Given vested interests in the destructive status quo, it would be naïve to expect a harmonious SAR Ithaca to emerge anytime soon. Yet the challenges impel urgent action.

The Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina Into the European Union

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the EU integration process of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dealing with the internal and external political challenges that country is facing on its path towards aspired EU membership. As one of the main internal challenges, the authors recognize a very pronounced ethnocracy and leaderocracy that captures democratic process, making the country unstable and unable to fulfill criteria even to achieve the status of candidate for EU membership. Furthermore, there is a strong influence of the neighboring countries, which were involved in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and continue to play very often an obstructive role in internal politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As the authors argue, in BiH, the issue of Euro-Atlantic integration is less a matter of political and economic transition, and more, it is not primarily an issue of stabilizing the peace and creating fundamental preconditions for overall development.

Financial Constraints, Corporate Savings and Labor Income Share—Based on China’s Economic Transition

What causes are responsible for China’s declining labor income share? We investigate this phenomenon in depth from the standpoint of financial constraints. By summarizing the stylized facts of China’s economy, this paper demonstrates that as China’s economy transforms, the financial market’s imperfections lead to more efficient (non-state-owned) enterprises inclined to use corporate savings for the purpose of “crowding out” workers’ remuneration for endogenous financing, resulting in a rising savings rate and a declining share of labor income. On this foundation, we construct a more general theoretical model regarding China’s economic transformation, propose research propositions, and conduct an empirical study utilizing the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database from 1999 to 2007. The findings show a strong negative relationship between the financial market imperfections and the labor income share, with a 1% increase in financial constraints reducing labor income share by 0.051%. The rise in savings as a result of the financial restrictions works as a mediator variable in this process. Furthermore, our prediction for the path of the labor income share suggests that China’s savings rate would decline after reaching its peak, while the labor income share will bottom out and rebound by the end of the country’s economic transition. This study uses firm-level micro-data to reveal the internal mechanism of financial constraints lowering labor income share, which is a useful supplement to the existing literature. It also provides empirical evidence and policy options for developing countries to reform their financial systems and increase labor income share in the pursuit of sustainable development.

The interplay between global accounting firms and national institutional contexts: The establishment of the Big Four in China from 1978 to 2007

This paper provides an analysis of the establishment of global accounting firms (the ‘Big Four’) in China between 1978 and 2007. Drawing on the extant literature on professional service firms, and the work of Faulconbridge and Muzio (2015) , this paper examines how the Big Four entered China following the country's ‘Reform and Opening-up’ and evolved from tentative representative offices to established accounting firms in the Chinese audit market. Based on an extensive analysis of archival materials and interviews, the findings of this paper show that the Big Four's establishment in China has been deeply intertwined with the country's socio-political and economic transition. It reveals important conjunctural moments in history that have provided the Big Four with important windows of opportunity to actively shape local institutional change to their own interests. This paper contributes to the extant accounting literature on the expansion of the Big Four in China by highlighting the interplay between their surrounding institutional context and their capacity for agency.

Limits of Land Capitalization and Its Economic Effects: Evidence from China

Academic debates over the advantages and disadvantages of land capitalization are ongoing in China, but the fundamental issues behind the debate have not been adequately explored. We suggest that the core issue in land capitalization is the degree of capitalization. This study first theoretically deduced the existence of land capitalization limits; then, we used panel data from 35 key cities to conduct an empirical test, and finally we analyzed the current risk of excessive land capitalization in China. The results indicated that the mutual restriction of multiple land attributes determined the limits of land capitalization. Therefore, land capitalization has been categorized into two types—moderate and excessive—which produce different economic effects. The degree of land capitalization and real economic growth showed a significant inverted-U relationship, and the turning point appeared when the land capital value reached 2.5 times the land factor value. According to this threshold, we can infer that many key cities have been overcapitalized, which may lead to an economic recession and affect the growth prospects of China’s economy. Further analysis indicated that excessive land capitalization could be related to the unique Chinese style of decentralization. These conclusions have important policy implications for the reform of land marketization in countries undergoing economic transition. The goal of land reform is to allow the market mechanism to play a major role in land resource allocation, but the excessive capitalization of land must be prevented.

Interdependence of Growth, Structure, Size and Resource Consumption During an Economic Growth Cycle

This paper explains how the Human and Resources with MONEY (HARMONEY) economic growth model exhibits realistic dynamic interdependencies relating resources consumption, growth, and structural change. We explore dynamics of three major structural metrics of an economy. First, we show that an economic transition to relative decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) from resource consumption is an expected pattern that occurs because of physical limits to growth, not a response to avoid physical limits. While increasing operational resource efficiency does increase the level of relative decoupling, so does a change in pricing from one based on full costs to one based only on marginal costs that neglect depreciation and interest payments. Marginal cost pricing leads to higher debt ratios and a perception of higher levels of relative resource decoupling. Second, if assuming full labor bargaining power for wages, when a previously-growing economy reaches peak resource extraction and GDP, wages remain high but profits and debt decline to zero. By removing bargaining power, profits can remain positive at the expense of declining wages. Third, the internal structure of HARMONEY evolves in the same way the post-World War II U.S. economy. This is measured as the distribution of intermediate transactions within the input-output tables of both the model and U.S. economy.

Has Green Finance Facilitated China's Low-Carbon Economic Transition?

The development of green finance helps to promote the transition to a low-carbon economy. Using data from 30 provinces in China from 2001-2019, we empirically examine the impact of green finance on the transition to a low-carbon economy and further explore the mediating role of low-carbon technological innovation in this facilitation process. The study finds that (1) green finance can significantly contribute to the transformation of the low-carbon economy from China as a whole. However, when China is divided into four regions: east, central, west and northeast, the contribution of green finance to the low-carbon economic transition in the west is not significant. (2) After adding low-carbon technologies to the model, green finance still has a significant contribution to the low-carbon economic transition, but this contribution decreases with the intervention of low-carbon technologies. (3) There is a strong spatial dependence between green finance development and low-carbon economic transformation in 30 Chinese provinces. However, the dependence among provinces tends to weaken after 2011. And the overall green financial development in China shows a positive spillover effect on the low-carbon economic transition. Based on the analysis results, several countermeasures are proposed to promote the further development of China's low-carbon economy.

Exploring the Convergence of Resilience Processes and Sustainable Outcomes in Post-COVID, Post-Glasgow Economies

Resilience and sustainability have each offered a path forward for post-COVID economic recovery and a post-Glasgow global financial order. Yet, the relationships between these two concepts are largely unexplored in economic policy and investment strategies. In light of emerging systemic risks and global demands for more resolute investments in resilience and sustainability, this perspective article took the position that policymakers must begin to draw greater conceptual, empirical, and practical linkages between sustainability and resilience. This perspective article provided a simplified framework for understanding the positively reinforcing, negatively conflicting, and neutral relationships between different types of resilience and sustainability consistent with two propositions. The Reinforcement Proposition argues (i) that various resilience processes may drive sustainable outcomes, and/or (ii) that an allocation of sustainable resources may reinforce resilience processes, as well as the transformative adaptation of markets. Conversely, the Conflict Proposition argues (i) that certain resilience processes may perpetuate stability features that may thwart an economic transition toward sustainability, and/or (ii) that certain sustainability outcomes associated with reorganized economic structures and relationships may undermine resources for resilience. This framework provides policymakers with an opportunity to evaluate the convergent and conflicting trade-offs of resilience processes and sustainable outcomes.