Pricing Power of China's Cocoon and Silk Products in International Market:An Empirical Analysis Based on International Market Power

Do China＇s silk products only have advantage in number but no pricing power in international market？ In this paper, we used the residual demand elasticity model to estimate the international market power of China＇s silk products. The empirical results revealed that China＇s raw material products such as natural silk products and semi-finished products such as satin products had certain market power in the main export markets, but the finished silk products such as woman＇s blouse or shirts and shawls had no market power in the target markets including USA and Germany. The scale economy from resource endowment and great market share are the base of the international market power of natural silk products. The advantage from industry agglomeration and great market share are the source of the international market power of satin products. Technical bottlenecks and inefficiency in brand building are the cause of unobvious international market power of China＇s finished silk products, and the competition from Italy and France has increased the difficulty to enhance market power. In order to consolidate and improve the international market power of China＇s silk products, it is suggested to stabilize the production scale and strengthen industrial base, to speed up the resources integration and optimize the industrial distribution, to strengthen science and technology innovation and adjust product structure, to speed up the brand construction and enhance the influence of brand, and to enlarge the scale of organization and achieve scale economies.

Rural resident household food consumption patterns in the Ganzhou district of Zhangye city:an analysis based on ELES Model

Demand for food plays an important role in the adjustment of prices for agricultural products and for adjusting agricultural structure.By using the extended linear expenditure system(ELES),we analyzed the food consumption structure of rural residents in the Ganzhou district of Zhangye city,and determined the basic food-consumption demand,the marginal propensity of consumption,the income elasticities of demand,and the own-price and cross-price elasticities of local rural residents,all of which illustrate the influencing factors on food consumption of rural residents and for forecasting the food-consumption structure.Those analyses show the following:the rural residents’ expenditure on household basic food consumption reaches about 7,050.35 Yuan;the marginal propensities of consumption of fruits and vegetables are relatively high(0.062 and 0.106,respectively),followed by meat(0.044);the demands for various foods are increasing as income increases,with the largest income elasticity of demand corresponding to fruits(1.354) and the lowest to cereal(0.310);fruits and vegetables have relatively high own-price elasticities(respectively-0.879 and-0.442),with the cereal having the lowest one(-0.184).An increase in cereal prices would greatly affect demand for other products;with the rising size of rural households,the consumption for meat is decreasing whereas it is increasing for cereal.The improvement of household education levels will lead to the increase of fruit consumption(E = 0.297),which indicates that people will pay more attention to diet and nutrition structure with the improvement of education.Further,although the amount of cereal expenditure is continually growing,the share will be declining with the increase of household income in 2006-2012.For all these reasons,therefore,the government should encourage the cultivation of economic crops and guide the development of stockbreeding to ensure the stability of cereal output.In order to attain the balance between supply and demand,it is important to rationally adjust the prices of fruits and vegetables on the basis of the stable price of cereal.

Research on Sales Strategy Based on Supermarket Pipeline Data

“Low profit and high sales” is a strategy to increase sales volume by reducing the profit of unit goods, so that businesses can gain more profits. For flexible goods, price reduction can increase the total revenue, but when the goods are lack of flexibility, price reduction will reduce the total revenue. In this paper, according to the sales data provided by a supermarket, we preprocess the data, establish appropriate indicators to measure the daily discount strength of the mall, and establish a mathematical model between the discount strength, sales and profit margin. Through these models, we found that meager profits do bring up sales, but too low discounts can also hurt total profits. In addition, when shopping malls implement discount promotions, they will also bring some negative effects, and we give some suggestions for this.

An ADMM-based parallel algorithm for solving traffic assignment problem with elastic demand

Efficiently solving the user equilibrium traffic assignment problem with elastic demand(UE-TAPED)for transportation networks is a critical problem for transportation studies.Most existing UE-TAPED algorithms are designed using a sequential computing scheme,which cannot take advantage of advanced parallel computing power.Therefore,this study focuses on model decomposition and parallelization,proposing an origin-based formulation for UE-TAPED and proving an equivalent reformulation of the original problem.Furthermore,the alternative direction method of multipliers(ADMM)is employed to decompose the original problem into independent link-based subproblems,which can solve large-scale problems with small storage space.In addition,to enhance the efficiency of our algorithm,the parallel computing technology with optimal parallel computing schedule is implemented to solve the link-based subproblems.Numerical experiments are performed to validate the computation efficiency of the proposed parallel algorithm.

Modeling an Elastic-Demand Bimodal Transport Network with Park-and-Ride Trips

This paper presents a network equilibrium formulation for modeling commuters＇ travel choices in a bimodal transport system with park-and-ride （P＆R） trips while the total demand is elastic to the congestion level of the network. A super-network approach is adopted in the proposed model. It is assumed that commuters＇ trips are categorized into two types, auto mode only and a combined mode with both auto and transit modes. The former is referred to as the pure mode trip and the latter as the P＆R mode trip. The proposed model simultaneously considers the commuter＇s choice of the pure mode versus the P＆R mode, the choice of parking location for the pure mode, the choice of transfer point for the P＆R mode, as well as the route choice for each mode. The demand elasticity of transport system, the capacity constraints of transport facilities, and the congestion interaction throughout the super-network are also explicitly incorporated into the proposed model. The results of the numerical experiment show the following key findings： （i） traditional parking/P＆R models may overestimate or underestimate travel demand distribution over network; （ii） parking/P＆R, transit scheduling, and carpooling schemes bring significant impacts on commuters＇ travel behavior and network performance; and （iii） different transport policies may be to some extent mutually substituted .

A Potential Security Threat and Its Solution in Coupled Urban Power-traffic Networks with High Penetration of Electric Vehicles

The growing penetration of electric vehicles(EVs)and the popularity of fast charging stations(FCSs)have greatly strengthened the coupling of the urban power network(PN)and traffic network(TN).In this paper,a potential security threat of the PN-TN coupling is revealed.Different from traditional loads,a regional FCS outage can lead to both the spatial and temporal redistribution of EV charging loads due to EV mobility,which further leads to a power flow redistribution.To assess the resulting potential threats,an integrated PN-TN modeling framework is developed,where the PN is described by a direct current optimal power flow model,and the TN is depicted by an energy-constraint traffic assignment problem.To protect the privacy of the two networks,an FCS outage distribution factor is proposed to describe the spatial-temporal redistribution ratio of the charging load among the remaining I FCSs.Moreover,to protect the security of the coupled networks,a price-based preventive regulation method,based on the spatial demand elasticity of the EV charging load,is developed to reallocate the charging load as a solution for insecure situations.Numerical simulation results validate the existence of the PN-TN coupling threat and demonstrate the effectiveness of the regulation method to exploit the spatial flexibility of EV loads.

Trade Restrictiveness and Deadweight Loss in China＇s Imports

China is believed to have gained immensely from its admission into to the World Trade Organization （WTO） in 2001. One of the direct gains comes from the lessening of deadweight loss （DWL） due to tariff reduction. Conventional measures for DWL, however, are too aggregate to capture the trade policies, which are determined at a much higher disaggregated level, and ignore the interactions between tariff and corresponding import demand as suggested by theories. In this paper, we first systematically estimate the import demand elasticities at a highly disaggregated level and then match them with the most detailed lines of the applied tariff for the most favored nations as reported by the WTO. Using the detailed matching data, we construct Feenstra＇s （1995） simplified trade restrictiveness index （TRI）, which captures the covariance of tariff and the corresponding demand elasticity. Finally, we use the TRI to compute the DWL from1997 to 2008 and find that the DWL due to the tariff barrier was reduced to 0.73% of GNI in 2008, noticeably lower than the highest previous mark of 4.58% of GNI in 2001.