This thesis consists of two essays analyzing related topics. The first essay investigates the role of search cost in electronic markets. It is the first to introduce product specificity to a search model which allows us to study both short term and long term effects of reducing search cost. It...

Department: Statistics.

As one of the important developing countries, China has experienced a tremendous amount of economic growth in the past 30 years. This in turn has attracted a huge amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country. However, according to past literature, FDI location is imbalanced in...

Motivated by existing evidence of individual investors' gambling preference in U.S. stock market (Kumar, 2009), this paper investigates characteristics of lottery-type stocks and individuals' gambling preference in China's stock market. Based on the practice situation of China's stock market,...

Inconel718 flash-butt welding is characterized by the gradient distribution of the welding temperature field and the deformation resistance, which affects the evolution of the microstructure after post-weld heat treatment (PWHT). In this paper, the evolution of the microstructure and mechanical...

The controllable and safe hydrogen storage technologies are widely recognized as the main bottleneck for the accomplishment of sustainable hydrogen energy. Ammonia borane (AB) has regarded as a competitive candidate for chemical hydrogen storage. However, developing efficient yet...