Background: Sustainable closed-loop supply chains have emerged as viable answers to supply chain problems. They can handle environmental damages (e.g., waste) and related social impacts. Closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) are forward and reverse supply chain networks that have gained popularity...

Public service spending is an important issue with great economic, social and political ramifications. Consequently, correct measurements with respect to productivity evaluation of such expenditures is of paramount significance. Motivated by evaluating public services from a non-parametric...

Assessing determinants of health care quality and efficiency is of importance to researchers, policy-makers, and public health officials. Doing so allows for improved human capital and resource allocation as well as long-term fiscal planning. Statistical analysis has been used to understand...

Shelf space is one of the scarcest resources, and its effective management to maximize profits has become essential to gain a competitive advantage for retailers. We consider the two-dimensional shelf space allocation problem (2DSSAP) with additional features motivated by literature and our...

This paper considers open-shop scheduling with no intermediate buffer to minimize total tardiness. This problem occurs in many production settings, in the plastic molding, chemical, and food processing industries. The paper mathematically formulates the problem by a mixed integer linear program....

This paper studies the heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on stock prices in China and its hidden mechanisms from multi perspectives. First, we confirm the recent conclusion that the spread of the epidemic has a significant negative impact on stock market returns. However, this...

The success of reverse referral service, whereby a city hospital transfers patients finishing operations to a community one for follow-up treatment, generally depends on the collaboration of these two levels of hospitals. Unfortunately, the free-riding effect in such collaboration may lead to an...

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has randomly selected two audit firms each year to check their problems in management and internal control since 2016. Using the random inspections from 2016 to 2018, we construct a staggered DID model and find that the possibility of audit firms...

The corporate’s emission reduction activities are closely influenced by government policies. This paper analyzes the effect of a hybrid carbon policy, which means a combination of carbon tax and cap-and-trade policies, on the manufacturer’s carbon abatement activities and supply chain...