Narrow Results

This study discusses the nexus between consumer credit (CC) and consumer confidence (CF) in the case of China with a bootstrap rolling-window causality test. The new empirical results demonstrate that CC improves CF in specific periods by loosening liquidity constraints and increasing consumer power temporarily. Meanwhile, a negative link is also found, which can be explained by policy adjustment and financial instabilities. On the contrary, CF negatively influences CC in some periods, reflecting consumers’ attitudes toward the future would change borrowing behaviors. But this relationship would be disrupted by government intervention and public events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The contribution is that time-varying, multiple-directional and dynamic causalities are captured, which enriches the theoretical framework between CC and CF. Therefore, the government must design and adjust loaning policies against specific circumstances and transmit positive signs to consumers. Future study needs to pay attention to different types of CC and try to reveal their heterogeneous influences on CF. In addition, the effect evaluation for CC policy is also another focus in the next research.

In this paper, a comprehensive power line test bed for the automatic meter reading (AMR) system is developed. Such a test bed builds a 220V power line environment in which the intensity and types of simulated noise can be configured very flexibly. It facilitates the fast analysis of the running condition of AMR system and power line carrier communication (PLCC). In particular, a new simulation technique, which is dedicated to modeling the power line cyclostationary noise, is proposed in this paper through analyzing many unique power line noise characteristics. It is further integrated with a noise simulator which handles the controllable noise replayer and time-varying loads to make the whole simulation system more salient. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed simulator is highly effective. Our simulator can handle the communication tests with a wide frequency range, from 10kHz to 500kHz with high accuracy.

In this paper, we examine the evidence of herding behavior on the Chinese stock market. Our main findings are as follows. First, we find strong evidence of herding behavior on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Second, we document evidence of asymmetric herding behavior with greater magnitude of herding behavior on up markets than on down markets. Third, our findings suggest that herding behavior is sector-specific and predominant in the industrial and properties sectors. Finally, we unravel strong evidence suggesting that herding behavior is time-varying and in some sectors time-varying herding behavior is more prevalent than in other sectors.

This paper analyzes the interaction between a heavy vehicle and a simply supported light bridge based on frequency modulation technique, in which variations of instantaneous frequencies of both bridge and heavy vehicle are considered. The bridge is modeled as a simply supported Euler beam and the heavy vehicle is simplified as a spring-mass system. The variation of instantaneous frequencies of both bridge and vehicle induced by the moving vehicle is usually neglected in classical analysis to decouple the pair of governing equations. However, the coupled vehicle–bridge interaction (VBI) system becomes time-varying and the pair of governing equations cannot be decoupled when the vehicle/bridge mass ratio cannot be neglected. The instantaneous frequencies of both bridge and heavy vehicle including their higher vibration modes are investigated herein. An analytical solution describing the dynamic response of the time-varying VBI system is developed by using the frequency modulation technique. Both Finite Element (FE) method and published experimental data are used for comparison purpose. The predictions of the proposed method match better with those obtained from the FE simulations and experimental measurements than the classical method. Five numerical examples have been adopted to compare the performance of the proposed model and the classical method: the former performs generally well, especially when the vehicle is heavy, or the vehicle frequency is near to the bridge frequency. The classical method is only a special case of the proposed model if either the mass or the stiffness of the vehicle is relatively small compared to the corresponding terms of the bridge. The performance of the proposed method has also been examined in four typical scenarios, where vehicle damping, multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) vehicle, road surface roughness, and two-span continuous bridge are involved.

Based on the daily return and volatility series of the Chinese yuan (RMB)/US dollar (USD) exchange rate and the Shanghai Stock Composite Index, the time-varying long memories of the Chinese currency and stock markets are investigated by comprehensively using the rescaled range (R/S), the modified R/S, and the detrended fluctuation analysis methods. According to the results drawn: (1) the efficiency of the Chinese currency market has not improved significantly, whereas the efficiency of the Chinese stock market has improved steadily, (2) volatility series presents longer memory than return series either in the Chinese currency or stock market and (3) the time-varying Hurst exponent of the Chinese currency market is sensitive to the reform that enhances the flexibility of the RMB exchange rate. Moreover, we find that short-term bidirectional Granger causal relationship exists, but no long-run equilibrium relationship between the time-varying Hurst exponents of the Chinese currency and stock markets was found based on the Granger causality and cointegration tests, respectively.

Bus bunching could seriously damage the stability of transit system. This resultant instability always causes a dissatisfying performance of transit system. Traditional bus bunching control methods (e.g., holding control strategy) add slack to schedules or adapt cruising speed. The control methods can alleviate bus bunching in theory, but it is difficult to apply to actual operation, especially in busy traffic. The short-turning strategy only deals with spatial concentration of demand in the existing literatures. We find that the short-turning strategy is also very effective in alleviating bus bunching. In this study, based on the passenger arrival rate of each stop and the spatial-temporal running time, a short-turning model with bunching penalty is developed, and the waiting time of passengers and the operation cost are also considered. Based on data from Beijing Transportation Information Center, we take the Yuntong 111 bus line of Beijing as an example. Compared with the currently used timetable, it is found that a 46.78% reduction in bus bunching is achieved by using the optimal timetable, and there is no increase in operating costs.

We have applied the extended Kalman filter to the parameter, state and structure estimation of recurrent radial basis function network. The architecture of recurrent radial basis function network is based upon nonlinear autoregressive model with exogenous inputs. The on-line structure adaptation of the network is achieved by combining growing and pruning of the hidden units and connections of the network. Statistical criteria for growing and pruning were derived using Kalman filter's innovation statistics and state estimation error. Examples of nonstationary time series prediction are given to illustrate the proposed algorithm.