Achieving transport connectivity is a priority in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. In order to further understand the impact of railway infrastructure on city-level economic expansion, we set cities with high-speed rail as the treatment group and those without high-speed rail as the control group, and a difference-in-differences (DID) technique was used to estimate the growth impact and heterogeneity of high-speed rail opening on the economic growth of cities along the New Silk Road Economic Belt. The main results are as follows: First, economic growth in cities with operational high-speed rail lines was significantly higher than those without high-speed rail. Second, the impact of high-speed rail on economic growth exhibited distinct heterogeneity. Large cities tend to have a stronger siphoning effect, resulting in more pronounced impact of high-speed rail opening on urban economic growth. Third, cities with higher marketization levels and higher government efficiency were shown to have stronger economic growth effect.

Purpose: Although the wind power industry has been booming in China during the last decade, the development of wind turbine aftermarket service is still lagging behind, which seriously affects the operational efficiency of wind farms. If wind turbine manufacturers get involved in the aftermarket, the service pricing policy will impact the profits of both the manufacturer and the wind farm. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss an optimal service pricing strategy in the wind turbine aftermarket and design a method to improve electricity generation efficiency through service contract design. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: In order to decide the maintenance quantity and channel effort level, the authors design a normal Stackelberg game and an efficiency value-added revenue-sharing contract and discuss two kinds of revenue increment sharing models under situations, in which the supply chain’s leaders are the wind farm and the wind turbine manufacturer, respectively. Findings: The results show that in either case, there exist optimal power generation revenue-sharing ratios that can maximize profit. At the same time, the authors outline an optimal service pricing policy, maintenance demand policy and channel service effort-level policy. The results summarize the influences of wind aftermarket services on wind farms’ and wind turbine manufacturers’ profit, which provides managerial insights into the process of manufacturing servitization. Practical implications: The manufacturer’s channel effort level will influence the power generation increments very much, so the authors have developed a mechanism to stimulate the manufacturer improving the efficiency of aftermarket services. Originality/value: Taking the power generation increment revenue as the profit increment function, the authors discuss the influence of service price on the profit increment of the wind farm and the wind turbine manufacturer and also consider the influence of service price on the wind farms maintenance quantity and wind turbine manufacturers channel effort level.

Purpose: Upstream suppliers attempt to outsource product after-sales services to midstream third-party service providers while selling the product directly to downstream sellers, forming a networked supply chain. However, a problem of information asymmetry in the market demand among supply chain members exists. The authors investigate the impact of demand information asymmetry among third-party service providers, upstream suppliers and downstream sellers in the supply chain on the supplier's contract selection under the networked framework.Design/methodology/approach: The authors establish a model in which the supplier can use a wholesale price contract and facilitate a signaling game between the third-party service provider and the seller. Conversely, the supplier could use a menu contract to establish an incentive mechanism to solve information asymmetry. The authors propose heuristic algorithms to quickly estimate a supplier's optimal profit.Findings: The results show that when the demand forecasting bias is relatively small, the use of a menu contract by the supplier could eliminate information asymmetry; when the demand forecasting bias is large enough, the signaling mechanism between the third-party service provider and the seller could alleviate the double marginalization effect in the supply chain. Although it is common to solve the asymmetric information problem by establishing incentive mechanisms, the authors found that in the latter case, the supplier is better off when no incentive mechanisms are implemented in the networked supply chain.Originality/value: This study compares screening and signaling effects and compares firms' profits in both cases.