The claim that “there is no third way” besides the economic models of capitalism and communism has faced a challenge from a new and growing body of research into a “third way” economic paradigm known as democratic planning. In this paper, we explore one of these democratic planning models–Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert’s model of a participatory economy, focusing in particular on its allocation mechanism–a non-market, non-command-planning procedure known as “participatory planning.” This procedure has recently been implemented in computer programs to explore its feasibility, the encouraging results of which have been published elsewhere and which we summarize here. But I present here for the first time the detailed algorithms and related pseudocode powering all of these computer programs for others to consider, examine, and build as their own programs. I also describe future directions for this avenue of research.

Even though policy coordination is one of the oldest challenges that governments have to confront, as problems evolve and "New Public Management" concepts emerge, it has become even more essential. The current literature on policy coordination among government agencies, however, shows little regarding the way coordination is managed under centralized political systems. This study, based on the science and technology (S&T) policy documents issued by China's central government agencies between 1978 and 2020, provides a quantitative and dynamic analysis of the coordination of policies in China and presents a comprehensive overview of policy coordination paths and processes in centralized political systems. As a result, it provides a way that contributes to the analytical methods available for quantitatively analyzing policy documents. On the other hand, the key findings of the study show that, first, state council-administered ministries have taken the lead in coordinating policy while other types of organizations have collaborated in more subordinate capacities. Second, national themes that are democratic and driven by demand have been the core concern of coordination activities, such as social development, high-tech industrialization, and rural S&T. Third, policy coordination has evolved continuously and has mostly contributed to interpreting macrostrategies and implementing more specific implementation measures.

Given the rapid development of live streaming commerce in China, this study focuses on the interactivity and sociability of live streaming shopping activities and explores online consumers’ real-time interaction intentions and trust-building behaviours with online merchants. To discover the real-time interaction between online consumers and online merchants, this study builds a research model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Through the data analysis based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the key findings state that, three factors, including attitude, subject norm, and perceived control, positively affect online consumers’ real-time interaction intentions and lead them to build trust with online merchants. Meanwhile, control variables, including gender, age, and educational background, demonstrate insignificant effects across the model. Unlike existing literature, the current study pays much attention to the interactive characteristics of live streaming shopping activities and can provide some valuable suggestions both for online consumers and online merchants, which can promote the co-development of the commercial and social aspects of live streaming platforms.