Offshoring and directed technical change

To study the short-run and long-run implications on wage inequality, we introducedirected technical change into a Ricardian model of offshoring. A unique final good isproduced by combining a skilled and an unskilled product, each produced from a continuumof intermediates (tasks). Some of these tasks can be transferred from a skill-abundant Westto a skill-scarce East. Profit maximization determines both the extent of offshoring andtechnological progress. Offshoring induces skill-biased technical change because it increasesthe relative price of skill-intensive products and induces technical change favoring unskilledworkers because it expands the market size for technologies complementing unskilled labor.In the empirically more relevant case, starting from low levels, an increase in offshoringopportunities triggers a transition with falling real wages for unskilled workers in the West,skill-biased technical change and rising skill premia worldwide. However, when the extentof offshoring becomes sufficiently large, further increases in offshoring induce technicalchange now biased in favor of unskilled labor because offshoring closes the gap betweenunskilled wages in the West and the East, thus limiting the power of the price effectfueling skill-biased technical change. The unequalizing impact of offshoring is thus greatestat the beginning. Transitional dynamics reveal that offshoring and technical change aresubstitutes in the short run but complements in the long run. Finally, though offshoringimproves the welfare of workers in the East, it may benefit or harm unskilled workers inthe West depending on elasticities and the equilibrium growth rate.

Technical inefficiency and public capital in US States: A stochastic frontier approach

This paper estimates a translog stochastic frontier production function in the analysis of all 48 contiguous U.S. states in the period 1970-1983, to attempt to measure and explain changes in technical efficiency. The model allows technical inefficiency to vary over time, and inefficiency effects to be a function of a set of explanatory variables in which the level and composition of public capital plays an important role. Results indicated that U.S. state inefficiency levels were significantly and positively correlated with the ratio of public capital to private capital. The proportion of public capital devoted to highways is negatively correlated with technical inefficiency, suggesting that not only the level but also the composition of public capital influenced state efficiency.

The hotel industry and its importance in the technical and economic development of a region : the Lake Geneva case (1852-1914)

The historiography dedicated to tourism has emphasised how some socio-economic evolutions such as urbanisation, mechanisation of transport or the advent of leisure time in society have supported pleasure trips and therefore the development of the hotel industry. On the contrary, the research has too often neglected or at least minimised the impact of the hotel sector on a region's development. This contribution seeks to fill this gap by analysing the Geneva Lake region, one of the most important birthplaces of the European tourism. In this space not much touched by the first industrial revolution, the hotel business has in fact played the role of an economic motor, stimulating investment and employment. This dynamism provoked a domino effect on several other sectors of the economy (industry, bulding sector, banking). To please their customers, the hoteliers have not only given impulses on housing modernisation, but also to the revitalisation of transport, energy and communication networks. The necessity to remain on the state-of-the-art of technical issues, with the concern of competitiveness, has called forth an acceleration of the technology transfer and stimulated the constitution of technical know-how.

North-south trade and directed technical change

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual propertyrights, market integration shifts technical change in favor of rich nations. Throughthis channel, free trade may amplify international income differences. At the sametime, integration with countries where intellectual property rights are weakly protectedcan slow down the world growth rate. A crucial implication of these results is thatprotection of intellectual property is most beneficial in open countries. This prediction,which is novel in the literature, finds support in the data on a panel of 53 countriesobserved in the years 1965-1990.

Are these classical business cycles?

The aim of this paper is to test formally the classical business cyclehypothesis, using data from industrialized countries for the timeperiod since 1960. The hypothesis is characterized by the view that the cyclical structure in GDP is concentrated in the investment series: fixed investment has typically a long cycle, while the cycle in inventory investment is shorter. To check the robustness of our results, we subject the data for 15 OECD countries to a variety of detrending techniques. While the hypothesis is not confirmed uniformly for all countries, there is a considerably high number for which the data display the predicted pattern. None of the countries shows a pattern which can be interpreted as a clear rejection of the classical hypothesis.

Embodied technical change and the fluctuations of wages and unemployment

The paper shows that a matching model where technological change is partially embodied in the job match is successful in explaining the variability of unemployment and vacancies. If we incorporate long-term wage contracts into the model, it also explains a number of stylized facts on the dynamics of real wages, which have been found in the empirical labor literature.

Posterior quadrantic epilepsy surgery: technical variants, surgical anatomy, and case series.

OBJECTIVE: Patients with intractable epilepsy due to extensive lesions involving the posterior quadrant (temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes) form a small subset of epilepsy surgery. This study was done with a view to analyze our experience with this group of patients and to define the changes in the surgical technique over the last 15 years. We also describe the microsurgical technique of the different surgical variants used, along with their functional neuroanatomy. METHODS: In this series there were 13 patients with a median age of 17 years. All patients had extensive presurgical evaluation that provided concordant evidence localizing the lesion and seizure focus to the posterior quadrant. The objective of the surgery was to eliminate the effect of the epileptogenic tissue and preserve motor and sensory functions. RESULTS: During the course of this study period of 15 years, the surgical procedure performed evolved toward incorporating more techniques of disconnection and minimizing resection. Three technical variants were thus utilized in this series, namely, (i) anatomical posterior quadrantectomy (APQ), (ii) functional posterior quadrantectomy (FPQ), and (iii) periinsular posterior quadrantectomy (PIPQ). After a median follow-up period of 6 years, 12/13 patients had Engel's Class I seizure outcome. CONCLUSION: The results of surgery for posterior quadrantic epilepsy have yielded excellent seizure outcomes in 92% of the patients in the series with no mortality or major morbidity. The incorporation of disconnective techniques in multilobar surgery has maintained the excellent results obtained earlier with resective surgery.

Habiter touristique et agencement de l'espace urbain : le cas de Los Angeles : recherche sur le concours des compétences des individus quant à leurs manières de faire avec les épreuves spatiales d'une métapole touristique

Vivre, c'est passer d'un espace à un autre en essayant le plus possible de ne pas se cogner déclamait George Pérec. Cet énoncé poétiquement géographique pourrait résumer d'une certaine façon le défi de connaissance saisi par cette recherche. L'enjeu consiste effectivement à envisager le fait à'habiter, entendu dans son acception du « faire avec de l'espace » de la part des individus, comme n'allant pas de soi, de mettre en exergue le caractère problématique que constitue la pratique d'un lieu pour un individu. A ce titre, l'une des propositions de ce travail est de considérer tout lieu comme un assemblage d'épreuves spatiales face auxquelles les individus sont confrontés. La question se pose alors de savoir comment les individus font avec ces épreuves spatiales. L'hypothèse défendue dans ce travail est celle de la mobilisation, par ces derniers, de compétences - ressortissant d'une « capacité à » telle qu'exprimée par Wittgenstein dans le domaine linguistique, c'est-à-dire d'une « maîtrise technique » - et d'un capital spatial - que l'on peut faire synthétiquement correspondre à l'expérience accumulée par un individu en terme de pratique de lieux. L'argumentation étaye l'hypothèse que les manières d'habiter touristiquement une métropole dépendent notamment de ces deux éléments interdépendants dont dispose tout individu de façon variable et évolutive ; leur importance, sans déterminer aucunement des pratiques spécifiques, participe d'une maîtrise accrue de l'espace, d'une facilité pour faire avec les épreuves spatiales, atténuant le caractère potentiellement contraignant de ces dernières. Il s'agit donc d'une enquête menant une réflexion tout à la fois sur la dimension actorielle des individus, mais également sur le lieu en tant qu'espace habité : travailler sur cette question revient à investir la question de l'agencement urbain d'un lieu, c'est-à-dire d'appréhender la façon dont une configuration urbaine (les épreuves spatiales coïncidant avec les principales caractéristiques de cette dernière) est habitée, et plus particulièrement en l'occurrence ici, est habitée touristiquement. Pour aborder empiriquement cette problématique, l'enquête se focalise donc sur les touristes : d'une part pour leur faible degré de familiarité avec le lieu pratiqué (faire avec cet espace ne relève donc pas d'une routine) et d'autre part parce que leur présence dorénavant massive au sein des métropoles a des effets sur l'agencement de ces lieux qu'il est nécessaire d'envisager. Le laboratoire utilisé est celui de Los Angeles, cette aire urbaine de 18 millions de résidents : son étalement considérable, l'absence d'un centre-ville historiquement important, et la forte prégnance de sa métrique automobile étant des caractéristiques qui font de ce lieu un « exceptionnel normal » aux épreuves spatiales particulièrement proéminentes. La recherche avance à ce titre des arguments permettant d'en souligner un agencement, par les manières d'habiter des touristes, différencié du modèle classique de la métropole touristique : pour exprimer cette singularité, l'enquête étaye l'hypothèse consistant à qualifier ce lieu de métapole touristique. - Living is moving from one space to another while trying not to collide claimed George Pérec. This poetically geographic statement could in a way sum up the challenge seized by this research. The challenge is indeed to consider the fact of dwelling, in the sense of "make do with space" on the part of individuals, as not an evidence but highlighting the problematic characteristics of the practice of a place by people. Accordingly, one of the proposals of this work is to consider each place as a gathering of spatial stakes against which individuals are faced. The question then arises how are individuals facing these spatial stakes. The hypothesis debated in this work is that of the mobilization of skills such as "the ability of' as expressed by Wittgenstein in the linguistic field, i.e. a "technical mastery" - and a spatial capital - that can synthetically correspond to the experience accumulated by one single individual in terms of practice of places. Argument supports the hypothesis that the ways of touristically dwelling a metropolis depend on these two interdependent elements which everyone deal with in a variable and scalable manner; their importance, without determining any specific practices, participates in an increased proficiency of space, easing to make do with the space stakes, moderating the potentially binding character of the latter. It is therefore a survey leading a reflection both on the actorial dimension of individuals, but also on the place as a living space: working on this issue is exploring the question of the urban layout of a place, i.e. to understand how an urban configuration (the space stakes coinciding with the main features of the latter) is inhabited, and in particular in the present case, is touristically dwelled. To empirically address this issue, the inquiry therefore focuses on tourists: on the one hand for their low degree of familiarity with the place (make do with this space is therefore not a routine) and secondly because their now massive presence within the metropolis has effects on the layout of these places that is necessary to consider. The laboratory used is that of Los Angeles, this urban area of 18 million residents: its considerable spread, the absence of an historically important downtown» and high salience of "automobile metric" are features that make this place a "normal exceptional" with particularly prominent space stakes. Hence, research advances the arguments underlining the layout, by the ways of tourists dwelling different from the classical model of the metropolis: to express this uniqueness, the survey supports hypothesis to describe this place as a tourist metapolis.

Fixed and random effects in Classical and Bayesian regression

This paper proposes a common and tractable framework for analyzingdifferent definitions of fixed and random effects in a contant-slopevariable-intercept model. It is shown that, regardless of whethereffects (i) are treated as parameters or as an error term, (ii) areestimated in different stages of a hierarchical model, or whether (iii)correlation between effects and regressors is allowed, when the sameinformation on effects is introduced into all estimation methods, theresulting slope estimator is also the same across methods. If differentmethods produce different results, it is ultimately because differentinformation is being used for each methods.

Environmental Services - Recycling Technical Assistance,

Iowa is one of the more progressive recycling states in the U.S. due in large part to its environmental technical assistance programs for business. The Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED), Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), the Recycle Reuse Technology Transfer Center (RRTTC) and the Iowa Waste Reduction Center (IWRC) work together to offer services that help businesses save money, increase operational efficiencies, enhance regulatory compliance and manage difficult waste management issues.