Global Market Integration and National Sovereignty

In this paper, we first trace the evolution of the global trading system from the 19th century to the present-day GATT/WTO arrangements, calling attention to the key roles of reciprocity and nondiscrimination, and we note how the system is now challenged by the new paradigm of global market integration. We then consider the recent plethora of free trade agreements (FTAs), including those between industrial and developing countries, and their uneasy relationship with a multilateral system based on non-discrimination.. Thereafter, we seek to identify the boundaries of the WTO and examine how the potential expansion of these boundaries extension and weakening of the effectiveness and influence of the WTO.Reciprocity, Non-Discrimination; Boundaries of WTO Regime

Fairness in the WTO Trading System

We first provide a brief critique of the utilitarian principle as a guide to fairness in the world trading system. We then turn to the alternative conception of fairness in terms of economic equity, exploring the meaning of its two components: equality of opportunity and distributive justice. We thereafter proceed to discuss the conditions of autonomy and reciprocity that have to be met in order to realize greater fairness in multilateral trade negotiations. Next, we comment on aspects of procedural justice that are necessary for the functioning of a fair trading system. Finally, we conclude with an overall assessment of the considerations of the fairness achieved in the Uruguay Round multilateral negotiations.Fairness, Equality of Opportunity, Distributive Justice, Global Trading System

What Are the Issues in Using Trade Agreements for Improving International Labor Standards?

This paper addresses the issues of whether the linking of core labor standards with multilateral or bilateral trade agreements is an effective way of promoting the improvement of labor standards. We review the determinants of core labor standards over time and conclude that efforts to improve these standards have to be tailored to the economic and social circumstances prevailing in a country at a specific time. Legalistic means to prod governments into revising their domestic laws or enforcing them will therefore be unsuccessful unless economic incentives can be changed to erode prevailing social norms and ease the way for the acceptance of new norms that will meet with public approval and be consonant with the distribution of political power. Moral suasion from both domestic and external sources may work more slowly than more legalistic means but is preferred because it contributes to altering the social norms that underlie and will reinforce the acceptance and effectiveness of labor standards.International labor standards, social norms, trade agreements

Equivalence theory for density estimation, Poisson processes and Gaussian white noise with drift

This paper establishes the global asymptotic equivalence between a Poisson process with variable intensity and white noise with drift under sharp smoothness conditions on the unknown function. This equivalence is also extended to density estimation models by Poissonization. The asymptotic equivalences are established by constructing explicit equivalence mappings. The impact of such asymptotic equivalence results is that an investigation in one of these nonparametric models automatically yields asymptotically analogous results in the other models.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053604000000012 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Effect Demographics Have On The Demand For Orange Juice

This paper investigates how the demand for orange juice is affected by the demographics of consumers. There are many variables in the orange juice demand equation and demographics are only one. Demographic variables are important in determining the tastes and preferences of different regions. The data that has been collected is weekly data over a two year period of time. The seemingly unrelated regression method will be used to examine the data. This project will be beneficial to orange juice advertising firms and companies that sell orange juice.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

Land‐Use Change in Rural America: Rates, Drivers, and Consequences1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117239/1/eap20051561849.pd

Heterocyst placement strategies to maximize growth of cyanobacterial filaments

Under conditions of limited fixed-nitrogen, some filamentous cyanobacteria develop a regular pattern of heterocyst cells that fix nitrogen for the remaining vegetative cells. We examine three different heterocyst placement strategies by quantitatively modelling filament growth while varying both external fixed-nitrogen and leakage from the filament. We find that there is an optimum heterocyst frequency which maximizes the growth rate of the filament; the optimum frequency decreases as the external fixed-nitrogen concentration increases but increases as the leakage increases. In the presence of leakage, filaments implementing a local heterocyst placement strategy grow significantly faster than filaments implementing random heterocyst placement strategies. With no extracellular fixed-nitrogen, consistent with recent experimental studies of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120, the modelled heterocyst spacing distribution using our local heterocyst placement strategy is qualitatively similar to experimentally observed patterns. As external fixed-nitrogen is increased, the spacing distribution for our local placement strategy retains the same shape while the average spacing between heterocysts continuously increases.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physical Biology. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher-authenticated version will be available onlin