Cheap talk: transaction costs, quality of institutions, and trade agreements

While there is evidence that politics matter for international cooperation, the impact on economic integration of the quality of institutions has been given short shrift in the previous literature. I argue that the quality of institutions raises the quantity and the quality of information available to potential member states during the bargaining phase of a trade agreement. In turn, this inflow of information reduces the negotiation period of an agreement and, in doing so, dampens the transaction costs associated with it. As a result, countries with good institutions are more likely to form trade agreements. Using original data on both the formation of trade agreements and the duration of negotiations, I quantitatively test this argument. The results strongly support the claim that the quality of institutions is a crucial driver in explaining the recent wave of regionalism

Diamond formation by thermal activation of graphite

Synthetic diamond is used in applications ranging from abrasives, tool coatings, bearing surfaces, microelectronics and optics to techniques to produce diamond as the thermodynamically stable form(3), but it can also be grown at low pressures as a metastable carbon phase(1,2). Here we report the production of high-purity cubic diamond microparticles (10-100 mu m), which form in a highly concentrated carbon-vapour phase, followed by deposition of the crystals on the substrate, The carbon-vapour phase is generated by thermal activation of graphite, and the fast initial growth-rates of diamond, in the range 100-500 mu m s(-1), are at least two orders of magnitude higher than previously reported(1,2). We expect that tuning of experimental parameters to optimize the density of the carbon-vapour phase will allow us to grow larger diamond crystals, thereby opening a wider range of potential practical applications