U.S. PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

USA only major trade power with equal economic stakes in all regions, and will oppose Asian economic integration if it excludes USA. Charts show relatively declining US role, rising China role as key trade partner for Japan, Korea, ASEAN. Responding to China¡¯s lead, as in its ASEAN trade deals, and shaped by former USTR Zoellick, there is growing US support for bilateral trade agreements, including Korea-US FTA, though most economists oppose bilateral/regional approach as inconsistent with the WTO-multilateral trade format. From US perspective, prognosis for East Asian economic integration not good.Economic Integration, APEC, FTA, ASEAN, Asian Economy, CAFTA, WTO

Family Control and the Rent-Seeking Society

The small number of very large family-controlled corporate groups in many countries combined with their long continuity of control and ability to act discretely give these organizations a comparative advantage in political rent-seeking. This advantage is a key part of a self-reinforcing system whereby oligarchic family corporate control, political rent seeking, and low general levels of trust combine to stymie growth.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39971/3/wp585.pd

Coulomb Gas Representation of the SU(2) WZW Correlators at Higher Genera

We express the correlation functions of the SU(2) WZW conformal field theory on Riemann surfaces of genus >1 by finite dimensional integrals.Comment: 9 pages, late

Chiral logs with staggered fermions

We compute chiral logarithms in the presence of "taste" symmetry breaking of staggered fermions. The lagrangian of Lee and Sharpe is generalized and then used to calculate the logs in $\pi$ and $K$ masses. We correct an error in Ref. [1] [C. Bernard, hep-lat/0111051]; the issue turns out to have implications for the comparison with simulations, even at tree level. MILC data with three light dynamical flavors can be well fit by our formulas. However, two new chiral parameters, which describe order $a^2$ hairpin diagrams for taste-nonsinglet mesons, enter in the fits. To obtain precise results for the physical coefficients at order $p^4$, these new parameters will need to be bounded, at least roughly.Comment: talk presented by C. Bernard at Lattice2002(spectrum); 3 pages, 2 figure

Thermodynamics with 3 and 2+1 Flavors of Improved Staggered Quarks

We present preliminary results from exploring the phase diagram of finite temperature QCD with three degenerate flavors and with two light flavors and the mass of the third held approximately at the strange quark mass. We use an order $\alpha_s^2 a^2, a^4$ Symanzik improved gauge action and an order $\alpha_s a^2, a^4$ improved staggered quark action. The improved staggered action leads to a dispersion relation with diminished lattice artifacts, and hence better thermodynamic properties. It decreases the flavor symmetry breaking of staggered quarks substantially, and we estimate that at the transition temperature for an $N_t=8$ to $N_t=10$ lattice {\em all} pions will be lighter than the lightest kaon. Preliminary results on lattices with $N_t=4$, 6 and 8 are presented.Comment: 3 pages, 6 figures, contribution to Lattice2001(hightemp) August 19--24, 2001, Berlin, German

Firm-Specific Variation and Openness in Emerging Markets

This paper compares the comovement of individual stock returns across emerging markets. Campbell et al. (2001) and Morck et al. (2000) show that the US in the post war period saw rising firm specific stock return variations and thus declining comovement. We detect a similar, albeit weaker, pattern in most, but not all, emerging markets. We further find that higher firm-specific variation is associated with greater capital market openness, but not goods market openness. Moreover, this relationship is magnified by institutional integrity (good government). Goods market openness is associated with higher market-wide variation.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40009/3/wp623.pd

European Springtails Orchesella cincta (L.) and O. villosa (L.) (Collembola: Entomobryidae): Vagabond Species of the Nearctic Region

North American specimens of the European invasive springtail Orchesella cincta (L.) were compared to several published European haplotypes in a phylogenetic framework using likelihood methods based on a portion of cytochrome oxidase II (cox2). Our analyses provide direct evidence of at least two distinct introductions of this invasive to North America from different regions of Europe. Additional introduction events cannot be ruled out because detection is limited by extremely low sequence divergence among populations inhabiting different regions of the continent. Orchesella villosa (L.), another invasive from Europe, is another candidate for multiple introductions. Herein we include the cox2 sequence from single specimens of O. villosa from Maine and Oregon. Although these two specimens are identical in sequence, they differ from a published sequence from a European specimen by 15%, indicating significant undocumented genetic variation in the natal range of O. villosa. Additional sampling of Nearctic populations of O. villosa might reveal the same situation reported herein for O. cincta

A Sufficient Condition for Power Flow Insolvability with Applications to Voltage Stability Margins

For the nonlinear power flow problem specified with standard PQ, PV, and slack bus equality constraints, we present a sufficient condition under which the specified set of nonlinear algebraic equations has no solution. This sufficient condition is constructed in a framework of an associated feasible, convex optimization problem. The objective employed in this optimization problem yields a measure of distance (in a parameter set) to the power flow solution boundary. In practical terms, this distance is closely related to quantities that previous authors have proposed as voltage stability margins. A typical margin is expressed in terms of the parameters of system loading (injected powers); here we additionally introduce a new margin in terms of the parameters of regulated bus voltages.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Toda Lattice Hierarchy and Zamolodchikov's Conjecture

In this letter, we show that certain Fredholm determinant $D(\lambda;t)$, introduced by Zamolodchikov in his study of 2D polymers, is a continuum limit of soliton solution for the Toda lattice hierarchy with 2-periodic reduction condition.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX file, no figure