The Macroeconomic Context for Trade in Guinea Bissau

This paper surveys the current macroeconomic situation in Guinea Bissau in light of proposals to increase the integration of the country with international markets. Major issues are continuing instability in the government, poor infrastructure particularly the port) and a very high degree of dependence on one export – cashew.Cashew, Macroeconomic, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Production Economics,

Cashew Production in Guinea Bissau

Cashew is by far the most important cash crop grown in Guinea Bissau. Indeed, the degree of export dependence on this crop exceeds even the export dependence of most members of OPEC on oil exports. This paper provides an overview of the current system of cashew production in Guinea Bissau and suggests policies to improve production, marketing and international sales.Cashew, Poverty, Macroeconomy, Financial Economics, Production Economics,

Transport, Electricity and Communications Priorities in Guinea Bissau

This paper details the current situation in Guinea Bissau regarding infrastructure needs and suggests policies for the future. In particular it is noted that the degradation of the country’s only port in Bissau is a serious concern given the likelihood that the port will in a few years cease to be accessible to ocean-going freighters if rehabilitation is not made an immediate priority. While primary roads are in fairly good shape, secondary roads are abysmal and maintenance needs are routinely ignored on all roads. It is shown that completion of bridges connecting Bissau directly to Senegal will have the effect of making Senegalese ports the preferred outlet for many of Guinea Bissau’s exports.exports, bridges, Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Production Economics,

Angola’s Macroeconomy and Agricultural Growth

This paper discusses the effects of Angola’s mineral wealth on the process of agricultural development. Though Angola has a rich agricultural resource base its history of civil war and extreme real exchange rate distortions has resulted in agricultural stagnation through many parts of the country. Though the security situation is now much improved, current high oil prices along with oil output increases mean that pressures on the real exchange rate will remain a fact of life for the foreseeable future.Financial Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Drag bias feedback for the analytic drag control entry guidance system

The Analytic Drag Control (ADC) entry guidance has been developed and baselined for the space shuttle orbiter entry. A method is presented which corrects the orbiter entry guidance commanded bank angle for biases between navigated drag and guidance computed reference drag. This is accomplished by an integral feedback technique, which uses the drag bias information to adjust the difference between navigated and reference altitude rate used by the ADC guidance. The method improves the capability of the ADC guidance system by compensating for any error source which causes a bias between the navigated drag and reference drag profile. These errors include navigated altitude rate errors, atmosphere dispersions, and roll attitude deadband effects. A discussion of the method and results of digital computer entry simulations is presented

THE RELATION BETWEEN FARM PRODUCTION RISK AND OFF-FARM INCOME

This paper presents a model of the farm labor allocation decision based on risk and return characteristics of different activities. It is shown that off-farm employment can play an important role in the diversification of farm family income, implying that portfolio models of risk and return to farm activities should take into account the possibility of off-farm employment. A model of the labor allocation decision based on the risk and return characteristics of each activity is developed and tested using a state level cross section of the United States over the post-war period, and performs well in explaining variation in reliance on off-farm income.Labor and Human Capital, Risk and Uncertainty,

Complexity-Aware Scheduling for an LDPC Encoded C-RAN Uplink

Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is a new paradigm for wireless networks that centralizes the signal processing in a computing cloud, allowing commodity computational resources to be pooled. While C-RAN improves utilization and efficiency, the computational load occasionally exceeds the available resources, creating a computational outage. This paper provides a mathematical characterization of the computational outage probability for low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, a common class of error-correcting codes. For tractability, a binary erasures channel is assumed. Using the concept of density evolution, the computational demand is determined for a given ensemble of codes as a function of the erasure probability. The analysis reveals a trade-off: aggressively signaling at a high rate stresses the computing pool, while conservatively backing-off the rate can avoid computational outages. Motivated by this trade-off, an effective computationally aware scheduling algorithm is developed that balances demands for high throughput and low outage rates.Comment: Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS) 2017, to appea