Firm Heterogeneity and Development: Evidence from Latin American countries

Motivated by the work of Melitz (2003), Helpman, et al. (2004) and Yeaple (2005), micro-firm data provided by the World Bank Enterprise Survey is used to study the empirical productivity distribution across 15 Latin American countries. This paper differs from previous work in identifying four types of firms by their ownership characteristics and their exporting status. We compare the productivity distribution of these four types of firms to reflect on theoretical modeling deficiencies. First, the productivity distributions for each type show no sign of a productivity cut-off at the lower end, contrary to current theoretical modeling. Second, we see that exporting activities are nonexclusive to firms with high productivity. In other words, by distinguishing groups of firms with different degrees of international involvement (domestic producers, exporters, nationally-owned and foreign-owned firms), we find that the productivity distributions of different groups of firms overlap with one another. This contradicts with the modeling in Melitz (2003), which suggests sorting into different international engagement according to productivity level. Third, we find a superior productivity distribution among foreign-owned firms as compared to domestic firms. The foreign ownership premium is significant and more prevailing in the services sectors than the manufacturing sectors. Exporters also show superior productivity, but this productivity premium is only enjoyed by the nationally-owned manufacturers. The premium is not constant over the quantiles. Lastly, with the cross-country data, we find a positive relationship between the overall productivity level and a country's development level, as often found in other research. However, we find that firms with low productivity in a given sector are more constrained by the macroeconomic development level of the country than firms with higher productivity, which seem to be able to advance productivity with individual micro- firm characteristics.Firm heterogeneity; Productivity distribution; Exporting; Development; Latin America

Global Agrifood Value Chains and Local Poverty Reduction: What Happens to Those Who Don’t Plug In?

Structural changes in the global agrifood value chain have transformed food production in developing countries including Indonesia. One element of this is the spread of supermarket retailing. By increasing the demand for and returns to higher quality produce, this development has the potential to improve living standards in a sector where poverty has been persistent. Many studies have shown the magnitude of price premiums available to farmers who sell to supermarkets. However, little attention has been paid to how the introduction of a supermarket retailer affects those farmers who continue to sell to traditional market channels. Our data suggests that in regions where there are both modern and traditional buyers, competition effects result in the immiserization of farmers who continue to sell to traditional markets. This result underlines the fact that while sectorial transformation has desirable poverty reduction potential, actual impacts are lumpy. The distribution of farmer participation in a region may result in a case where the upgrading of agrifood supply chains can increase poverty in the absence of policy interventions

Gravity Models of Trade-based Money Laundering

Several attempts have been made in the economics literature to measure money laundering. However, the adequacy of these models is difficult to assess, as money laundering takes place secretly and, hence, goes unobserved. An exception is trade- based money laundering (TBML), a special form of trade abuse that has been discovered only recently. TBML refers to criminal proceeds that are transferred around the world using fake invoices that under- or overvalue imports and exports. This article is a first attempt to test well-known prototype models proposed by Walker and Unger to predict illicit money laundering flows and to apply traditional gravity models borrowed from international trade theory. To do so, we use a dataset of Zdanowicz of TBML flows from the US to 199 countries. Our test rejects the specifications of the Walker and Unger prototype models, at least for TBML. The traditional gravity model that we present here can indeed explain TBML flows worldwide in a plausible manner. An important determinant is licit trade, the mass in which TBML is hidden. Furthermore, our results suggest that criminals use TBML in order to escape the stricter anti money laundering regulations of financial markets.Money laundering, international trade, gravity model, Walker model.

A Case Study for Exploring Dental Patients’ Preferred Roles in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to explore the dental patients’ preferred roles in Taiwan. A convenience sample of 66 patients, 26 recruited from one dental clinic, and 40 from one medical center, were interviewed and their preferences for participation in treatment decision making were established using a measurement tool designed to elicit decision-making preferences. Patients’ preferences for participation in treatment decision making were established using Control Preference Scale (CPS) tool. In addition, Unfolding theory provided a means of analyzing the data so that the degree of control preferred by each patient could be established. This study found that nearly 70% clinic patients perceived passive role in treatment decision making whereas 50% patients in medical centre. Further, the collaborative role was most commonly preferred, but an active role was more commonly perceived in clinics than in medical centre. Finally, the implications of the results for patient participation are discussed

Efficient Prodrug Activator Gene Therapy by Retroviral Replicating Vectors Prolongs Survival in an Immune-Competent Intracerebral Glioma Model.

Prodrug activator gene therapy mediated by murine leukemia virus (MLV)-based retroviral replicating vectors (RRV) was previously shown to be highly effective in killing glioma cells both in culture and in vivo. To avoid receptor interference and enable dual vector co-infection with MLV-RRV, we have developed another RRV based on gibbon ape leukemia virus (GALV) that also shows robust replicative spread in a wide variety of tumor cells. We evaluated the potential of GALV-based RRV as a cancer therapeutic agent by incorporating yeast cytosine deaminase (CD) and E. coli nitroreductase (NTR) prodrug activator genes into the vector. The expression of CD and NTR genes from GALV-RRV achieved highly efficient delivery of these prodrug activator genes to RG-2 glioma cells, resulting in enhanced cytotoxicity after administering their respective prodrugs 5-fluorocytosine and CB1954 in vitro. In an immune-competent intracerebral RG-2 glioma model, GALV-mediated CD and NTR gene therapy both significantly suppressed tumor growth with CB1954 administration after a single injection of vector supernatant. However, NTR showed greater potency than CD, with control animals receiving GALV-NTR vector alone (i.e., without CB1954 prodrug) showing extensive tumor growth with a median survival time of 17.5 days, while animals receiving GALV-NTR and CB1954 showed significantly prolonged survival with a median survival time of 30 days. In conclusion, GALV-RRV enabled high-efficiency gene transfer and persistent expression of NTR, resulting in efficient cell killing, suppression of tumor growth, and prolonged survival upon CB1954 administration. This validates the use of therapeutic strategies employing this prodrug activator gene to arm GALV-RRV, and opens the door to the possibility of future combination gene therapy with CD-armed MLV-RRV, as the latter vector is currently being evaluated in clinical trials

Type-II Topological Dirac Semimetals: Theory and Materials Prediction (VAl3 family)

The discoveries of Dirac and Weyl semimetal states in spin-orbit compounds led to the realizations of elementary particle analogs in table-top experiments. In this paper, we propose the concept of a three-dimensional type-II Dirac fermion and identify a new topological semimetal state in the large family of transition-metal icosagenides, MA3 (M=V, Nb, Ta; A=Al, Ga, In). We show that the VAl3 family features a pair of strongly Lorentz-violating type-II Dirac nodes and that each Dirac node consists of four type-II Weyl nodes with chiral charge +/-1 via symmetry breaking. Furthermore, we predict the Landau level spectrum arising from the type-II Dirac fermions in VAl3 that is distinct from that of known Dirac semimetals. We also show a topological phase transition from a type-II Dirac semimetal to a quadratic Weyl semimetal or a topological crystalline insulator via crystalline distortions. The new type-II Dirac fermions, their novel magneto-transport response, the topological tunability and the large number of compounds make VAl3 an exciting platform to explore the wide-ranging topological phenomena associated with Lorentz-violating Dirac fermions in electrical and optical transport, spectroscopic and device-based experiments.Comment: 28 pages, 7 Figure