Investment Discrimination and the Proliferation of Preferential Trade Agreements

The proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements has arguably been the main change to the international trading system since the end of the Uruguay Round in the mid- 1990s. We argue that investment discrimination plays a major role in this development. Preferential trade agreements can lead to investment discrimination because of tariff differentials on intermediary products and as result of provisions that relax investment rules for the parties to the agreement. Excluded countries are sensitive to the costs that this investment discrimination imposes on domestic firms and react by signing a trade agreement that aims at leveling the playing field. We test our argument using a spatial econometric model and a newly compiled dataset that includes 166 countries and covers a period of 18 years (1990-2007). Our findings strongly support the argument that investment discrimination is a major driver of the proliferation of trade agreements

Coulomb dissociation of O-16 into He-4 and C-12

We measured the Coulomb dissociation of O-16 into He-4 and C-12 within the FAIR Phase-0 program at GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung Darmstadt, Germany. From this we will extract the photon dissociation cross section O-16(alpha,gamma)C-12, which is the time reversed reaction to C-12(alpha,gamma)O-16. With this indirect method, we aim to improve on the accuracy of the experimental data at lower energies than measured so far. The expected low cross section for the Coulomb dissociation reaction and close magnetic rigidity of beam and fragments demand a high precision measurement. Hence, new detector systems were built and radical changes to the (RB)-B-3 setup were necessary to cope with the high-intensity O-16 beam. All tracking detectors were designed to let the unreacted O-16 ions pass, while detecting the C-12 and He-4

The Design of Preferential Trade Agreements

We identified a total of 690 negotiated trade agreements between 1945 and 2009 of which we have coded 404 agreements for which treaty texts and appendices were available. We aim to have a database for about 550 agreements by 2012. We have coded agreements for a total of 10 broad sectors of cooperation, encompassing market access, services, investments, intellectual property rights, competition, public procurement, standards, trade remedies, non-trade issues, and dispute settlement. For each of these sectors, we have coded a significant number of items, meaning that we have about 100 data points for each agreement. The resulting DESTA database is — to the best of our knowledge — by far the most complete in terms of agreements and sectors covered. This dataset fills a crucial gap in the field by providing a fine-grain measurement of the design of PTAs. Among others, we think that DESTA will be of relevance for the literatures on the signing of PTAs; the legalization of international relations; the rational design of international institutions; the diffusion of policies; the political and economic effects of trade agreements; power relations between states; and forum shopping in international politics. This working paper describes the DESTA data set and provides selected descriptive statistics. The overview puts emphasis on variation in design over time and across regions

Delegation and control in European and American trade policy

Der Beitrag beschaeftigt sich mit der Handelspolitik der Europaeischen Union (EU) und der USA, die beide durch eine hohe Delegationskompetenz der Exekutive charakterisiert sind. Bestehende Erklaerungsansaetze zur Delegation behaupten, dass die Gesetzgeber mit dem Ziel einer Liberalisierung der Handelspolitik delegieren moechten, aber nicht in der Lage sind, diese eigenstaendig umzusetzen. Im Kontext dieser Untersuchungen differenzieren Wissenschaftler zwischen Perioden, in denen Gesetzgeber zum Zwecke einer Durchsetzung der Liberalisierung durch die Exekutive auf ihre Macht verzichten sowie Zeitraeume, in denen die politischen Fuehrungen ihre Kontrollmacht zum Schutz der eigenen Wirtschaft wieder an sich nehmen. Vor diesem Hintergrund zeigen die Autoren mit ihrer Untersuchung auf, dass die Gesetzgeber Macht delegieren, um sowohl fuer die inlaendischen Exporteure einen Zugang zu den auslaendischen Maerkten zu erreichen als auch fuer einen Schutz der heimischen Industrie zu sorgen. Dabei wird ein stetiges Anwachsen bei der Delegierung und eine gleichzeitige Ausweitung der Kontrolle deutlich. Da Fuehrungen mit heterogenen Forderungen seitens des Export- und Importsektors konfrontiert werden, beauftragen sie Vertretungen zur Uebertragung der Gewinne und installieren Kontrollmechanismen zur Verhinderung von Verlusten, waehrend der Ressourcenhandel durch die Beeinflussung von Lobbies beibehalten wird. Daraus laesst sich die empirisch beobachtbare Auswirkung ableiten, dass mit dem Anwachsen der Handelsmoeglichkeiten in der gesamten Wirtschaft sowohl Delegierung als auch Kontrolle im Laufe der Zeit bestaendig angestiegen sein sollten. Die Validitaet dieser Annahme wird anhand der amerikanischen Handelspolitik der vergangenen 50 Jahre sowie der europaeischen Handelspolitik seit Gruendung der EU ueberprueft. Dabei werden die Aehnlichkeiten der beiden politischen Systeme und ihre institutionellen Arrangements herausgearbeitet und das Verhaeltnis oeffentlicher Autoritaeten und Institutionen zu privaten Akteuren beleuchtet. (ICGUebers)'Trade policy in both the European Union and the United States has been characterized by a high degree of delegation to the executive. Existing explanations for delegation claim that legislators delegate because they wish to liberalize trade policy but are unable to achieve this aim by acting on their own. As a result, scholars have been led to try and distinguish periods where legislators abdicated their powers in order to have the executive impose liberalization, from periods where principals reasserted their control to provide protection. We take issue with this prevalent view, show that legislators dele-gate powers to achieve foreign market access for domestic exporters as well as powers to provide protection to import-competing interests, and explain why there has been a steady increase in delegation and a concurrent extension of control. Since principals are confronted with heterogeneous demands from both exporting and import-competing groups, they delegate to two sets of agents to confer concentrated benefits on these constituencies, and install control to avoid concentrated losses, while maintaining the flow of resources from lobbying. We derive the empirically observable implication that, with the increase in the share of tradables in the overall economy, delegation as well as control should have steadily increased over time. We test the validity of this proposition for both political entities over the past half century.' (author's abstract)German title: Delegation und Kontrolle in der europaeischen und amerikanischen HandelspolitikAvailable from UuStB Koeln(38)-20040106928 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Antimicrobial and in silico studies of the triterpenoids of Dichapetalum albidum

Here we report a new polyhydroxylated triterpene, 2β,6β,21α-trihydroxyfriedelan-3-one (4) isolated from the root and stem bark of Dichapetalum albidum A. Chev (Dichapetalaceae), along with six known triterpenoids (1–3, 5, 6, 8), sitosterol-3β-O-D-glucopyranoside (9), a dipeptide (7), and a tyramine derivative of coumaric acid (10). Friedelan-3-one (2) showed an antimicrobial activity (IC50) of 11.40 μg/mL against Bacillus cereus, while friedelan-3α-ol (1) gave an IC50 of 13.07 μg/ mL against Staphylococcus aureus with ampicillin reference standard of 19.52 μg/mL and 0.30 μg/ mL respectively. 3β-Acetyl tormentic acid (5) showed an IC50 of 12.50 μg/mL against Trypanosoma brucei brucei and sitosterol-3β-O-D-glucopyranoside (9) showed an IC50 of 5.06 μg/mL against Leishmania donovani with respective reference standards of IC50 5.02 μg/mL for suramin and IC50 0.27 μg/mL for amphotericin B. Molecular docking of the isolated compounds on the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) suggested 3β-acetyl tormentic acid (5) and sitosterol-3β-O-D-glucopyranoside (9) as plausible inhibitors of the enzyme in accordance with the experimental biological results observed

Antimicrobial and in silico studies of the triterpenoids of Dichapetalum albidum

Here we report a new polyhydroxylated triterpene, 2β,6β,21α-trihydroxyfriedelan-3-one (4) isolated from the root and stem bark of Dichapetalum albidum A. Chev (Dichapetalaceae), along with six known triterpenoids (1–3, 5, 6, 8), sitosterol-3β-O-D-glucopyranoside (9), a dipeptide (7), and a tyramine derivative of coumaric acid (10). Friedelan-3-one (2) showed an antimicrobial activity (IC50) of 11.40 μg/mL against Bacillus cereus, while friedelan-3α-ol (1) gave an IC50 of 13.07 μg/mL against Staphylococcus aureus with ampicillin reference standard of 19.52 μg/mL and 0.30 μg/mL respectively. 3β-Acetyl tormentic acid (5) showed an IC50 of 12.50 μg/mL against Trypanosoma brucei brucei and sitosterol-3β-O-d-glucopyranoside (9) showed an IC50 of 5.06 μg/mL against Leishmania donovani with respective reference standards of IC50 5.02 μg/mL for suramin and IC50 0.27 μg/mL for amphotericin B. Molecular docking of the isolated compounds on the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) suggested 3β-acetyl tormentic acid (5) and sitosterol-3β-O-D-glucopyranoside (9) as plausible inhibitors of the enzyme in accordance with the experimental biological results observed

A new Time-of-flight detector for the R 3 B setup

© 2022, The Author(s).We present the design, prototype developments and test results of the new time-of-flight detector (ToFD) which is part of the R3B experimental setup at GSI and FAIR, Darmstadt, Germany. The ToFD detector is able to detect heavy-ion residues of all charges at relativistic energies with a relative energy precision σΔE/ ΔE of up to 1% and a time precision of up to 14 ps (sigma). Together with an elaborate particle-tracking system, the full identification of relativistic ions from hydrogen up to uranium in mass and nuclear charge is possible.11Nsciescopu