1,307 research outputs found
Behaviour of Belgian firms in the context of globalisation : lessons from the conference on âInternational Trade : Threats and Opportunities in a Globalised Worldâ
The article summarises the main lessons of the Bankâs 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the subject. Firms active internationally have specific characteristics : they are larger and more productive than firms concentrating on the home market. The costs of entering international markets determine their globalisation strategies, be it in terms of timing, the number of markets canvassed, or the choice between exporting and foreign direct investment. Information technologies have a key role in the development of trade in services, especially for analytical work. It is also shown that, in the face of increased competition from Asian products, firms are tending to concentrate their exports on their leading products and to upgrade quality. The international activities of some firms also have positive repercussions on the productivity and globalisation decisions of firms active solely on the home market. Finally, the impact of globalisation on employment is analysed from various angles. In general, trade with low-wage countries tends to increase demand for skilled labour in Belgium and to reduce demand for unskilled labour. The effects of offshoring are comparable. Finally, while multinationals manage their workforce more flexibly than domestic firms, they have nevertheless been the source of substantial job creation, particularly where the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals are concerned.international trade, foreign direct investment, microeconomic analysis, firm heterogeneity, internationalisation, spillovers, multi-product firms, multinational firms, offshoring, employment, skills
Baby Skyrmions stabilized by canonical quantization
We analyse the effect of the canonical quantization of the rotational mode of
the O(3) -model which includes the Skyrme term. Numerical evidence is
presented that the quantum correction to the mass of the rotationally-invariant
charge configurations may stabilize the solution even in the limit of
vanishing potential. The corresponding range of values of the parameters is
discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
General Board Geometry
Game boards are described in the Ludii general game system by their underlying graphs, based on tiling, shape and graph operators, with the automatic detection of important properties such as topological relationships between graph elements, directions and radial step sequences. This approach allows most conceivable game boards to be described simply and succinctly
Le laboratoire maritime du MusĂ©um National dâHistoire naturelle Ă Saint-servan
Fischer-Piette Edouard. Le laboratoire maritime du MusĂ©um National dâHistoire naturelle Ă Saint-Servan. In: La Terre et La Vie, Revue d'Histoire naturelle, tome 3, n°10, 1933. pp. 610-615
Supersymmetric WZW Model on Full and Half Plane
We study classical integrability of the supersymmetric U(N) model
with the Wess-Zumino-Witten term on full and half plane. We demonstrate the
existence of nonlocal conserved currents of the model and derive general
recursion relations for the infinite number of the corresponding charges in a
superfield framework. The explicit form of the first few supersymmetric charges
are constructed. We show that the considered model is integrable on full plane
as a concequence of the conservation of the supersymmetric charges. Also, we
study the model on half plane with free boundary, and examine the conservation
of the supersymmetric charges on half plane and find that they are conserved as
a result of the equations of motion and the free boundary condition. As a
result, the model on half plane with free boundary is integrable. Finally, we
conclude the paper and some features and comments are presented.Comment: 12 pages. submitted to IJMP
Collision-Induced Decay of Metastable Baby Skyrmions
Many extensions of the standard model predict heavy metastable particles
which may be modeled as solitons (skyrmions of the Higgs field), relating their
particle number to a winding number. Previous work has shown that the
electroweak interactions admit processes in which these solitons decay,
violating standard model baryon number. We motivate the hypothesis that
baryon-number-violating decay is a generic outcome of collisions between these
heavy particles. We do so by exploring a 2+1 dimensional theory which also
possesses metastable skyrmions. We use relaxation techniques to determine the
size, shape and energy of static solitons in their ground state. These solitons
could decay by quantum mechanical tunneling. Classically, they are metastable:
only a finite excitation energy is required to induce their decay. We attempt
to induce soliton decay in a classical simulation by colliding pairs of
solitons. We analyze the collision of solitons with varying inherent
stabilities and varying incident velocities and orientations. Our results
suggest that winding-number violating decay is a generic outcome of collisions.
All that is required is sufficient (not necessarily very large) incident
velocity; no fine-tuning of initial conditions is required.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, latex. Very small changes onl
Diabetic Patientsâ Medication Underuse, Illness Outcomes, and Beliefs About Antihyperglycemic and Antihypertensive Treatments
OBJECTIVEâThe purpose of this study was to determine how patientsâ beliefs about antihyperglycemic and antihypertensive medications relate to medication underuse and health status
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