Productivity Growth in Backward Economies and the Role of Barriers to Technology Adoption

We offer a barrier model of growth with a broader understanding of the sources of productivity growth. Organizational change is suggested as an alternative to innovation and technology adoption. Domestic and international barriers (related to the level of human capital and the trade share) determine the timing and pace of technological catch-up, and as opposed to the catchingup hypothesis backward economies may get stuck in a poverty trap. Growth in lagging economies is not driven by adoption of foreign technology due to inappropriateness. The large technological distance forces the economy to rely more on own productivity improvements through organizational change. Trade liberalization in backward economies does not give the expected boost to productivity growth, because of low capability to take advantage of the frontier technology. Economies can escape the poverty trap by reducing trade barriers, but the benefits from an open economy is highest in middle-income economies, which have both the potential and capability to adopt foreign technology.Ramsey-model; sources of growth; trade barriers; poverty trap

Resource Boom, Productivity Growth and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics - A dynamic general equilibrium analysis of South Africa.

We study the impact of a natural resource boom on structural change and real exchange rate dynamics, taking into account the indirect effect via relative sectoral productivity changes. Our contribution relative to the Dutch disease literature is threefold. First, the productivity specification is extended from simple learning by doing to include trade barriers and technology gap dynamics, consistent with the modern understanding of productivity growth. Second, we offer a dynamic general equilibrium model with imperfect substitution between domestic and foreign goods. Third, the model is applied to South Africa and analyzes the macroeconomic impact of the gold price increase in the 1970s. Political pressure for rapid domestic spending after a surge in resource rents tends to generate myopic government behavior with unsustainable high consumption spending. Such fiscal response to higher resource income is captured by the model specification. Numerical simulations show how the resource boom can help explain the structural change and real exchange rate path observed in South Africa. Due to productivity effects the initial real appreciation is followed by gradual depreciation of the real exchange rate.gold price boom;Dutch disease;trade barriers;fiscal response;deindustrialization

Multinational supermarket chains in developing countries: Does local agriculture benefit

There is no consensus in the empirical literature on how entry of multinational supermarket chains affects farmers in developing countries. We quantify the dynamic effects of supermarket expansion on agriculture within a structural framework that clarifies the adjustment mechanisms involved. The model specification takes the potential productivity linkage between supermarkets and local suppliers into account. While econometric analyses struggle with causality issues, we analyze the endogenous interaction between supermarkets’ choice of suppliers and agricultural productivity. Based on numerical simulations, two results emerge. First, we offer a possible understanding of the conflicting evidence in the empirical literature. Whether farmers benefit from supermarkets or get stuck in a low productivity trap depends on the extent of local constraints related to production capacity and market access. Second, supply chain development initiated by supermarkets can help farmers escape the low productivity trap. While supermarkets face a short run cost, they gradually gain from more productive local suppliers.

Ramsey model of barriers to growth and skill-biased income distribution in South Africa

The paper integrates two mechanisms of economic growth, barriers to international spillovers and skill-biased effects on the income distribution. South Africa is an interesting case study because of dramatic changes in international barriers over time and policy focus to productivity and distribution. Barriers affect the balance between innovation and adoption in the productivity growth and thereby the skill-bias. The productivity dynamics and the distributional implications are investigated in an intertemporal Ramsey growth model. The model offers a calibrated tariff-equivalence measure of the sanction effect and allows for counterfactual analysis of no-sanctions. Increased openness is shown to reduce barriers to technology adoption leading to skill-biased economic growth and worsened income distribution. The result is consistent with the observation that economic growth under sanctions has been slow and with an increase in the relative wage of unskilled labor. The tradeoff between barriers and skill-bias, foreign spillover driven productivity growth and income distribution, obviously is a challenge for growth policy.

Learning and Foreign Technology Spillover in Thailand: Empirical Evidence on Productivity Dynamics

Thailand has experienced annual average growth of GDP of remarkable 6.6% during the period 1950 – 2000. We analyze total factor productivity (TFP) growth in a modified Nelson-Phelps framework where foreign trade and foreign direct investment influence the adoption of technology. The econometric analysis separating between sources of productivity for agriculture and industry covers the period 1975 – 96. International spillovers are significant and important, and both sectors have been able to take benefit of openness. The analysis addresses the endogeneity issues involved in the estimation of TFP sources and investigates the dynamics of productivity. The effects during the period studied must be interpreted as transition growth, and endogenous growth effects are rejected.

Learning by Exporting and Productivity-investment Interaction: An Intertemporal General Equilibrium Analysis of the Growth Process in Thailand

While the discussion of Thailand and East Asian growth has been a controversy between capital accumulation and productivity stories, we analyze the general equilibrium interaction between productivity and investment in an intertemporal model. The model builds in endogenous productivity spillover effects influencing profitability and investment and produces long run growth effects of economic policy. To understand the growth process in Thailand, learning by exporting is assumed to be the main vehicle of international spillover and brings further productivity effects to the domestic economy. The dynamic simulations show how high economic growth is prolonged by multisector productivity and investment dynamics and structural shift from agriculture to exportables. The importance of trade liberalization is shown in a counterfactual analysis where protection holds back growth by serving as a barrier to productivity spillover.intertemporal growth modeling; endogenous productivity growth; learning by exporting; trade and growth; Thailand

Development of a homologous gene replacement approach to study ciprofloxacin resistance in clinical Escherichia coli isolates

Urinary tract infections are common amongst infectious diseases in humans, and often these infections are caused by uropathogenic Escherichia coli. Effective antimicrobial treatment of infections are medical achievements that should not be taken for granted, as antimicrobial resistance has developed and causes treatments to become ineffective. Further, resistance traits can be spread between unrelated bacteria through mechanisms such as conjugation, where plasmids (mobile genetic elements) are potential carriers of multidrug resistance traits. Treatment strategies outside the production of novel antimicrobial drugs are being investigated. Collateral sensitivity is an example of a treatment strategy that specifically targets resistant bacteria. By gaining antimicrobial resistance to an initial drug, susceptibility towards other antimicrobials can increase due to the initial resistance. The aim of this project was to develop a homologous gene replacement approach to introduce or repair defined mutations known to cause ciprofloxacin resistance in Escherichia coli. This would enable investigation of the effects specific resistance-causing mutations have on collateral susceptibility changes in different strain backgrounds. Methods of traditional cloning by ligation, as well as the more modern isothermal cloning method, were used to build constructs that would replace the original genomic target by homologous gene replacement. While we were able to build gene constructs with defined mutations by isothermal cloning, moving these constructs into integrative plasmids for homologous gene replacement proved challenging. However, one construct was ligated into an integrative plasmid, but has yet to be transferred by conjugation to the clinical isolate of interest. Ultimately, we were able to design and optimize several cloning approaches to introduce or repair mutations, but further work is necessary to enable the efficient use of homologous gene replacement in the future

A multi-angle plane wave imaging approach for high frequency 2D flow visualization in small animals: simulation study in the murine arterial system

To preclinically investigate the role of hemodynamics in atherogenesis, mouse models are particularly useful due to the rapid disease development. As such, murine blood flow visualization has become an important tool, with current US systems equipped with traditional 1D flow imaging techniques, lacking spatial and/or temporal resolution to accurately resolve in-vivo flow fields. Hence, we investigated multi-angle plane wave imaging for ultrafast, 2D vector flow visualization and compared this approach with conventional pulsed Doppler in the setting of a mouse aorta with abdominal aortic aneurysm. For this purpose, we used a multiphysics model which allowed direct comparison of synthetic US images with the true flow field behind the image. In case of the abdominal aorta, we showed the mean flow estimation improved 9 % when using 2D vector Doppler compared to conventional Doppler, but still underestimated the true flow because the full spatial velocity distribution remained unknown. We also evaluated a more challenging measurement location, the mesenteric artery (aortic side branch), often assessed in a short-axis view close to the origin of the branch to avoid the smaller dimensions downstream. Even so, complex out-ofplane flow dynamics hampered a reliable flow assessment for both techniques. Hence, both cases illustrated the need for 3D vascular imaging, allowing acquisition of the full 3D spatial velocity profile

A Remarkable Depth Confusion in Images of the Incomplete Statues of Bruno Catalano

Images of Bruno Catalano’s sculptures of incomplete bodies give rise to a remarkable depth confusion in which the background is partly pushed to the front. We argue that this confusion is related to what happens in the Kanizsa square, although the effect in the images of Catalano’s sculpture appears to be driven by knowledge-based processing.publishedVersio