EXPORT DIVERSIFICATION IN LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES: AN INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE AFTER DOHA

This paper discusses major policy issues related to commodity dependence and export diversification in low-income countries. Contrary to some widely-held view, it argues that natural resources are not necessarily a ‘curse’ that condemns low-income countries to underdevelopment but can provide a basis for sustained export-led growth. Natural resource-based sectors have potential for export diversification. The OECD ‘mirror’ trade data indeed suggest that many different routes to diversification exist, including resource-based manufacturing and processing of primary products. However, these opportunities are far from being exploited in many low-income countries. This is because export diversification is typically a slow process, and this process needs to be sustained by an appropriate and coherent strategy, characterised by a combination of vision, co-ordination and management of conflicting interests. Moreover, the analysis of trade support services in two African countries points to a mismatch between private sector’s needs and services actually provided and to a limited institutional development of the trade and investment support network. The lessons for trade capacity building are important for Africa but are also relevant for other low-income countries.export diversification, resource curse, Doha development agenda, trade capacity building, trade support services

Trade And Structural Adjustment Policies In Selected Developing Countries

The experience of the five examined industries (agro-food in Chile, cut flowers in Kenya,garment in Lesotho and in Mauritius and seafood in Thailand) demonstrates that non-traditional industries can emerge and achieved strong growth rates in very diverse settings in terms of geography and initial economic and social conditions. In most of these cases, the government adopted a relatively export-oriented, business- friendly attitude and adapted its policies as the industries developed. Hence, a key factor for successful structural adjustment has been the pro-active role of government in establishing an enabling economic and policy environment that allows local firms to operate on a level-playing field and strengthen their competitive edge in international markets. This highlights the importance of implementing trade policies in the framework of comprehensive development strategies and establishing a consultative national policy-making process for ensuring a coherent approach to trade and structural adjustment. The case studies also underscore that countries (government and industry) are compelled to constantly adapt in light of new sources of competition, growing wage levels, environmental constraints, technological advances and demanding product and process standards. Policy-makers in most countries under review are aware of this challenge. As a consequence, some of them have taken the initiative to set up specific mechanisms or programmes for further enhancing the competitiveness of existing export sectors and/or promoting emerging non-traditional export industries.Trade and structural adjustment, export diversification, trade capacity building

Introduction to algebraic approaches for solving isogeny path-finding problems (Theory and Applications of Supersingular Curves and Supersingular Abelian Varieties)

The isogeny path-finding is a computational problem that finds an isogeny connecting two given isogenous elliptic curves. The hardness of the isogeny path-finding problem supports the fundamental security of isogeny-based cryptosystems. In this paper, we introduce an algebraic approach for solving the isogeny path-finding problem. The basic idea is to reduce the isogeny problem to a system of algebraic equations using modular polynomials, and to solve the system by Gröbner basis computation. We report running time of the algebraic approach for solving the isogeny path-finding problem of 3-power isogeny degrees on supersingular elliptic curves. This is a brief summary of [16] with implementation codes

A privatização no Brasil: o caso dos serviços de utilidade pública

Inclui bibliografiasEste livro colige os artigos elaborados para o seminário sobre o tema, promovido pelo BNDES e pelo Centro de Desenvolvimento da OCDE, realizado em abril de 1999, no Rio de Janeir

Characterization of sensitivity and responses of a 2-element prototype wavefront sensor for millimeter-wave adaptive optics attached to the Nobeyama 45 m telescope

We report the results of the performance characterization of a prototype wavefront sensor for millimetric adaptive optics (MAO) installed on the Nobeyama 45 m radio telescope. MAO is a key component to realize a future large-aperture submillimeter telescope, such as Large Submillimeter Telescope (LST) or Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST). The difficulty of MAO is, however, real-time sensing of wavefront deformation with ~10 um accuracy across the aperture. Our wavefront sensor operating at 20 GHz measures the radio path length between a certain position of the primary mirror surface to the focal point where a 20 GHz coherent receiver is placed. With the 2-element prototype, we sampled two positions on the primary mirror surface (at radii of 5 m and 16 m) at a sampling rate of 10 Hz. Then an excess path length (EPL) between the two positions was obtained by differentiating the two optical paths. A power spectral density of the EPL shows three components: a low-frequency drift (1/f^n), oscillations, and a white noise. A comparison of EPL measurements under a variety of wind conditions suggests that the former two are likely induced by the wind load on the telescope structure. The power of the white noise corresponds to a 1sigma statistical error of 8 um in EPL measurements. The 8 um r.m.s. is significant with respect to the mirror surface accuracy required by the LST and AtLAST (~20-40 um r.m.s.), which demonstrates that our technique is also useful for the future large-aperture submillimeter telescopes.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Published in SPIE Pro

Circumstellar molecular composition of the oxygen-rich AGB star IK Tau: I. Observations and LTE chemical abundance analysis

The aim of this paper is to study the molecular composition in the circumstellar envelope around the oxygen-rich star IK Tau. We observed IK Tau in several (sub)millimeter bands using the APEX telescope during three observing periods. To determine the spatial distribution of the $\mathrm{^{12}CO(3-2)}$ emission, mapping observations were performed. To constrain the physical conditions in the circumstellar envelope, multiple rotational CO emission lines were modeled using a non local thermodynamic equilibrium radiative transfer code. The rotational temperatures and the abundances of the other molecules were obtained assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. An oxygen-rich Asymptotic Giant Branch star has been surveyed in the submillimeter wavelength range. Thirty four transitions of twelve molecular species, including maser lines, were detected. The kinetic temperature of the envelope was determined and the molecular abundance fractions of the molecules were estimated. The deduced molecular abundances were compared with observations and modeling from the literature and agree within a factor of 10, except for SO$_2$, which is found to be almost a factor 100 stronger than predicted by chemical models. From this study, we found that IK Tau is a good laboratory to study the conditions in circumstellar envelopes around oxygen-rich stars with (sub)millimeter-wavelength molecular lines. We could also expect from this study that the molecules in the circumstellar envelope can be explained more faithful by non-LTE analysis with lower and higher transition lines than by simple LTE analysis with only lower transition lines. In particular, the observed CO line profiles could be well reproduced by a simple expanding envelope model with a power law structure.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, 8 tables *Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic