India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute

The root cause of instability and hostility in South Asia stems from the unresolved nature of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. It has led to two major wars and several near misses in the past. Since the early 1990s, a 'proxy war' has developed between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The onset of the proxy war has brought bilateral relations between the two states to its nadir and contributed directly to the overt nuclearisation of South Asia in 1998. It has further undermined the prospects for regional integration and raised fears of a deadly IndoPakistan nuclear exchange in the future. Resolving the Kashmir dispute has thus never acquired more urgency than it has today. This paper analyses the origins of the Kashmir dispute, its influence on IndoPakistan relations, and the prospects for its resolution

Devaluation, Export Quality and Employment in a Small Dependent Economy

This paper investigates how devaluation by a small open economy affects its export quality when higher quality requires more of skilled labour and capital; and the ramifications of such quality changes on employment of unskilled labour and real income. In a competitive general equilibrium structure with cost of export quality determined endogenously, changes in export quality is shown to be contingent upon whether higher quality is more skill intensive or more capital intensive; but, aggregate employment of unskilled labour rises unambiguously under homothetic taste, and under reasonable conditions under non-homothetic tastes. These results qualify several robustness checks

Emigration, tax on remittances and export quality

We examine implications of emigration of unskilled workers for quality of a skill-based good exported by a small open economy. This issue is relevant in the context of quality constraint faced by the developing countries like China and India, in promoting their exports, on the one hand, and significantly large emigrations of workers, particularly unskilled workers, that lower their productive capacities, on the other hand. We show that even though unskilled workers are not directly used in production of the quality-differentiated export good, their emigration would lower export quality when quality upgrading requires more intensive use of skilled workers relative to capital. This result follows from the complementarity between skilled and unskilled wages in a competitive general equilibrium model. A quality-content production subsidy in such a case can mitigate the adverse effect of emigration. Significantly large remittances received from unskilled emigrants create scope for taxing such remittances to finance the subsidy

Devaluation, Export Quality and Employment in a Small Dependent Economy

This paper investigates how devaluation by a small open economy affects its export quality when higher quality requires more of skilled labour and capital; and the ramifications of such quality changes on employment of unskilled labour and real income. In a competitive general equilibrium structure with cost of export quality determined endogenously, changes in export quality is shown to be contingent upon whether higher quality is more skill intensive or more capital intensive; but, aggregate employment of unskilled labour rises unambiguously under homothetic taste, and under reasonable conditions under non-homothetic tastes. These results qualify several robustness checks

Money, Exchange Rate and Export Quality

This paper theoretically examines the effect of an expansionary monetary policy on export quality and its ramifications on the aggregate employment of the unskilled workers in a competitive general equilibrium framework of a small open economy. This issue assumes relevance since monetary policies are often pursued by the central bank of an economy to manage exchange rate fluctuations under a managed float regime, which may have adverse consequences for export-quality choices and thereby for export growth given the growing preference of buyers in richer nations for higher qualities of goods they consume. Under optimal allocation of wealth over a portfolio of cash, domestic assets and foreign assets, we show that an increase in the domestic money supply affects the choice of export-quality primarily in two ways. One is through larger investment, capital formation and consequent endowment effect; the other is through changes in the nominal exchange rate. Under less price-elastic demand for a non-traded good, the export quality is upgraded when higher quality varieties of the export good are relatively capital intensive. On the other hand, though the expansionary monetary policy may raise the aggregate employment of unskilled workers due to its endowment effect, may lower it through changes in the quality of the export good. The overall effect is thus ambiguous. A larger initial size of bequests has a similar effect

Joint convergence of several copies of different patterned random matrices

We study the joint convergence of independent copies of several patterned matrices in the noncommutative probability setup. In particular, joint convergence holds for the well known Wigner, Toeplitz, Hankel, reverse circulant and symmetric circulant matrices. We also study some properties of the limits. In particular, we show that copies of Wigner becomes asymptotically free with copies of any of the above other matrices.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures. Substantial change in the introduction. Typos correcte

“Waitlist mortality” is high for myeloma patients with limited access to BCMA therapy

BackgroundThe first-in-class approved BCMA CAR-T therapy was idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel), approved in March 2021, for RRMM patients who progressed after 4 or more lines of therapy. Despite the promising outcomes, there were limited apheresis/production slots for ide-cel. We report outcomes of patients at our institution who were on the “waitlist” to receive ide-cel in 2021 and who could not secure a slot.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective review of RRMM patients evaluated at the University of Kansas Cancer Center for ide-cel from 3/2021-7/2021. A retrospective chart review was performed to determine patient and disease characteristics. Descriptive statistics were reported using medians for continuous variables. Survival analysis from initial consult was performed using Kaplan-Meier Survival estimator.ResultsForty patients were eligible and were on the “waitlist” for CAR-T. The median follow-up was 14 months (2-25mo). Twenty-four patients (60%) secured a production slot and 16 (40%) did not. The median time from consult to collection was 38 days (8-703). The median time from collection to infusion was 42 days (34-132 days). The median overall survival was higher in the CAR-T group (NR vs 9 mo, p<0.001).Conclusion(s)Many patients who were eligible for ide-cel were not able to secure a timely slot in 2021. Mortality was higher in this group, due to a lack of comparable alternatives. Increasing alternate options as well as improvement in manufacturing and access is an area of high importance to improve RRMM outcomes