China and the Future of the Developing World: The Coming Global-Asian Era and its Consequences

The rise of China as an economic and political ?driver? of the global economy is likely to be one of the defining moments of world history. Its dynamism and international expansion are on the verge of creating a ?critical disruption? in the global order that has held sway for over 60 years. As such, China is beginning to reshape the world, presaging a new phase of globalization: a ?global-Asian era?. This new era is likely to be distinct from any of the earlier phases of globalization and China?s global footprint, in terms of its business, economic and political actions and their geopolitical implications, is likely to be markedly different from what has gone before. This paper offers a framework by which we can begin to understand the coming global-Asian era (GAE) and some of its consequences, particularly as the latter are surfacing in the developing world. Having discussed the nature and dynamics of the GAE, the paper turns to sketch a series of vectors (trade, aid and energy security) along which the GAE is beginning to impact on developing countries. The paper argues that, at least for these vectors, the Chinese-driven GAE is providing opportunities as well as dangers for national development projects. It concludes by briefly speculating on the viability of the GAE.China, globalization, developing world, trade, oil, aid, geopolitics

Greenspan’s Monetary Policy in Retrospect: Discretion or Rules?

Is Alan Greenspan to blame for the current housing bubble and the ongoing financial crisis? A growing chorus charges the former Federal Reserve Chairman with being an "inflationist" whose loose monetary policy caused or significantly contributed to our current economic troubles. However, although Greenspan's policies weren't perfect, his monetary policy was in fact tight, and his legacy is one of having overseen low and stable inflation and a striking dampening of the business cycle. Critics charge Greenspan with having carried on an excessively expansionary monetary policy, particularly following the recession of 2001. They note how low interest rates were from 2002 through 2004 and argue that those low rates paved the way for everything from high prices at the pump to high prices at the supermarket, from the housing crisis to the financial crisis. In so doing, those critics make the classic mistake of using interest rates to evaluate monetary policy, reasoning that if interest rates are low, recent monetary policy must have been expansionary. It is not the Federal Reserve but supply and demand that ultimately determines interest rates. Although central banks can push rates up or down to some degree, the globally integrated financial system reduces the Fed’s ability to significantly influence rates. This paper should not be construed as a defense of all of Greenspan’s policies, nor of central banking or the Federal Reserve. In fact, our preference would be to abolish the Fed and deregulate the banking industry. Barring that, we argue that Federal Reserve policy ought to abide by the rules rather than the discretion of its chairman

Product-Related Risk and Cognitive Biases: The Shortcomings of Enterprise Liability

Products liability law has witnessed a long debate over whether manufacturers should be held strictly liable for the injuries that products cause. Recently, some have argued that psychological research on human judgment supports adopting a regime of strict enterprise liability for injuries caused by product design. These new proponents of enterprise liability argue that the current system, in which manufacturer liability for product design turns on the manufacturer\u27s negligence, allows manufacturers to induce consumers into undertaking inefficiently dangerous levels or types of consumption. In this paper we argue that the new proponents of enterprise liability have: (1) not provided any more than anecdotal evidence for their thesis; (2) failed to account for the mechanisms the law already has available to counter manufacturer manipulation of consumers; and (3) made no effort to address the well-known problems enterprise liability creates. Furthermore, even on its own terms, the new arguments for enterprise liability fail to consider the tendency of some manufacturers to exacerbate the risks that some products pose - a tendency that enterprise liability would exacerbate. In short, the insights gleaned from psychological research on human judgment do not support adopting a system of strict enterprise liability for products

A laboratory experiment in free market capitalism (?). How and why neo-classical economics got hong hong's development wrong

.Synopsis: Among the most successful cases of economic growth and development in the last 50 years, and with Milton Friedman describing it as ‘a laboratory experiment in free market capitalism’, Hong Kong – for neo-classical theory - has attained iconic status. This interpretation of Hong Kong as a free market success story, however, was only possible by ignoring key factors (such as state-owned land and subsidies to capital accumulation) that did not fit with neoclassical assumptions. This talk will critically interrogate the neoclassical explanation in order to show that government intervention has been much more significant to Hong Kong’s development story than neoclassical theory could countenance. Among other things, it will explore the reasons for such intellectual ‘silences’ and point to some of the wider implications of these lacunae for neoclassical prescriptions for growth and development elsewhere.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR) Concept of Operations

Aircrews submit trajectory change requests to air traffic control (ATC) to better achieve the operator's preferred business trajectory. Requests are currently made with limited information and are often denied because the change is not compatible with traffic. Also, request opportunities can be overlooked due to lack of automation that advises aircrews of trajectory changes that improve flight time, fuel burn, and other objectives. The Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR) concept leverages Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) surveillance information to advise the aircrew of beneficial trajectory changes that are probed for traffic compatibility prior to issuing the request to ATC. This document describes the features, benefits, and limitations of TASAR automation hosted on an Electronic Flight Bag. TASAR has two modes: (1) auto mode that continuously assesses opportunities for improving the performance of the flight and (2) manual mode that probes trajectory changes entered by aircrews for conflicts and performance objectives. The roles and procedures of the aircrew and ATC remain unchanged under TASAR

Annualized TASAR Benefit Estimate for Virgin America Operations

The Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Request (TASAR) concept offers onboard automation for the purpose of advising the pilot of traffic compatible trajectory changes that would be beneficial to the flight. A fast-time simulation study was conducted to assess the benefits of TASAR to Virgin America. The simulation compares historical trajectories without TASAR to trajectories developed with TASAR and evaluated by controllers against their objectives. It was estimated that about 25,000 gallons of fuel and about 2,500 minutes could be saved annually per aircraft. These savings were applied fleet-wide to produce an estimated annual cost savings to Virgin America in excess of $5 million due to fuel, maintenance, and depreciation cost savings. Switching to a more wind-optimal trajectory was found to be the use case that generated the highest benefits out of the three TASAR use cases analyzed. Virgin America TASAR requests peaked at two to four requests per hour per sector in high-altitude Oakland and Salt Lake City center sectors east of San Francisco

Civic Contributions: Taxes Paid by Immigrants in the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Area

This report estimates the taxes paid by immigrants in the Washington, D.C., area in 1999-2000 and documents their demographics, household composition, income, and dispersal across jurisdictions in the region. The findings in this report are based mostly on analysis of 2000 U.S. Census data, because the census provides the most recent comprehensive data that allow disaggregation by country of origin groups and by many of the region's local jurisdictions. The demographic data in the report are updated through 2004 using the U.S. Current Population Survey. We calculate taxes at both the individual level (e.g., income and payroll taxes) and the household level (e.g., property taxes), but aggregate them up to the household level. Throughout the report we refer to households headed by immigrants (whether citizens, legal immigrants, or unauthorized migrants) as "immigrant households" and compare their incomes and tax payments to households headed by native-born U.S. citizens

Characterization of Partial Derivatives with Respect to Boundary Conditions for Solutions of Nonlocal Boundary Value Problems for nth Order Differential Equations

Under certain conditions, solutions of the nonlocal boundary value problem, y(n) = f(x, y, y\u27, ... , y(n- 1)), y(xi) = Yi for 1 £ i £ n- 1, and y(xn) - Σmk=1 Υiy (ni) = y n, are differentiated with respect to boundary conditions, where a \u3c X1 \u3c X2 \u3c · · · \u3c Xn-1 \u3c n1 \u3c · · · \u3c nm \u3c Xn \u3c b, r1, ... , rm, Y1, ... , Yn ∈ R

Public & Private Spillovers, Location and the Productivity of Pharmaceutical Research

While there is widespread agreement among economists and management scholars that knowledge spillovers exist and have important economic consequences, researchers know substantially less about the "micro mechanisms" of spillovers -- about the degree to which they are geographically localized, for example, or about the degree to which spillovers from public institutions are qualitatively different from those from privately owned firms (Jaffe, 1986; Krugman, 1991; Jaffe et al., 1993; Porter, 1990). In this paper we make use of the geographic distribution of the research activities of major global pharmaceutical firms to explore the extent to which knowledge spills over from proximate private and public institutions. Our data and empirical approach allow us to make advances on two dimensions. First, by focusing on spillovers in research productivity (as opposed to manufacturing productivity), we build closely on the theoretical literature on spillovers that suggests that knowledge externalities are likely to have the most immediate impact on the production of ideas (Romer, 1986; Aghion & Howitt, 1997). Second, our data allow us to distinguish spillovers from public research from spillovers from private, or competitively funded research, and to more deeply explore the role that institutions and geographic proximity play in driving knowledge spillovers.

Pathogenic adaptations to host-derived antibacterial copper

Recent findings suggest that both host and pathogen manipulate copper content in infected host niches during infections. In this review, we summarize recent developments that implicate copper resistance as an important determinant of bacterial fitness at the host-pathogen interface. An essential mammalian nutrient, copper cycles between copper (I) (Cu(+)) in its reduced form and copper (II) (Cu(2+)) in its oxidized form under physiologic conditions. Cu(+) is significantly more bactericidal than Cu(2+) due to its ability to freely penetrate bacterial membranes and inactivate intracellular iron-sulfur clusters. Copper ions can also catalyze reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, which may further contribute to their toxicity. Transporters, chaperones, redox proteins, receptors and transcription factors and even siderophores affect copper accumulation and distribution in both pathogenic microbes and their human hosts. This review will briefly cover evidence for copper as a mammalian antibacterial effector, the possible reasons for this toxicity, and pathogenic resistance mechanisms directed against it