Measuring trade policy intervention : a cross-country index of relative price dispersion

In the debate about the relationship between trade policy and growth, various measures for trade intervention have been used. The author presents a new measure based on a country's relative price structure and the structure of relative world prices. This measure, he argues, conforms more closely than existing measures to the concept of trade intervention. The relationship between openness and trade liberalization is more complicated than is often believed. Whether a country intervenes does not tell the whole story about its trade policy, and misses an essential aspect of intervention: which goods are favored by subsidies and which are protected by tariffs. The debate has been confused by the failure to distinguish between trade intervention and outward orientation. Trade intervention implies policies that distort the flow or pattern of trade; outward orientation implies incentives to export that are greater than incentives for import substitution. The two may be related but a heavily interventionist policy could be outwardly oriented. The index of relative price dispersion that the author develops has the advantage that it is objective, measures intervention in both exports and imports, is comparable across countries, and is independent of fluctuations in exchange rates caused by macroeconomic mismanagement.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets

Do Domestic Firms Benefit From Direct Foreign Investment? Evidence From Venezuela

Governments often promote inward foreign investment to encourage technology \u27spillovers\u27 from foreign to domestic firms. Using panel data on Venezuelan plants, the authors find that foreign equity participation is positively correlated with plant productivity (the \u27own-plant\u27 effect), but this relationship is only robust for small enterprises. They then test for spillovers from joint ventures to plants with no foreign investment. Foreign investment negatively affects the productivity of domestically owned plants. The net impact of foreign investment, taking into account these two offsetting effects, is quite small. The gains from foreign investment appear to be entirely captured by joint ventures

Spillovers, Foreign Investment, and Export Behavior

Case studies of export behavior suggest that firms that penetrate foreign markets reduce entry costs for other potential exporters, either through learning effects or establishing commercial linkages. We examine whether spillovers associated with one firm\u27s export activity reduce the cost of exporting for other firms. We identify two sources of spillovers: export production in general and the specific activities of multinationals. From a simple model of export behavior we derive a probit specification for the probability that a firm exports. Using panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants, we find evidence of spillovers from multinational enterprises but not from general export activity

Slender False Brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum, Poaceae), an Invasive Grass New to Ontario, Canada

Brachypodium sylvaticum, Slender False Brome, an invasive Eurasian grass, is reported for the first time in Ontario and eastern Canada from Grey County, southern Ontario. The only previous Canadian record is from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The species is widespread in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, where it is spreading aggressively throughout much of western Oregon. In the eastern U.S.A., known populations are few and localized, although the species will likely spread

Wages and Foreign Ownership: A Comparative Study of Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States

This paper explores the relationship between wages and foreign investment in Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States. Despite very different economic conditions and levels of development, we find one fact that is robust across all three countries: higher levels of foreign investment are associated with higher wages. However, in Mexico and Venezuela, foreign investment is associated with higher wages only for foreign-owned firms — there is no evidence of wage spillovers leading to higher wages for domestic firms. The lack of spillovers in Mexico and Venezuela is consistent with significant wage differentials between foreign and domestic enterprises. In the United States, where the evidence suggests some wage spillovers from foreign to domestic enterprises, wage differentials are smaller

Representations of mental health and arts participation in the national and local British press, 2007-2015

We analysed news articles published in national and local British newspapers between 2007 and 2015 to understand 1) how mental health and arts participation were framed and 2) how the relationships between participants in arts initiatives were conceptualised. Using corpus-assisted qualitative frame analysis, we identified frames of recovery, stigma and economy. The recovery frame, which emphasised that mental illness can be treated similarly to physical illness, positioned arts participation as a form of therapy that can complement or substitute medication. The stigma frame presented arts participation as a mechanism for challenging social conceptions that mentally ill individuals are incapable of productive work. The economy frame discussed the economic burden of mentally ill individuals and portrayed arts participation as facilitating their return to employment. Using thematic analysis, which paid attention to the representation of social actors, we found that service users were identified as the prime beneficiaries of arts initiatives and arts participation was conceptualised as a way to bring people with mental health issues together. We discuss these findings against existing research on media representations of mental health and the concept of ‘mutual recovery’ and suggest what wider concurrent developments in the areas of mental health and the media may account for the uncovered frames and themes

Hegel, Adorno and the origins of immanent criticism

‘Immanent criticism' has been discussed by philosophers of quite different persuasions, working in separate areas and in different traditions of philosophy. Almost all of them agree on roughly the same story about its origins: It is that Hegel invented immanent criticism, that Marx later developed it, and that the various members of the Frankfurt School, particularly Adorno, refined it in various ways, and that they are all paradigmatic practitioners of immanent criticism. I call this the Continuity Thesis. There are four different claims that interest me. (i) Hegel is the originator of immanent criticism. (ii) Hegel's dialectical method is that of immanent criticism. (iii) Adorno practises immanent criticism and endorses the term as a description of his practice. (iv) Adorno's dialectical method is fundamentally Hegelian. In this article, I offer an account of immanent criticism, on the basis of which, I evaluate these four claims and argue that the Continuity Thesis should be rejected

Virological failure and development of new resistance mutations according to CD4 count at combination antiretroviral therapy initiation

Objectives: No randomized controlled trials have yet reported an individual patient benefit of initiating combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) at CD4 counts > 350 cells/μL. It is hypothesized that earlier initiation of cART in asymptomatic and otherwise healthy individuals may lead to poorer adherence and subsequently higher rates of resistance development. Methods: In a large cohort of HIV-positive individuals, we investigated the emergence of new resistance mutations upon virological treatment failure according to the CD4 count at the initiation of cART. Results: Of 7918 included individuals, 6514 (82.3%), 996 (12.6%) and 408 (5.2%) started cART with a CD4 count ≤ 350, 351-499 and ≥ 500 cells/μL, respectively. Virological rebound occurred while on cART in 488 (7.5%), 46 (4.6%) and 30 (7.4%) with a baseline CD4 count ≤ 350, 351-499 and ≥ 500 cells/μL, respectively. Only four (13.0%) individuals with a baseline CD4 count > 350 cells/μL in receipt of a resistance test at viral load rebound were found to have developed new resistance mutations. This compared to 107 (41.2%) of those with virological failure who had initiated cART with a CD4 count < 350 cells/μL. Conclusions: We found no evidence of increased rates of resistance development when cART was initiated at CD4 counts above 350 cells/μL. HIV Medicin