The State-by-State Effects of Mad Cow Disease Using a New MRIO Model

Until recently, it is hard to find studies to estimate how much the total economic losses for U.S. or other states by the BSE incidents except one dominant study by Devadoss et al (2005), which used CGE (Computable Generalized Equations) model for U.S. However, they are not reporting the direct impacts by each state and indirect impacts resulting from state-by-state economic relations. The interindustry relations and spatial connections have required to developing the Multiregional Input-Output (MRIO) type model, and in the sense, the experience of beef export closures to foreign countries is the suitable case enabling to estimate the economic impacts via inter-regional inter-industrial connections. Therefore, this study estimated the U.S. economic losses by foreign export closures of each state due to the BSE incident in Washington State using a different, newly developed methodology, complementing the previous study. To assess the economic impacts of BSE on each state and U.S. national economy, we used two methodologies. First, we forecasted normal status of beef exports from January in 2004 to April in 2005 using time-series analyses, based on monthly pre-2004 foreign historical exports data obtained from WISERTrade data, in order to calculate the direct gaps between the estimated exports which would have been had if the BSE had not been discovered and the actually decreased exports. Second, a newly constructed MRIO-type model by Park et al (2006), the NIEMO (National Interstate Economic Model), addressed how much the impacts within each state including Washington, interstate effects, and U.S. national losses by the BSE are, based on the final demand losses from the ex-post incidents. While domestic U.S. market can find the equilibrium rapidly by tightening supply side, international barriers to hinder U.S. exports still become a critical agricultural policy for U.S. government. The closure of U.S. exports of bovine by mad cow disease occurred in Washington State yielded a huge shock into the U.S. economy due to simultaneous closures of other state exports. Currently, the only available MRIO model, the NIEMO, enables to estimate the economic losses by the simultaneous closures of each state export of beef and related products. In terms that the NIEMO can supply information comparing the different economic impacts of state-by-state to agricultural policy-makers, they can distribute the national subsides due to the incident, considering the spreading impacts.BSE, Time-series, Multiregional Input-Output, Economic Impacts, Agricultural Policy, Health Economics and Policy,

DFT Study on the Nucleophilic Addition Reaction of Water and Ammonia to the Thymine Radical Cation

The nucleophilic addition reactions of water and ammonia molecules toward the C5−C6 double bond of thymine radical cations were investigated using density functional theory. We predicted that the nucleophilic addition favored the C5-site of thymine radical cations, in contrast to the previous experimental observations in bulk solution where the addition product to the C6-site was dominant. Considering the molecular orbital factors, we estimated the relative reactivity of the C5- and C6-sites of thymine radical cations for the nucleophilic addition of ammonia. We found that the C5 was more reactive than the C6 for the small-size clusters of Thy_1(NH_3)_n+, n = 0−2, in the gas phase and even in aqueous solution, though the difference in the reactivity between the two sites became smaller as the number of ammonia molecules increased. This variation of the reactivity was attributed to the electron density redistribution within the thymine radical cations induced by the ammonia molecules as a nucleophile. We suggest that the dominance of the C6-addition product in bulk solution is mainly due to the higher stability of the C6-addition product by solvation, rather than to the higher reactivity of the C6-site for the nucleophilic addition