A Simple Model of Offshore Outsourcing,Technology Upgrading and Welfare

We adapt Yeaple's (2005) heterogeneous agents framework to model firms in the North as making explicit offshore outsourcing decisions to cheap-labor economies. Globalization results from a lowering of the set-up costs incurred when engaging in offshore activities. We highlight how firms'technology transformations due to global- ization will induce skill upgrading in the North, increase aggregate productivity, av- erage wages and therefore total welfare at the cost of increased wage inequalities. We analytically derive mild conditions under which all consumers-including lower-skilled workers-will nevertheless gain from the surge of offshore outsourcing. A parameter- ized version of the model roughly calibrated on U.S. data is then numerically explored and confirms our positive welfare predictions.Offshore outsourcing; Globalization; Skill upgrading, Technology upgrading; Firm heterogeneity

Synchronous double primary malignant tumor of the gallbladder and liver: a case report

We report a case of synchronous double primary tumor of gallbladder and liver. A 63-year-old male was admitted to the hospital complaining of abdominal discomfort. Enhanced computed tomography of the abdomen showed acute cholecystitis with tiny gallbladder stones and a 2.2 cm size enhanced nodule in the left lobe of the liver. Under the impression of acute cholecystitis with gall bladder stones and hepatocellular carcinoma of the left Liver, the patient underwent a laparotomy. At laparotomy, a mass was palpated on the surface of the neck portion of the gall bladder. Intraoperative frozen diagnosis revealed adenocarcinoma of the gall bladder. The patient was diagnosed as having gall bladder cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma, so extended cholecystectomy with dissection of regional lymph nodes and left hemihepatectomy were performed. Histological examination revealed moderated differentiated adenocarcinoma of gallbladder and hepatocellular carcinoma of liver. To our knowledge, the simultaneous occurrence of primary malignant tumor of the gallbladder and liver has never been published before. The patient is doing well with no evidence of recurrence 17 months after surgery

AMSB Demystified

We reinterpret anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking from a field-theoretic perspective in which superconformal anomalies couple to either the chiral compensator or the $U(1)_R$ vector superfield. As supersymmetry in the hidden sector is spontaneously broken by non-vanishing vacuum expectation values of the chiral compensator F-term and/or the $U(1)_R$ vector superfield D-term, the soft breakdown of supersymmetry emerges in the visible sector. This approach is physically more understandable compared with the conventional approach where the chiral compensator is treated on the same footing as a spurion in gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking scenario.Comment: Submitted to the proceedings of SUSY09 conference, June 2009, Boston, US