Universal quadratic forms and elements of small norm in real quadratic fields

For any positive integer M we show that there are infinitely many real quadratic fields that do not admit M-ary universal quadratic forms (without any restriction on the parity of their cross coefficients).Comment: 7 pages, slightly revised and expanded versio

The Democratization of Social Media A Critical Perspective in Technology

Social Media is part of contemporary technology that is the contentious subject matter within the society. It is paradoxical when social media should provide techniques and objects that serve human being in a positive way, but at the same time, it can dehumanize human being such as alienation. The main problem is because the lack of impact of public policy, which does not involve society in the democratic sphere. The article is about the possibility of democratization social media in the discourse of philosophy of technology. I refer to Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology (CTT) for opening discourse and criticizing social media. Social Media should be changed by the critical view to analyze the internal contradictions in technocracy, which view social media merely as an instrument and value-free. In the other hand, CTT will lead into the discourse of instrumentalization theory, technological rationality, technical code and democratization of social media. I conclude this article by applying CTT to delineate extant approach and consideration of democratization of social media in Indonesian through critical thinking participation and emotional education in the public sphere

Understanding Rules of Origin

This paper surveys recent work on the economic effects, both theoretical and empirical, of Rules of Origin (RoO) in a Free Trade Area (FTA).

Conceptually Based Measures of Structural Adaptability

This paper provides definitions and measures of the extent of adaptability of an economy to exogenous changes in product prices, factor availability and technological change. It is argued that flexibility can in general only be defined relative to the exogenous changes that occur. Using a dual approach, measures of flexibility in response to the particular exogenous shock are developed. In addition, a decomposition of the total change in National Income into its component parts including gains due to flexibility or losses due to inflexibility is developed.

Conditional Policies in General Equilibrium

Obtaining lower generalized system of preferences (GSP) tariffs requires meeting costly Rules of Origin (ROOs). Growing coffee in the shade is more costly, but yields a price premium. This paper analyzes the effects of such restrictions in a general equilibrium setting and shows that such policies may have unanticipated effects. It is shown that in a world with capital mobility, the GSP could result in capital outflows rather than inflows and consumer preferences for shade grown coffee end up hurting labor in developing countries. Even small subsidies that are contingent on the use of domestic intermediates can result in specialization in the targeted good. Value added contingent policies can easily lead to multiple equilibria despite the absence of externalities or market imperfections.

Tariffs vs. Quotas with Endogenous Quality

This paper analyzes some aspects of the effects of trade restrictions (such as tariffs, quotas and quality controls) and their desirability when the quantity of the imported good is endogenous, and the foreign producer is a monopolist. It uses a fairly general model based on the work of Spence and Sheshinski. A crucial determinant of the direction of these effects is shown to be the valuation of increments in quality by marginal consumers,relative to that of all consumers on average. A way of comparing infinitesimal equivalent policies is developed and used to compare import equivalent policies. For reasonable characterizations of demand - tariffs are shown to dominate quotas on the basis of their revenue effects alone, while quotas are shown to dominate tariffs on the basis of their quality effects alone. Also, quality controls are shown to dominate both tariffs and quotas on the basis of revenue effects alone for reasonable characterizations of demand. Some special cases are also analyzed, including the case where demand is modelled along the lines of Swan - and only services of the good produced matter to consumers.

The Case of the Vanishing Revenues: Auction Quotas With Oligopoly

This paper examines the effects of auctioning quota licenses when market power exists. The overall conclusion is that with oligopolistic markets, quotas, even when set optimally and with quota licenses auctioned off, are - unlikely to dominate free trade. Moreover, auction quotas only strictly dominate giving away licenses which are competitively traded if the quota is quite restrictive. When there is a foreign duopoly or oligopoly and domestic competition it is shown that such sales of licenses does not raise revenues unless they are quite restrictive. An oligopoly example is explored to study the role of product differentiation, demand conditions and market conditions in determining the value of a license and the welfare effects of auctioning quotas. In this example, auction quotas are always worse than free trade. Finally, when there is a home duopoly and foreign competition, the price of a quota license is shown to be positive when the home and foreign goods are substitutes but to be zero when they are complements.