Trans-boundary pollution and international migration

Adopting the basic Ricardian static trade model, Two-country (Home and Foreign), Two-goods (Agricultural and Industrial) and One-factor (labour) model with environmental resource, we extended Copland and Taylor (1999) in three points. Firstly, we assumed pollution should be trans-boundary. Secondly, we considered the technical difference between two countries. Thirdly, we introduced international migration. We assumed that the only difference between two countries is the pollution protecting technology caused by industrial production. There will occur three different situations depending on the strength of demand on industrial good. Firstly, if industrial good is strongly preferred, the country with low technology (country L) will specialize in production of industrial good and another country (country H) will produce both goods. In this case, if trade is permitted, country L will gain while whether country H will gain or not is ambiguous. Moreover, after free trade, there occurs no international migration. Secondary, if both goods are preferred almost equally, then country H (L) will specialize agricultural (industrial) good. Whether free trade is beneficial or not for each country depends on parameters. After trade, there remains wage gap between two countries and therefore international migration from L to H will occur. Thirdly, if industrial good is weakly preferred, then country L produces both goods while country H produces agricultural good only. In this case free trade will reduce the economic welfare of country L while the effects on country H is ambiguous. After free trade, workers will migrate from L to H if permitted. In the second and third cases, migration expands the production of agricultural good but reduces that of industrial good and it will continue until comparative advantage of each country diminishes. If we consider that one of the two goods is non-tradable, there is no possibility of international trade but if international migration is permitted, workers in country L will migrate to country H, which will not end before all of inhabitants in country L quit their home country.

Legal and Illegal Immigration in an Efficiency Wage Model

In the developed countries like EU and Japan, some young native people dare to enjoy voluntary unemployment. Though they can easily find relatively low-wage job, they prefer to work part-time and look for a chance to to get high-wage job. Moreover the illegal unskilled foreign (legal skilled foreign [or domestic but from different region]) workers are complementary (substitutional) to the natives of that region and their wage is usually low (high). Reflecting this situation, we introduce two types of immigrants in an efficiency wage model (with two different job-sectors) by Shapiro and Stiglitz. The co-existence of these immigrants also permits us to analyze the importance of legality.

Illegal Migrants in an Overlapping-Generations Model(In Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary)

By extending the framework of Galor (1986), this paper shows that making the penalty of illegal migrants higher or enhancing the disclosure at the border will surely raise the wage rate, lower the rental price of capital, and give rise to a welfare gain in the host country under the condition of the low possibility of success for illegal immigration. In other words, if the above condition is not satisfied, the validity of those policies are not assured

Trans-boundary Pollution, Optimal Transfer, and International Migration(In Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary)

We analyse the welfare effects of international migration in the presence of trans-boundary pollution. We use a simplified Copeland and Taylor (1999) model, where the (developed) home country\u27s pollution abatement technology is superior to that of the (less developed) foreign country. For the home country, transferring manufactured good to the foreign country could be optimal so as to reduce the trans-boundary pollution caused by foreign manufacturing industry and improve the productivity of domestic agricultural good under some conditions. If workers migrate from the foreign country to the home country, both total amount of optimal transfer and world economic welfare will increase

Programmed death (PD)-1/PD-ligand 1 blockade mediates antiangiogenic effects by tumor-derived CXCL10/11 as a potential predictive biomarker

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) programmed death (PD)-1/PD-ligand 1 (PD-L1) blockade has been approved for various cancers. However, the underlying antitumor mechanisms mediated by ICIs and the predictive biomarkers remain unclear. We report the effects of anti-PD-L1/PD-1 Ab in tumor angiogenesis. In syngeneic mouse models, anti-PD-L1 Ab inhibited tumor angiogenesis and induces net-like hypoxia only in ICI-sensitive cell lines. In tumor tissue and serum of ICI-sensitive cell line-bearing mice, interferon-γ (IFN-γ) inducible angiostatic chemokines CXCL10/11 were upregulated by PD-L1 blockade. In vitro, CXCL10/11 gene upregulation by IFN-γ stimulation in tumor cell lines correlated with the sensitivity of PD-L1 blockade. The CXCL10/11 receptor CXCR3-neutralizing Ab or CXCL11 silencing in tumor cells inhibited the antiangiogenic effect of PD-L1 blockade in vivo. In pretreatment serum of lung carcinoma patients receiving anti-PD-1 Ab, the concentration of CXCL10/11 significantly correlated with the clinical outcome. Our results indicate the antiangiogenic function of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade and identify tumor-derived CXCL10/11 as a potential circulating biomarker of therapeutic sensitivity

BLOCKADE OF PD-1/PD-L1 ENHANCES APC FUNCTION OF FIBROCYTES

Fibrocytes, a distinct population of collagen-producing, monocyte-derived cells, are involved in wound healing as well as fibrotic diseases. Recently, fibrocytes have been revealed to play a role in the tumor microenvironment, particularly under antiangiogenic therapy. In addition, combination cancer immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitor and antiangiogenic agents have been developed for various cancers in the clinical setting, although the immunological background is not clear. In the current study, we aimed to determine the function of fibrocytes in tumor immunity induced by immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Human and murine fibrocytes were generated from PBMCs and lungs, respectively. The expression of costimulatory and inhibitory molecules on fibrocytes was examined by flow cytometry. The stimulation of CD8+ T cells by fibrocytes was examined in MLRs with a 3H-thymidine incorporation assay. Fibrocytes expressed CD80low and CD86high as a costimulatory molecule, and expressed PD-L1high, but not PD-L2, as a coinhibitory molecule.Without any stimulation, fibrocytes strongly enhanced the proliferation of CD8+ T cells in mice and humans. Treatment with anti-CD86 and -CD54 Abs inhibited the growth of CD8+ T cells induced by fibrocytes. Anti–PD-L1 Ab further enhanced the proliferation of CD8+ T cells, even in the OVA-specific MLR with OT-1Rag-/- mice. Importantly, fibrocytes derived from PBMCs of patients with lung adenocarcinoma or murine MC38 tumors augmented the proliferation of CD8+ T cells with PD-L1 blockade. These results suggest that fibrocytes infiltrating tumor sites may play a role in the antitumor immunity mediated by CD8+ T cells when the activity is further enhanced by PD-L1/PD-1 blockade

Development of an Oropharyngeal Scope with an Integrated Tongue Depressor: NTOP2013 Study

The oropharynx is examined with a light source such as an electric light, a penlight, or a forehead mirror based on an acquired visual field using a tongue depressor. However, it is extremely difficult to obtain objective and reproducible images of tissue within the pharynx required in recent years with these methods, and insufficient progress in the examination tools has been made. There is an increasing need to develop a method for display during oropharyngeal examination. We conducted the present study to develop a novel oropharyngeal endoscope as an objective observation method