10,387 research outputs found
Do exporters gain from voluntary export restraints?
Most literature suggests that voluntary export restraints (VER) are not very harmful for the exporting country. This paper argues that this view is misconceived. Most work has focused on the welfare loss to the importing country arising from a loss of income transfer combined with a distortionary loss in efficiency. Implicit is the message that the often large rent transfer to the exporting country is likely to compensate for any induced inefficiency losses. This paper studies the effects on distribution and efficiency when VERs force factors out of industries in which they are most productive. It develops a general theoretical model that establishes qualitative conditions under which a VER will result in industry contraction, spillovers of exports to unrestricted markets, and losses in national welfare. It estimates key parameters of supply and demand for leather footwear exports from Taiwan subject to the U.S. Orderly Marketing Agreement, and explores the implications in a calibrated simulation exercise. The results are a strongindictment of VERs. For most plausible parameter values, VERs redirect exports, reduce the size of the industry, and cause overall economic losses, expecially if the affected industry is large.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Water and Industry
The role of interstitial binding in radiation induced segregation in W-Re alloys
Due to their high strength and advantageous high-temperature properties,
tungsten-based alloys are being considered as plasma-facing candidate materials
in fusion devices. Under neutron irradiation, rhenium, which is produced by
nuclear transmutation, has been found to precipitate in elongated precipitates
forming thermodynamic intermetallic phases at concentrations well below the
solubility limit. Recent measurements have shown that Re precipitation can lead
to substantial hardening, which may have a detrimental effect on the fracture
toughness of W alloys. This puzzle of sub-solubility precipitation points to
the role played by irradiation induced defects, specifically mixed solute-W
interstitials. Here, using first-principles calculations based on density
functional theory, we study the energetics of mixed interstitial defects in
W-Re, W-V, and W-Ti alloys, as well as the heat of mixing for each
substitutional solute. We find that mixed interstitials in all systems are
strongly attracted to each other with binding energies of -2.4 to -3.2 eV and
form interstitial pairs that are aligned along parallel first-neighbor
strings. Low barriers for defect translation and rotation enable defect
agglomeration and alignment even at moderate temperatures. We propose that
these elongated agglomerates of mixed-interstitials may act as precursors for
the formation of needle-shaped intermetallic precipitates. This
interstitial-based mechanism is not limited to radiation induced segregation
and precipitation in W-Re alloys but is also applicable to other body-centered
cubic alloys.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Price and quality effects of VERs - revisited : a case study of Korean footwear exports
The application of index numbers to disaggregated Korean footwear exports during 1974-85 suggests that binding voluntary export restraints (VERs) led to significant price increases but not to the upgrading of quality predicted in earlier theoretical analyses. The results in this paper were derived from exporters rather than importers data. Drawing its comparisons from multilateral indices, the paper finds that the price of Korean footwear exports to the United States rose significantly in the years when the VERs were binding. VERs were associated less with quality upgrading and if anything were possibly associated with quality downgrading. The empirical results confirm that as a result of VER type restrictions on shoes, rents accrue to the exporting country, but shoes do not show the improved quality that automobiles do under similar restrictions.Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Transport and Trade Logistics,Common Carriers Industry
The "True" Column Density Distribution in Star-Forming Molecular Clouds
We use the COMPLETE Survey's observations of the Perseus star-forming region
to assess and intercompare three methods for measuring column density in
molecular clouds: extinction mapping (NIR); thermal emission mapping (FIR); and
mapping the intensity of CO isotopologues. The structures shown by all three
tracers are morphologically similar, but important differences exist.
Dust-based measures give similar, log-normal, distributions for the full
Perseus region, once careful calibration corrections are made. We also compare
dust- and gas-based column density distributions for physically-meaningful
sub-regions of Perseus, and we find significant variations in the distributions
for those regions. Even though we have used 12CO data to estimate excitation
temperatures, and we have corrected for opacity, the 13CO maps seem unable to
give column distributions that consistently resemble those from dust measures.
We have edited out the effects of the shell around the B-star HD 278942. In
that shell's interior and in the parts where it overlaps the molecular cloud,
there appears to be a dearth of 13CO, likely due either to 13CO not yet having
had time to form in this young structure, and/or destruction of 13CO in the
molecular cloud. We conclude that the use of either dust or gas measures of
column density without extreme attention to calibration and artifacts is more
perilous than even experts might normally admit. And, the use of 13CO to trace
total column density in detail, even after proper calibration, is unavoidably
limited in utility due to threshold, depletion, and opacity effects. If one's
main aim is to map column density, then dust extinction seems the best probe.
Linear fits amongst column density tracers are given, quantifying the inherent
uncertainties in using one tracer (when compared with others). [abridged]Comment: Accepted in ApJ. 13 pages, 6 color figures. It includes small changes
to improve clarity. For a version with high-resolution figures see
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/papers/Goodman_ColumnDensity.pd
The Use of Quiet Books with People with Late Stage Dementia: A Case Study
Discussion of the use of Quiet Books as a method to provide sensory stimulation to people with late stage dementia to reduce agitation and combativeness with activities of daily living. Supporting literature for the use of sensory stimulation with people with dementia is also highlighted.
Poster presented at AOTA 2017 Annual Conference in Philadelphia PA and POTA 2016 Annual Conferenc
Computationally-efficient stochastic cluster dynamics method for modeling damage accumulation in irradiated materials
An improved version of a recently developed stochastic cluster dynamics (SCD)
method {[}Marian, J. and Bulatov, V. V., {\it J. Nucl. Mater.} \textbf{415}
(2014) 84-95{]} is introduced as an alternative to rate theory (RT) methods for
solving coupled ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems for irradiation
damage simulations. SCD circumvents by design the curse of dimensionality of
the variable space that renders traditional ODE-based RT approaches inefficient
when handling complex defect population comprised of multiple (more than two)
defect species. Several improvements introduced here enable efficient and
accurate simulations of irradiated materials up to realistic (high) damage
doses characteristic of next-generation nuclear systems. The first improvement
is a procedure for efficiently updating the defect reaction-network and event
selection in the context of a dynamically expanding reaction-network. Next is a
novel implementation of the -leaping method that speeds up SCD
simulations by advancing the state of the reaction network in large time
increments when appropriate. Lastly, a volume rescaling procedure is introduced
to control the computational complexity of the expanding reaction-network
through occasional reductions of the defect population while maintaining
accurate statistics. The enhanced SCD method is then applied to model defect
cluster accumulation in iron thin films subjected to triple ion-beam
(, and \text{H\ensuremath{{}^{+}}})
irradiations, for which standard RT or spatially-resolved kinetic Monte Carlo
simulations are prohibitively expensive
Council Regulation 1612/68: A Significant Step in Promoting the Right of Freedom of Movement within the EEC
Parental Role in Encouraging Sport Participation in Females
Although still askew compared to male rates, female participation rates in sports have gone up since the introduction of Title IX in 1972. A plethora of research has been done to identify the various factors as to why females play sport, parental influence being a common social aspect. Research is lacking, however, in exploring the types of parental influence, specifically based on the gender of the parent. By surveying students at St. John Fisher College, this study examines the support/modeling roles commonly associated with the gender of the parent in regards to influencing their children to participate in sport. Results show that although there are certain support roles that still tend to be the mother’s responsibility as in the past, unexpected results indicate there is a shift from previous research, with both parents sharing certain support/modeling roles equally when a nuclear parent household is present. Ultimately, however, the paternal influence was reported as still being the biggest influence in the participant’s entry into athletics
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