Endogenous asymmetries in technology adoption and international trade.

This note explores the interaction between trade integration and asymmetric choices of technology adoption. It seeks to bring micro foundations of Örm heterogeneity into an open-economy model. By so doing, the analysis shows the complementarity between an imperfect competition framework of strategic substitutability and a system of preferences specially well suited for general equilibrium analysis. Preliminary results, still in partial equilibrium, conÖrm standard claims on price reduction and the ability of economies of scale to facilitate technology adoption. More interesting, the number of active Örms is reduced by the increase in market size and subtile interactions arises from demand aggregation.Trade integration; Open-economy; Technological Change; general equilibrium analysis;

Trade Integration in Manufacturing : The Chilean Experience.

Using bilateral trade flow data from 1979 to 1999, we estimate trade integration between Chile and its principal trading partners during the period (European Union, United States and Latin America). Our estimates are based on a gravity speci cation, theoretically grounded on a monopolistic competition framework with increasing returns. Trade barriers are measured following the border e ect methodology by comparing inter-national imports to intra-national ones. Our results are consistent with the agenda of trade integration followed by Chile. Moreover, trade integration turns out to be heterogeneous across industries and over the time. We also fi nd asymmetries between export and import oriented policies. All these features are usually missing when one uses direct measures of trade policies.Trade Reform in Chile; Gravity Equation; Market Access;

Market Access and the Evolution of within Plant Productivity in Chile

This paper studies the impact of trade reforms on the evolution of plant's productivity in Chile (1979-2000). The main contribution of the paper is to construct detailed measures of trade liberalization disentangling the impact of export and import oriented policies. We find evidence of a positive impact of export oriented policies on productivity of traded sectors relative to non traded. On the other hand, the reduction of import barriers might have a positive impact on productivity in export oriented sectors, but it hurts local firms in import competing ones probably due to the existence of increasing returns.firm heterogeneity, trade reforms, productivity gains, plant’s panel data

Trade liberalization and heterogeneous within-firm productivity improvements

This paper develops an intra-industry model of trade with heterogeneous firms to investigate the impact of trade on the evolution of within firm productivity. The main contribution is to incorporate endogenous labor productivity gains. Heterogeneous firms have different incentives to invest in foreign technology which in turns enhances efficiency heterogeneously. Trade liberalization reduces the price of imported capital equipment and increases factor demands. These mechanisms introduce two novel results. First, aggregate productivity increases due to within-firm productivity improvements. Second, tariffs reduction has little impact on the extensive margin of trade in countries already highly open.trade liberalization ; firm heterogeneity ; endogenous productivity gains ; extensive margin of trade

Competition, Innovation and Distance to Frontier

According to a recent literature, the positive effect of competition is supposed to be growing with the proximity to the technological frontier. Using a variety of indicators, the paper tests the effect of competition and regulation on innovative activity measured by patenting. The sample consists of a panel of 15 industries for 17 OECD countries over the period 1979-2003. Results show no evidence of a positive effect of competition growing with the proximity to the frontier. Two main configurations emerge. First, regulation has a positive effect whatever the distance to the frontier and the magnitude of its impact is higher the closer the industry is to the frontier. Second, the effect of regulation is negative far from the frontier and becomes positive (or non significant) when the technology gap decreases. These results contradict the belief in the innovation-boosting effect of product market deregulation such as taken into account in the Lisbon Strategy.Innovation, competition, distance to frontier.

A systematic review of data quality issues in knowledge discovery tasks

Hay un gran crecimiento en el volumen de datos porque las organizaciones capturan permanentemente la cantidad colectiva de datos para lograr un mejor proceso de toma de decisiones. El desafío mas fundamental es la exploración de los grandes volúmenes de datos y la extracción de conocimiento útil para futuras acciones por medio de tareas para el descubrimiento del conocimiento; sin embargo, muchos datos presentan mala calidad. Presentamos una revisión sistemática de los asuntos de calidad de datos en las áreas del descubrimiento de conocimiento y un estudio de caso aplicado a la enfermedad agrícola conocida como la roya del café.Large volume of data is growing because the organizations are continuously capturing the collective amount of data for better decision-making process. The most fundamental challenge is to explore the large volumes of data and extract useful knowledge for future actions through knowledge discovery tasks, nevertheless many data has poor quality. We presented a systematic review of the data quality issues in knowledge discovery tasks and a case study applied to agricultural disease named coffee rust

Modernidad y Psicología : una disyuntiva y una paradoja

La psicología que hoy día se practica, con pocas excepciones, comparte un conjunto de nociones, que he llamado "Marco de Racionalidad"; propias de la época moderna que ha propiciado su desarrollo. Dicho marco es el sustento del pensamiento positivista en las ciencias, cuya aplicación al ámbito de la psicología como ciencia básica o social genera una disyuntiva y una paradoja que lo hacen insostenible. Por ello se propone un marco de racionalidad desde la postmodernidad y algunas reflexiones, las cuales se orientan a enriquecer la discusión para la construcción de nuevas orientaciones en la ciencia psicológica

Lessons from the Seismic Performance of Pile-Supported Bridges Affected by Liquefaction During the M8.8 2010 Maule Chile Earthquake

Ground failure case studies have been the source of the most important advances in geotechnical earthquake engineering over the past 50 years. Documented case histories from the 2010 M8.8 Maule Chile earthquake will, if carefully studied, further advance this field. The 2010 M8.8 earthquake in Chile showed that liquefaction-induced soil-foundation-structure interaction problems are still far from being completely understood. The observed damage and partial collapse of pile-supported bridges like Juan Pablo II, Llacolén, Tubul, La Mochita, and Raqui, is most likely due to the effects of liquefaction-induced lateral and vertical ground displacement, which often causes large ground deformations that impose kinematic loads on the pile foundations. In this paper, simplified back-analyses regarding the seismic performance of bridges Mataquito, Juan Pablo II, and Llacolen are presented. The bridges have been selected not only because clear evidence of liquefaction was found at their respective locations, but also because their seismic performance was very different, ranging from little to negligible damage to a larger and more distributed level of damage