Private investment under macroeconomic adjustment in Morocco

A significant domestic counterpart of Morocco's vigorous external adjustment in the eighties was a decline in fixed capital formation, of which the private sector bore a sizable share. The authors focus on the causes of declining private investment and on the policiesrequired to reverse this trend. Using an eclectic framework, they econometrically determine the main determinants of private investment in Morocco. They conclude that the main causes of the decline in the eighties were great uncertainty about policy (proxied by foreign debt), a rapid rise in the cost of capital, a more stringent credit policy, and reduced public capital. They further conclude that fiscal stabilization, a consistent foreign debt policy, more investment in public infrastructure, and a reform of investment codes would increase private investment and growth in Morocco. Moreover, reform of the financial sector could significantly improve the efficiency of financial intermediation and therefore the quality of investment in Morocco.Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

The plastikstufe - a generalization of the overtwisted disk to higher dimensions

In this article, we give a first prototype-definition of overtwistedness in higher dimensions. According to this definition, a contact manifold is called "overtwisted" if it contains a "plastikstufe", a submanifold foliated by the contact structure in a certain way. In three dimensions the definition of the plastikstufe is identical to the one of the overtwisted disk. The main justification for this definition lies in the fact that the existence of a plastikstufe implies that the contact manifold does not have a (semipositive) symplectic filling.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 15 December 200

The effect of cold priming on the fitness of Arabidopsis thaliana accessions under natural and controlled conditions

Priming improves an organism's performance upon a future stress. To test whether cold priming supports protection in spring and how it is affected by cold acclimation, we compared seven Arabidopsis accessions with different cold acclimation potentials in the field and in the greenhouse for growth, photosynthetic performance and reproductive fitness in March and May after a 14 day long cold-pretreatment at 4 °C. In the plants transferred to the field in May, the effect of the cold pretreatment on the seed yield correlated with the cold acclimation potential of the accessions. In the March transferred plants, the reproductive fitness was most supported by the cold pretreatment in the accessions with the weakest cold acclimation potential. The fitness effect was linked to long-term effects of the cold pretreatment on photosystem II activity stabilization and leaf blade expansion. The study demonstrated that cold priming stronger impacts on plant fitness than cold acclimation in spring in accessions with intermediate and low cold acclimation potential

Molecular ID Numbers

A search for counterexamples of Randić\u27s prime molecular ID-numbers for alkane-trees with up to 20 carbon atoms produced only one pair of non-isomorphic trees with the same prime ID- number. Thus, it is shown that the prime ID-number, although a highly discriminating molecular descriptor, is not unique

On the Complexity of Square-CeH Configurations

The procedure is proposed for obtaining the complexity numbers of square-cell configurations. It is based on the concept of the canonical square-cell configuration. The complexity number of a square-cell configuration is then simply the minimal of edge-cuts by which this structure can be reduced to constituting canonical configurations