Regional employment and wages. The effects of transport costs and market potential. An application for Argentina

Economic activity in Argentina shows a high degree of concentration, in 1993 almost 46% of GDP was generated in an area representing just 0.14% of the country. When looking at the manufacturing sector the concentration is still higher. The new economic geography models developed since the early nineties explain the location of economic activity across regions as the result of two opposite forces, centripetal and centrifugal. As trade costs are reduced, the relative strength of these two forces changes, such that we might also expect changes in the regional structure of production and wages. How trade liberalising policies might have affected the structure of production and wages across regions is the topic we try to make a contribution. The evidence points out that the further reduction of trade barriers during the nineties might have had a small effect on the regional structure of employment and wages across counties, at least in the short-run.Economic Geography; Market Potential; Spatial agglomeration; Increasing returns; Transport costs

Ultra-Light Scalar Fields and the Growth of Structure in the Universe

Ultra-light scalar fields, with masses of between m=10^{-33} eV and m=10^{-22} eV, can affect the growth of structure in the Universe. We identify the different regimes in the evolution of ultra-light scalar fields, how they affect the expansion rate of the universe and how they affect the growth rate of cosmological perturbations. We find a number of interesting effects, discuss how they might arise in realistic scenarios of the early universe and comment on how they might be observed.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

On the motive of certain subvarieties of fixed flags

We compute de Chow motive of certain subvarieties of the flags manifold and show that it is an Artin motive.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure