'Mind the Gap!': Transport Costs and Price Convergence in the 19th Century Atlantic Economy.

This paper challenges the widely held view that sharply falling real transport costs closed the transatlantic gap in grain prices in the second half of the 19th century. Several new results emerge from an analysis of a new data set of weekly wheat prices and freight costs from New York to UK markets. Firstly, there was a decline in the transatlantic price gap but it was not sharp and the gap remained substantial. Secondly, the fall in the transatlantic price differential had more to do with improved market and marketing efficiency than with falling transport costs. Thirdly, spurious price convergence (or divergence) can appear if quality differences associated with allegedly homogeneous commodities like wheat are not controlled for.market integration; spatial price gaps

The Nature and Costs of Dis-Equilibrium Trade: The Case of Transatlantic Grain Exports in the 19th Century

The essential issue addressed in this paper is whether inefficient spatial arbitrage has significant welfare effects. The paper looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in transatlantic grain trade in the period 1855-1895. It shows that there is a law of one price equilibrium but that markets display spells of demand- or supply- constrained trade. Over time adjustments back to equilibrium as measured by the half-life of a shock become faster, and adjustment parameters are much larger than routinely reported in the PPP-literature. There are also significant gains from improved market efficiency but most of that improvement takes place in one step after the information ‘regime’ shifts from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era with a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. Improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transport costs.market integration; error correction; law of one price

The Cost of Ignorance: Reputational Mark-up in the Market for Tuscan Red Wines

This paper argues that imperfectly informed consumers use simple signals to identify the characteristics of wine. The geographical denomination and vintage of a wine as well as the characteristics of a particular wine will be considered here. However, the specific characteristics of a wine are difficult to ascertain ex ante given the enormous product variety. The reputation of a denomination will thus be an important guide for consumers when assessing individual wines. Denomination reputation is a function of average quality as revealed by the past performance of producers. The impact of past performance increases over time, since producers consider improved average quality to be an important factor in enhancing the price, but this necessitates monitoring of members in the denomination. The market and pricing of Tuscan red wines provide a natural experiment because there are a number of denominations of different age, each of which is typically undergoing a process of gradual increase in quality standards over time. Furthermore, Tuscan red wines are easily comparable because of great similarities in climate and choice of grape varieties, soil and exposure to sun etc. We show that new denominations have a lower average quality score and that price differentials between denominations are linked to differences in average quality, although consumers tend to exaggerate the quality gap between prestige denominations and new denominations. Thus, a producer in an old denomination benefits from a substantial mark-up relative to an equally good producer from a new denomination. Since ambitious producers in new denominations suffer from price ‘discrimination’ it can be expected that they will produce vineyard branded but denomination neutral wines, provided they can overcome the large fixed costs associated with that strategy. We show that denomination neutral wines do indeed have a stronger price-quality relationship than denomination specific wines.wine; Tuscany; price-quality relationship

The Gains from Improved Market Efficiency: Trade Before and After the Transatlantic Telegraph

This paper looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in long-distance grain trade in the second half of the 19th century when violations of the law of one price were reduced due to improved information transmission. Two markets, a major export centre, Chicago, and a major importer, Liverpool, are analyzed. We show that there was a law of one price equilibrium throughout the period but that markets displayed spells of demand- or supply-constrained trade when the law of one price was violated. Over time adjustments back to equilibrium, as measured by the half-life of a shock, become faster, violations of the law of one price become smaller and hence less persistent. There were also significant gains from improved market efficiency but that improvement took place after the information ‘regime’ shifted from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era which developed a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. Improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transport costs.market integration; error correction; law of one price

Market Integration and Convergence in the World Wheat Market, 1800-2000

This paper argues that the conventional view which sees international transport costs reductions as the major force in price convergence cannot be upheld when the period under scrutiny is extended to the last two centuries. Domestic transport costs fell for land-locked regions while real international transport costs fluctuated strongly without exhibiting a significant trend. Changes in trade policies were the single most important factor explaining convergence and divergence of prices in the long run.market integration; price convergence; protectionism

Feeding the British: Convergence and Market Efficiency in 19th Century Grain Trade

This paper traces the evolution of the international market for wheat from an emerging market structure after the repeal of the Corn Laws to a mature market characterized by efficient arbitrage after the introduction of the transatlantic telegraph and the growth of trade. Efficiency is documented using traditional price gap accounting as well as error correction modelling. Markets which traded directly with each other as well as markets which did not trade with each other were integrated. The traditional bi-lateral focus in market integration studies has been extended to a multi-variate approach which generates new insights as to the pattern of diffusion of price shocks in the international economy. Shocks in the major importing nation, Britain, dominated in the emerging market phase while shocks in the major exporting economy, United States, dominated international prices movements at the end of the 19th century.

Nanowire Transistors and RF Circuits for Low-Power Applications

The background of this thesis is related to the steadily increasing demand of higher bandwidth and lower power consumption for transmitting data. The work aims at demonstrating how new types of structures, at the nanoscale, combined with what is referred to as exotic materials, can help benefit in electronics by lowering the consumed power, possibly by an order of magnitude, compared to the industry standard, silicon (Si), used today. Nanowires are semiconductor rods, with two dimensions at the nanoscale, which can be either grown with a bottom-up technique, or etched out with a top-down approach. The research interest concerning nanowires has gradually increasing for over two decades. Today, few have doubts that nanowires represent an attractive alternative, as scaling of planar structures has reached fundamental limits. With the enhanced electrostatics of a surrounding gate, nanowires offer the possibility of continued miniaturization, giving semiconductors a prolonged window of performance improvements. As a material choice, compound semiconductors with elements from group III and V (III-Vs), such as indium arsenide (InAs), have the possibility to dramatically decrease power consumption. The reason is the inherent electron transport properties of III-Vs, where an electron can travel, in the order of, 10 times faster than in Si. In the projected future, inclusion of III-Vs, as an extension to the Si-CMOS platform, seems almost inevitable, with many of the largest electronics manufacturing companies showing great interest. To investigate the technology potential, we have fabricated InAs nanowire metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (NW-FETs). The performance has been evaluated measuring both RF and DC characteristics. The best devices show a transconductance of 1.36 mS/µm (a device with a single nanowire, normalized to the nanowire circumference) and a maximum unilateral power gain at 57 GHz (for a device with several parallel nanowires), both values at a drive voltage of 0.5 V. The performance metrics are found to be limited by the capacitive load of the contact pads as well as the resistance in the non-gated segments of the nanowires. Using computer models, we have also been able to extract intrinsic transport properties, quantifying the velocity of charge carrier injection, which is the limiting property of semi-ballistic and ballistic devices. The value for our 45-nm-in-diameter nanowires, with 200 nm channel length, is determined to 1.7∙107 cm/s, comparable to other state-of-the-art devices at the same channel length. To demonstrate a higher level of functionality, we have connected several NW-FETs in a circuit. The fabricated circuit is a single balanced differential direct conversion mixer and is composed of three stages; transconductance, mixing, and transimpedance. The basic idea of the mixer circuit is that an information signal can either be extracted from or inserted into a carrier wave at a higher frequency than the information wave itself. It is the relative size of the first and the third stage that accounts for the circuit conversion gain. Measured circuits show a voltage conversion gain of 6 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of 2 GHz. A conversion mixer is a vital component when building a transceiver, like those found in a cellphone and any other type of radio signal transmitting device. For all types of signals, noise imposes a fundamental limitation on the minimal, distinguishable amplitude. As transistors are scaled down, fewer carriers are involved in charge transport, and the impact of frequency dependent low-frequency noise gets relatively larger. Aiming towards low power applications, it is thus of importance to minimize the amount of transistor generated noise. Included in the thesis are studies of the level and origin of low-frequency 1/f-noise generated in NW-FETs. The measured noise spectral density is comparable to other non-planar devices, including those fabricated in Si. The data suggest that the level of generated noise can be substantially lowered by improving the high-k dielectric film quality and the channel interface. One significant discovery is that the part of the noise originating from the bulk nanowire, identified as mobility fluctuations, is comparably much lower than the measured noise level related to the nanowire surface. This result is promising as mobility fluctuations set the lower limit of what is achievable within a material system

The Public Procurement Fallacy - Why EU Public Procurement rules can counteract common goals of the Union

The area of public procurement has a significant financial impact on the Union market, proven by the fact that 18% of the Union’s GDP is spent by public authorities on resources that are regulated by the legislative framework surrounding public procurement. Such a significant spending therefore has the possibility of controlling the behaviour of the supply side on the market by demonstrating what public resources are preferably spent on. As a consequence, social and environmental responsibility among the member states has been given a strong position within public procurement as an effective tool to implement policies. However, this development has also encountered opposition, mainly from the Union itself otherwise supporting this kind of development. The opposition stems from the economical heritage that the Union is founded on. The area of public procurement was developed as one of many measures to maintain a fully functioning internal market, hence public contracts are meant to be awarded to the economically most advantageous tenders. Such a prerequisite ensures that there is competition between tenderers and the most competitive tenderer will therefore be awarded the contract. When taking social and environmental aspects into consideration, the lowest tender is seldom the tender that manages to include these considerations to the greatest extent possible. These aspects are discussed in this thesis, and continue to discuss to what extent the current public procurement system nevertheless can be used in order incorporate other considerations than economic ones, without breaching the same system. This subsequently leads to a conclusion on whether the current public procurement system enables not only the member state’s, but also the Union’s policies to be fully implemented. As will be shown, there is discretion to incorporate such non-economic policies, although to a differing extent depending on the specific contract to be awarded