Behaviour of Belgian firms in the context of globalisation : lessons from the conference on “International Trade : Threats and Opportunities in a Globalised World”

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the subject. Firms active internationally have specific characteristics : they are larger and more productive than firms concentrating on the home market. The costs of entering international markets determine their globalisation strategies, be it in terms of timing, the number of markets canvassed, or the choice between exporting and foreign direct investment. Information technologies have a key role in the development of trade in services, especially for analytical work. It is also shown that, in the face of increased competition from Asian products, firms are tending to concentrate their exports on their leading products and to upgrade quality. The international activities of some firms also have positive repercussions on the productivity and globalisation decisions of firms active solely on the home market. Finally, the impact of globalisation on employment is analysed from various angles. In general, trade with low-wage countries tends to increase demand for skilled labour in Belgium and to reduce demand for unskilled labour. The effects of offshoring are comparable. Finally, while multinationals manage their workforce more flexibly than domestic firms, they have nevertheless been the source of substantial job creation, particularly where the subsidiaries of foreign multinationals are concerned.international trade, foreign direct investment, microeconomic analysis, firm heterogeneity, internationalisation, spillovers, multi-product firms, multinational firms, offshoring, employment, skills

Atypical location of intracranial germinoma: a case report.

peer reviewe

General Board Geometry

Game boards are described in the Ludii general game system by their underlying graphs, based on tiling, shape and graph operators, with the automatic detection of important properties such as topological relationships between graph elements, directions and radial step sequences. This approach allows most conceivable game boards to be described simply and succinctly

Slow equivariant lump dynamics on the two sphere

The low-energy, rotationally equivariant dynamics of n CP^1 lumps on S^2 is studied within the approximation of geodesic motion in the moduli space of static solutions. The volume and curvature properties of this moduli space are computed. By lifting the geodesic flow to the completion of an n-fold cover of the moduli space, a good understanding of nearly singular lump dynamics within this approximation is obtained.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

The Casimir energy of skyrmions in the 2+1-dimensional O(3)-model

One-loop quantum corrections to the classical vortices in 2+1 dimensional O(3)-models are evaluated. Skyrme and Zeeman potential terms are used to stabilize the size of topological solitons. Contributions from zero modes, bound-states and scattering phase-shifts are calculated for vortices with winding index n=1 and n=2. For both cases the S-matrix shows a pronounced series of resonances for magnon-vortex scattering in analogy to the well-established baryon resonances in hadron physics, while vortices with n>2 are already classically unstable against decay. The quantum corrections destabilize the classically bound n=2 configuration. Approximate independence of the results with respect to changes in the renormalization scale is demonstrated.Comment: 24 pages LaTeX, 14 figure

Formation of singularities for equivariant 2+1 dimensional wave maps into the two-sphere

In this paper we report on numerical studies of the Cauchy problem for equivariant wave maps from 2+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime into the two-sphere. Our results provide strong evidence for the conjecture that large energy initial data develop singularities in finite time and that singularity formation has the universal form of adiabatic shrinking of the degree-one harmonic map from $\mathbb{R}^2$ into $S^2$.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, final version to be published in Nonlinearit

Magnetothermodynamics of BPS baby skyrmions

The magnetothermodynamics of skyrmion type matter described by the gauged BPS baby Skyrme model at zero temperature is investigated. We prove that the BPS property of the model is preserved also for boundary conditions corresponding to an asymptotically constant magnetic field. The BPS bound and the corresponding BPS equations saturating the bound are found. Further, we show that one may introduce pressure in the gauged model by a redefinition of the superpotential. Interestingly, this is related to non-extremal type solutions in the so-called fake supersymmetry method. Finally, we compute the equation of state of magnetized BSP baby skyrmions inserted into an external constant magnetic field $H$ and under external pressure $P$, i.e., $V=V(P,H)$, where $V$ is the "volume" (area) occupied by the skyrmions. We show that the BPS baby skyrmions form a ferromagnetic medium.Comment: Latex, 39 pages, 14 figures. v2: New results and references added, physical interpretation partly change

Supersymmetric WZW σ\sigma Model on Full and Half Plane

We study classical integrability of the supersymmetric U(N) $\sigma$ model with the Wess-Zumino-Witten term on full and half plane. We demonstrate the existence of nonlocal conserved currents of the model and derive general recursion relations for the infinite number of the corresponding charges in a superfield framework. The explicit form of the first few supersymmetric charges are constructed. We show that the considered model is integrable on full plane as a concequence of the conservation of the supersymmetric charges. Also, we study the model on half plane with free boundary, and examine the conservation of the supersymmetric charges on half plane and find that they are conserved as a result of the equations of motion and the free boundary condition. As a result, the model on half plane with free boundary is integrable. Finally, we conclude the paper and some features and comments are presented.Comment: 12 pages. submitted to IJMP