The Role Of China And The United States In The Global Economy Of The 21st Century

The world is characterized by brutal global competition. When talking about competition during much of the 80s and 90s, we generally refer to the triage of Western European, Japanese, and U.S. firms. Today, we have to add firms from Brazil, Chile, China, and India to this elite bunch. This competition is good for the consumer -- prices of manufactured goods have been kept in check, and there is a general feeling of economic prosperity around the world. According to a recent article in The Economist global output has grown by over 4.3 % annually. The growing middle class in India and China has recorded the sharpest increase in the number of billionaires in the last decade; therefore the world has every reason to feel optimistically euphoric, even if China and India will reap a bigger share of the economic pie. In the words of Drucker, India and China are “…rapidly transforming their economies…they can now produce technologically sophisticated and financially rewarding offerings that are diminishing American standards.” (Drucker, 2004)  The concern with the advent of China has prompted more protectionist oriented legislation against China: textiles. The U.S. Congress also blocked a recent attempt by China’s China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to acquire Chevron. A recent Harris Poll indicated that 40% of the people surveyed believe that China will be stronger than the U.S. within a decade, and over 50% believe that China will have a negative effect on the U.S. economy

THE OPERATIONAL HEDGING PROPERTIES OF INTANGIBLE ASSETS: THE CASE OF NON-VOLUNTARY FOREIGN ASSET SELLOFFS

In this paper we examine the valuation effects and long-term performance of U.S. multinational firms involved in forced transfers of their foreign operating assets during the 1965-1988 period. The evidence suggests that the operational hedging ability of the firm to address country risk (nationalization threats) is related to the level of its intangible assets. While it is well known that firms with high levels of intangible assets prefer foreign direct investment, our results show that intangible assets have hidden properties of protection against country risk as well. We document significantly negative abnormal returns only for divesting firms with low levels of intangible assets, but not for firms with high levels of intangible assets. In addition, we show that low (high) growth firms are involved in partial (complete) withdrawals, and show that the long-term economic performance of firms choosing the complete withdrawal strategy is better than those that opt to remain. We argue that management's attempt to maintain economic links in a hostile foreign environment can be attributed in part to the firm's low growth opportunities, performance, and lack of contingent plans to address country risk

Circular dichroism of designed peptide helices and β-hairpins: analysis of trp- and tyr-rich peptides

VCD versus ECD spectroscopy. Peptides rich in aromatic residues yield anomalous far-UV electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra that preclude secondary structure assignment. The utility of vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) in conformation analysis is demonstrated by using a set of well-defined peptide helices and hairpins containing proximal aromatic residues

Sequential capital investment decision making under extreme cash fl ow situations: evidence using Monte Carlo simulation

Uncertainty influences a decision maker's choices when making sequential capital investment decisions. With the possibility of extremely negative cash inflows, firms may need to curtail operations significantly. Traditional Net Present Value analysis does not allow for efficient management of these problems. In addition, firm managers may behave irrationally by accepting negative Net Present Value projects in the short term. This paper presents a Monte Carlo simulation based model to provide policy insights on how to incorporate extreme cash flows and manager irrationality scenarios into the capital budgeting process. This paper presents evidence that firms with irrational managers and experiencing extremely negative cash flows may, under certain conditions, reap long term rewards associated with the acceptance of negative Net Present Value projects in the short term. These benefits are largest if cost ratios (discount rates) are small, or investment horizons are high. We argue that acceptance of short term negative Net Present Value projects implies the purchase of a long term real option which can generate positive long term cash flows under certain conditions

Molecular structure of Boc-Aib-Aib-Phe-Met-NH<SUB>2</SUB>·DMSO. A fragment of a biologically active enkephalin analogue

The tetrapeptide t-butyloxycarbonyl-&#945;-aminoisobutyryl-&#945;-aminoisobutyryl-L- phenylalanyl-L-methionyl amide crystallizes in the orthorhombic space group P212121 with a= 9.096, b= 18.067, c= 21.701 &#197; and Z= 4. The crystals contain one molecule of dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) associated with each peptide. The structure has been solved by direct methods and refined to an R value of 0.103 for 2 672 observed reflections. The peptide adopts a distorted 310 helical structure stabilized by two intramolecular 4 &#8594; 1 hydrogen bonds between the Boc CO and Aib(1) CO groups and the NH groups of Phe(3) and Met(4), respectively. A long hydrogen bond (N...O = 3.35 &#197;) is also observed between Aib(2) CO and one of the terminal amide hydrogens. The DMSO molecule is strongly hydrogen bonded to the Aib(1) NH group. The solid-state conformation agrees well with proposals made on the basis of n.m.r. studies in solution

Role of ABC transporter MRPA, γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase and ornithine decarboxylase in natural antimony-resistant isolates of Leishmania donovani

Objectives: The resistance of clinical isolates of Leishmania donovani to sodium antimony gluconate (SAG), the mainstay of treatment in Indian visceral leishmaniasis, has become a critical issue in India. The present work investigates the mechanism of resistance to SAG in parasites isolated from patients who are unresponsive to SAG. Methods and results: Susceptibility to SAG as determined in vitro with intracellular amastigotes correlated well with the clinical response. The ABC transporter gene MRPA was amplified in resistant field isolates as part of an extrachromosomal circle. Co-amplification of the pterin reductase gene (PTR1) and MRPA suggests amplification of the H locus in SAG-resistant isolates. Amplification of MRPA was correlated to increased RNA as determined by real-time PCR. MRPA is an ABC-thiol transporter, and cysteine and glutathione were increased in the resistant isolates. Ornithine decarboxylase (a rate limiting enzyme in polyamine biosynthesis), and γ -glutamylcysteine synthetase (a rate limiting enzyme in glutathione biosynthesis), the two building blocks of the main cellular thiol trypanothione, were overexpressed in some of the resistant isolates. Conclusions: A variety of resistance mechanisms to SAG, most of them consistent with a model based on the study of resistance in vitro, were present in clinical isolates from the same geographical region

Gravitational collapse in an expanding background and the role of substructure II: Excess power at small scales and its effect of collapse of structures at larger scales

We study the interplay of clumping at small scales with the collapse and relaxation of perturbations at larger scales using N-Body simulations. We quantify the effect of collapsed haloes on perturbations at larger scales using two point correlation function, moments of counts in cells and mass function. The purpose of the study is twofold and the primary aim is to quantify the role played by collapsed low mass haloes in the evolution of perturbations at large scales, this is in view of the strong effect seen when the large scale perturbation is highly symmetric. Another reason for this study is to ask whether features or a cutoff in the initial power spectrum can be detected using measures of clustering at scales that are already non-linear. The final aim is to understand the effect of ignoring perturbations at scales smaller than the resolution of N-Body simulations. We find that these effects are ignorable if the scale of non-linearity is larger than the average inter-particle separation in simulations. Features in in the initial power spectrum can be detected easily if the scale of these features is in the linear regime, detecting such features becomes difficult as the relevant scales become non-linear. We find no effect of features in initial power spectra at small scales on the evolved power spectra at large scales. We may conclude that in general, the effect on evolution of perturbations at large scales of clumping on small scales is very small and may be ignored in most situations.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Adaptive TreePM: An Adaptive Resolution Code for Cosmological N-body Simulations

Cosmological N-Body simulations are used for a variety of applications. Indeed progress in the study of large scale structures and galaxy formation would have been very limited without this tool. For nearly twenty years the limitations imposed by computing power forced simulators to ignore some of the basic requirements for modeling gravitational instability. One of the limitations of most cosmological codes has been the use of a force softening length that is much smaller than the typical inter-particle separation. This leads to departures from collisionless evolution that is desired in these simulations. We propose a particle based method with an adaptive resolution where the force softening length is reduced in high density regions while ensuring that it remains well above the local inter-particle separation. The method, called the Adaptive TreePM, is based on the TreePM code. We present the mathematical model and an implementation of this code, and demonstrate that the results converge over a range of options for parameters introduced in generalizing the code from the TreePM code. We explicitly demonstrate collisionless evolution in collapse of an oblique plane wave. We compare the code with the fixed resolution TreePM code and also an implementation that mimics adaptive mesh refinement methods and comment on the agreement, and disagreements in the results. We find that in most respects the ATreePM code performs at least as well as the fixed resolution TreePM in highly over-dense regions, from clustering and number density of haloes, to internal dynamics of haloes. We also show that the adaptive code is faster than the corresponding high resolution TreePM code.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in the MNRA

Psychic distance : antecedents, retail strategy implications and performance outcomes

The authors propose a conceptual model of the psychic distance&ndash;organizational performance relationship that incorporates organizational factors (international experience and centralization of decision making), entry strategy, and retail strategy implications. The findings suggest that when entering psychically distant markets, retailers should adopt low-cost/low-control entry strategies and adapt their retail strategy to a greater extent than in psychically close markets. However, the authors find that such strategic responses have an adverse effect on performance. They find that international experience, psychic distance, entry strategy, and retail strategy adaptation are significant drivers of organizational performance and factors that determine critical success in international retailing.<br /