EXTENSION ACCOUNTABILITY--A FEDERAL PERSPECTIVE

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

How Much of Chinese Exports is Really Made In China? Assessing Domestic Value-Added When Processing Trade is Pervasive

The rise of China in world trade has brought both benefits and anxiety to other economies. For many policy questions, it is crucial to know the extent of domestic value added (DVA) in exports, but the computation is more complicated when processing trade is pervasive. We propose a method for computing domestic and foreign contents that allows for processing trade. By our estimation, the share of domestic content in exports by the PRC was about 50% before China’s WTO membership, and has risen to over 60% since then. There are also interesting variations across sectors. Those sectors that are likely labeled as relatively sophisticated such as electronic devices have particularly low domestic content (about 30% or less).

European Economic Integration and the Consequences for U.S. Agriculture

The pace of political-economic change in former East Bloc nations of Europe defies accurate prediction. Some events such as more price-directed markets are predictable enough but integration of former East Bloc countries into the European Community remains a matter of speculation. Analysis indicates that the economics of agriculture favors acceptance by the European Community of members of the European Free Trade Association before former members of the. East Bloc. Analysis also indicates the considerable agricultural production potential of Central and East Europe will be unleased first by market-directed economies and later by integration with the EC -- if the latter occurs. US consumers gain more than producers lose so the economic welfare of Americans is raised modestly.International Relations/Trade,

How are global value chains fragmented and extended in China\u27s domestic production networks?

Global value chains are supported not only directly by domestic regions that export goods and services to the world market, but also indirectly by other domestic regions that provide parts, components, and intermediate services to final exporting regions. In order to better understand the nature of a country’s position and degree of participation in global value chains, we need to more fully examine the role of individual domestic regions. Understanding the domestic components of global supply chains is especially important for large developing countries like China and India, where there may be large variations in economic scale and development between domestic regions. This paper proposes a new framework for measuring domestic linkages to global value chains. This framework measures domestic linkages by endogenously embedding a country’s domestic interregional input-output (IO) table in an international IO model. Using this framework, we can more clearly describe how global production is fragmented and extended through linkages across a country’s domestic regions. This framework will also enable us to estimate how value added is created and distributed in both domestic and international segments of global value chains. For examining the validity and usefulness of this new approach, some numerical results are presented and discussed based on the 2007 Chinese interregional IO table, China customs statistics at the provincial level, and World Input-Output Tables (WIOTs)

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: Tracing Value Added in Global Production Chains

This paper provides both a conceptual framework for decomposing a country’s gross exports into value-added components by source and a new bilateral database on value-added trade. Our parsimonious framework integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the literature. To illustrate the potential of the decomposition, we present a number of applications including re-computing revealed comparative advantages and constructing an index to describe whether a country-sector is likely in the upstream or downstream of global production chains.

The Dipole Moment of Styrene

The dipole moment of styrene, calculated from eighteen solutions ranging in weight fraction from 0 - 100%, was found to be 0.181 D. The method and results of the measurement were compared to the method and results of Petro and Smyth for the same compound. It was concluded that the atomic polarization in styrene in small, and thus is taken into account by the measurement of the molar refraction at the sodium D line. It was further proposed that the relatively large dipole moments of trans-p, βdinitrostyrene and trans-p, βdicyano-styrene may be due, at least in part, to abnormally large atomic polarizations

Additional work of breathing from trigger errors in mechanically ventilated children

BACKGROUND: Patient-ventilator asynchrony is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. A direct causative relationship between Patient-ventilator asynchrony and adverse clinical outcome have yet to be demonstrated. It is hypothesized that during trigger errors excessive pleural pressure swings are generated, contributing to increased work-of-breathing and self-inflicted lung injury. The objective of this study was to determine the additional work-of-breathing and pleural pressure swings caused by trigger errors in mechanically ventilated children. METHODS: Prospective observational study in a tertiary paediatric intensive care unit in an university hospital. Patients ventilated > 24 h and < 18 years old were studied. Patients underwent a 5-min recording of the ventilator flow-time, pressure-time and oesophageal pressure-time scalar. Pressure-time-product calculations were made as a proxy for work-of-breathing. Oesophageal pressure swings, as a surrogate for pleural pressure swings, during trigger errors were determined. RESULTS: Nine-hundred-and-fifty-nine trigger errors in 28 patients were identified. The additional work-of-breathing caused by trigger errors showed great variability among patients. The more asynchronous breaths were present the higher the work-of-breathing of these breaths. A higher spontaneous breath rate led to a lower amount of trigger errors. Patient-ventilator asynchrony was not associated with prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation or paediatric intensive care stay. CONCLUSIONS: The additional work-of-breathing caused by trigger errors in ventilated children can take up to 30-40% of the total work-of-breathing. Trigger errors were less common in patients breathing spontaneously and those able to generate higher pressure-time-product and pressure swings. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Not applicable