Learning on the quick and cheap: gains from trade through imported expertise

Gains from productivity and knowledge transmission arising from the presence of foreign firms has received a good deal of empirical attention, but micro-foundations for this mechanism are weak . Here we focus on production by foreign experts who may train domestic unskilled workers who work with them. Gains from training can in turn be decomposed into two types: (a) obtaining knowledge and skills at a lower cost than if they are self-taught at home, (b) producing domestic skilled workers earlier in time than if they the domestic economy had to rediscover the relevant knowledge through "reinventing the wheel". We develop a three-period model in which the economy initially has no skilled workers. Workers can withdraw from the labor force for two periods of self study and then produce as skilled workers in the third period. Alternatively, foreign experts can be hired in period 1 and domestic unskilled labor working with the experts become skilled in the second period. We analyze how production, training, and welfare depend on two important parameters: the cost of foreign experts and the learning (or "absorptive") capacity of the domestic economy. --learning,transmission mechanism,multinationals,imported

Learning on the Quick and Cheap: Gains from Trade Through Imported Expertise

Gains from productivity and knowledge transmission arising from the presence of foreign firms has received a good deal of empirical attention, but micro-foundations for this mechanism are weak . Here we focus on production by foreign experts who may train domestic unskilled workers who work with them. Gains from training can in turn be decomposed into two types: (a) obtaining knowledge and skills at a lower cost than if they are self-taught at home, (b) producing domestic skilled workers earlier in time than if they the domestic economy had to rediscover the relevant knowledge through reinventing the wheel'. We develop a three-period model in which the economy initially has no skilled workers. Workers can withdraw from the labor force for two periods of self study and then produce as skilled workers in the third period. Alternatively, foreign experts can be hired in period 1 and domestic unskilled labor working with the experts become skilled in the second period. We analyze how production, training, and welfare depend on two important parameters: the cost of foreign experts and the learning (or absorptive') capacity of the domestic economy.

Foreign Direct Investments in Services and the Domestic Market for Expertise

Producer services such as managerial and engineering consulting can provide domestic firms with the substantial benefits of specialized knowledge that would be costly in terms of both time and money for domestic firms to develop on their own. These intermediate services are often non-traded, or costly to trade, and are best transferred through foreign direct investment. This has important implications for public policy since policies that impact on foreign direct investment are often quite different from those that impact on trade in goods. We develop a model of these services in this paper. Results show that: (1) while imported services are partial-equilibrium substitutes for domestic skilled labor, they may be general-equilibrium complements, (2) imported services lead to differential productivity effects in final goods production so that, for example, the pattern of trade in goods can reverse when FDI is permitted, and (3) the optimal tax on FDI (which we do not advocate as a practical matter) is negative.

Jordan and Disability Rights: A Pioneering Leader in the Arab World

This article investigates Jordan’s rationale for assuming a leadership role on the disability rights issue in the Arab World. Tens of millions of people, including over ten percent of Arab families, are impacted and impoverished because of disability. To address this substantial challenge, the Jordan Royal family has leveraged Jordan’s tradition of openness and generosity coupled with one of the best educational systems in the Arab World to promote disability issues. As a result, Jordan is recognized by the international community as leading the Arab World in promoting disability rights. Jordan’s international and regional leadership on disability rights was recognized in 2005 when Jordan received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award

The role of anxiety in the stimulus preference and play patterns

The play patterns and stimulus preference of 20 preschool children were observed during low and high s tress conditions. The stress manipulation was contingent upon the child\u27s preparation for a medical appointment. Heart rate recordings and a questionnaire were used as Indices of stress. Children manifested a preference toward creative-constructive play under conditions of increased stress , with a resultant decrease in manipulative and imaginative play. Play with relevant or irrelevant toys did not change significantly during the increased stress condition. Pencil—paper measures of stress used in previous studies were significantly related to the physiological measure of stress . No sex differences were found for play patterns, stimulus preference or for stress

Alien Registration- Rutherford, Audrey R. (Calais, Washington County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/2205/thumbnail.jp

Sites of struggle: representations of family in Spanish film (1996-2004)

Electronic version excludes material for which permission has not been granted by the rights holderThis thesis analyses how ways of thinking about and meanings of family are (re)negotiated and (re)presented in six films that, to varying degrees, are categorised as cine social. The group of films consists of Familia (León de Aranoa, 1996), Solas (Zambrano, 1999), Flores de otro mundo (Bollaín, 1999), Poniente (Gutiérrez, 2002), Te doy mis ojos (Bollaín, 2003) and Cachorro (Albaladejo, 2004). Despite the growing body of critical work on the wide-ranging social themes they deal with, little sustained attention has been given to their representations of family. Scholars tend to mention it only in passing, or refer back to the allegorical/mediating function that family has often played in Spanish cinema. The objective of this thesis is to place the emphasis, as the films do themselves, on the family per se. Insights into family from a range of academic fields including philosophy, sociology, feminist and queer theories and cultural, race and gender studies are combined with close textual readings and a consideration of the modes of representation and address employed in the films to analyse how they function as sites of ideological struggle. The thesis begins by sketching out historically and culturally situated definitions of family and providing an overview of some of its most iconic representations in Spanish cinema. Establishing many of the aspects developed in the main body of the thesis the first chapter concentrates on Familia, which denaturalises the hegemonic family by presenting it as a self-conscious performance. The subsequent four chapters focus on family forms, roles, practices, commitment, power dynamics and domestic space. They explore how the films’ affective and informed modes of address position the spectator in relation to criticisms of the traditional family and evaluations of emerging family ideologies, finally proposing that they could usefully be viewed as a cycle of postmodern family melodramas

Complementarity and Increasing Returns in Intermediate Inputs: A Theoretical and Applied General-Equilibrium Analysis

Conventional analysis in the trade-industrial-organization literature suggests that, when a country has some market power over an imported good, some small level of protection must be welfare improving. This is essentially a terms-of-trade argument that is reinforced if the imported goods are substitutes for domestic goods produced with increasing returns to scale, goods that are initially underproduced in free-trade equilibrium. This paper notes that this result may not hold when (1) the imports are intermediates used in a domestic increasing-returns industry, and/or (2) the intermediates are complements for domestic inputs produced with increasing returns. We then demonstrate such an outcome with respect to Mexican protection against imported auto parts using an applied general-equilibrium model of the North American auto industry.

BMP-7 gene transfer to inflamed ferret dental pulps

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73343/1/j.1600-0722.2001.00150.x.pd