The Political Economy of Declining Industries: Senescent Industry Collapse Revisited

One of the most robust empirical regularities in the political economy of trade is the persistence of protection. This paper explains persistent protection in terms of the interaction between industry adjustment, lobbying, and the political response. Faced with a trade shock, owners of industry-specific factors can undertake costly adjustment, or they can lobby politicians for protection and thereby mitigate the need for adjustment. The choice depends on the returns from adjusting relative to lobbying. By introducing an explicit lobbying process, it can be shown that the level of tariffs is an increasing function of past tariffs. Since current adjustment diminishes future lobbying intensity, and protection reduces adjustment, current protection raises future protection. This simple lobbying feedback effect has an important dynamic resource allocation effect: declining industries contract more slowly over time and never fully adjust. In addition, the model makes clear that the type of collapse predicted by Cassing and Hillman (1986) is only possible under special conditions, such as a fixed cost to lobbying. The paper also considers the symmetric case of lobbying in growing industries.

Répartition géographique de la bactériose vasculaire du manioc en Colombie et variabilité de l'agent pathogène

Le manioc est une culture importante en Colombie puisqu'elle couvre environ 196 000 ha. L'un des facteurs limitants de la production est une maladie causée par une bactérie : #Xanthomonas axonopodis# pv. #manihotis# (Xam). La distribution géographique de la maladie et son incidence sont précisées dans les différentes zones écologiques de la Colombie. Les souches de cette bactérie collectées dans trois zones ont été caractérisées selon une approche moléculaire, leur agressivité étant évaluée sur la plante. Vingt-six groupes de souches de Xam ont pu être définis et leur répartition dans les 3 zones écologiques analysée. Dans une zone de haute altitude, la variabilité de l'agent pathogène est très faible. L'impact de cette étude pour l'amélioration variétale vis-à-vis de la résistance à la bactériose est discuté. Les perspectives d'étude sur les gènes de résistance sont également abordés. (Résumé d'auteur

Geography, economics and political systems: A bird's eye view

As early on as in the writings of Montesquieu and Adam Smith, geography plays a preponderant role in explaining disparity of development between nation‐states. Smith placed the emphasis on topography, and especially on the role of coasts and rivers in the development of regions. For Montesquieu, climate was an element essential to economic development: His theory asserted that climate may substantially influence the nature and development of human societies. For a long time, economists did not pay attention to geography, and this field was left to sociologists, historians, and geographers. Only lately economists have started analyzing the impact of geography, and this article will examine the various avenues of research that have been taken, wherein the notion of geography mostly encompasses matters related to location, soils, and topography; and yet also climate and epidemiology. The first part focuses on the relationship between geography and economics, while the second part relates geography to political systems and public economics

Sound and light from fractures in scintillators

Prompted by intriguing events observed in certain particle-physics searches for rare events, we study light and acoustic emission simultaneously in some inorganic scintillators subject to mechanical stress. We observe mechanoluminescence in ${Bi}_4{Ge}_{3}{O}_{12}$, ${CdWO}_{4}$ and ${ZnWO}_{4}$, in various mechanical configurations at room temperature and ambient pressure. We analyze how the light emission is correlated to acoustic emission during fracture. For ${Bi}_4{Ge}_{3}{O}_{12}$, we set a lower bound on the energy of the emitted light, and deduce that the fraction of elastic energy converted to light is at least $3 \times 10^{-5}$

Modular optical design of the LHC experimental insertions

To optimize the use of space, the LHC insertions combine dispersion matching (arc and ring separation/recombination), beam focalization at the interaction point and betatron phase advance control within a unique optical module. In this paper, we show that the significant dispersion produced by the separation/recombination dipoles can be treated separately, allowing a separation of the optical functions in the insertion. This methodology yields the flexibility and robustness needed to adapt the insertion to a lattice with a variable tune split