Relationship-Specific Sunk Costs and Exporter Decisions

Using macro-level trade data, we investigate how different types of sunk costs influence decisions of exporters. We make a distinction between the relationship-specific sunk costs that depend on the interactions between the exporter and the importer and sunk costs that do not. We find that exporters’ decisions reflect sensibly their desire to minimize those sunk relationship-specific costs. Specifically, exporters of differentiated products are more likely to reenter the export market than exporters of homogenous products. Also, the former are more likely to stay in the export market and exhibit more stability when doing so than the later. All of our findings are consistent with the view that relationship with their foreign partners matters more for trade in differentiated products than in homogenous ones.

Evolution of Heart Transplantation Surgical Techniques

Organ transplantation has kindled the human imagination since the beginning of time. Prehistorically, transplantation appeared as mythological stories: from creatures with body parts from different species, the heart transplant between two Chinese soldiers by Pien Ch’iao, to the leg transplant by physician Saints Cosmas and Damian. By 19th century, the transplantation concept become possible by extensive contributions from scientists and clinicians whose works had taken generations. Although Alexis Carrel is known as the founding father of experimental organ transplantation, many legendary names had contributed to the experimental works of heart transplantation, including Guthrie, Mann, and Demikhov. The major contribution to experimental heart transplantation before the clinical era were made by a team lead by Richard Lower and Norman Shumway at Stanford University in the early 1960s. They played the vital role in developing experimental and clinical heart transplantation as it is known today. Using Shumway biatrial technique Christiaan Barnard started a new era of clinical heart transplantation, by performing the first in man human-to-human heart transplantation in 1967. The techniques of heart transplant have evolved since the first heart transplant. This chapter will summarize the techniques that have been used in clinical heart transplantation