What does the eclectic trade model say about the Samuelson conundrum?

Can growth of a trading partner harm a country? This paper seeks to answer this question through the use of an eclectic trade model which is similar in flavour to Markusen (1986). This paper makes two contributions. First, it develops a simple and tractable model of international trade based on a combination of imperfectcompetition, comparative advantage, and identical but non-homothetic preferences in a three country framework. Second, it uses this framework to consider the possibility of losses from partner-country growth in a free-trading environment. We find that the presence of nonhomothetic preferences in particular, leads to a home bias in consumption which dampens any negative welfare effects when a country's trading partners grow

Integrated equilibrium in a Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo model

This paper shows that, unlike in the Heckscher-Ohlin model, the integrated equilibrium in the Davis (1995) Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo model depends crucially on demand patterns. The area defining the integrated equilibrium is smaller, the greater is the weight placed by consumers on the good that has different technologies across countries

Estimating the production function of university students

This paper estimates the production function for university students in English universities. Taking as the output the quality of a university degree and the dropout rate, we use as inputs teaching quality and quantity, entry qualifications, and the effort level. Our results uncover new findings regarding the importance of each of these elements in university performance. In particular, we find that the quality of teaching and entry qualifications affect degree performance, but not the number of hours of teaching or private study. Controlling for unobserved ability through a 2SLS/GMM estimator suggests that entry scores have no additional impact on degree performance beyond its role as a measure of student ability.

What does the eclectic trade model say about the Samuelson conundrum?

Can growth of a trading partner harm a country? This paper seeks to answer this question through the use of an eclectic trade model which is similar in flavour to Markusen (1986). This paper makes two contributions. First, it develops a simple and tractable model of international trade based on a combination of imperfectcompetition, comparative advantage, and identical but non-homothetic preferences in a three country framework. Second, it uses this framework to consider the possibility of losses from partner-country growth in a free-trading environment. We find that the presence of nonhomothetic preferences in particular, leads to a home bias in consumption which dampens any negative welfare effects when a country's trading partners grow.

Integrated equilibrium in a Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo model

This paper shows that, unlike in the Heckscher-Ohlin model, the integrated equilibrium in the Davis (1995) Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo model depends crucially on demand patterns. The area defining the integrated equilibrium is smaller, the greater is the weight placed by consumers on the good that has different technologies across countries.

Some university students are more equal than others: Evidence from England

This paper estimates the efficiency of students in English universities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a new dataset which is able to capture the behaviour of university students. Taking as the output the classification of a university degree, we use as inputs teaching hours and quality, entry qualifications, and the effort level. We find that university students differ in terms of the efficiency with which they use inputs in producing good degrees. In a second stage, we explore the determinants of the efficiency of university students using a truncated regression model. Higher student efficiency is found to be positively and significantly related to university size, and negatively and significantly related to the proportion of part-time students and the number of academic staff. The quality of a university has no significant impact on the efficiency of its students once endogeneity of university quality is controlled for.

Phase transition between non-extremal and extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes

We discuss the phase transition between non-extremal and extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes. This transition is considered as the $T \to 0$ limit of the transition between the non-extremal and near-extremal black holes. We show that an evaporating process from non-extremal black hole to extremal one is possible to occur, but its reverse process is not possible to occur because of the presence of the maximum temperature. Furthermore, it is shown that the Hawking-Page phase transition between small and large black holes unlikely occurs in the AdS Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, version to appear in MPL

Does price matter? Overseas students In UK higher education

This paper explores the determinants of the choice of UK universities by overseas undergraduate applicants. We use data on overseas applicants in Business Studies and Engineering from 2002 to 2007, to 97 UK universities. Estimating using a Hausman-Taylor model to control for the possible correlation between our explanatory variables and unobservable university level effects, we find that the fees charged may influence the application decision of some students, but that any relationship between levels of fees and applications is nonlinear. The quality of education provided is positively and significantly related to the number of applications. Proximity to London and the existing popularity of a university among home applicants, are also significant predictors of university applications

A Multi-dimensional Code for Isothermal Magnetohydrodynamic Flows in Astrophysics

We present a multi-dimensional numerical code to solve isothermal magnetohydrodynamic (IMHD) equations for use in modeling astrophysical flows. First, we have built a one-dimensional code which is based on an explicit finite-difference method on an Eulerian grid, called the total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme. Recipes for building the one-dimensional IMHD code, including the normalized right and left eigenvectors of the IMHD Jacobian matrix, are presented. Then, we have extended the one-dimensional code to a multi-dimensional IMHD code through a Strang-type dimensional splitting. In the multi-dimensional code, an explicit cleaning step has been included to eliminate non-zero $\nabla\cdot B$ at every time step. To estimate the proformance of the code, one- and two-dimensional IMHD shock tube tests, and the decay test of a two-dimensional Alfv\'{e}n wave have been done. As an example of astrophysical applications, we have simulated the nonlinear evolution of the two-dimensional Parker instability under a uniform gravity.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, using aaspp4.sty, 22 text pages with 10 figure