Some Thoughts on Hypercomputation

Hypercomputation is a relatively new branch of computer science that emerged from the idea that the Church--Turing Thesis, which is supposed to describe what is computable and what is noncomputable, cannot possible be true. Because of its apparent validity, the Church--Turing Thesis has been used to investigate the possible limits of intelligence of any imaginable life form, and, consequently, the limits of information processing, since living beings are, among others, information processors. However, in the light of hypercomputation, which seems to be feasibly in our universe, one cannot impose arbitrary limits to what intelligence can achieve unless there are specific physical laws that prohibit the realization of something. In addition, hypercomputation allows us to ponder about aspects of communication between intelligent beings that have not been considered befor

Trade openness and the settlement of domestic disputes in the shadow of the future

© 2015 University of Venice. We explore the severity of an ongoing dispute over a productive resource within a country that participates in world trade. In addition to arming, the contending groups in our setting choose either to engage in destructive conflict or to settle their dispute peacefully. Our central objective is to characterize the conditions under which the dispute might be resolved peacefully instead of violently. The analysis underscores the intuitive roles played by the destructiveness of open conflict and the salience of the future that have been identified in the previous literature, but it also provides some novel insights into how world prices and trade openness matter. Among other things, we find that, given conflict's destructive effects and time preferences, settlement is most likely to be supported as a stable equilibrium when the "traditional" gains from trade are largest. However, there also exist circumstances under which increased trade openness can induce destructive conflict

Globalization, Factor Endowments and Scale-Invariant Growth

The paper develops a two-country dynamic general-equilibrium model of growth without scale effects to explore the effects of globalization on long-run growth and wages. Higher quality products are endogenously discovered through stochastic and sequential global innovation contests in which challengers devote resources to R&D and technology leaders undertake rent-protection activities (RPAs) to prolong the expected duration of temporary monopoly power by frustrating the R&D effort of challengers. Globalization (i.e., a move from autarky to an integrated trading equilibrium) for two countries with identical relative factor abundance and possible differences in size does not affect the long-run growth rate of either country. However, the country that is abundant in the factor used intensively in the production of R&D services grows faster in autarky. Moreover, factor prices (adjusted for quality) and national long-run growth rates converge and are eventually equalized. Depending on international per-capita differences in factor abundance, the model also generates intra-sectoral trade, vertical and horizontal multinationals, and international outsourcing of services (R&D investment or RPAs). The growth effects of globalization between countries with different relative factor endowments are larger for smaller countries.Economic growth, scale effects, R&D, rent-protecting activities, innovation, wages.

Globalization, Factor Endowments,and Scale-Invariant Growth

The paper develops a two-country dynamic general-equilibrium model of growth without scale effects to explore the effects of globalization on long-run growth and wages. Higher quality products are endogenously discovered through stochastic and sequential global innovation contests in which challengers devote resources to R&D and technology leaders undertake rent-protection activities (RPAs) to prolong the expected duration of temporary monopoly power by frustrating the R&D effort of challengers. Globalization (i.e., a move from autarky to an integrated trading equilibrium) for two countries with identical relative factor abundance and possible differences in size does not affect the long-run growth rate of either country. However, the country that is abundant in the factor used intensively in the production of R&D services grows faster in autarky. Moreover, factor prices (adjusted for quality) and national long-run growth rates converge and are eventually equalized. Depending on international per-capita differences in factor abundance, the model also generates intra-sectoral trade, vertical and horizontal multinationals, and international outsourcing of services (R&D investment or RPAs). The growth effects of globalization between countries with different relative factor endowments are larger for smaller countries.Economic growth, scale effects, R&D, rent-protecting activities, innovation, wages

Trade and insecure resources

We construct a model of conflict and trade to study the consequences of interstate disputes over contested resources (land, oil, water or other resources) for arming, welfare and trade flows. Different trade regimes imply different costs of such disputes in terms of arming. Depending on world prices, free trade can intensify arming to such an extent that the additional security costs it brings swamp the traditional gains from trade and thus render autarky more desirable for one or all rival states. Free trade, though, is always an equilibrium, and sometimes is a dominant one with features of a prisoner's dilemma outcome. Furthermore, contestation of resources can reverse a country's apparent comparative advantage relative to its comparative advantage in the absence of conflict. And, where such conflict is present, comparisons of autarkic prices to world prices could be inaccurate predictors of trade patterns