New aspects of intra-industry trade in EU countries

Using the HS eight-digit product level trade data of EU countries for the period 1988 – 2010, we analyse Intra-industry trade within EU countries as well as with Eastern European countries and with China. We find the Eastern European countries’ rise up the quality ladder, and by contrast the substantially lower prices of China’s exports to EU countries vis-à-vis China’s imports from them. The contrast between EU trade with the Eastern European countries and with China is present even in very recent years

Product quality and intra-industry trade

In this study, we argue that the conventional intra-industry trade (IIT) index does not address the quality issue directly and propose a methodology to make full use of unit-price gap information to deduce quality differences between simultaneously exported and imported products. By applying this measure to German trade data at the eight-digit level, we study the quality improvement of Chinese export goods in its IIT with Germany. We compare the case of China with those of Eastern European countries, which are also major trading partners of Germany. Our results show that the unit-value difference in IIT between Germany and Eastern European countries is clearly narrowing. However, China\u27s export prices to Germany are much lower than Germany\u27s export prices to China, and this gap has not narrowed over the last 23 years. This is at odds with the common perception that China\u27s product quality has improved, as documented by Rodrik (2006) and Schott (2008). Our results support Xu (2010), which argued that incorporating the quality aspect of the exported goods weakens or even eliminates the evidence of the sophistication of Chinese export goods in Rodrik (2006)

Hyperactive Wnt signaling changes the developmental potential of embryonic lung endoderm

BACKGROUND: Studies in many model systems have shown that canonical signaling through the pathway downstream of ligands of the Wnt family can regulate multiple steps in organogenesis, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and lineage specification. In addition, misexpression of the Wnt-family member Wingless in Drosophila imaginal disc cells can lead to transdetermination of progenitors from one lineage to another. Conditional deletion of the β-catenin component of the Wnt signaling pathway has indicated a role for Wnt signaling in mouse lung endoderm development. The full range of effects of this pathway, which includes the transcription factor Lef1, has not been explored, however. RESULTS: To explore this issue, we expressed a constitutively active β-catenin-Lef1 fusion protein in transgenic embryos using a lung-endoderm-specific promoter from the surfactant protein C gene. Transgenic lungs appeared grossly normal, but internally they contained highly proliferative, cuboidal epithelium lacking fully differentiated lung cell types. Unexpectedly, microarray analysis and in situ hybridization revealed a mosaic of cells expressing marker genes characteristic of intestinal Paneth and goblet cells and other non-lung secretory cell types. In addition, there was strong ectopic expression of genes such as Cdx1 and Atoh1 that normally regulate gut development and early allocation of cells to intestinal secretory lineages. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that hyperactive Wnt signaling in lung progenitors expressing a lung-specific gene can induce a dramatic switch in lineage commitment and the generation of intestinal cell types. We discuss the relevance of our findings to the poorly understood pathological condition of intestinal metaplasia in humans

New Aspects of Intra-Industry trade: Evidence from EU-15 countries

This paper argues about some missing aspects of intra-industry trade (IIT) and proposes some alternative measures to better capture the nature of IIT. We show the over-time evolution of the number of IIT products, and propose an index which captures the share of the number of IIT products over the number of all traded goods. We also show how arbitrary the conventional classification into Horizontal and Vertical IIT indices are, and then propose a new measure using the unit value difference of IIT products. To discuss these issues we use trade data at HS 8 digit product level of EU 15 countries for the period 1988-2007, mainly within EU countries as well as with Eastern European countries, and with China as major EU trading partners. Our findings include the Eastern European countries' rise up the quality ladder, and the substantially lower prices of China's exports to EU 15 countries vis-à-vis China's imports from them, whose gap is not narrowing even in very recent years.Intra-industry trade, Horizontal and Vertical Product Differentiation, Quality, Unit price gap

On the stability of intra-industry trade

This paper presents the novel finding that two-way intra-industry trade (IIT) in product–country pairs is very unstable over time by using disaggregated trade data of OECD countries. Many products frequently switch among two-way, one-way and zero trade over time. To measure the stability of two-way trade, we propose a measure that we refer to as the "IIT stability index". Our estimation results using the proposed measure show that two-way trade involving markets of different sizes and long distance are likely to be unstable. In addition, primary products are more unstable than manufactured products

Sensor-based analysis of high-precision insertion tasks

金沢大学大学院自然科学研究科知的システム創成金沢大学工学部A lot of research efforts an assembly automation problems have been given by many researchers from a variety of communities, e.g., manufacturing, robotics, artificial intelligence and so on. They mostly focused on the geometric constraints related to a considered task, e.g., relative configuration change between the peg and the hole. Such an approach, however, seems valid only when the dimensional tolerance is fairly large so that it allows to change the relative configuration of the two mating parts in an obvious fashion. This paper investigates the mechanism of a high-precision insertion process from the viewpoint of sensory information. Tolerance considered in the present study is approximately 5 μm. Currently the assembly task is being conducted by skilled human workers. In order to analyze the insertion task, we focus on force and moment information and inclination measurements. Conventional approach, i.e., a position-based analysis, is not appropriate for such a narrow dimensional tolerance because it is unlikely that human operators conduct the task based on position information. This paper presents a newly developed, high-sensitivity moment sensor and experimental results in high-precision insertion tasks

Analysis of subgingival microbiota in monozygotic twins with different severity and progression risk of periodontitis

The study aims to reveal the composition of subgingival bacteria in monozygotic twins with discordant in severity and progression risk of periodontitis. Microbiome analysis indicated that most bacteria were heritable but differed in their abundance and immune response. The dysbiotic bacteria can be considered as risk markers for periodontitis progression