Agricultural Trade Liberalisation and Economic Growth in Developing Countries: Analysis of Distributional Consequences

The article analyses the impact of agricultural trade liberalisation on economic growth as well as on the welfare of rural livelihoods in developing countries through technological transformation in the agricultural sector. The article, based on existing literature, considers the background and reasons for the policy shift in developing economies away from agricultural protection and toward trade liberalisation. It attempts to shed light on the debate over the distributional consequences resulting from trade liberalisation. It also analyses how agricultural trade policy reforms affect poverty and inequality, since the majority of the population of developing countries is involved with agriculture, and these households are predominantly rural poor and functionally landless. The study found that trade liberalisation in the agricultural sector has had positive impacts on the agricultural sector but has contributed very little to poverty reduction because of the lack of income distribution and inequality measures in the policy sphere. The article might be useful for policy makers and researchers.agriculture, developing countries, growth, inequality, trade liberalisation, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development, Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use, Political Economy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Multibaseline gravitational wave radiometry

We present a statistic for the detection of stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs) using radiometry with a network of multiple baselines. We also quantitatively compare the sensitivities of existing baselines and their network to SGWBs. We assess how the measurement accuracy of signal parameters, e.g., the sky position of a localized source, can improve when using a network of baselines, as compared to any of the single participating baselines. The search statistic itself is derived from the likelihood ratio of the cross correlation of the data across all possible baselines in a detector network and is optimal in Gaussian noise. Specifically, it is the likelihood ratio maximized over the strength of the SGWB, and is called the maximized-likelihood ratio (MLR). One of the main advantages of using the MLR over past search strategies for inferring the presence or absence of a signal is that the former does not require the deconvolution of the cross correlation statistic. Therefore, it does not suffer from errors inherent to the deconvolution procedure and is especially useful for detecting weak sources. In the limit of a single baseline, it reduces to the detection statistic studied by Ballmer [Class. Quant. Grav. 23, S179 (2006)] and Mitra et al. [Phys. Rev. D 77, 042002 (2008)]. Unlike past studies, here the MLR statistic enables us to compare quantitatively the performances of a variety of baselines searching for a SGWB signal in (simulated) data. Although we use simulated noise and SGWB signals for making these comparisons, our method can be straightforwardly applied on real data.Comment: 17 pages and 19 figure

Ultra-short pulses from quantum cascade lasers for terahertz time domain spectroscopy

Although the quantum cascade laser (QCL) is a promising compact semiconductor terahertz (THz) source, its success in creating ultra-short pulses is limited. THz short pulses have many applications, including in time domain spectroscopy. There have been demonstrations of short pulse (few picosecond duration) generation from THz QCLs based on active modelocking, although the stability of the pulses is limited. We show that THz QCLs can be modelocked passively using a two-section cavity, where the sections are in- dependently controlled by bias voltages. While one of the sections produces gain, the other produces quantum coherent saturable absorption and helps to create ultra-short pulses

A Shifting Paradigm of Work-Life Balance in Service Context-An Empirical Study

Purpose: The study examined the effect of various ‘work-life balance’ determinants such as employee benefits, work environment, workload, flextime and discrimination on work culture and job satisfaction. Introduction: In the second half of the last century, tremendous environmental, economic, political, and socio cultural changes contributed to the restructuring of couples in their relation to work. Literature review: Several fundamental changes in family and work structures, such as the participation of women in the workforce, family arrangements that deviate from traditional gender-based roles (e.g. dual-earner couples), and technological changes (e.g. cell phones, portable computers) have reduced the separation between job and family life. Methods: Data were collected from a multinational insurance firm based on structured questionnaire. Conclusion: Results indicated that employee benefits, work environment, flextime, and discrimination were significantly related with job satisfaction. Although work environment and workload were related significantly with work, culture but work culture has no relationship with flextime, and discrimination of the employees. Recommendations: The findings suggest that incorporating these dimensions may render service organization with the potent to improve existing level of performance and job satisfaction.Work culture, job satisfaction, flextime, discrimination, benefits and facilities