Democracy and Protectionism

Does democracy encourage free trade? It depends. Broadening the franchise involves transferring power from non-elected elites to the wider population, most of whom will be workers. The Hecksher-Ohlin-Stolper-Samuelson logic says that democratization should lead to more liberal trade policies in countries where workers stand to gain from free trade; and to more protectionist policies in countries where workers will benefit from the imposition of tariffs and quotas. We test and confirm these political economy implications of trade theory hypothesis using data on democracy, factor endowments, and protection in the late nineteenth century.

Trade, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution

Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but is skill-biased today. This fact is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model of the transition to sustained economic growth which can endogenously account for both these facts, by allowing the factor bias of technological innovations to reflect the profit-maximising decisions of innovators. Endowments dictated that the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution be unskilled-labor biased. The transition to skill-biased technological change was due to a growth in "Baconian knowledge" and international trade. Simulations show that the model does a good job of tracking reality, at least until the mass education reforms of the late nineteenth century.

Trade, Technology and the Great Divergence

This paper develops a model that captures the key features of the Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence between the industrializing \North" and the lagging \South." In particular, a convincing story is needed for why North-South divergence occurred so dramatically during the late 19th Century, a good hundred years after the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. To this end we construct a trade/growth model that includes both endogenous biased technologies and intercontinental trade. The Industrial Revolution began as a sequence of unskilled-labor intensive innovations which initially incited fertil- ity increases and limited human capital formation in both the North and the South. The subsequent co-evolution of trade and technological growth however fostered an inevitable di- vergence in living standards - the South increasingly specialized in production that worsened their terms of trade and spurred even greater fertility increases and educational declines. Biased technological changes in both regions only reinforced this pattern. The model high- lights how pronounced divergence ultimately arose from interactions between specialization from trade and technological forces.

Trade, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution

Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but is skill-biased today. This fact is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model of the transition to sustained economic growth which can endogenously account for both these facts, by allowing the factor bias of technological innovations to reflect the profitmaximising decisions of innovators. Endowments dictated that the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution be unskilled-labor biased. The transition to skill-biased technological change was due to a growth in “Baconian knowledge” and international trade. Simulations show that the model does a good job of tracking reality, at least until the mass education reforms of the late nineteenth century.Endogenous growth, Demography, Trade

Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution

For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded supply of raw cotton it provided. We test both hypotheses using calibrated general equilibrium models of the British economy and the rest of the world for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported. Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it was trade with the rest of the world, not the American colonies, that allowed Britain to export its rapidly expanding textile output and achieve growth through extreme specialization in response to shifting comparative advantage.

Luddites and the Demographic Transition

Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early Industrial Revolution, but is skill-biased today. This is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model which can endogenously account for these facts, where factor bias reflects profit-maximizing decisions by innovators. Endowments dictate that the early Industrial Revolution be unskilled-labor-biased. Increasing basic knowledge causes a growth takeoff, an income-led demand for fewer educated children, and the transition to skill-biased technological change. The simulated model tracks British industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries and generates a demographic transition without relying on either rising skill premia or exogenous educational supply shocks.

On Bogovski\u{\i} and regularized Poincar\'e integral operators for de Rham complexes on Lipschitz domains

We study integral operators related to a regularized version of the classical Poincar\'e path integral and the adjoint class generalizing Bogovski\u{\i}'s integral operator, acting on differential forms in $R^n$. We prove that these operators are pseudodifferential operators of order -1. The Poincar\'e-type operators map polynomials to polynomials and can have applications in finite element analysis. For a domain starlike with respect to a ball, the special support properties of the operators imply regularity for the de Rham complex without boundary conditions (using Poincar\'e-type operators) and with full Dirichlet boundary conditions (using Bogovski\u{\i}-type operators). For bounded Lipschitz domains, the same regularity results hold, and in addition we show that the cohomology spaces can always be represented by $C^\infty$ functions.Comment: 23 page

Association between urinary sodium, creatinine, albumin, and long term survival in chronic kidney disease

Dietary sodium intake is associated with hypertension and cardiovascular risk in the general population. In patients with chronic kidney disease, sodium intake has been associated with progressive renal disease, but not independently of proteinuria. We studied the relationship between urinary sodium excretion and urinary sodium:creatinine ratio and mortality or requirement for renal replacement therapy in chronic kidney disease. Adults attending a renal clinic who had at least one 24-hour urinary sodium measurement were identified. 24-hour urinary sodium measures were collected and urinary sodium:creatinine ratio calculated. Time to renal replacement therapy or death was recorded. 423 patients were identified with mean estimated glomerular filtration rate of 48ml/min/1.73m<sup>2</sup>. 90 patients required renal replacement therapy and 102 patients died. Mean slope decline in estimated glomerular filtration rate was -2.8ml/min/1.73m<sup>2</sup>/year. Median follow-up was 8.5 years. Patients who died or required renal replacement therapy had significantly higher urinary sodium excretion and urinary sodium:creatinine but the association with these parameters and poor outcome was not independent of renal function, age and albuminuria. When stratified by albuminuria, urinary sodium:creatinine was a significant cumulative additional risk for mortality, even in patients with low level albuminuria. There was no association between low urinary sodium and risk, as observed in some studies. This study demonstrates an association between urinary sodium excretion and mortality in chronic kidney disease, with a cumulative relationship between sodium excretion, albuminuria and reduced survival. These data support reducing dietary sodium intake in chronic kidney disease but further study is required to determine the target sodium intake

Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution

For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded supply of raw cotton it provided. We test both hypotheses using calibrated general equilibrium models of the British economy and the rest of the world for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported. Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it was trade with the rest of the world, not the American colonies, that allowed Britain to export its rapidly expanding textile output and achieve growth through extreme specialization in response to shifting comparative advantage.

Plant communities and elevation in the diked portion of Joe Ney Slough : a baseline assessment of a marsh restoration project in Coos Bay, Oregon

The need to preserve Oregon's estuaries has been expressed through the Land Conservation and Development Commission's Estuarine Resources Goal 16. The first use of the mitigation guideline set forth in this goal is in the Coos Bay estuary. The proposed North Bend Airport runway extension will fill 32 acres (13 ha) of tideland in Coos Bay. Mitigation of this fill is the breaching of the dikes in upper Joe Ney Slough near Charleston, Oregon, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) southeast of the airport site. Vegetation and elevation data were gathered in the diked portion of Joe Ney Slough, a control site, and an area of marsh adjacent to the proposed runway extension. Through comparsion of vegetation and elevation at the Joe Ney Slough and control sites, the historic and future pattern of salt marsh vegetation is interpreted. Thirteen plant communities are identified by cluster analysis of 682 vegetation samples from the Joe Ney Slough site: 1) Eleocharis- Agrostis alba, 2) Eleocharis-Juncus effusus var. pacificus-Jussiaea, 3) Juncus effusus var. gracilis-Lotus, 4) Oenanthe-Juncus effusus var. pacificus-Agrostis alba, 5) Carex lyngbyei, 6) Carex obnupta, 7) Agrostis alba-Potentilla, 8) Agrostis alba-Alopecurus-Potentilla, 9) Juncus balticus, 10) Holcus-Agrostis tenuis-Ranunculus, 11) Ranunculus, 12) Agrostis tenuis-Festuca arundinacea, 13) Festuca arundinacea- Agrostis tenuis. Total community biomass is mostly proportional to its areal extent. A vegetation and elevation map, both at a scale of 1 to 2,450, are presented. Seven plant communities are identified by cluster analysis of 66 vegetation samples from the control site: 1) Salicornia, 2) Carex lyngbyei, 3) Deschampsia-Juncus balticus-Triglochin, 4) Agrostis alba- Triglochin-Plantago, 5) Agrostis alba-Potentilla, 6) Juncus balticus- Agrostis alba-Potentilla-Festuca rubra, 7) Potentilla-Festuca rubra. Biomass data indicate that standing crop is higher in this natural marsh than in the diked area. A vegetation map of this site at a scale of 1 to 1,420 is presented. Analysis of 329 vegetation samples from the airport site identified a Salicornia community at elevations higher than 1.4 m above Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). Upon dike breaching, 12.5 percent of the land area within the mitigation site can be expected to become mudflat. All but a few species present in this area today can be expected to disappear with reinstatement of estuarine waters. Salt marsh species associated with silty substrates are expected to become established between elevations of 1.4 and 2.4 m above MLLW