Labor absorption with import substituting industrialization: An examination of elasticities of substitution in the Brazilian manufacturing sector

In the less developed countries employment generation has emerged as a major problem. Those countries characterized by import substituting industrialization have been especially unable to expand employment opportunities, and their industrialization has been capital intensive in nature. Two different explanations for the failure of import substituting industrialization to absorb labor have been put forth. One school of thought Stresses the structural characteristics of industrialization, while an alternative explanation focuses on distortions in the factor markets. Much of this controversy implicitly revolves around the magnitude of the elasticities of Substitution — the "structural critic" school maintaining very Iow, or zero, elasticities of Substitution and the "market critic" school implying relatively high elasticities of Substitution. The CES production function is fitted to a regional cross-section of twenty-two Brazilian industries. The OLS estimates, made from 1960 industrial census data, show elasticities of Substitution ranging from .44 to 2.67 with over 50 percent of those estimated falling between .8 and 1.1. For the total manufacturing sector the elasticity of Substitution (estimated across states) was 1.0. The relatively high estimated elasticities of Substitution provide Support for the "market critic" school. Using the production function estimates to generate factor demand functions, the importance of factor market distortions is indicated. Distortions in the Brazilian labor market are quantified and, assuming their removal, a Iower bound estimate of the resulting employment generation is made, amounting to an increase of 11.4 percent in total manufacturing employment. Because of data limitations and the difficulties in quantification, no similar estimates were made regarding the capital market distortions. --

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Responsible Brains: Neuroscience, Law, and Human Culpability

[This download includes the table of contents and chapter 1.] When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant on trial for murder were found to have serious brain damage, which brain parts or processes would have to be damaged for him to be considered not responsible, or less responsible, for the crime? The authors argue that evidence from neuroscience and the other cognitive sciences can illuminate the nature of responsibility and agency. They go on to offer a novel and comprehensive neuroscientific theory of human responsibility

A Functional Ecological Comparison of three Sponge Species from the Lower Florida Keys

The shallow, tidal flats off the islands of the lower Florida Keys represent a harsh environment for sessile marine invertebrates. This habitat is home to three taxonomically distinct sponge species that share similar rope morphologies: Cliona varians forma varians, Ircinia variabilis, and Neopetrosia subtriangularis. Despite sharing a habitat, these three species differ in their symbiont regime, with C. varians hosting dinoflagellate photosymbionts, and I. variabilis and N. subtriangularis hosting cyanobacterial photosymbionts. We conducted experiments to measure other ecological differences between these species. The sponges were all assayed for pumping rates using dye-video analysis and tissue samples were taken to compare the composition and functional genes of their microbiomes. The results indicated that N. subtriangularis had a significantly higher pumping rate than the other species. The microbiomes of the species varied, and the microbiome functional gene screening provided evidence that C. varians forma varians hosts nitrogen fixing bacteria, that I. variabilis hosts methane metabolizing bacteria, and that N. subtriangularis hosts nitric oxide reducing bacteria. More work is currently underway to examine the metabolism of these sponges, giving us insight into the unique ecology of this harsh habitat

Analytic Scattering and Refraction Models for Exoplanet Transit Spectra

Observations of exoplanet transit spectra are essential to understanding the physics and chemistry of distant worlds. The effects of opacity sources and many physical processes combine to set the shape of a transit spectrum. Two such key processes - refraction and cloud and/or haze forward scattering - have seen substantial recent study. However, models of these processes are typically complex, which prevents their incorporation into observational analyses and standard transit spectrum tools. In this work, we develop analytic expressions that allow for the efficient parameterization of forward scattering and refraction effects in transit spectra. We derive an effective slant optical depth that includes a correction for forward scattered light, and present an analytic form of this correction. We validate our correction against a full-physics transit spectrum model that includes scattering, and we explore the extent to which the omission of forward scattering effects may bias models. Also, we verify a common analytic expression for the location of a refractive boundary, which we express in terms of the maximum pressure probed in a transit spectrum. This expression is designed to be easily incorporated into existing tools, and we discuss how the detection of a refractive boundary could help indicate the background atmospheric composition by constraining the bulk refractivity of the atmosphere. Finally, we show that opacity from Rayleigh scattering and collision induced absorption will outweigh the effects of refraction for Jupiter-like atmospheres whose equilibrium temperatures are above 400-500 K.Comment: ApJ accepted; submitted Feb. 7, 201

Methodological notes on analyzing the manufactured export performance in less developed countries

Import substituting industrialization has increasingly come under criticism as a strategy for economic growth in the less developed countries. Many economists, in both the developed and less developed countries, have become highly skeptical of the benefits of inward looking development and have advocated outward looking growth, emphasizing the export of manufactures, as a viable growth strategy. In analyzing the manufactured export performance of the less developed countries, a number of methodological questions are raised. This paper, originally prepared as three separate notes, focuses on some usable methodological tools for the economic analyst. Chapter I provides a discussion of some of the econometric problems involved in quantitatively estimating the determinants of manufactured export behavior in less developed countries. An ordinary least squares regression model for analyzing manufactured export behavior in the relatively short run is developed and discussed. In Chapter II neo-classical microeconomic theory is adapted to the problem of analyzing export behavior of the industrial firm in a less developed economy. Under the assumptions of profit maximizing behavior and economically separate domestic and foreign markets, a micro model of export behavior is developed subject to the constraint of the firm's production function. Chapter III presents a methodology for measuring the demand side contribution of import substitution and export expansion as ex post explanations of industrial growth. An alternative, more comprehensive approach to the traditional Chenery and recent Morley-Smith approaches to measurement is developed

Labor absorption with import substituting industrialization: An examination of elasticities of substitution in the Brazilian manufacturing sector

In the less developed countries employment generation has emerged as a major problem. Those countries characterized by import substituting industrialization have been especially unable to expand employment opportunities, and their industrialization has been capital intensive in nature. Two different explanations for the failure of import substituting industrialization to absorb labor have been put forth. One school of thought Stresses the structural characteristics of industrialization, while an alternative explanation focuses on distortions in the factor markets. Much of this controversy implicitly revolves around the magnitude of the elasticities of Substitution — the "structural critic" school maintaining very Iow, or zero, elasticities of Substitution and the "market critic" school implying relatively high elasticities of Substitution. The CES production function is fitted to a regional cross-section of twenty-two Brazilian industries. The OLS estimates, made from 1960 industrial census data, show elasticities of Substitution ranging from .44 to 2.67 with over 50 percent of those estimated falling between .8 and 1.1. For the total manufacturing sector the elasticity of Substitution (estimated across states) was 1.0. The relatively high estimated elasticities of Substitution provide Support for the "market critic" school. Using the production function estimates to generate factor demand functions, the importance of factor market distortions is indicated. Distortions in the Brazilian labor market are quantified and, assuming their removal, a Iower bound estimate of the resulting employment generation is made, amounting to an increase of 11.4 percent in total manufacturing employment. Because of data limitations and the difficulties in quantification, no similar estimates were made regarding the capital market distortions