Measuring the impacts of global trade reform with optimal aggregators of distortions

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed information on trade than on production and consumption. The approach reflects the fact that different aggregators are needed for expenditure on imported goods and for tariff revenues, and allows for incorporation of both intensive and extensive margins of adjustment to reform. Applications confirm that the technique is straightforward enough for widespread use, and point to close to a doubling of the welfare gains at the intensive margin when using the highest possible level of international commodity disaggregation, with larger gains in developing regions than in the industrial countries. The measured income gains increase along the entire path of liberalization, with slightly larger increases in the earlier stages, where the gaps between the responses of the expenditure and tariff revenue aggregators are largest. Sensitivity analysis suggests that, for global trade reform, the ease of substitution between tariff lines is much more important than that between varieties from different countries.Free Trade,International Trade and Trade Rules,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Debt Markets

Implications of the Doha market access proposals for developing countries

This paper uses detailed data on bound and applied tariffs to assess the consequences of the World Trade Organization’s December 2008 Modalities for tariffs levied and faced by developing countries, and the welfare implications of these reforms. The authors find that the tiered formula for agriculture would halve tariffs in industrial countries and lower them more modestly in developing countries. In non-agriculture, the formulas would reduce the tariff peaks facing developing countries and cut average industrial country tariffs by more than a third. The authors use a political-economy framework to assess the implications of flexibilities for the size of the tariff cuts and find they are likely to substantially reduce the outcome. However, despite the flexibilities, there are likely to be worthwhile gains, with applied tariffs facing developing countries cut by about 20 percent in agriculture and 27 percent in non-agriculture, and sizeable cuts in tariffs facing industrial countries. The welfare impacts of reform are evaluated using a new approach to aggregation that improves on the traditional, flawed approach of weighted-average tariffs. This substantially increases the estimated benefits of an agreement along the lines of these modalities, with estimated global income gains of up to $160 billion per year from market access reform.International Trade and Trade Rules,Agribusiness,Free Trade,Trade Policy,Debt Markets

Welfare Impacts of Agricultural and Non-Agricultural Trade Reforms

The variability of protection rates within sectors is frequently particularly high in agriculture relative to non-agriculture. Standard aggregation procedures ignore the variability within sectors, and underweight the importance of highly protected sectors. It therefore seems likely that they underestimate the potential benefits of agricultural trade reform relative to non-agricultural reform. This study examines this question using a new procedure for aggregating trade distortions. It finds that the key impact of using better aggregators is to increase the benefits of both agricultural and non-agricultural reform. It finds that using optimal aggregation procedures increases the measured importance of agricultural trade reform relative to non-agricultural reform from a very high initial level, but only by around two percentage points.agricultural trade, nonagricultural trade, trade distortions, tariffs, aggregation, World Trade Organization, WTO, trade reform, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q13, Q17, Q18,

Measuring the impacts of global trade reform with optimal aggregators of distortions:

Traditional weighted-average measures of trade distortions are widely used in analyzing global and regional reforms, despite well-known deficiencies. This paper develops and applies optimal aggregators for the real-world case of multiple countries and commodities with much more detailed information on trade than on production and consumption. The approach reflects that different aggregators are needed for expenditure on imported goods and tariff revenues, and allows for incorporation of both intensive and extensive margins of adjustment to reform. Applications confirm that the technique is straightforward enough for widespread use, and point to close to a doubling of the welfare gains at the intensive margin when using the highest possible level of international commodity disaggregation, with larger gains in developing regions than in the industrial countries. The measured income gains increase along the entire path of liberalization, with slightly larger increases in the earlier stages, where the gaps between the responses of the expenditure and tariff revenue aggregators are largest. Sensitivity analysis suggests that, for global trade reform, the ease of substitution between tariff lines is much more important than that between varieties from different countries.aggregation, distortions, economic welfare measurement, Trade reform, trade restrictiveness,

The effect of sinoaortic denervation on renal wrap hypertension

The purpose of this study was to determine whether sinoaortic deafferentation (SAD) alters the severity of hypertension or sympathoadrenal contribution to mean blood pressure (MAP) during renal wrap hypertension. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were implanted with radiotelemetry transmitters for 24-hour recording of MAP and heart rate. All rats underwent either SAD or sham SAD (Intact) surgery and were allowed to recover for 10 to 14 days. The rats were then assigned to a normotensive (Sham) group or a hypertensive (Wrap) group in which 1-kidney figure-8 renal wrap was performed. SAD increased the acute MAP response to renal wrap (Intact-Sham=5+/-1 mm Hg, Intact-Wrap=45+/-3 mm Hg, SAD-Sham=3+/-3 mm Hg, SAD-Wrap=58+/-4 mm Hg) and increased the lability of MAP (SD of MAP; Intact-Sham=3.8+/-0.2, Intact-Wrap=4.2+/-0.3, SAD-Sham=9. 6+/-1.4, SAD-Wrap=9.7+/-1.4). MAP was not different between SAD and Intact rats during 4 weeks after renal wrap or sham surgery; however, induction of hypertension produced additional MAP variability that was independent of SAD (Intact-Sham=4.6+/-0.4, Intact-Wrap=6.2+/-0.6, SAD-Sham=6.3+/-0.5, SAD-Wrap=10.8+/-1.5). In a separate group of rats, the sympathoadrenal contribution to MAP was assessed by the depressor response to ganglionic blockade and plasma norepinephrine at rest and after neuronal uptake inhibition with desipramine. The depressor response to ganglionic blockade was significantly increased by renal wrap and by SAD (Intact-Sham=-49+/-2 mm Hg, Intact-Wrap=-73+/-4 mm Hg, SAD-Sham=-77+/-5 mm Hg, SAD-Wrap=-96+/-6 mm Hg). In the 3 groups with enhanced ganglionic blockade responses, desipramine caused a significant increase in plasma norepinephrine. These results indicate that SAD does not alter the development of renal wrap hypertension but does increase the sympathoadrenal contribution to MAP in both normotensive and hypertensive animal

Do Trait Emotional Intelligence and Dispositional Mindfulness Have a Complementary Effect on the Children's and Adolescents' Emotional States?

Mindfulness is both a non-judgmental and present-centered awareness, which has been applied to reduce negative emotions. On the other hand, Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI) is the way of how good people perceive their emotional intelligence abilities (perceiving, expressing, understanding, and regulating emotions), which are involved in people's social functioning. This empirical study was designed to analyze whether dispositional mindfulness (DM) and TEI have a potential combined role for children and adolescent's emotional states. In a sample of primary school students (N = 318), age ranged from 8 to 16 years old (M = 11.25, SD = 2.20), participants filled a TEI measure (ESCQ, Emotional skills and competence questionnaire) and two measures of DM (CAMM, Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure and AFQ-Y, Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth). Measures selected included: PANAS (Positive affect and negative affect schedule), White Bear Suppression Inventory (a thought suppression inventory), and STAIC (State-Trait Anxiety for Children). Findings pointed out that TEI measures (labeling and expression, understanding, and managing emotions) were positively and significantly related to positive emotional states (especially, positive affect and balance) and negatively with a lower association with state anxiety. However, DM measures were both negatively and strongly associated with negative emotional states (thought suppression, negative affect, and anxiety). Conclusions indicate that a combined effect of both TEI skills and DM based interventions would be more complete than each one separately for better social functioning of children and teenagers

Stakeholder-designed scenarios for global food security assessments

To guide policymaking, decision makers require a good understanding of the long-term drivers of food security and their interactions. Scenario analysis is widely considered as the appropriate tool to assess ‘wicked problems’, such as ensuring global food security, that are characterized by a high level of complexity and uncertainty. This paper describes the development process, storylines and drivers of four new global scenarios that are specifically designed to explore global food security up to the year 2050. To ensure the relevance, credibility and legitimacy of the scenarios, they have been developed using a participatory process, involving a diverse group of stakeholders. The scenarios consist of storylines and a scenario database that presents projections for key drivers, which can be used as an input into global simulation models

Autonomous Operation of a Reconfigurable Multi-Robot System for Planetary Space Missions

Reconfigurable robots can physically merge and form new types of composite systems. This ability leads to additional degrees of freedom for robot operations especially when dynamically composed robotic systems offer capabilities that none of the individual systems have. Research in the area of reconfigurable multi-robot systems has mainly been focused on swarm-based robots and thereby to systems with a high degree of modularity but a heavily restricted set of capabilities. In contrast, this thesis deals with heterogeneous robot teams comprising individually capable robots which are also modular and reconfigurable. In particular, the autonomous application of such reconfigurable multi-robot systems to enhance robotic space exploration missions is investigated. Exploiting the flexibility of a reconfigurable multi-robot system requires an appropriate system model and reasoner. Hence, this thesis introduces a special organisation model. This model accounts for the key characteristics of reconfigurable robots which are constrained by the availability and compatibility of hardware interfaces. A newly introduced mapping function between resource structures and functional properties permits to characterise dynamically created agent compositions. Since a combinatorial challenge lies in the identification of feasible and functionally suitable agents, this thesis further suggests bounding strategies to reason efficiently with composite robotic systems. This thesis proposes a mission planning algorithm which permits to exploit the flexibility of reconfigurable multi-robot systems. The implemented planner builds upon the developed organisation model so that multi-robot missions can be specified by high-level functionality constraints which are resolved to suitable combinations of robots. Furthermore, the planner synchronises robot activities over time and characterises plans according to three objectives: efficacy, efficiency and safety. The plannera s evaluation demonstrates an optimization of an exemplary space mission. This research is based on the parallel development of theoretical concepts and practical solutions while working with three reconfigurable multi-robot teams. The operation of a reconfigurable robotic team comes with practical constraints. Therefore, this thesis composes and evaluates an operational infrastructure which can serve as reference implementation. The identification and combination of applicable state-of-the-art technologies result in a distributed and dynamically extensible communication infrastructure which can maintain the properties of reconfigurable multi-robot systems. Field tests covering semi-autonomous and autonomous operation have been performed to characterise multi-robot missions and validate the autonomous control approach for reconfigurable multi-robot systems. The practical evaluation identified critical constraints and design elements for a successful application of reconfigurable multi-robot systems. Furthermore, the experiments point to improvements for the organisation model. This thesis is a wholistic approach to automate reconfigurable multi-robot systems. It identifies theoretical as well as practical challenges and it suggests effective solutions which permit an exploitation of an increased level of flexibility in future robotics missions

Decadal changes in the mid-depth water mass dynamic of the Northeastern Atlantic margin (Bay of Biscay)

The lithium/magnesium (Li/Mg) molar ratios, radiocarbon measurements (?14C) and Nd-isotopic composition (eNd) of the aragonite skeleton of a branching cold-water coral (CWC) species Madrepora oculata collected alive in the Bay of Biscay at ~691 m water depth were investigated to reconstruct a robust record of the mid-depth water mass dynamics between 1950 and 1990 AD. Temperature estimates based on the skeletons Li/Mg molar ratios reveal small decadal changes of about 1 °C at thermocline depth synchronous to and of similar amplitude as surface temperature anomalies. ?14C measurements shows quasi-decadal oscillations of 15‰ around pre-bomb ?14C average value of -59±6‰ and post-bomb ?14C of -12±6‰, which most likely reflect decadal changes of water mass exchange across the thermocline. The coral eNd values remain in narrow ranges of -11.9 to -10.2, similar to the isotopic composition of East North Atlantic Central Water, but show highest values in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The punctuated changes of the coral Nd-isotopic composition may thus reflect periods of particular enhanced advection of temperate intermediate water (mid-depth Subpolar Gyre/Mediterranean Sea Water). Altogether, our robust multi-proxy record provides new evidence that Northern Hemisphere atmospheric variability (such as, North Atlantic Oscillation and East Atlantic pattern) drives changes not only in the thermocline but also in the mid-depth water-mass advection patterns in the Northeastern Atlantic margin. However, the interannual variability of our record remains to be tested

Scenarios to explore global food security up to 2050: Development process, storylines and quantification of drivers

To guide policymaking, decision makers require a good understanding of the long-term drivers of food security and their interactions. Scenario analysis is widely considered as the appropriate tool to assess complex and uncertain problems, such as food security. This paper describes the development process, storylines and drivers of four new global scenarios up to the year 2050 that are specifically designed for food security modelling. To ensure the relevance, credibility and legitimacy of the scenarios a highly participatory process is used, involving a diverse group of stakeholders. A novel approach is introduced to quantify a selection of key drivers that directly can be used as input in global integrated assessment models to assess the impact of aid, trade, agricultural and science policies on global food and nutrition security