Macroeconomic Analysis on the Basis of Trade Theory: A Review Essay

This paper reviews the branch of literature that applies models developed in international trade theory (Microeconomics) to explain phenomena found in international finance (Macroeconomics). Among all international trade models, the New New Trade Theory with productivity heterogeneity across firms in the same industry has proved to be a powerful tool to bridge the gap between international trade and finance. As a result, this review focuses on several papers in this nascent field, where the behavior of macroeconomic indicators are generated from sound microeconomic foundation.Heterogeneous firm; Price fluctuation; Innovation

Constitutional Conflict and the Development of Canadian Aboriginal Law

This paper argues that aboriginal rights in Canada have been greatly affected by 19 th century governmental and social conflicts within the Canadian colonial state. These conflicts, largely over the ownership of land and regulatory authority between the federal government and the provinces necessarily impacted the First Nations on the ground while affecting how their legal claims were recognized and implemented. In particular they impacted the legal efficacy of treaty rights, the scope of rights recognised by the courts and an expansive legally protected notion of indigenous sovereignty. As a result, the rights now protected under sec. 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act 1982 are more restricted than the text might imply

Assessing Evapotranspiration Estimates from the Global Soil Wetness Project Phase 2 (GSWP-2) Simulations

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).We assess the simulations of global-scale evapotranspiration from the Global Soil Wetness Project Phase 2 (GSWP-2) within a global water-budget framework. The scatter in the GSWP-2 global evapotranspiration estimates from various land surface models can constrain the global, annual water budget fluxes to within ±2.5%, and by using estimates of global precipitation, the residual ocean evaporation estimate falls within the range of other independently derived bulk estimates. However, the GSWP-2 scatter cannot entirely explain the imbalance of the annual fluxes from a modern-era, observationally-based global water budget assessment, and inconsistencies in the magnitude and timing of seasonal variations between the global water budget terms are found. Inter-model inconsistencies in evapotranspiration are largest for high latitude inter-annual variability as well as for inter-seasonal variations in the tropics, and analyses with field-scale data also highlights model disparity at estimating evapotranspiration in high latitude regions. Analyses of the sensitivity simulations that replace uncertain forcings (i.e. radiation, precipitation, and meteorological variables) indicate that global (land) evapotranspiration is slightly more sensitive to precipitation than net radiation perturbations, and the majority of the GSWP-2 models, at a global scale, fall in a marginally moisture-limited evaporative condition. Finally, the range of global evapotranspiration estimates among the models is larger than any bias caused by uncertainties in the GSWP-2 atmospheric forcing, indicating that model structure plays a more important role toward improving global land evaporation estimates (as opposed to improved atmospheric forcing).NASA Energy and Water-cycle Study (NEWS, grant #NNX06AC30A), under the NEWS Science and Integration Team activities

Private firms as global borrowers: foreign and domestic lenders need equal protection

The period 1990 to 2009 has witnessed private firms being promoted as independent borrowers in the global capital market

Efficient wound assessment system with an RGB-D camera

Continuous monitoring of changes in wound size, wound area, and volume, is key to predict whether wounds will heal on time. Wound measurement methods can be subdivided into non- contact and contact methods. Contact methods are prone to errors given the human intervention and it increases the chance of discomfort during measurement. Alternative methods, such as image- based non-contact methods, eliminate any discomfort and have good reliability for measuring a wound. However, existing image-based non-contact methods are expensive. This is because these methods build a 3D model of the wound using expensive devices in order to allow the clinician to obtain the necessary wound measurements. To alleviate the cost of these systems, the proposed system described in this report measures wounds using low-cost depth cameras such as the Microsoft Kinect. This report describes methods that take in an RGB image from the Microsoft Kinect, computes the necessary parts of a 3D wound model, and finally reports wound measurements. The proposed system requires the user to draw the contour of the wound on the image. Then, the system automatically extracts all the necessary information from the RGB and depth images to create a minimal 3D model of the wound. Subsequently, the system processes the 3D model in order to facilitate the estimation of the wound area and volume. Finally, the system reports the measurements to the user. This report presents experiments demonstrating that the proposed system achieves acceptable measurements despite the fact that it uses a low-cost and noisy imaging sensor