An Economic Analysis of Counterfeit Goods: the Case of China

The paper provides an economic analysis of two types of counterfeit goods under market equilibrium and under market failure respectively.  Section one answers why consumers demand fake goods, the counterfeiters’ incentives, dynamics of short-run equilibrium and changes in the long run.  Counterfeiting, as a market behavior, lasts as long as the pleasure from consuming and super profit from producing exist.  Section two analyzes six non-market factors behind the large-scale production in China. There are institutional, economic and social reasons that keep this illegal industry flourishing.  Measures improving these factors should be effective to prevent a crackdown on the industry

Ownership Restriction and Housing Value: Evidence from American Housing survey

Amendments to the Fair Lending Act have exempted an age restriction on ownership from fair housing prohibitions. This paper studies the economic impact of such ownership restriction on housing values. Using American Housing Survey data, we find that there is a significant premium attached to the restrictive covenant when other factors are controlled. In particular, we find that imposing age restriction on ownership increases the housing values by anywhere from 10.5% to 12.7%. At the average house value, this is equivalent to a dollar amount between $14,642 and$17,399. The estimates are robust to different specifications in hedonic equations.

The Development of the Chinese Transportation Infrastructure: A Case of Highway Development

Economists have long envisaged that China would be a major economic power in the 21st century.   China along with India accounts for 18 percent of the global economy (on purchasing power parity basis) and 40 percent of the global working age population. During the past decade, China’s economy grew on average at ten percent per annum, and China’s share of world trade increased from one percent in early 1990s to six percent in 2004. China’s industrial production also increased at an annual rate of 17 percent in 2004.  Going forward, the continued economic growth of China will continue to impact other countries as well as provide impacts within China.  Long term impacts of this growth will likely result in spillover effects in countries surrounding China as well as other countries in the Pacific Rim.

Forecasting Cycles in the Transportation Sector

This paper predicted fluctuations in the transportation sector using leading indicators. From 25 initial candidates, we selected seven leading indicators, using various screening techniques and modern time series models. A composite leading index was constructed and found to perform well in predicting transportation reference cycles. The leading index signals downturns in the transportation sector 10 months ahead and upturns six months ahead on average. The index predicted the latest recession in transportation with a lead of 20 months. The analysis also confirms the predictive contents of the composite leading index (CLI) in relation to transportation growth cycles. These evaluation criteria ensure accurate forecasts of the general state of the transportation sector in a timely fashion

Forecasting Cycles in the Transportation Sector

This paper predicted fluctuations in the transportation sector using leading indicators. From 25 initial candidates, we selected seven leading indicators, using various screening techniques and modern time series models. A composite leading index was constructed and found to perform well in predicting transportation reference cycles. The leading index signals downturns in the transportation sector 10 months ahead and upturns six months ahead on average. The index predicted the latest recession in transportation with a lead of 20 months. The analysis also confirms the predictive contents of the composite leading index (CLI) in relation to transportation growth cycles. These evaluation criteria ensure accurate forecasts of the general state of the transportation sector in a timely fashion

CORRECTION Open Access

tumor progression enhances the oncogenic capacity of advanced ovarian cance

Short-range potentials from QCD at order g2g^2

We systematically compute the effective short-range potentials arising from second order QCD-diagrams related to bound states of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons. Our formalism relies on the assumption that the exchanged gluons are massless, while the constituent gluons as well as the lightest quarks acquire a nonvanishing constituent mass because of confinement. The potentials we obtain include the first relativistic corrections, thus spin-spin terms, spin-orbit terms, etc. Such effective potentials are expected to be relevant for the building of accurate potential models describing usual hadrons as well as exotic ones like glueballs and $q\bar q g$ hybrids. In particular, we compute for the first time an effective quark-gluon potential, and show the existence of a quadrupolar interaction term in this case. We also discuss the influence of a possible nonzero mass for the exchanged gluons.Comment: 33 pages, 4 tables and 12 figures ; typos correcte

Stochastic Heterostructures in B/N-Doped Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are one-dimensional and very narrow. These obvious facts imply that under doping with boron and nitrogen, microscopic doping inhomogeneity is much more important than for bulk semiconductors. We consider the possibility of exploiting such fluctuations to create interesting devices. Using self-consistent tight-binding (SCTB), we study heavily doped highly compensated nanotubes, revealing the spontaneous formation of structures resembling chains of random quantum dots, or nano-scale diode-like elements in series. We also consider truly isolated impurities, revealing simple scaling properties of bound state sizes and energies.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 4 PostScript figure