Disentangling the Demand-enhancing Effect and Trade-cost Effect of Technical Measures in Agricultural Trade among OECD countries

Domestic technical measures such as SPS and TBTs can enhance import demand via information disclosure and quality improvement, or hamper foreign export supply via imposing sizeable compliance costs, or both. The traditional gravity equation model estimates the net effect of these measures on international trade with a loss of useful inference on separate effects. We stipulate a generalized gravity equation model to disentangle the two effects. We apply the augmented approach to agricultural trade among OECD countries in 2004. We find that technical measures in agriculture often jointly enhance import demand and hinder export supply with the net effect of promoting the propensity to trade. Further disaggregated data analysis reveals heterogeneity across sectors in terms of net effects of technical measures, despite common demand-enhancing and supply-hindering effects. These measures in the net decrease the probability of intra-OECD trade in dairy products, whereas they increase that of intra-OECD trade in cereal preparations.sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, technical measures, NTM, TBT, standards, gravity equation, protectionism, OECD, International Relations/Trade,

Does European Aflatoxin Regulation Hurt Groundnut Exporters from Africa?

We provide an ex-post econometric examination of the harmonization and tightening of the EU Maximum Residues Limit (MRL) on aflatoxins in 2002, and its impact on African exports of groundnut products. We show that the MRL set by the EU has no significant trade impact on groundnut exports from Africa across various methods of estimation. African domestic supply plays an important role in the determination of the volumes of trade and the propensity to trade. Our findings suggest that the trade potential of African groundnut exporters is more constrained by domestic supply issues rather than by limited market access.food safety; standards; aflatoxin; MRL; groundnut; Africa; EU; market access

Aflatoxin Redux: Does European Aflatoxin Regulation Hurt Groundnut Exporters from Africa?

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/02/10.food safety, standards, aflatoxin, Maximum Residues Limit, groundnut, gravity equation, Africa, market access, EU, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, International Relations/Trade, Q17, F13,

Beyond the simple Proximity Force Approximation: geometrical effects on the non-retarded Casimir interaction

We study the geometrical corrections to the simple Proximity Force Approximation for the non-retarded Casimir force. We present analytical results for the force between objects of various shapes and substrates, and between pairs of objects. We compare the results to those from more exact numerical calculations. We treat spheres, spheroids, cylinders, cubes, cones, and wings; the analytical PFA results together with the geometrical correction factors are summarized in a table.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures, 1 tabl

Three `species' of Schr\"odinger cat states in an infinite-range spin model

We explore a transverse-field Ising model that exhibits both spontaneous symmetry-breaking and eigenstate thermalization. Within its ferromagnetic phase, the exact eigenstates of the Hamiltonian of any large but finite-sized system are all Schr\"odinger cat states: superpositions of states with `up' and `down' spontaneous magnetization. This model exhibits two dynamical phase transitions {\it within} its ferromagnetic phase: In the lowest-temperature phase the magnetization can macroscopically oscillate between up and down. The relaxation of the magnetization is always overdamped in the remainder of the ferromagnetic phase, which is divided in to phases where the system thermally activates itself {\it over} the barrier between the up and down states, and where it quantum tunnels.Comment: 7 pages, added numerical result