Capital-Intensive Country-Specific Network Costs and Intra-Industry Trade

This paper examines the impacts of country-specific network costs that are provided by a capital-intensive communications sector in a two-country two-factor model, where there are two trading sectors, agriculture and manufacturing. It is shown that when firms in the manufacturing sector incur a fixed cost associated with connection to the communications network upon entry, comparative advantage will be determined by the relative endowments of capital in each country and the size of fixed costs associated with the communications sector. The capital abundant (scarce) country will have a comparative advantage (disadvantage) when the cost-sharing effect (the congestion effect) dominates.

Communication costs, network externalities, and long-run growth

This note examines the effect of per-period communication costs in a model of expanding product variety. It is shown that while a decrease in communication costs leads to growth in aggregate output, this growth is only transitional with the growth rate falling to zero in the long run as the result of a congestion effect.

Novel payload dynamics on space elevator systems

A simple model of a payload ascending or descending a space elevator is developed to explore the underlying dynamics of the problem. It shown that an unconstrained payload at rest on a space elevator at synchronous radius is in an unstable equilibrium, and that this instability can be used to motivate the development of new ideas for payload transfer. In particular, it will be shown that a chain of connected payloads can be assembled which will lift new payloads at the bottom of the chain, while releasing payloads from the top of the chain. The system therefore acts as an 'orbital siphon', transporting mass from the surface of the Earth to escape speed without the need for external work to be done

Patterns of Technology, Industry Concentration, and Productivity Growth Without Scale Effects

This paper investigates the relationship between geographic patterns of industrial activity and endogenous growth in a two region model of trade that exhibits no scale effect. The in-house process innovation of manufacturing firms drives productivity growth and is closely associated with firm-level scales of production and relative levels of accessible technical knowledge. Focusing on long-run industry shares and a cross-region productivity gap, we find that dispersed equilibria with positive industry shares for both regions always produce higher growth rates than core-periphery equilibria with all industry locating in one region. Moreover, the highest growth rate arises in a symmetric steady state that features no productivity gap and equal shares of industry leading to the conclusion that the geographic concentration of industry has a negative impact on overall growth. Convergence towards a dispersed equilibrium, however, is contingent on the levels of inter-regional transport costs and knowledge dispersion. Finally, we explore the implications of greater economic integration arising from reduced transport costs and greater knowledge dispersion for patterns of industry and productivity, and for regional welfare levels within a dispersed equilibrium.Industry Concentration, Industry Share, Productivity Gap, Productivity Growth, Scale Effect

Littérature de l’holocauste et éthique de la lecture

La littérature de l'holocauste pose problème à la critique éthique dans la mesure où celle-ci cherche le plus souvent à affirmer la pertinence des valeurs que l'holocauste remet en question. Cet article examine des textes de Charlotte Delbo, Elie Wiesel et Jorge Semprun qui suggèrent que la rencontre avec l'holocauste est impossible pour les survivants et leurs lecteurs ; l'événement est trop traumatisant pour être intégré à l'expérience du sujet et la connaissance qu'il offre est décrite comme inutile ou dangereuse. Enfin, la notion d'" enseignement " est empruntée à la pensée de Levinas pour esquisser une façon d'aborder la littérature de l'holocauste qui ne consisterait pas à se l'approprier du point de vue des valeurs du lecteur.Holocaust literature poses a particular problem for ethical criticism in that the latter typically endeavours to affirm the pertinence of values which the Holocaust calls into question. This article examines texts by Charlotte Delbo, Elie Wiesel and Jorge Semprun which suggest that the encounter with the Holocaust is impossible for both survivors and readers ; it is too traumatic to be integrated into the experience of the subject and the knowledge it offers is described as either useless or dangerous. Finally, Levinas's notion of "teaching" is used to sketch a way of reading Holocaust literature which might not entail appropriating it from the perspective of the reader's established values

Traces of War

The legacy of the Second World War remains unsettled; no consensus has been achieved about its meaning and its lasting impact. This is pre-eminently the case in France, where the experience of defeat and occupation created the grounds for a deeply ambiguous mixture of resistance and collaboration, pride and humiliation, heroism and abjection, which writers and politicians have been trying to disentangle ever since. This book develops a theoretical approach which draws on trauma studies and hermeneutics; and it then focuses on some of the intellectuals who lived through the war and on how their experience and troubled memories of it continue to echo through their later writing, even and especially when it is not the explicit topic. This was an astonishing generation of writers who would go on to play a pivotal role on a global scale in post-war aesthetic and philosophical endeavours. The book proposes close readings of works by some of the most brilliant amongst them: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Charlotte Delbo, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Louis Althusser, Jorge Semprun, Elie Wiesel, and Sarah Kofman