The changing geography of world auto production: exploring the linkages between the trade and the FDI

Over the last decade, the international organization of auto production has undergone major changes, with firms moving across borders with the aim to find more efficient organizational forms to serve final markets. Trying to keep up with a rapid shift in the geographic composition of global demand – decreasing in industrialized countries while increasing in emerging economies – all of the world’s leading producers have increased their foreign activities, either in the form of new production locations through greenfield FDI or through M&A with other firms. Although the literature on the trade impact of FDI is widespread and has suggested that the latter may either be a complement or a substitute for trade, the automotive sector – one of the more dynamic sectors in terms of overseas expansion of leading producers – has so far not been investigated empirically. This paper builds on previous research by the authors on the international reorganization of auto production applying SNA to trade flows (Amighini and Gorgoni, 2011, under review), showing that the emergence of new countries acting as parts suppliers has not only changed the geography of suppliers, but has also been accompanied by a change in the structure of production, as the world’s leading producers now act as the core of a more hierarchical international division of labour than a decade ago. Based on firm-level data on greenfield FDI from fDIMarkets.com and M&A from various sources (at firm, sector and national levels), this paper aims to explore using multiple regression through the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) how the foreign expansion of auto firms (i.e. the FDI and M&A networks) has been an important determinant of the international trade network of auto parts and components

China and the international fragmentation of automotive: a network analysis

Purpose The paper addresses the question of to what extent has the rise of new supplying countries changed the structure of the international organisation of auto-production, by looking particularly at the role of China. Rationale Over the last decade, the international organization of automotive production has undergone major changes, with firms moving across borders with the aim to find more efficient organizational forms to serve final markets and with production processes split into different phases carried out in different countries. Geographic fragmentation of production (outsourcing and delocalization) has also seen emerging economies’ (e.g. China, India, Brazil, etc.) increased participation to international division of labor. Fragmentation results in cross border trade flows of parts and components (‘network trade’ or ‘triangular trade’), and this is why it has been claimed that trade data is a good proxy for production data, thus revealing who does what in the international division of labour. Design/Methodology/Approach We apply network analysis to trade data. Following the empirical literature on production fragmentation, pioneered by Yeats (2001) and pursued in a number of recent studies we use bilateral trade statistics on components trade from the UN trade data reporting system (UNComtrade database). We select disaggregated trade data (at 5 digits level, representing detailed product categories) for each of the components used in production, using the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC, Rev. 3). Network analysis is applied to highly disaggregated international (components) trade data for the 1998 and the 2008. We use network visualizations tools to immediately grasp the changes occurred in the components trade networks over time. In addition, we calculate some network measures (e.g. reciprocity, centralization, out-degree strength and centrality, core-periphery and regionalisation) to describe and contrast the characteristics of the trade networks. Finally, we analyse the position and role of China by performing brokerage analysis and analysis of structural equivalence (Wassermann and Faust, 1994). All this is done using UCINET (Borgatti & al., 2002). Findings Our analysis has shown that China and a number of other emerging countries have not simply increased their weight as suppliers to the world’s leading auto manufacturers, but have caused a switch in the international division of labour in the sector. In fact, the world’s leading producers now act as the core of a more hierarchical production structure than a decade ago, that is they source from a number of individual suppliers – mainly within their regions – but these are disconnected from each other. Among the two contrasting tendencies towards globalisation or regionalisation of production, the latter seems to be still dominating in the auto industry. This suggests that the rise of China as major producer, given the possibility of low production costs and economies of scale, has not overcome the importance of transportation and diversification costs to final markets. Originality/value From a theoretical perspective, this paper contributes to the extant literature by disentangling the globalisation vs. regionalisation debate. From a methodological perspective the paper shows that the use of network analysis allows overcoming some limitations of traditional analytical techniques. Also, it improves on previous studies that apply network analysis to trade data by using highly disaggregated, directed and valued data

Responsible Research and Innovation between \u201cnew governance\u201d and fundamental rights

This chapter frames RRI as an emerging governance approach in the EU regulatory context. We argue that reference to fundamental rights makes RRI a distinctive approach to responsibility compared to other existing paradigms and that human rights, in particular those laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, are not necessarily a constraint but can instead be a catalyst of innovation. Eventually we maintain that a governance framework based on the complementarity between legal norms and voluntary commitments might successfully combine the respect of fundamental rights with the openness and flexibility of the innovation process

Stay Human. The quest for Responsibility in the Algorithmic Society

Abstract: recent developments of Artificial Intelligence based on machine learning techniques through Big Data raise multiple ethical and legal concerns, all of which ultimately do turn around the issues of responsibility, which is increasingly invoked not as a remedy but as a character which shall shape the whole development process of AI as well as its functioning. The characters of AI, taken in its technical and social role, challenge some established ideas related to human agency, namely responsibility. Recently two scholars like Jack Balkin (director of the Yale Information Society Project he founded on 1997) and Frank Pasquale (author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, 2015) proposed \u201cnew laws of robotics for the Algorithmic Society\u201d inspired to Isaac Asimov\u2019s ones, but targeting the human agents behind the development and the use of AI. On the other side, Responsible Research and Innovation model has been proposed as a model for the responsible development of AI. Whilst the reference to responsibility is appealing, nevertheless the inflation of its disparate usages may obscure the meaning associated with it. This article wants to contribute to the understanding of the issues behind the idea of preserving the human character of responsibility when confronted to the risks of its dissolution induced by the increasingly relevant roles played by AI in our societies

Narcolepsy and emotional experience: a review of the literature

Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations, and sleep paralysis. This disease affects significantly the overall patient functioning, interfering with social, work, and affective life. Some symptoms of narcolepsy depend on emotional stimuli; for instance, cataplectic attacks can be triggered by emotional inputs such as laughing, joking, a pleasant surprise, and also anger. Neurophysiological and neurochemical findings suggest the involvement of emotional brain circuits in the physiopathology of cataplexy, which seems to depending on the dysfunctional interplay between the hypothalamus and the amygdala associated with an alteration of hypocretin levels. Furthermore, behavioral studies suggest an impairment of emotions processing in narcolepsy-cataplexy (NC), like a probable coping strategy to avoid or reduce the frequency of cataplexy attacks. Consistently, NC patients seem to use coping strategies even during their sleep, avoiding unpleasant mental sleep activity through lucid dreaming. Interestingly, NC patients, even during sleep, have a different emotional experience than healthy subjects, with more vivid, bizarre, and frightening dreams. Notwithstanding this evidence, the relationship between emotion and narcolepsy is poorly investigated. This review aims to provide a synthesis of behavioral, neurophysiological, and neurochemical evidence to discuss the complex relationship between NC and emotional experience and to direct future research

EEG oscillations during sleep and dream recall. State- or trait-like individual differences?

Dreaming represents a peculiar form of cognitive activity during sleep. On the basis of the well-known relationship between sleep and memory, there has been a growing interest in the predictive role of human brain activity during sleep on dream recall. Neuroimaging studies indicate that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by limbic activation and prefrontal cortex deactivation. This pattern could explain the presence of emotional contents in dream reports. Furthermore, the morphoanatomical measures of amygdala and hippocampus predict some features of dream contents (bizarreness, vividness, and emotional load). More relevant for a general view of dreaming mechanisms, empirical data from neuropsychological and electroencephalographic (EEG) studies support the hypothesis that there is a sort of continuity between the neurophysiological mechanisms of encoding and retrieval of episodic memories across sleep and wakefulness. A notable overlap between the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying emotional memory formation and some peculiar EEG features of REM sleep has been suggested. In particular, theta (5–8 Hz) EEG oscillations on frontal regions in the pre-awakening sleep are predictive of dream recall, which parallels the predictive relation during wakefulness between theta activity and successful retrieval of episodic memory. Although some observations support an interpretation more in terms of an intraindividual than interindividual mechanism, the existing empirical evidence still precludes from definitely disentangling if this relation is explained by state- or trait-like differences

Mental sleep activity and disturbing dreams in the lifespan

Sleep significantly changes across the lifespan, and several studies underline its crucial role in cognitive functioning. Similarly, mental activity during sleep tends to covary with age. This review aims to analyze the characteristics of dreaming and disturbing dreams at dierent age brackets. On the one hand, dreams may be considered an expression of brain maturation and cognitive development, showing relations with memory and visuo-spatial abilities. Some investigations reveal that specific electrophysiological patterns, such as frontal theta oscillations, underlie dreams during sleep, as well as episodic memories in the waking state, both in young and older adults. On the other hand, considering the role of dreaming in emotional processing and regulation, the available literature suggests that mental sleep activity could have a beneficial role when stressful events occur at dierent age ranges. We highlight that nightmares and bad dreams might represent an attempt to cope the adverse events, and the degrees of cognitive-brain maturation could impact on these mechanisms across the lifespan. Future investigations are necessary to clarify these relations. Clinical protocols could be designed to improve cognitive functioning and emotional regulation by modifying the dream contents or the ability to recall/non-recall them

The functional role of dreaming in emotional processes

Dream experience (DE) represents a fascinating condition linked to emotional processes and the human inner world. Although the overlap between REM sleep and dreaming has been overcome, several studies point out that emotional and perceptually vivid contents are more frequent when reported upon awakenings from this sleep stage. Actually, it is well-known that REM sleep plays a pivotal role in the processing of salient and emotional waking-life experiences, strongly contributing to the emotional memory consolidation. In this vein, we highlighted that, to some extent, neuroimaging studies showed that the processes that regulate dreaming and emotional salience in sleep mentation share similar neural substrates of those controlling emotions during wakefulness. Furthermore, the research on EEG correlates of the presence/absence of DE and the results on EEG pattern related to the incorporated memories converged to assign a crucial role of REM theta oscillations in emotional re-processing. In particular, the theta activity is involved in memory processes during REM sleep as well as during the waking state, in line with the continuity hypothesis. Also, the gamma activity seems to be related to emotional processes and dream recall as well as to lucid dreams. Interestingly, similar EEG correlates of DE have been found in clinical samples when nightmares or dreams occur. Research on clinical samples revealed that promoting the rehearsal of frightening contents aimed to change them is a promising method to treat nightmares, and that lucid dreams are associated with an attenuation of nightmares. In this view, DE can defuse emotional traumatic memories when the emotional regulation and the fear extinction mechanisms are compromised by traumatic and frightening events. Finally, dreams could represent a sort of simulation of reality, providing the possibility to create a new scenario with emotional mastery elements to cope with dysphoric items included in nightmares. In addition, it could be hypothesized that the insertion of bizarre items besides traumatic memories might be functional to “impoverish” the negative charge of the experiences

Identification of the mRNA targets of tRNA-specific regulation using genome-wide simulation of translation

FUNDING Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) [BB/I020926/1 to I.S.]; BBSRC PhD studentship award [C103817D to I.S. and M.C.R.]; Scottish Universities Life Science Alliance PhD studentship award (to M.C.R. and I.S.]. Funding for open access charge: BBSRC. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Oscillatory EEG activity during REM sleep in elderly people predicts subsequent dream recall after awakenings

Several findings underlined that the electrophysiological (EEG) background of the last segment of sleep before awakenings may predict the presence/absence of dream recall (DR) in young subjects. However, little is known about the EEG correlates of DR in elderly people. Only an investigation found differences between recall and non-recall conditions during NREM sleep EEG in older adults, while—surprisingly—no EEG predictor of DR was found for what concerns REMsleep. Considering REMsleep as a privileged scenario to produce mental sleep activity related to cognitive processes, our study aimed to investigate whether specific EEG topography and frequency changes during REM sleep in elderly people may predict a subsequent recall of mental sleep activity. Twenty-one healthy older volunteers (mean age 69.2 ± 6.07 SD) and 20 young adults (mean age 23.4 ± 2.76 SD) were recorded for one night from19 scalp derivations. Dreams were collected upon morning awakenings from REM sleep. EEG signals of the last 5min were analyzed by the Better OSCillation algorithm to detect the peaks of oscillatory activity in both groups. Statistical comparisons revealed that older as well as young individuals recall their dream experience when the last segment of REM sleep is characterized by frontal theta oscillations. No Recall (Recall vs. Non-Recall) × Age (Young vs. Older) interaction was found. This result replicated the previous evidence in healthy young subjects, as shown in within- and between-subjects design. The findings are completely original for older individuals, demonstrating that theta oscillations are crucial for the retrieval of dreaming also in this population. Furthermore, our results did not confirm a greater presence of the theta activity in healthy aging. Conversely, we found a greater amount of rhythmic theta and alpha activity in young than older participants. It is worth noting that the theta oscillations detected are related to cognitive functioning. We emphasize the notion that the oscillatory theta activity should be distinguished from the non-rhythmic theta activity identified in relation to other phenomena such as (a) sleepiness and hypoarousal conditions during the waking state and (b) cortical slowing, considered as an EEG alteration in clinical samples