The (Reform) Treaty of Lisbon: What’s in it? How Significant. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 9 No. 1, January 2009

[From the Introduction]. The European Union is currently based on the treaty framework which emerged as the Treaty of Nice entered into force in 2003 (European Union, 2003). The Constitutional Treaty elaborated during the Convention on the Future of Europe, 2002-2003, and finally negotiated during the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), 2003-2004, proposed a number of changes in that framework, but the treaty was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in May and June 2005 (Laursen, 2008). After a reflection period it was decided to negotiate a so-called Reform Treaty. The German Presidency played an important role in securing agreement on a mandate for a new IGC in June 2007. During the Portuguese Presidency in the autumn of 2007 that IGC then produced a new treaty, the Lisbon Treaty (European Union 2007). In this paper we shall outline the most important provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Will the Lisbon Treaty improve the efficiency, democratic legitimacy “as well as the coherence of its external action,” as the mandate from June 2007 claimed it should? (Council of the European Union, 2007)

How Structural Change Differs, and Why it Matters (for Economic Growth)

Several types of theoretical literature on the topic of trade, growth and specialisation, including neoclassical approaches, post-Keynesian literature and some models in evolutionary economics, have shown that it is possible enjoy higher rates of economic growth, given the presence of certain sectors in the economy, being it high-tech or fast-growing sectors. This paper investigates these propositions empirically. Basically the idea is to conduct a constant market share (CMS) analysis, and afterwards include the obtained effects in regression models, using panel data techniques in explaining aggregate economic growth. The results display that the fixed effects model is the most appropriate technique, and that using this tool, the initial level of income (the catch up variable) is significant and has a negative sign as expected. The investment (growth of the capital stock) variable is also significant, while the growth adaptation effect (measuring whether the country in question has actively (more than the average country) moved into slow or fast growing sectors) is the only significant variable (positive sign) of the CMS effects. Hence, it is concluded that a certain dynamism in terms of structural change is required by countries in order to achieve high levels of economic growth at the macro level. The final part of the paper deals with the question of whether the fast-growing sectors (as measured in the CMS analysis) are high-tech or not. Based on a comparison between the OECD growth vector from the CMS analysis, on the one hand, and R&D intensities in the 22 sectors (for the 1970s and for the 1980s), on the other, it is concluded that the fast-growing sectors are in general also high-tech sectors.trade specialisation, economic growth, constant market share analysis, panel data

Do Export and Technological Specialisation Patterns Co-evolve in Terms of Convergence or Divergence? Evidence From 19 OECD Countries, 1971-1991

Several researchers looking at the development of international export specialisation patterns have shown that there is a general tendency for OECD countries to de-specialise. This finding is in contrast to findings made by other authors, working on technological specialisation. These authors found increasing technological specialisation. The first aim of this paper is to investigate whether these contradictory findings are due to a real world phenomenon, or whether the explanation is purely technical, by comparing the development of export specialisation to specialisation in terms of US patents, using the same methodology, and level of aggregation. The second aim is to analyse the extent to which countries and sectors display stable specialisation patterns over time, also both in terms of exports and in terms of technology. The paper confirms that the OECD countries did in general de-specialise in terms of export specialisation. The evidence is less conclusive with regard to technological specialisation, as the results are mixed in the sense that just about half of the countries tend to increase in terms of the level of specialisation, while the other half tend to engage in de-specialisation. In terms of country and sectoral stability of specialisation patterns, it can be concluded that both trade specialisation and technological specialisation patterns are path-dependent in the sense that all country and sectoral patterns are correlated between seven three year intervals, within the period in question. In comparison however, trade specialisation patters are more stable than are technological specialisation patterns.trade specialisation, technological specialisation, structural change

Revealed Comparative Advantage and the Alternatives as Measures of International Specialisation

The paper is an analysis of Balassa’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA). The papers shows that when using the RCA, it should always be adjusted in such a way, so that it becomes symmetric. The conclusion is based on a theoretical discussion of the properties of the measure, but also on convincing empirical evidence, based on the Jarque-Bera test of normality of the error terms from regressions, using both the RCA and the ‘Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage’ (the RSCA). The RSCA is also compared to other measures of international trade specialisation. These measures included the Michaely index and the chi square measure. The conclusion emerging from the analysis is that the RSCA is - on balance - the best measure of comparativerevealed comparative advantage, international specialisation

The Impact of Technological Opportunity on the Dynamics of Trade Performance

The paper explores firstly the impact of technological change on trade growth at the country level, using trade statistics and statistics on patenting activity in the US, across 20 countries for 17 manufacturing sectors. Secondly, using structural decomposition analysis, the paper examine whether the degree to which countries get access to sectors with above average growth in technological opportunity has any impact on growth in aggregate market shares of exports. The results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between change in trade performance and change in technological capabilities across countries for 8 ‘technology intensive’ sectors over the period 1965-1988. It is also shown that there appear to be some (however weak) relationship between the degree to which countries get access to sectors with above average growth in technological opportunity and growth in aggregate market shares. However, there seems to be a much stronger positive relationship between growth rates in trade performance and the individual ‘national innovation system’s’ ability to actively move into technological sectors offering above average technological opportunity.Technological opportunity, trade growth, national systems of innovation, structural decomposition analysis

HOW DO WE DETERMINE PLANT QUALITY OF ORGANIC CROPS?

Plants are photoautotrophic organisms being able to synthesize all metabolites and macro-molecules on the basis of light, CO2, H2O and 14 inorganic elements taken up from the soil. As plants are confined to the environment in which they germinate, this means that the plant ionome, metabolome and proteome are heavily influenced by soil mineralogy, climate and not least agricultural management. Organic plant products within the European Union are produced according to a specific set of regulations, which e.g. implicate that organic plants are cultivated without pesticides and synthetically produced nitrogen (N) fertilizers. In addition, N fertilizers are often used in lower amounts relative to conventional agriculture. Over more than a decade it has been intensively studied whether these marked agronomical differences lead to systematic differences in the chemical composition of plant tissue and whether this has an impact on selected plant quality attributes. From a theoretical point of view the marked differences in fertilization strategies between organic and conventional agriculture will cause systematic differences in the chemical composition of plants. The differences are expected to be very large when comparing plants representing the extremes of organic and conventional agriculture. Thus, if synthetic fertilizers are used exclusively for conventional plant production and in high amounts relative to organic production based on animal manure, green manures, compost etc., the conventional plants are likely to differ from the organic ones. However, in most cases plants are not produced with such extreme fertilization strategies and differences are often masked by natural variation caused by e.g. geographical locations and growth season and thereby little difference in plant quality is usually observed. Despite the fact that systematic differences in chemical composition between organic and conventional plants are usually overridden by natural variation it was recently found that the type of N fertilizers is reflected in the isotope ratios of plants and that the isotopic fingerprints are unbiased by geographical locations and growth season. However, the fundamental differences in isotope ratios are supposedly irrelevant regarding plant quality, but have shown to be a strong signature for authentication of organic plants products. In this lecture we will further explain how the fertilization strategy can affect the underlying biochemical mechanisms controlling the chemical composition of plants and discuss how these are related to organic plant quality. Special attention will be given to N fertilizer forms and quantity, as fertilization generally appears to be the single-most parameter with the strongest impact on metabolism when comparing plants from organic and conventional agricultural systems

Is it really organic? Authenticity testing of organic plant products using elemental and isotopic fingerprinting

The commercial market for high-value plant products is steadily increasing. Consumers are willingly paying premium prices for plants that originate from specific geographical regions or are produced according to certain agricultural management practices. This has significantly enhanced the market shares of organically grown plant products but has simultaneously increased the risk of food adulteration and fraudulent activities. Consequently, sophisticated analytical principles are currently being developed to enable discrimination of organic and conventional plants and ensure compliance with the regulations of organic agriculture. Some of the most promising principles for organic authentication are based on atomic spectroscopy which encompasses several analytical techniques suitable for analysis of the elemental and isotopic composition of plants (1). Analytical discrimination of organic and conventional plant products relies on an expectation of systematic differences in agricultural management practices. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the prohibition of pesticides and synthetically produced fertilizers in organic agriculture is reflected in the chemical composition of plants. This hypothesis was recently tested in a Danish research project called OrgTrace, in which analytical methods for elemental and isotopic fingerprinting were developed and combined with multivariate statistics for authenticity testing of organic crops (2-4). The unique experimental design of OrgTrace included numerous plant species grown either organically or conventionally at several geographical locations differing in soil type, climate etc. Furthermore, year-to-year variation was assessed by inclusion of two growth years. Results from the OrgTrace project will be presented at the seminar. Recently, the international research project AuthenticFood was initiated. In AuthenticFood novel analytical procedures will be tested and combined to enable authentication of selected organic plant products before and after processing of these. The main research hypotheses and methodologies of AuthenticFood will be presented

The metallicity of gamma-ray burst environments from high energy observations

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their early afterglows ionise their circumburst material. Only high-energy spectroscopy therefore, allows examination of the matter close to the burst itself. Soft X-ray absorption allows an estimate to be made of the total column density in metals. The detection of the X-ray afterglow can also be used to place a limit on the total gas column along the line of sight based on the Compton scattering opacity. Such a limit would enable, for the first time, the determination of lower limits on the metallicity in the circumburst environments of GRBs. In this paper, we determine the limits that can be placed on the total gas column density in the vicinities of GRBs based on the Compton scattering. We simulate the effects of Compton scattering on a collimated beam of high energy photons passing through a shell of high column density material to determine the expected lightcurves, luminosities, and spectra. We compare these predictions to observations, and determine what limits can realistically be placed on the total gas column density. The smearing out of pulses in the lightcurve from Compton scattering is not likely to be observable, and its absence does not place strong constraints on the Compton depth for GRBs. However, the distribution of observed luminosities of bursts allows us to place statistical, model-dependent limits that are typically <~1e25 cm^{-2} for less luminous bursts, and as low as ~1e24 cm$^{-2} for the most luminous. Using the shape of the high-energy broadband spectrum, however, in some favourable cases, limits as low as ~5e24 cm^{-2} can placed on individual bursts, implying metallicity lower limits from X- and gamma-rays alone from 0 up to 0.01 Z/Zsun. At extremely high redshifts, this limit would be at least 0.02 Z/Z_sun, enough to discriminate population III from non-primordial GRBs.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to A&A letter