Competition, Market Structure and Job Turnover

Data for rates of job turnover among plants in the Swedish economy in 1986-97 imply that in a typical year in a representative industry one out of six jobs disappeared, and a corresponding number of jobs were created. Job turnover is counter-cyclical, with no trend, and is higher for skilled jobs, and lower in manufacturing, than for all jobs. The rate of job turnover seems to be higher in industries with high rates of innovation and market growth, which may indicate that the volatility of firm specific demand and supply shocks is higher in such industries. Moreover, for given shocks, turnover is higher in industries with many small plants and low return on capital. The results support the hypothesis that market shares are more stable, and thus reallocation of jobs limited, in industries where firms have strong market power. Finally, there is less job turnover in export oriented industries where foreign ownership is widespread. Firms selling in many markets and/or producing in different locations may be able to even out the employment effects of shocks specific to individual markets and/or locations.Job turnover; Market structure; International competitiveness

Foreign Direct Investment and Productivity Spillovers in Swedish Manufacturing

Based on a panel of data for Swedish manufacturing firms in 1990-2000, this paper finds strong evidence for the existence of positive spillover effects from inward FDI. The presence of foreign ownership in the same industry and region seems to enhance the total factor productivity of domestic firms. Moreover, the size of these FDI spillover effects seems to depend both on the nationality of the foreign MNF as well as on the absorptive capacity of the domestic firm, measured by its own R&D. It appears that this positive relationship between foreign presence and productivity cannot be explained as a consequence of reverse causality, i.e that FDI is attracted to highly productive regions and industries.Multinational firms; Productivity spillovers; Foreign direct investment

Technology, Resource Endowments and International Competitiveness

The paper evaluates the impact of technology together with resource endowments and economies of scale on international competitiveness in OECD countries. Knowledge capital stocks are obtained by cumulating R&D expenditure. Results show that competitiveness is determined not only by the R&D activity of the representative firm, but also by the size of domestic industry as well as economy wide stocks of knowledge, indicating the presence of local externalities. Further results point to the importance of economies of scale in R&D internal to the firm and of investment for introduction of embodied technical progress. Finally, the R&D impact differs between high- and low-tech industries as well as among countries.international competitiveness; technology gap; knowledge stock; R&D; disembodied and embodied technical change

Structural Change, Competition and Job Turnover in the Swedish Manufacturing Industry 1964-96

The rate of inter-industry job turnover in Swedish manufacturing seems to be driven by the dispersion of profit changes among industries. Shifts in international competitiveness among industries played a central role for explaining this pattern. The rate of intra-industry job turnover among plants has been higher in industries with many small plants, low profit margins and high import penetration.Comparative advantage; market power; structural change; job turnover

Optical Frequency Comb Noise Characterization Using Machine Learning

A novel tool, based on Bayesian filtering framework and expectation maximization algorithm, is numerically and experimentally demonstrated for accurate frequency comb noise characterization. The tool is statistically optimum in a mean-square-error-sense, works at wide range of SNRs and offers more accurate noise estimation compared to conventional methods

Prehospital CPR training performed with visual feedback

INTRODUCTION: Swedish firefighters are a part of the emergency medical services. Therefore, they perform prehospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a regular basis. Training becomes crucial for maintaining the CPR skills and increasing the patients’ chances of survival. Training with visual feedback is for Swedish firefighters a new way of training CPR. The aim of this study was to evaluate firefighters’ perception of a CPR manikin with visual feedback. METHOD: This study had a qualitative approach. Data were collected by interviews with 16 firefighters after performing CPR on a manikin with visual feedback. The data were analyzed with a manifest content analysis. RESULTS: Visual feedback makes it easy to identify and maintain correct compression rate. There is a need for identifying too deep compressions. Uncertainty regarding the closeness to the stomach arises when using the whole hand during compressions instead of just the wrist. To accomplish an open airway requires a bit of adjustment of the manikins’ head. DISCUSSION: To train and learn CPR is feasible with visual feedback. The firefighters can maintaing a correct compression rate and correct compression depth during the sessions. Ventilating a patient with bag-valvemask or pocket mask may require training with visual feedback to guarantee the firefighters being able to secure an open airway of the patient. All these skills are essential and improve the chance of survival for the patients

Power Consumption and Joint Signal Processing in Fiber-Optical Communication

The power consumption of coherent fiber-optical communication systems is becoming increasingly important, for both environmental and economic reasons. The data traffic on the Internet is increasing at a faster pace than that at which optical network equipment is becoming more energy efficient, which means that the overall power consumption of the Internet is increasing. In addition, wasted energy leads to higher costs for network operators, through increased electricity expenses but also because the heat generated in the equipment limits how closely it can be packed.This thesis includes both power consumption modelling and trade-off studies, as well as investigations of novel schemes for joint signal processing that may lead to an improved energy efficiency and increased performance in future systems. The power consumption modelling part includes a model of optical amplifier power consumption, which is connected to a performance model based on the Gaussian-noise model. Using these models, the trade-offs between amplifier power consumption and the choice of modulation format and forward-error-correction (FEC) scheme can be analyzed. Furthermore, the power consumption for a coherent link with minimal digital signal processing (DSP) is studied as well.In the second part we investigate joint signal processing for phase-coherent superchannel systems based on optical frequency combs or multicore fiber. We find that the phase-coherence of optical frequency comb lines enables joint carrier recovery, which can increase performance and reduce the power consumption of the digital signal processing. The possible power consumption savings are quantified for a blind phase search method for phase tracking. Finally, we quantify the performance of joint carrier recovery for wavelength division multiplexed multicore fiber transmission in presence of nonlinear interference and inter-core skew

STRUCTURAL CHANGE, COMPETITION AND JOB TURNOVER IN THE SWEDISH MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY 1964-96

The rate of inter-industry job turnover in Swedish manufacturing seems to be driven by the dispersion of profit changes among industries. Shifts in international competitiveness among industries played a central role for explaining this pattern. The rate of intra-industry job turnover among plants has been higher in industries with many small plants, low profit margins and high import penetration.comparative advantage; market power; structural change; job turnover

Combining Cluster Validation Indices for Detecting Label Noise

In this paper, we show that cluster validation indices can be used for filtering mislabeled instances or class outliers prior to training in supervised learning problems. We propose a technique, entitled Cluster Validation Index (CVI)-based Outlier Filtering, in which mislabeled instances are identified and eliminated from the training set, and a classification hypothesis is then built from the set of remaining instances. The proposed approach assigns each instance several cluster validation scores representing its potential of being an outlier with respect to the clustering properties the used validation measures assess. We examine CVI-based Outlier Filtering and compare it against the Local Outlier Factor (LOF) detection method on ten data sets from the UCI data repository using five well-known learning algorithms and three different cluster validation indices. In addition, we study and compare three different approaches for combining the selected cluster validation measures. Our results show that for most learning algorithms and data sets, the proposed CVI-based outlier filtering algorithm outperforms the baseline method (LOF). The greatest increase in classification accuracy has been achieved by using union or ranked-based median strategies to assemble the used cluster validation indices and global filtering of mislabeled instances

Adapting the streaming video based on the estimated motion position

In real time video streaming, the frames must meet their timing constraints, typically specified as their deadlines. Wireless networks may suffer from bandwidth limitations. To reduce the data transmission over the wireless networks, we propose an adaption technique in the server side by extracting a part of the video frames that considered as a Region Of Interest (ROI), and drop the part outside the ROI from the frames that are between reference frames. The estimated position of the selection of the ROI is computed by using the Sum of Squared Differences (SSD) between consecutive frames. The reconstruction mechanism to the region outside the ROI is implemented in the mobile side by using linear interpolation between reference frames. We evaluate the proposed approach by using Mean Opinion Score (MOS) measurements. MOS are used to evaluate two scenarios with equivalent encoding size, where the users observe the first scenario with low bit rate for the original videos, while for the second scenario the users observe our proposed approach with high bit rate. The results show that our technique significantly reduces the amounts of data are streamed over wireless networks, while the reconstruction mechanism will provides acceptable video quality