36,341 research outputs found
CHINA´S WTO ACCESSION: ITS IMPACT ON CHINESE EMPLOYMENT
It is often claimed that the WTO membership will benefit China by increasing exports and employment and forcing domestic firms to improve efficiency through competition. Benefits are expected to accrue through improved resource allocation and greater economic efficiency resulting from trade liberalization and greater global competition. In the paper we argue that although some sectors will benefit from competition others will suffer a great deal especially in the short and medium terms. The net overall benefits are likely to accrue only in the long run. During the transition period China will face enormous problems of restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and banking, insurance and financial services, entailing significant loss of employment. The employment impact of the accession with special reference to SOEs is considered since they are generally less competitive than the non-state enterprises. Reduction in SOE employment may not be compensated by an increase in employment in the non-state sector. The experience of three specific industries is discussed: textiles and clothing, automobiles and household appliances. Besides the unemployment impact of the accession, the paper examines the possibility of a ‘flying geese model’ of trade and development working within China to maintain its global competitiveness on account of low labour costs in the hinterland. It also discusses China’s possible response to global competition to protect employment, for example. Three types of response are considered: non-compliance of the WTO accord, devaluation, and a production shift from tradeables to non-tradeables.
Modular Equations and Distortion Functions
Modular equations occur in number theory, but it is less known that such
equations also occur in the study of deformation properties of quasiconformal
mappings. The authors study two important plane quasiconformal distortion
functions, obtaining monotonicity and convexity properties, and finding sharp
bounds for them. Applications are provided that relate to the quasiconformal
Schwarz Lemma and to Schottky's Theorem. These results also yield new bounds
for singular values of complete elliptic integrals.Comment: 23 page
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An Adaptive Soft Handover Scheme Using Fuzzy Load Balancing for WCDMA Systems
In cellular systems, user distribution variations can cause load imbalance between cells. Embedding a load balancing strategy within the handover scheme means that ensuing traffic congestion can be alleviated by dynamically reallocating load between neighbouring cells. An adaptive soft handover scheme for multimedia cellular communication systems is proposed in this paper, that considers both the cell load factors as well as the pilot channel signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) for soft handovers. By using fuzzy principles, the soft handover thresholds and time hysteresis are adapted dependent upon the loads of the neighbouring cells. Simulation results show that the new algorithm provides improved system performance in terms of a more evenly distributed load, lower blocking probabilities and higher throughput
Direct observation of high-speed plasma outflows produced by magnetic reconnection in solar impulsive events
Spectroscopic observations of a solar limb flare recorded by SUMER on SOHO
reveal, for the first time, hot fast magnetic reconnection outflows in the
corona. As the reconnection site rises across the SUMER spectrometer slit,
significant blue- and red-shift signatures are observed in sequence in the Fe
XIX line, reflecting upflows and downflows of hot plasma jets, respectively.
With the projection effect corrected, the measured outflow speed is between
900-3500 km/s, consistent with theoretical predictions of the Alfvenic outflows
in magnetic reconnection region in solar impulsive events. Based on theoretic
models, the magnetic field strength near the reconnection region is estimated
to be 19-37 Gauss.Comment: 5 pages, 6 color figures, 1 animation onlin
On the Instability of the Lee-Wick Bounce
It was recently realized that a model constructed from a Lee-Wick type scalar
field theory yields, at the level of homogeneous and isotropic background
cosmology, a bouncing cosmology. However, bouncing cosmologies induced by
pressure-less matter are in general unstable to the addition of relativistic
matter (i.e. radiation). Here we study the possibility of obtaining a bouncing
cosmology if we add radiation coupled to the Lee-Wick scalar field. This
coupling in principle would allow the energy to flow from radiation to matter,
thus providing a drain for the radiation energy. However, we find that it takes
an extremely unlikely fine tuning of the initial phases of the field
configurations for a sufficient amount of radiative energy to flow into matter.
For general initial conditions, the evolution leads to a singularity rather
than a smooth bounce.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure
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