Industrial Policies in Developing Countries: History and Perspectives

This paper presents a historical and empirical account of the role played by government intervention in the form of industrial policies in spurring development and growth in developing countries in the last fifty years. Adopting the taxonomy proposed in Cimoli et alt. (2008), it describes the set of industrial policies implemented since the end of WWII to today in a number of developing countries. Which are the characteristics of successful industrial policies? Are there industrial policies, among the ones that have worked in the past, which can be also useful in the present context? Is there a fit-all recipe, or the high degree of country heterogeneity makes impossible to identify any general effective industrial policy? These are some of the questions this papers tries to suggest some answers.Industrial policy,Developing Countries,East Asia,Latin America

Uncertainty, trade integration and the optimal level of protection in a Ricardian model with a continuum of goods

This paper analyzes how increasing trade integration affects individual utility when the international specialization pattern is stochastic, i.e. when the number of varieties each country produces depends on the realization of a random variable. I employ a Ricardian continuum of goods model to show that in this case a trade off emerges. As in the standard model, higher trade integration reduces prices and increases expected real income. However, higher trade integration, reducing the number of active sectors in the economy, also increases the displacement cost the worker would suffer in a bad state (i.e. when the sector she is employed into has to close down because, ex-post, the foreign country’s competing sector results to be more efficient). The main result of the model is that there exists an optimal level of protection that it is higher the smaller the price reduction induced by trade integration and the more technologically similar are countries.Uncertainty; optimal protection; Ricardian model with a continuum of goods

Uncertainty, Trade Integration and the Optimal Level of Protection in a Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods

This paper analyzes how increasing trade integration affects individual utility when the international specialization pattern is stochastic, i.e. when the number of varieties each country produces depends on the realization of a random variable. I employ a Ricardian continuum of goods model to show that in this case a trade off emerges. As in the standard model, higher trade integration reduces prices and increases expected real income. However, higher trade integration, reducing the number of active sectors in the economy, also increases the displacement cost the worker would suffer in a bad state (i.e. when the sector she is employed into has to close down because, ex-post, the foreign country’s competing sector results to be more efficient). The main result of the model is that there exists an optimal level of protection that it is higher the smaller the price reduction induced by trade integration and the more technologically similar are countries.Trade Intergration,Ricardian Model with a continuum of goods,Optimal protection,Uncertainty

Uncertainty, Gains from Specialization and the Welfare State

This paper presents a specific-factor model showing that, under technological uncertainty and risk averse agents, increasing trade integration is not always welfare increasing. The reason is that changes in the country's specialization level induced by trade integration produce both benefits and cost. Increasing specialization increases wages (efficiency gains), but, modifying the tax scheme of the Welfare State, it also increases income variance. The model identifies a trade-off, absent in the standard deterministic model, between gains from specialization and the higher cost of the Welfare State. It is shown that, depending on the parameter's configuration, it exists a specialization level beyond which aggregate expected income under free trade becomes lower than that achieved under autarky. �Free Trade,Specialization gains,Welfare State,Uncertainty

High-loop perturbative renormalization constants for Lattice QCD (II): three-loop quark currents for tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action and n_f=2 Wilson fermions

Numerical Stochastic Perturbation Theory was able to get three- (and even four-) loop results for finite Lattice QCD renormalization constants. More recently, a conceptual and technical framework has been devised to tame finite size effects, which had been reported to be significant for (logarithmically) divergent renormalization constants. In this work we present three-loop results for fermion bilinears in the Lattice QCD regularization defined by tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action and n_f=2 Wilson fermions. We discuss both finite and divergent renormalization constants in the RI'-MOM scheme. Since renormalization conditions are defined in the chiral limit, our results also apply to Twisted Mass QCD, for which non-perturbative computations of the same quantities are available. We emphasize the importance of carefully accounting for both finite lattice space and finite volume effects. In our opinion the latter have in general not attracted the attention they would deserve.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, pdflate

The Importance of the Pre-exponential Factor in Semiclassical Molecular Dynamics

This paper deals with the critical issue of approximating the pre-exponential factor in semiclassical molecular dynamics. The pre-exponential factor is important because it accounts for the quantum contribution to the semiclassical propagator of the classical Feynman path fluctuations. Pre-exponential factor approximations are necessary when chaotic or complex systems are simulated. We introduced pre-exponential factor approximations based either on analytical considerations or numerical regularization. The approximations are tested for power spectrum calculations of more and more chaotic model systems and on several molecules, for which exact quantum mechanical values are available. The results show that the pre-exponential factor approximations introduced are accurate enough to be safely employed for semiclassical simulations of complex systems

Stable Determination of the Discontinuous Conductivity Coefficient of a Parabolic Equation

We deal with the problem of determining a time varying inclusion within a thermal conductor. In particular we study the continuous dependance of the inclusion from the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. Under a priori regularity assumptions on the unknown defect we establish logarithmic stability estimates.Comment: 36 page

Stable determination of an inclusion by boundary measurements

We deal with the problem of determining an inclusion within an electrical conductor from electrical boundary measurements. Under mild a priori assumptions we establish an optimal stability estimate.Comment: 19 page