The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview and context of the country studies on Information Technology (IT) for Trade Facilitation (TF) in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).Impact of Information Techonology, Trade Facilitation, SMEs

Studies in Trade and Investment: The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation

This chapter defines the context of IT in TF and delineate its environment. The argument is that the importance of the IT context cannot be overlooked and may even be critical to its successful application to a country's trading system.Trade facilitation, background, ICT, Information Technology

Studies in Trade and Investment: The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation

It is important to lay out a framework for understanding how trade facilitation (TF) affects the movement of goods, and where information (IT) fits in. This relationship, in turn, sets the stage for locating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in international transactions. There is an increasing amount of substantial literature on TF and equally wide knowledge of IT. While it is not the intent of this chapter to survey these materials, to the extent that they are relevant to the following discussion, they will be referred to appropriately. Section A of this chapter elaborates on TF and the wide range of instruments that have been used and analyzed while section B details some actual experiences in the use of IT in TF. Section C examines small and medium-sized enterprises and IT in TF. Section D summarizes this chapter and considers the implications for inclusive growth.Trade facilitation, ICT, IT, SMEs,

Impact of Trade Facilitation on Export Competitiveness: a Regional Perspective

This chapter attempts to identify regional cooperation measures that support trade and transport facilitation and thereby enhance export competitiveness. This will be done by examining some experiences in Asia and the Pacific that illustrate how cooperation has developed or is developing.Asia, trade, transport, regional cooperation, facilitation

Studies in Trade and Investment: The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview and the context of the country studies on IT in TF in SMEs. Following this introductory clarification of the differing views about the importance of IT in TF, where the interests of SMEs lay and how these interests are promoted, section A summarizes the different country studies covering several aspects of IT in TF. Section B derives some implications from the country studies. Section C introduces the contents of the succeeding chapters.Trade facilitation, ICT, IT, SMEs

On the Fürstenberg closure of a class of binary recurrences

In this paper, we determine the closure in the full topology over Z of the set {un: n≥0}, where (un)n≥0 is a nondegenerate binary recurrent sequence with integer coefficients whose characteristic roots are quadratic units. This generalizes the result for the case when un=Fn was the nth Fibonacci number

Long-range correlated random field and random anisotropy O(N) models: A functional renormalization group study

We study the long-distance behavior of the O(N) model in the presence of random fields and random anisotropies correlated as ~1/x^{d-sigma} for large separation x using the functional renormalization group. We compute the fixed points and analyze their regions of stability within a double epsilon=d-4 and sigma expansion. We find that the long-range disorder correlator remains analytic but generates short-range disorder whose correlator develops the usual cusp. This allows us to obtain the phase diagrams in (d,sigma,N) parameter space and compute the critical exponents to first order in epsilon and sigma. We show that the standard renormalization group methods with a finite number of couplings used in previous studies of systems with long-range correlated random fields fail to capture all critical properties. We argue that our results may be relevant to the behavior of He-3A in aerogel.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, revtex

Measurement of the longitudinal spin structure of the proton by COMPASS

The inclusive A_1,p and hadron double-spin asymmetries A_p^pi+, A_p^pi-, A_p^K+, A_p^K- measured at COMPASS (CERN SPS) in deep-inelastic scattering of a polarized muon beam off a polarized NH_3 solid target are presented. The results have been obtained with the full statistics collected in 2007 for the longitudinal target polarization. Proton asymmetries have been combined with the published deuteron ones. An evaluation of the non-singlet spin-dependent structure function g_1^NS(x,Q^2) and its first moment, which confirms the validity of the Bjorken sum-rule, is presented. A LO evaluation of polarized quark densities is also presented. The use of the proton data allows to perform a full flavor separation and to extract individual helicity densities of u, d, anti-u, anti-d and s quarks. All sea quark densities are found to be compatible with zero in the full range of the measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, presented at the 3rd joint International HADRON STRUCTURE '09 Conference, Tatranska Strba (Slovak Republic

Evolutionarily stable in-group favoritism and out-group spite in intergroup conflict

We study conflict between two groups of individuals. Using Schaffer`s (1988) concept of evolutionary stability we provide an evolutionary underpinning for in-group altruism combined with spiteful behavior towards members of the rival out-group. We characterize the set of evolutionarily stable combinations of in-group favoritism and out-group spite and find that an increase in in-group altruism can be balanced by a decrease in spiteful behavior towards the out-group