Import Competition, Product Differentiation and Mark-Ups - Microeconomic evidence from Swedish manufacturing in the 1990s

This paper examines how import competition from different origins and the presence of product differentiation affect market power of Swedish manufacturing firms during the 1990s. Applying Roeger’s method (1995), I perform the empirical analysis based on detailed firm-level data and estimate an average mark-up level of Swedish manufacturing firms. The general finding is that imports from both European countries and other highincome countries outside Europe impose disciplinary effects on price-cost margin of Swedish manufacturing firms. The strongest effect is from the recent EU member countries. However, the competitive pressure associated with import is relaxed in the presence of product differentiation.Import competition; Mark-up; Market structure; Product differentiation

Has Import Disciplined Swedish Manufacturing Firms in the 1990s?

This paper analyses how increased integration and the ongoing enlargement of European Union’s internal market affected the performance of Swedish manufacturing firms. The pro-competitive effect of international trade, in terms of intensified import competition on domestic firms’ market power, has been investigated extensively at industry level. In contrast to previous studies, this analysis is based on detailed firm-level information. Import data are divided into an EU member group and a group of recently proved EU member candidates. It focuses on how imports from these groups, together with imports from other non-European trading partners, impact on firm profitability, while taking firm-specific efficiency effects into account. The findings are that import from the new EU-candidates seems to have a substantial disciplinary effect on Swedish firm profits, whereas import from EU-member countries only appears to have an impact on firms with large market shares and in highly concentrated industries.Import discipline; Market structure; Market share; Firm-level efficiency

Exports as an Indicator on or Promoter of Successful Swedish Manufacturing Firms in the 1990s

We study the link between exporting and productivity at the firm level. Like in previous studies we get support for that more productive firms self-select into the export market. In addition, and contrary to many of the former studies, we also obtain evidence for that exporting further increases firm productivity. Exporting firms appear to have significantly higher productivity than non-exporting. Moreover, exporters - mainly firms that increase their export intensities - have higher output growth than non-exporters. Reallocation of resources between firms may then have contributed to overall manufacturing productivity growth. Hence, we try to quantify the importance of reallocation.Exports; productivity; reallocation; decomposition

International Trade and Inter-Industry Wage Structure in Swedish Manufacturing - Evidence from matched employer-employee data

This study examines the inter-industry wage structure in Swedish manufacturing by using matched employer-employee data for the period 1996 to 2000. First, we use detailed individual and job characteristics to estimate industry-specific and time-varying wage premiums. Second, we investigate the impact of international trade on wage premiums, after controlling for effects of domestic competition and technical progress. Our results indicate that industries that face intensive import competition from low-income countries have lower wage premiums. Surprisingly, the wage premiums are not related to export intensities. Furthermore, technical progress, measured by investment in R&D activity, appears to enhance inter-industry wage premiums.Inter-industry wage structure; International trade; Matched employer- employee data

In-Datacenter Performance Analysis of a Tensor Processing Unit

Many architects believe that major improvements in cost-energy-performance must now come from domain-specific hardware. This paper evaluates a custom ASIC---called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)---deployed in datacenters since 2015 that accelerates the inference phase of neural networks (NN). The heart of the TPU is a 65,536 8-bit MAC matrix multiply unit that offers a peak throughput of 92 TeraOps/second (TOPS) and a large (28 MiB) software-managed on-chip memory. The TPU's deterministic execution model is a better match to the 99th-percentile response-time requirement of our NN applications than are the time-varying optimizations of CPUs and GPUs (caches, out-of-order execution, multithreading, multiprocessing, prefetching, ...) that help average throughput more than guaranteed latency. The lack of such features helps explain why, despite having myriad MACs and a big memory, the TPU is relatively small and low power. We compare the TPU to a server-class Intel Haswell CPU and an Nvidia K80 GPU, which are contemporaries deployed in the same datacenters. Our workload, written in the high-level TensorFlow framework, uses production NN applications (MLPs, CNNs, and LSTMs) that represent 95% of our datacenters' NN inference demand. Despite low utilization for some applications, the TPU is on average about 15X - 30X faster than its contemporary GPU or CPU, with TOPS/Watt about 30X - 80X higher. Moreover, using the GPU's GDDR5 memory in the TPU would triple achieved TOPS and raise TOPS/Watt to nearly 70X the GPU and 200X the CPU.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 8 tables. To appear at the 44th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), Toronto, Canada, June 24-28, 201

BioMAX the first macromolecular crystallography beamline at MAX IV Laboratory

BioMAX is the first macromolecular crystallography beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory 3 GeV storage ring, which is the first operational multi bend achromat storage ring. Due to the low emittance storage ring, BioMAX has a parallel, high intensity X ray beam, even when focused down to 20 mm 5 mm using the bendable focusing mirrors. The beam is tunable in the energy range 5 25 keV using the in vacuum undulator and the horizontally deflecting doublecrystal monochromator. BioMAX is equipped with an MD3 diffractometer, an ISARA high capacity sample changer and an EIGER 16M hybrid pixel detector. Data collection at BioMAX is controlled using the newly developed MXCuBE3 graphical user interface, and sample tracking is handled by ISPyB. The computing infrastructure includes data storage and processing both at MAX IV and the Lund University supercomputing center LUNARC. With state of the art instrumentation, a high degree of automation, a user friendly control system interface and remote operation, BioMAX provides an excellent facility for most macromolecular crystallography experiments. Serial crystallography using either a high viscosity extruder injector or the MD3 as a fixedtarget scanner is already implemented. The serial crystallography activities at MAX IV Laboratory will be further developed at the microfocus beamline MicroMAX, when it comes into operation in 2022. MicroMAX will have a 1 mm x 1 mm beam focus and a flux up to 10 15 photons s 1 with main applications in serial crystallography, room temperature structure determinations and time resolved experiment

Consensus guidelines for the use and interpretation of angiogenesis assays

The formation of new blood vessels, or angiogenesis, is a complex process that plays important roles in growth and development, tissue and organ regeneration, as well as numerous pathological conditions. Angiogenesis undergoes multiple discrete steps that can be individually evaluated and quantified by a large number of bioassays. These independent assessments hold advantages but also have limitations. This article describes in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro bioassays that are available for the evaluation of angiogenesis and highlights critical aspects that are relevant for their execution and proper interpretation. As such, this collaborative work is the first edition of consensus guidelines on angiogenesis bioassays to serve for current and future reference