Liberalization for Sale: Corporate Demands and Lobbying over FTAs

Firm-based approaches to international trade have revolutionized the study of trade politics. Corporate participation in political processes is costly, limiting access to large, productive, well-resourced, and often internationally engaged firms. This implies a pro-trade bias in corporate lobbying demands over trade policy. I examine this relationship in the case of three free trade agreements passed by the United States Congress in 2011. I combine public statements from firms on the FTAs with corporate lobbying activities and find that both lobbying firms and those that lobbied and publicly disclosed their policy positions were more productive than the typical publicly traded firm. Likewise, firms with income from foreign affiliates were more likely to be politically active than others. These results contribute to a vibrant body of research into the complex relationships firms hold with policies governing access to international markets

Firm Heterogeneity and Trade-Policy Stances: Evidence from a Survey of Japanese Producers

Recent research in international political economy has begun to explore the implications of producer heterogeneity for trade politics. Variations in productivity and size lead to systematic variations in market behaviors, especially with respect to firms’ abilities to engage foreign markets. This heterogeneity similarly leads to systematic variations in policy stances: Highly productive firms are more likely to favor trade liberalization than their less productive counterparts. I test the role of firm heterogeneity on trade-policy stances using original and representative survey data of Japanese manufacturers. I find that highly productive firms are more likely to favor liberalization than others, while a large portion of producers is indifferent to trade-policy reform. Other producers do not know how they would be impacted by liberalization; these tend to be smaller than their counterparts. The relationship between productivity and pro-trade attitudes is robust, even when controlling for a wide range of internationalization modes

Implementation of a Code Lobby Surge and the Impact on Left Without Being Seen Rates

Practice Problem: Crowding of emergency departments contribute to higher-than-average left without being seen (LWBS) rates. LWBS patients pose risks to the hospital as well as to one’s own health. PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was in a pediatric emergency department (P), does implementation of a “Code Lobby Surge” (I), compared to standard care (C), decrease left without being seen rates (O) within eight weeks (T)? Evidence: Surge interventions and decreasing the visual of crowding have shown to decrease LWBS rates. Intervention: “Code Lobby Surge” was implemented to decrease LWBS rates and improve throughput within the pediatric emergency department. “Code Lobby Surge” is activated when the wait time for triage is over 30 minutes and the total number of patients pending triage exceeds 10 patients. Outcome: The intervention decreased LWBS rates by approximately four percent. Conclusion: “Code Lobby Surge” not only decreased LWBS rates, but also improved throughput of the emergency department. “Cody Lobby Surge” is an effective intervention to mitigate emergency department surges that contribute to LWBS rates

Functional Studies of Ribosomal Protein bL27 of the Model Bacterium Thermus thermophilus

More than 35,000 people die in the United States every year from antibiotic-resistant infections. The overuse and misuse of prescribed medications is partly to blame for this crisis. When antibiotics are ineffective, infections last longer, are more severe, and are more expensive to treat. Since microorganisms are becoming increasingly resilient to clinically relevant antibiotics worldwide, researchers are actively studying novel treatments. Prokaryotic ribosomes are a major target of antibiotics. This cellular machinery is composed of two subunits (30Ss and 50Ss), and made of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and protein. Its function is to translate mRNA messages into a chain of amino acids, which are delivered by tRNA. The proper formation of proteins is essential for all life. Understanding the function and importance of the ribosome allows us to investigate mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in our model organism Thermus thermophilus. The ribosomal protein bL27 is found in the 50S subunit. It consists of a globular domain situated on the subunit surface, and an extended tail that reaches into the peptidyltransferase active site, where peptide bond formation is catalyzed by the ribosome, and the site of action of numerous antibiotics. The close proximity of this tail to a critical active site suggests a role for this protein in ribosome structure and function. In order to test this hypothesis, we deleted rpmA, the gene encoding bL27, from T. thermophilus and replaced it with a kanamycin-resistance gene. PCR analysis was used to confirm the deletion. Surprisingly, the rpmA deletion mutant is viable, demonstrating that bL27 is dispensable indicating that it plays at most an indirect role in peptide bond formation. However, the role of this protein in organizing the structure of the active site has not been excluded, and is consistent with the slow-growth phenotype of this mutant