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Does trade openness cause higher GDP per capita? Since the seminal instrumental variables (IV) estimates of Frankel and Romer [F&R](1999) important doubts have surfaced. Is the correlation spurious and driven by omitted geographical and institutional variables? In this paper, we generalize F&R's geography-based empirical strategy to a panel setting. We observe that natural disasters affect bilateral trade, and that this effect is conditioned by geographical variables such as distance to financial centers or area. This allows us to use interactions between geography and the incidence of disasters at the bilateral level to construct an instrument for multilateral openness that varies across countries and time. The instrument can be used in panel setups where it is possible to fully control for geographical and historical determinants of countries' performances as well as for the direct effect of disasters. We find that the elasticity of income with respect to openness is about 0.69, but that substantial heterogeneity exists across country samples.

I summarize the main results and policy insights from the 2011 EIB Conference on Productivity and Long-Term Growth Potential in Europe. Europe's need for productivity growth has become more pressing against the backdrop of huge government debt and a beginning slowdown in labour supply. The contributors to the EIB Conference and this volume suggest that governments should embrace domestic and international competition by dismantling anticompetitive product market regulations, especially in services. Private and public R&D should feature high on the policy agenda, but their effectiveness should be enhanced by removing overly protective elements of the patent system. Education attainment and quality as well as life-long learning should be fostered and more emphasis put on an ICT-literate workforce. Productivity-enhancing resource reallocation may further require lower employment protection and stronger incentives for regional and sectoral mobility. Finally, Europe faces large broadband investment needs, calling for a predictable network regulation framework and targeted public support to broadband roll-out to less profitable areas.

This paper aims to assess R. G. Frey's analysis of Leonard Nelson's argument (that links interests to rights). Frey argues that claims that animals have rights or interests have not been established. Frey's contentions that animals have not been shown to have rights nor interests will be discussed in turn, but the main focus will be on Frey's claim that animals have not been shown to have interests. One way Frey analyses this latter claim is by considering H. J. McCloskey's denial of the claim and Tom Regan's criticism of this denial. While Frey's position on animal interests does not depend on McCloskey's views, he believes that a consideration of McCloskey's views will reveal that Nelson's argument (linking interests to rights) has not been established as sound. My discussion (of Frey's scrutiny of Nelson's argument) will centre on the dialogue between Regan and Frey in respect of McCloskey's argument. I will endeavor to update the dialogue by providing a re-interpretation of 'rights' in Nelson's argument.

This paper examines the relationship between the internationalisation of firms in services and their innovation performance. We use firm-level data over the period 2004-2006 and estimate an augmented structural model to account for the role of foreign direct investment and exporting on the innovation performance of services firms in Ireland. Our research shows that in comparison to firms serving only the Irish market, domestic exporters were more likely to engage in R&D and innovation and they were more likely to be successful in terms of innovation output, over and above firm characteristics such as size and distance to the technology frontier. Further, we find that adoption of information and communication technologies was positively associated with innovation output. Co-operation with suppliers was positively associated with all innovation types, while knowledge flows from customers and from the government or public research institutes were positively linked to product innovation. Co-operation with universities was positively linked to innovation measured by patents.

The main aim of the EC-financed R&D project PlantLIBRA (PLANT food supplements: Levels of Intake, Benefit and Risk Assessment) is to foster the safe use of food supplements containing plants or botanical preparations, by enabling science-based decision making by regulators and stakeholders. To make informed decisions, competent authorities and industry need more accessible and quality-assured information, as well as better tools (e.g., databases) and procedures for safety and benefit assessments, supported by broadly accepted methodologies. Consequently, PlantLIBRA is working to develop, validate and disseminate data and methodologies for risk and benefit assessment of plant food supplements, and to implement sustainable international cooperation. International cooperation will help ensure the quality of botanicals imported in the EU. Moreover, the project will provide data on intake by conducting a harmonized consumption survey. Existing composition and safety data will be collated into a meta-database. New analytical data and methods will be investigated and validated. The consortium is working closely with competent authorities and stakeholders.

The 54th IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Korea August 7-10, 2011, CDROM, pp.1-4. ; This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, may not be copyrighted. ; Constant weight codewords, in which the number of 1's is constant, are essential to combinatorial computing. For example, it is often useful to generate all subsets of a set with a fixed number of elements. In this paper, we show an efficient circuit that converts a constant weight codeword into a unique index of that codeword. This circuit is a necessary part of a circuit that uses constant weight codewords to transmit data on and off chip. Our circuit is based on the combinatorial number system in which the digits are binomial coefficients n r. Experimental results show the efficiency of our design.

Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are an adaptive heuristic search algorithm premised on the evolutionary ideas of natural selection and genetic. In this study we apply GAs for Fundamental Models of Exchange Rate Determination in exchange rate market. In this framework, we estimated absolute and relative purchasing power parity, Mundell-Fleming, sticky and flexible prices, equilibrium exchange rate and portfolio balance model as fundamental models for European Union's Euro against the US Dollar using monthly data from January 1992 to December 2008. Then, we put these models into the genetic algorithm system for measuring their optimal weight for each model. These optimal weights have been measured according to four criteria i.e. R-squared (R2), mean square error (MSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE). Based on obtained Results, it seems that for explaining of EU Euro against the US Dollar exchange rate behavior, equilibrium exchange rate and portfolio balance model are better than the other fundamental models.

The degree of openness in the service industry has been greatly improved since China's opening up to the outside world in 1978. FDI in services has grown substantially and it can be expected that China's service industry will become the most attractive field to foreign capital. In this article, the status and problems of FDI in the service industry are analysed. Empirical analysis of the effects and determinants of FDI in services shows that a positive relationship between FDI in services and the development of China's services industry is not evident. The economic effect of FDI in services is dependent on the interaction mechanisms between FDI and the levels of human capital available, R&D capability and China's open-door policy. FDI in services is positively influenced by the degree of openness, market scale and cumulative FDI, while a high wage rate acts as a deterrent to inward FDI. The scale and quality of FDI in services should be improved by increasing domestic absorptive capability and opening the service sector further under the WTO framework. (CIJ/GIGA)

The study refers to a problem of temporal competence in shy youth. The research question was: Whether and what differences in the level and the structure of temporal competences are in the group of young people with various level of shyness? The group of 286 (F–178, M–108) aged 15–18 years was tested. The Shyness Questionnaire by W. R. Crozier and The Temporal Competences Questionnaire by Z. Uchnast and K. Tucholska were applied. The analysis of results obtained allows to state that the shy youth has significantly lower level of temporal competence in general. They suffer from the lack of acceptance of their past and present situation, and deficit in prospective approach. The results of conducted research may direct the therapeutic work with shy people on the issues of their openness to various dimensions of psychological time. It should be noticed that the essence of shyness is not only in the lack of social or communicative competences but also it is connected with the lack of basic competences in psychological time experience.

Article 26.1 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety left open the possibility for member countries to include in their biosafety regulatory processes the assessment of socio-economic considerations. Countries may also decide to include such assessments as part of their national legislation or regulations for the approval and deliberate release into the environment of genetically engineered technologies. Countries are debating if and how to implement assessment of socio-economic considerations. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy dialogue by discussing issues related to socio-economic assessment including scope, timing, inclusion modalities, methods, decision-making rules and standards, and the integration of socio-economic assessments in biosafety and/or biotechnology approval processes. This paper also discusses the implications of such inclusion for technology flows and public and private sector R&D. If inclusion is not done properly, it may negatively impact technology flows especially from the public sector and render an unworkable biosafety system. Adapted from the source document.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. ; A large number of interesting organocatalytic enantioselective protocols have been explored and successfully applied in the last decade. Among them, the Henry (nitroaldol) reaction represents a powerful carbon-carbon bond-forming procedure for the preparation of valuable synthetic intermediates, such as enantioenriched nitro alcohols, which can be further transformed in a number of important nitrogen and oxygen-containing compounds. This area of research is still in expansion and a more complex version of this useful process has recently emerged, the domino Michael/Henry protocol, affording highly functionalized cycles with multiple stereogenic centers. ; We thank the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Projects CTQ2009-09028 and CTQ2010-19606) and the Government of Aragón (Project PI064/09 and Research Groups, E-10) for financial support of our research. E. M.-L. thanks CSIC for a JAE-Doc postdoctoral contract. R. P. H. thanks the Aragón I + D Foundation for her permanent position. ; Peer Reviewed

[EN] The purpose of this paper is to analyse the content of the European Commission¿s Communication of 18th November 2010 on the future of the CAP. It discusses the key issues of interest that will be tackled during the CAP reform process and it also provides some suggestions in order to support the debate before the presentation of the legislative proposals from the Commission in 2011. ; [ES] El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el contenido de la Comunicación de la Comisión Europea de 18 de noviembre de 2010 sobre el futuro de la PAC. Resalta los principales temas de interés que serán abordados durante el proceso de reforma y al mismo tiempo esboza algunas ideas con vistas a facilitar el debate previo a la presentación de las propuestas legislativas por la Comisión en 2011. ; Compes López, R. (2011). Tribuna de debate. La PAC 2020: claves interpretativas de la comunicación de la CXomisión Europea. Economía Agraria y Recursos Naturales. 11(1):257-263. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/36789 ; S ; 257 ; 263 ; 11 ; 1

Elsevier user license: Permitted: For non-commercial purposes: Read, print & download Text & data mine Translate the article Not Permitted: Reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works Redistribute or republish the final article Sell or re-use for commercial purposes ; The Valencian Community, with 5,000,000 inhabitants, is implementing a system of pharmaceutical management to reduce costs. This system is based on classifying patients in groups using the case mix system, Clinical Risk Groups. An electronic tool has been developed based on www to manage patients with chronic conditions and monitor pharmaceutical expenditure in primary health care. GPs receive a report on the real pharmaceutical cost that is being incurred and the optimum cost adjusted by CRG. ; Usó Talamantes, R.; Caballer Tarazona, M.; Buigues Pastor, L.; Trillo Mata, JL.; Guadalajara Olmeda, MN.; Vivas Consuelo, DJJ. (2011). Predictability of pharmaceutical spending using Clinical Risk Groups in the Valencian Community, Valencia. Value in Health. 14(7):A341-A341. doi:10.1016/j.jval.2011.08.596 ; S ; A341 ; A341 ; 14 ; 7

Johansson S, Leonard R, Noonan K. Caring and the generation of social capital: two models for a positive relationshipWhen caring is linked to social capital, it is generally assumed that the nature of the relationship is that social capital is a resource that can be used for care work. When there is inadequate funding of aged care services by the state, then social capital may be seen as a substitute for economic and human capital. Caring, therefore, is seen as a drain on capital. However, this does not have to be the case. Aged care services, if thoughtfully designed, can not only consume social capital, but also generate it. Two models of elder care, one Swedish and one Australian, have been identified which specifically address the generation of social capital. In each case, the services and facilities have been developed by third‐sector organisations with a strong community development focus, often in the face of resistance from state‐run or medically oriented services.