External adjustment and U.S. macroeconomic performance

Deficit financing ; Saving and investment ; Gross national product

Does China Still Have a Labor Cost Advantage?

In recent years wages in China have been rising and the yuan has appreciated, potentially eroding China’s cost advantage in manufactures. This paper explores the evolution of China’s relative unit labor costs in manufacturing over 1998-2009. Between 1998 and 2003 China’s unit labor costs fell, but since 2003 they have increased both absolutely and relative to US unit labor costs. Much of the rise in China’s relative unit labor costs can be traced to a real appreciation of the yuan against the dollar. Despite the recent rise, China’s unit labor costs remain low relative to those in most other countries.China, labor costs, productivity, international competitiveness, real exchange rate

Orientation of the cores of hybrid morphology radio sources

The FRI/FRII dichotomy is a much debated issue in the astrophysics of extragalactic radio sources. Study of the properties of HYbrid MOrphology Radio Sources (HYMORS) may bring crucial information and lead to a step forward in understanding the origin of FRI/FRII dichotomy. HYMORS are a rare class of double-lobed radio sources where each of the two lobes clearly exhibits a different FR morphology. This article describes follow-up high resolution VLBA observations of the five discovered by us HYMORS. The main aim of the observations was to answer the questions of whether the unusual radio morphology is connected to the orientation of objects towards the observer. We obtained the high resolution radio maps of five hybrid radio morphology objects with the VLBA at C-band and L-band. Two of them revealed milliarcsecond core-jet structures, the next two objects showed hints of parsec-scale jets, and the last one remained point-like at both frequencies. We compared properties of observed milliarcsecond structures of hybrid sources with the larger scale ones previously detected with the VLA. We find that on both scales the fluxes of their central components are similar, which may indicate the lack of additional emission in the proximity of the nucleus. This suggests that jets present on the 1-10 kpc scale in those objects are FRII-like. When possible, the detected core-jet structures were used for estimating the core's spatial orientation. The result is that neither the FRI-like nor the FRII-like side is preferred, which may suggest that no specific spatial orientation of HYMORS is required to explain their radio morphology. Their estimated viewing angles indicate they are unbeamed objects. The 178 MHz luminosity of observed HYMORS exceed the traditional FRI/FRII break luminosity, indicating they have radio powers similar to FRIIs.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Does China Still Have A Labor Cost Advantage?

In recent years wages in China have been rising and the yuan has appreciated, potentially eroding China’s cost advantage in manufactures. This paper explores the evolution of China’s relative unit labor costs in manufacturing over 1998-2009. Between 1998 and 2003 China’s unit labor costs fell, but since 2003 they have increased both absolutely and relative to US unit labor costs. Much of the rise in China’s relative unit labor costs can be traced to a real appreciation of the yuan against the dollar. Despite the recent rise, China’s unit labor costs remain low relative to those in most other countries

Molecularly imprinted poly(2-oxazoline) based on cross-linking by direct amidation of methyl ester side chains

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are tailor-made synthetic materials possessing memory of their molecular templates and have found numerous applications in separation science, drug delivery, and catalysis. Here, we report the development of an MIP based on poly(2-oxazoline)s. The cross-linked imprinted polymer was obtained by reacting a short-chain poly(2-oxazoline) with methyl ester side chains with diethylenetriamine in the presence of indometacin as template. The cross-linker diethylenetriamine simultaneously acted as cross-linker and interacted with the indometacin template. The influence of several parameters on indometacin adsorption such as initial concentration, contact time, and temperature, as well as reusability of the MIPs and kinetics of indometacin release, have been investigated. The maximum amount of indometacin bonded reached 293 mg g(-1) for the imprinted polymer versus 25 mg g(-1) for the nonimprinted polymer. This result clearly indicates that molecularly imprinted poly(2-oxazoline)s possess a large potential for developing new MIPs due to their high imprinting properties