American Regionalism and Global Free Trade

A free trade agreement supports global free trade since trade barriers tend to divert trade in favor of members, but not reduce imports. The term: 'mutual assured deterrence' is used to refer to a regional free trade association that has the feature that no member can gain individually from the imposition of a barrier against a non- member. Mutual assured deterrence is shown to be possible for a surprisingly rich set of partners. A customs union is compatible with global free trade if the vast majority of trade takes place naturally within the confines of the association. A customs union that is likely to have this property would combine countries to form a nearly exact economic replica of the globe. The economic combination of Mexico and the United States doesn't form a replica of the global economy because, compared with Asia, North America has relatively high capital per worker even after adding the Mexican workforce. However, NAFTA does seem to have the property of mutual assured deterrence, and may for that reason amount to a commitment to global free trade as well as regional free trade.

A Heckscher-Ohlin View of Sweden Competing in the Global Market

In this paper we explore the hypothesis that the Swedish malaise comes from the interaction of the Swedish welfare state with changes in the global marketplace. External commerce can expose Swedish workers in exporting and import-competing industries to competition from low-wage foreign workers that is incompatible with an extensive welfare system. The Heckscher-Ohlin theory that is the foundation of this paper allows a high-wage equilibrium without government intervention even though there is increasing competition from low-wage suppliers, if capital is abundant and if production is concentrated on the most capital intensive products. Then the unskilled workers can be employed at high wages either in the tradables or nontradables sector. However, Swedish investment rates have not been high enough to maintain the position that it had two decades ago. This we express in the form of the Heckscher-Ohlin Crowding Hypothesis: Swedish difficulties in its interactions with the global marketplace come from an eroding lead in capital abundance. Though losing its distinctiveness in capital abundance, Sweden remains well supplied with soft-wood forests. Although contributing substantially to GDP forest resources can also imply lower wages for unskilled workers and greater income inequality. A country with abundant forest resources and produce capital intensive products as well as pulp and paper, but a country with more moderate supplies of capital can find much of its capital deployed in pulp and paper and end up with a mix of tradables including relatively labor-intensive products. This product mix may dictate relatively low wages for unskilled workers since the marginal unskilled worker may be employed in sectors which globally award low wages.

Reflectance differences between Target and Torch rape cultivars

Spectroradiometric reflectance measurements were made on Target and Torch plants (four and five leaves, respectively) that were growing in 0.09 m2 soil-containing flats. Torch's spectrophotometric single leaf reflectance was consistently lower than Target's at the 650-nm chlorophyll absorption band because Torch's chlorophyll concentration was larger than Target's, which caused more red light absorption. Spectroradiometric measurements indicate that: wet soil strongly absorbs visible light (500 to 700 nm) so that Target's soil-containing flat with 60% plant cover has less reflectance than Torch's soil-containing flat with 75% plant cover; Torch (most foiliage) has higher near-infrared (750 to 1,350 nm) reflectance than Target (least foliage); and the 2,200-nm wavelength is a candidate band to distinguish Target from Torch. The difference in chlorophyll concentrations between Target and Torch, compared with leaf structural differences, is apparently the most important factor that would affect the infrared color film's tonal response to vegetation in the photographic sensitive region (500 to 900 nm)