Long Term Patterns of International Merchandise Trade

This FIW Special International Economics takes a long term perspective on international merchandise trade and tracks specialisation patterns of 19 world regions over the period 1980 to 2009. The data reveals that the path of trade specialisation is not predetermined: globalisation may intensify initial specialisations or may induce technological upgrading leading to new specialisation patterns. The emergence of the highly successful East Asian electronics cluster is easily discernible from our analysis as is the catch-up process of Eastern Europe. The experience of these dynamic regions contrasts with that of the African regions, West Asia and to some extent South America, whose primary role in the world economy is still that of oil and raw material suppliers. We also show that international trade in technology intensive industries has broadened geographically. High income countries in Europe, Japan and the US which dominated trade in high tech manufactures until the 1980s have suffered a considerable loss of market shares to the benefit of emerging East Asian countries causing a lot of concern about the EU’s export performance in high technology industries among European policy makers. R&D policy has become a major component of Europe’s industrial policy which is intended to support the continuous process of technological upgrading high income countries need to remain competitive in world markets. European high income regions have been successful in this respect in the sense that their export structures continue to shift towards more technology intensive industries despite the losses of global market shares which must be seen as a consequence of a broader participation in world trade. We read the major shifts in global world trade over the past decades and in particular the ‘rise of Asia’ as evidence that active trade and industrial policies can ignite and support the industrialisation process and technological upgrading within the manufacturing sector. At the same time Eastern Europe showed that a technological catch-up process can also be achieved by relying on foreign direct investment and deep trade integration with more advanced trading partners in the region. In contrast, the policies pursued by South American countries after the debt-crisis of the 1980s did not seem to have fostered significant technological upgrading. Given the undetermacy of trade specialisation over time and the multiple paths to technological upgrading we believe that international trade rules should ensure – more than they do now – that all countries have the required policy space to implement policies that foster structural changes in their economies.export specialisation, structural change, technological upgrading, industrial policy

The Peruvian upwelling ecosystem: dynamics and interactions

Upwelling, Ecosystems, Fishery biology, Fishery oceanography, Conferences, Peru,

On direct and crossed channel asymptotics of four-point functions in AdS/CFT correspondence

We analyse the leading logarithmic singularities in direct and crossed channel limit of the four-point functions in dilaton-axion sector of type IIB supergravity on $AdS_{5}$ in AdS/CFT correspondence. Logarithms do not cancel in the full correlator in both channels.Comment: Revised version, typos corrected, 9 pages, no figure

Tariff-mediated network effects with incompletely informed consumers

I explore the competitive effects of on-net/off-net differentiation in a market with two asymmetric networks by combining the literature on on-net/off-net differentiation with research on costly consumer search in an agent-based simulation model. All consumers in the market are subscribed to one of two networks, whereby, initially, clusters of subscribers to network B exist. A priori, consumers lack information on the market shares of both network and, hence, have to engage in costly fixed-sample search. With respect to the extent of search costs, I distinguish between three types of consumers: (1) fully informed consumers (FICs) have non-positive search costs and, accordingly, are always perfectly informed about networks' market shares; (2) partly informed consumers (PICs) have moderate search costs, which allow them to observe market shares within a circular sensing field; and (3) locally informed consumers (LICs) have high search costs and, hence, only observe market shares among their immediate eight neighbours. Irrespective of their type, consumers maximize their expected utility by subscribing to the network offering the lowest expected cost for a call to a random consumer. The results of a systematic variation of the key parameters of the model show that the larger network's probability to increase its market share or to corner the market is negatively affected by the fraction of PICs and LICs, whereas it is positively affected by PICs's sensing radius, the larger network's initial market share, and the number of clusters. The introduction of calling clubs reveals that the probability of calling a friend inflicts a negative effect while the size of the calling clubs has a positive effect. These findings highlight the pivotal role of the amount of information available to consumers for the distribution of market shares

The effect of on-net / off-net differentiation and heterogeneuous consumers on network size in mobile telecommunications : an agent-based aporoach

I explore the effects of on-net / off-net differentiation on network sizes in mobile telecommunications when both rational and non-rational consumers coexist in the market. In particular, three different types of consumers are modeled: (1) fully informed rational (FIR) consumers who are perfectly informed about the true market shares of all networks and choose the network with the lowest expected cost of a call; (2) partly informed rational (PIR) consumers who only observe market shares within a circular sensing field and choose the network with the lowest expected cost of a call based on these observed market shares; and (3) non-rational (NR) consumers who choose the network with the highest market share among their immediate neighbors. Using an agent-based simulation approach and by systematical variation of four key parameters of the model, three key results emerge. First, if the share of FIR consumers is too high, all consumers will eventually join the initially larger network A. Second, if their share in the population is sufficiently large, NR consumers can prevent the growth of clusters of consumers subscribed to network B. Third, if the share of PIR consumers is high, clusters of consumers subscribed to network B can grow, thereby increasing network B's market share, provided that the radius of their circular sensing field is small enough for the cluster size

Will the true labor share stand up?

We document the consequences of ambiguity in the empirical definition of the macroeconomic labor share. Depending on its definition, the properties of short-run fluctuations, medium-run swings, and long-run stochastic trends of the labor share may vary substantially. Based on a range of historical US time series, we carry out a systematic exploration of discrepancies between the alternative labor share definitions in terms of the observed stochastic trends, shares of short-, medium- and long-run variation in total volatility of the series, degree of persistence, mean-reversion properties, and susceptibility to structural breaks. We conclude that while short-run properties of the labor shares (represented by cyclical variation below 8 years) are relatively consistent across all definitions, their medium-run swings (8-50 years) and long-run trends ( 50 years) diverge substantially. As important applications, we document the implications of our findings for growth accounting, the identification of short-run responses of the labor share to technology shocks and for estimating inflation

First mover advantages in mobile telecommunications: Evidence from OECD countries

We explore the existence of first mover advantages in mobile telecommunications markets. Building on a data set comprising monthly penetration rates, market concentration, number of active operators, and market shares of 90 followers from 33 OECD countries, we estimate a dynamic growth model. Our analysis delivers five key results. Regarding a follower's longrun market share, we observe that (1) the penetration rate at the time of market entry exerts an inverted u-shaped effect, suggesting the existence of an optimal time for issuing additional licenses for mobile network operation; (2) the concentration rate at market entry exerts a positive effect, implying that it is easier for followers to enter a more concentrated market; (3) both the number of active operators at market entry and the number of currently active operators have a negative impact. Furthermore, we find that a follower's rate of convergence to the long-run market share is (4) negatively influenced by the current market concentration and number of active operators; (5) negatively affected by changes in the penetration rate since market entry, which strongly indicates the presence of substantial first mover advantages for pioneering network operators

What drives the relevance and reputation of economics journals? An update from a survey among economists

This is paper analyses the interrelationship between perceived journal relevance and reputation. Based on a survey of 705 members of the German Economic Association, we find a strong interrelationship between journal reputation and relevance where a journal's perceived relevance has a stronger effect on the journal's reputation than vice versa. Moreover, past journal ratings conducted by the Handelsblatt and the German Economic Association (GEA) directly affect journals' reputation among German economists and indirectly also their perceived relevance, but the effect on reputation is more than twice as large as the effect on perceived relevance. In general, citations have a non-linear impact on perceived journal reputation and relevance. While the number of landmark articles published in a journal increases reputation, an increase in the so-called H-index even tends to decrease a journal's perceived relevance, as long as this is not simultaneously reflected in a higher Handelsblatt- and/or GEA-rating. We also identify significant differences in the views on journal relevance and reputation between different age groups

Spinning deformations of the D1-D5 system and a geometric resolution of Closed Timelike Curves

The SO(4) isometry of the extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black hole of N=1, D=5 supergravity can be partly broken, without breaking any supersymmetry, in two different ways. The ``right'' solution is a rotating black hole (BMPV); the ``left'' is interpreted as a black hole in a Godel universe. In ten dimensions, both spacetimes are described by deformations of the D1-D5-pp-wave system with the property that the non-trivial Closed Timelike Curves of the five dimensional manifold are absent in the universal covering space of the ten dimensional manifold. In the decoupling limit, the BMPV deformation is normalizable. It corresponds to the vev of an IR relevant operator of dimension \Delta=1. The Godel deformation is sub-leading in \alpha' unless we take an infinite vorticity limit; in such case it is a non-normalizable perturbation. It corresponds to the insertion of a vector operator of dimension \Delta=5. Thus we conclude that from the dual (1+1)-CFT viewpoint the SO(4) R-symmetry is broken `spontaneously' in the BMPV case and explicitly in the Godel case.Comment: 20 pages, no figures, LaTeX; v2: Minor improvements, to appear in Nucl. Phys.