Implications of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) regulations on the EU – U.S. Corn Trade Sector and the Case of the ‘Agenda 2000’ Reforms

Corn trade between the European Union (EU) and the United States has undergone substantial changes over the past decade. EU Reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), beginning with the Mac Sharry Reforms of 1992 and continuing with the Agenda 2000 Reforms, were directed at bringing EU agricultural policy into compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions. These reforms have brought about considerable changes in the market structure in corn trade. However, while trade has been facilitated by decoupling payments and removing levies and tariffs on imported corn, EU’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures have negated some of the progress in trade between EU countries and the United States. Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), in the form of SPS measures, have progressively replaced traditional tariff and non-tariff trade barriers while allowing the EU to remain in compliance with WTO regulations. The absence of recognizing equivalency in production procedures has created a further decline in corn trade accounting for over $300 million loss annually to U.S. corn exports since 1997 (Weyerbrock and Xia 2000). Using data obtained from the USDA and EUROSTAT, we develop a three stage simultaneous equation model to estimate the economic impact of TBTs on EU-U.S. bilateral corn trade for specific EU countries. Further, welfare effects for producers and consumers in EU countries are also estimated.Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures, Technical Barriers to Trade, Common Agricultural Policy, Agenda 2000 Reforms, Genetically Modified corn, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade,

All tree level scattering amplitudes in Chern-Simons theories with fundamental matter

We show that Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) recursion relations can be used to compute all tree level scattering amplitudes in terms of $2\rightarrow2$ scattering amplitude in $U(N)$ ${\mathcal N}=2$ Chern-Simons (CS) theory coupled to matter in fundamental representation. As a byproduct, we also obtain a recursion relation for the CS theory coupled to regular fermions, even though in this case standard BCFW deformations do not have a good asymptotic behaviour. Moreover at large $N$, $2\rightarrow 2$ scattering can be computed exactly to all orders in 't Hooft coupling as was done in earlier works by some of the authors. In particular, for ${\mathcal N}=2$ theory, it was shown that $2\rightarrow 2$ scattering is tree level exact to all orders except in the anyonic channel arXiv:1505.06571, where it gets renormalized by a simple function of 't Hooft coupling. This suggests that it may be possible to compute the all loop exact result for arbitrary higher point scattering amplitudes at large $N$.Comment: RevTEX 4.1, 5 pages+6 Appendices, 7 figures; V2 Published versio

Reductive Biotransformation of Ethyl Acetoacetate: A Comparative Studies using Free and Immobilized Whole Yeast Cells

Bioreduction of ethyl acetoacetate with free and immobilized yeast whole cell was achieved by using water and sucrose combination. After detachment from immobilized beads under basic condition, the corresponding ethyl(S)-(+)-3-hydroxybutanoate was isolated with 98 to 100% yield. Immobilized beads of yeast whole cell were prepared at different temperature which affects the morphology and physiology of the beads for the diffusion of the enzyme, which shown the maximum conversion of the substrate to products as compared to the free yeast whole cell