Search results for "TRADE"
showing 10 items of 1475 documents
Misidentification ofDiphyllobothriumSpecies Related to Global Fish Trade, Europe
2014
To the Editor: Diphyllobothriosis, infection by tapeworms of the genus Diphyllobothrium (Cestoda: Diphyllobothriidea) (1), is a well-known disease of humans. In Europe, infections caused by 3 species of Diphyllobothrium have recently been reported in humans: D. latum is considered to be the principal species infecting persons in Europe (1); 4 cases of D. dendriticum infection and 6 cases of D. nihonkaiense infection have also been reported (2,3). Except for those caused by D. latum, which is autochthonous in northeastern Europe and subalpine lakes, most of the cases in Europe have been imported or caused by consumption of fish imported from areas to which the parasites are endemic (1,3,4). …
Starvation can diversify the population structure and virulence strategies of an environmentally transmitting fish pathogen.
2013
Background Generalist bacterial pathogens, with the ability for environmental survival and growth, often face variable conditions during their outside-host period. Abiotic factors (such as nutrient deprivation) act as selection pressures for bacterial characteristics, but their effect on virulence is not entirely understood. “Sit and wait” hypothesis expects that long outside-host survival selects for increased virulence, but maintaining virulence in the absence of hosts is generally expected to be costly if active investments are needed. We analysed how long term starvation influences bacterial population structure and virulence of an environmentally transmitting fish pathogen Flavobacteri…
La Unión Europea ante la emergencia climática
2020
From its origins, the Member States of the European Union (EU) have demonstrated the need for strategic energy measures. As it did with the 1952 Coal and Steel Treaty and the 1957 Euratom Treaty, designing a strong economic area, although it was based on the promotion of a decadent and unsustainable energy. Today, we are facing an EU, which climate policy is far from the original one, with a plausible objective: to give priority to energy efficiency while making its own path through the international community, designing key, competitive and sustainable measures, contributing significantly to the new international climate regime under the Paris Agreement. However the adoption of the Eu…
A Methodology for Solving the Multiple Criteria Macroeconomic Policy Problem
1983
In this paper we review the results of our research on using interactive multiple criteria optimization methods for solving macroeconomic policy problems in Finland. An existing econometric model describing the interrelationships between different variables and sectors of the economy is used. In addition, the current status of the implementation work is reported and some possibilities for future research are discussed.
Offshoring along the production chain
2009
Recent contributions on offshoring often assume that firms can freely split their production process into separate steps which can be ranked according to the cost savings from producing abroad. We replace this assumption by the notion of a technologically determined sequence of production steps. In our model, cost savings from offshoring fluctuate along the production chain, and moving unfinished goods across borders causes transport costs. We show that, in such a setting, firms may refrain from offshoring even if relocating individual steps would be advantageous in terms of offshoring costs, or they may offshore (almost) the entire production chain to save transport costs. Small variations…
Does complexity explain the structure of trade?
2013
This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis ( ) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the number of mistakes made by workers in the production process in developed and developing countries as a source of comparative advantage. Our model predicts that the share of developed countries in world trade increases with products complexity. Empirical tests confirm this prediction. Moreover, we find that complexity complements the explanation provided by skillintensity on countries commodity trade …
Fixed Costs Per Shipment
2011
Exporting firms do not only decide how much of their products they ship abroad but also at which frequency. Doing so, they face a trade-off between saving on fixed costs per shipments (by shipping large amounts infrequently) and saving on storage costs (by delivering just in time with small and frequent shipments). The firm's optimal choice defines a mapping from size and frequency of shipments to fixed costs per shipment. We use a unique dataset of Swiss cross-border trade on the transaction level to analyze the size and shape of the underlying fixed costs. The data suggest that for the average Swiss exporter the fixed costs per shipment are economically important: 0.82 percent of the valu…
Do Female Loan Officers Mitigate Social-Financial Trade-Offs in Microfinance?
2021
This paper revisits social-financial trade-offs in microfinance. We theorize that workforce diversity mitigates the divergence between social and financial performance levels. We test our prediction by performing fixed-effects generalised least squares regressions on a global sample of 1257 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 107 countries over the period 2010–2018. Confirming our prediction, the empirical results show that the proportion of female loan officers attenuates the negative relationship between the social performance and the financial performance of MFIs. We attribute our findings to the personal characteristics of female loan officers and the high repayment rates of loans that …
Editorial: Calculation of Passenger Car Equivalents at Roundabouts
2021
Editorial on the Research Topic: Calculation of Passenger Car Equivalents at Roundabouts About this Research Topic: Calculation of Passenger Car Equivalents (PCEs) for heavy vehicles represents the starting point for the operational analysis of road facilities and other traffic management applications. PCEs are used to consider the presence of heavy vehicles in the traffic stream and are expressed as multiples of the effect of an average passenger car. Moreover, the highly curvilinear nature of the roundabout design, both in urban and rural environment, has significant effects on the paths that heavy vehicles would travel; as a consequence, the interaction between the physical and performan…
Effect of ageing on the morphology and creep and recovery of polymer-modified bitumens
2018
Polymer additives are used to improve the properties of road bitumens including their oxidative resistance. However, their usage as anti-oxidative materials remains relatively unclear. This study aims to investigate the changes in the morphology and the rheological response of polymer modified bitumens used in road pavement construction caused by ageing. An elastomer (radial styrene butadiene styrene, SBS) and a plastomer (ethyl vinyl acetate, EVA) polymer were mixed with one base bitumen at three polymer concentrations. The bitumens were RTFO and PAV aged. The morphology of the bitumens was captured by fluorescence microscopy while the rheological properties were measured by means of the m…