This paper investigates the effects of input-trade liberalization on firms’ decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. We develop a simple theoretical model of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. Assuming that imported intermediate goods and high-technology are complementary and the existence of technology adoption fixed costs...

The distribution of virtual goods like multimedia data relies on the trustworthiness of the distribution system. Recent concepts for the distribution based on peer to peer networks like BitTorrent require new approaches to establish the needed level of trust in the overall functionality of the system. This paper explores the integration of hardware based trust concepts from the domain of Truste...

s-An attempt is made to explain why public health services in South Cameroon function inefficiently. Special attention is given to the distribution of medicines. The root cause of rneffkiency is believed to be ‘corruption*. the private use of public goods. It is suggested that some degree of commercialization may solve the present problems and replace the ‘expensive free distribution’ of medici...

Counterfeit pharmaceutical products are a real threat to the health of patients, and to the reputation and commercial success of legitimate producers of genuine products. NIR chemical imaging provides a rapid method for detecting and comparing suspected counterfeit products with no sample preparation. With appropriate choice of operating conditions, multiple samples can be compared simultaneous...

We consider a (not necessarily complete) continuous-time security market with semimartingale prices and general information filtration. In such a setting, we show that the first-order conditions for optimality of an agent maximizing a ‘smooth’ (but not necessarily additive) utility can be formulated as the martingale property of prices, after normalization by a ‘state-price’ process. The latter...

This article looks at the negative images on cash trades of in-game assets in Taiwan, through interview of participants in this activity, we believe the blurring of boundaries between work and play, adulthood and adolescence, real and virtual is what distinguishes this market from previous markets of virtual goods, resulting in its social stigma. We then discuss how the participants confront th...

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the current dollar value of all final goods and services that are produced within a country within a given period of time. “Goods” are physical things that we consume (like a shirt) while “services” are intangible things that we consume but which are not necessarily physical (like education). “Final” means that intermediate goods are excluded from the calculation...

Heavy goods vehicles not only have a non-marginal impact on the performance of the road network in terms of traffic congestion, exposure to risk and accidents, they also provide an essential service in the distribution chain. Both sellers and purchasers of goods rely on an efficient transport system to ensure that goods are available at a time and location that meets the demands of end users. A...

the neo- classical school on the situation of the individual and claims that individuals (consumers and producers) meet each in the market. on the supply side, there exists possibility of substitution between factors of production and, on the demand side, substitution by consumers between final goods. in the neo- classical production function capital and labor are taken as the determniants of t...

Let % be a preference relation on a convex set F . Necessary and sufficient conditions are given that guarantee the existence of a set {ul} of affine utility functions on F such that % is represented by U ( f ) = ul ( f ) if f ∈ Fl; where each Fl is a convex subset of F . The interpretation is simple: facing a “non-homogeneous” set F of alternatives, a decision maker splits it into “homogeneous...