Permanent magnets: a technological analysis

Abstract
Technology analysis is a new technomanagerial discipline that provides common frameworks for analysing individual technologies and their relationships to each other. It is used here to probe the development of a particular technology, namely that of permanent magnets.
The paper traces the development of permanent magnets over the past decade and explores possible future improvements in performance parameters. The strength of magnets (i.e. energy product as expressed in kilo Joules per cubic metre) has increased from approximately 40 in the 1930s to approximately 400 at present.
Future developments will be constrained by a barrier which seems to exist at approximately 525 kilo Joules per cubic metre. However this is viewed as a barrier that can be transcended and not as an immutable limit. It therefore signifies a possible breakthrough zone.
S-curve theory leads analysts to speculate about a possible breakthrough during the five year period leading up to 1995. At that date magnetic strengths of 600+ kilo Joules per cubic metre could be aimed for.
Increased magnetic strength will improve the performance parameters of all technologies utilising magnets, unleash new magnetic based technologies and threaten many traditional areas in the fields of matter processing, transporting and storing, energy processing, and information processing and storing.
These effects will cascade through the entire technological landscape creating new markets and destroying others. The article gives an overview of these impacts on the technological landscape.     

On the possibility of reasonable consistent majoritarian choice: Some positive results

Strictly Majoritarian Social Choice Functions (SMSCFs) are such that the choice on an agenda can be defined with the knowledge of the simple majority relation on the agenda as the sole information. The possibility for SMSCFs to satisfy both the General Pareto condition and choice consistency conditions strong enough to be meaningful has been doubted. Here we exhibit three reasonable SMSCFs that do both. One of them can be interpreted as eliminating from the agenda all alternatives one can suspect of being Pareto dominated by some other. We compare some of their properties with those of the SMSCFs already known in the literature.     

Environmental Analysis of Packaging for Soft Drinks Using the Life Cycle Assessment Methodology

The knowledge of a product＇s life cycle is the first step on the search of sustainable development. The life cycle assessment （LCA） is an important method because it allows an environment accounting, where the extraction of natural resources and energy of the nature are considered and the ＂returns＂ to the same one and allows in evaluating relative potential the environment impacts generated. The present work had as objective to make an analysis of material and energy flows of the life cycle of three types of packaging for soft drinks： glass bottles of 390 mL, aluminum cans of 350 mL, and bottles of PET of 2,000 mL. The study considered processes since the extraction of raw materials for production of the packaging until the stages of recycling, after the consumption of the soft drink. For the research, an inventory analysis followed the LCA methodology. The main critical points of generation of negative environmental impact during the life cycle of each packaging had been the identified and quantified data in this study. The consumption of natural resources like water and other raw materials and energy, the generation of atmospheric emissions, solid wastes and wastewaters had been the analyzed categories. The results showed that, in accordance with the scenes and defined variables, the most important conclusion was that the bottle of glass presented a less favorable scene to the environment in comparison with other packaging.     

The dynamics of ex-ante weighted spread: an empirical analysis

We model the evolution of the ex-ante weighted spread (EWS) embedded in an open Limit Order Book (LOB) and investigate the impact of observed market-related variables on the spread. Our modeling involves decomposing the joint distribution of the weighted spread into simple and interpretable distributions. Our main results have several implications: (i) EWS features high persistence in autocorrelation; (ii) lower-level LOB remains liquid even after a high trade imbalance; (iii) lower- and higher-level LOB react to temporal spread change and trade imbalance in different ways; and (iv) both trade durations and quote durations have seasonality effects. We also show, through a simple high frequency trading exercise, that the use of the model can be economically important. Further, our model provides an estimation of market resilience.     

Scaling models for the severity and frequency of external operational loss data

According to Basel II criteria, the use of external data is indispensable to the implementation of an advanced method for calculating operational risk capital. This article investigates how the severity and frequencies of external losses are scaled for integration with internal data. We set up an initial model designed to explain the loss severity by taking into account potential selection bias in the external data. Estimation results show that many variables have significant power in explaining the loss amount. We use them to develop a normalization formula. We develop a zero-inflated count-data model to scale the loss frequency. We compute an operational VaR and we conduct out-of-sample backtesting.     

Dispensing with NAFTA Rules of Origin? Some Policy Options

The objective of this paper is to use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) methodology to estimate the economic gains, for both Canada and Mexico, of: (1) adopting a North American customs union (CU) that would also liberalise rules of origin (ROO); and (2) reviving the WTO scenario of multilateral free trade, thereby eliminating preferential commerce and thus the need for preferential ROO across free trade agreements (FTAs). Such a CGE methodology is useful as the approach permits computation of an efficiency (or ex post) cost of ROO that might, in some contexts, be more relevant than the existing ex ante indices of ROO restrictiveness, which are unable to account for the fact that the use of preferential access in an FTA (and the concomitant ROO compliance) is an option, not an obligation. The paper shows that the erosion of NAFTA tariff preferences at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, which resulted from a different phasing of the NAFTA and Uruguay Round measures, has reduced the efficiency cost of NAFTA ROO, making these rules economically less relevant, especially for Canada, and therefore limiting somewhat the gains from liberalising them through a CU. Given this, the WTO scenario of multilateral free trade remains the approach that would deliver the largest economic gains in terms of GDP and welfare, while making preferential commerce and ROO obsolete.     

电子商务和旅游:塞舌尔电子旅游的现状和影响

本论文主要阐述电子商务对当代经济,尤其是对于在服务业的电子旅游方面所产生的冲击和影响。在信息和通信技术的推动下,电子商务改变了全世界商务运行的方式。尽管如此,本调查主要针对于以旅游业为主要外汇来源的发展中的塞舌尔岛。主要从以下几方面论述,第一,旅游业的概况,第二,突出问题所在,第三,目前解决这些问题的方法,最后,对于改善在这个产业中的技术发展的建议。文中的数据自于游客和商业调查并将用基本的评估和回归分析法来进行分析。调查的主要目的在于首先引起公众对于当今经济中电子商务的重要性和含义,其次,为塞舌尔电子商务将来的政策发展提供参考。我希望决策者和一些生意人能以此文为借鉴,帮助他们不仅为塞舌尔的旅游业,并且为塞舌尔经济的其他方面的未来和技术进步铺平道路。     

Review Article of Drèze's essays on economic decisions under uncertainty

Jacques Drèze has participated significantly in many fields of economic analysis. The book we have reviewed is limited to his main contributions to the economics of uncertainty and information. It is rich in ideas, models, and results for graduate students and researchers who are interested in this now basic dimension of economic analysis. We hope that its publication will permit the public at large to better appreciate the importance of its author's contributions.Economics Department and CRT Université de Montréal C.P. 6128. Succursale A Montréal (Québec) Canada H3C 3J7. Kenneth Arrow, Danielle Blanchard, Camille Bronsard, Leonard Dudley, Robert Gagné, Edi Karni and Françoise Shoumaker provided very useful comments on a first version of this review. Thanks are also due to Carole Laflamme for editorial assistance.     

Demographic Shock and Social Security: A Political Economy Perspective

We assume that individual voters differ not only according to age but also productivity. In the steady state, workers with wages in the intermediate range join the retired persons to form a majority and vote for a positive level of social security. When a shock decreases population growth, entrenched interests can constrain majority voting decisions and prevent reforms in the name of entitlements. We show that from a Rawlsian viewpoint it may be desirable to rely on these entitlements to protect the low wage earners of the transition generations. However, when the possibility of fixing a basic pension is introduced, it constitutes a better instrument than entitlements.     

Diffidence Theorem, State-Dependent Preferences, and DARA

C. Gollier (The Economics of Risk and Time. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001) has developed a standard technique based on the diffidence theorem. This theorem provides a very simple instrument to solve relatively sophisticated problems when preferences are state-independent. The object of this article is to show that the theorem is also very useful to derive significant results with state-dependent preferences. Using the reference set notion and an extension of the diffidence theorem, we establish formally necessary and sufficient conditions on the reference set, in order to obtain prudence and decreasing absolute risk aversion. Examples of DARA utility functions compatible with non-linear reference sets are presented in the Appendix.