Positive Sum Research Articles

Implications of SAFTA for Indian Economy: Trade, Compatibility and Welfare Effects

Among the members of South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), India dominates in terms of its geographical location, land area, population size and economic share. However, SAFTA is treated as a weak agreement as India is highly outward oriented for trade. This raises a question about India’s trade compatibility with South Asian countries. Also since SAFTA is now fully implemented, there is a need to determine its welfare effects for India as well as for the region. The study focuses on (a) trends and patterns of India’s intra-regional trade with South Asian countries, (b) trade compatibility and (c) welfare effects of SAFTA for the Indian economy. India’s trade intensity, trade share and trade compatibility with the other regional members is calculated. GTAP simulations are used to determine welfare effects. The study is based upon the secondary data. The study finds that with the implementation of SAFTA, India’s trade intensity and trade share with its regional members has slightly improved. Trade compatibility though low, is gradually improving. The study considers SAFTA as a positive sum game for India. India is likely to have favourable allocative efficiency effect, terms of trade effect and investment-savings effect if trade facilitation measures are adopted. JEL Codes: F150, F10, F140, C150

U.S. uncertainty and Asian stock prices: Evidence from the asymmetric NARDL model

When uncertainty reduces spending among U.S. consumers, it may affect the bottom line stock performance of Asian producers that cater to their needs. Theory predicts that the impact of uncertainty will be asymmetrical: during the two phases of the business cycle, countercyclic shocks will outweigh procyclic shocks, resulting in phase-specific equilibrium price adjustments. We conjecture that relative to recessions, recoveries bring larger long-run price adjustments, a response to pent-up growth potential. This is an extension of existing theories, which predict that recoveries bring overshooting, a transient reaction to pent-up demand. We test for these asymmetric uncertainty effects on 11 Asian stock market indices over the 2000M08 – 2017M02 period. Our independent measures include the economic policy uncertainty index (EPU) of Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016), the Chicago Board Options Exchange implied volatility index (VIX), and the financial uncertainty indicator (JLN) of Jurado, Ng, and Ludvigson (2015). To characterize asymmetry, we employ the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model of Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2014), in which both short- and long-run nonlinearities are captured through positive and negative partial sum decompositions of the explanatory variable(s). Using the NARDL output, we test three hypotheses. The first, that increases in uncertainty (decreases in uncertainty) result in stock price drops (stock price rises), is broadly supported by our analysis. The second, that equilibrium adjustments following negative countercyclic uncertainty shocks exceed those following positive movements, is supported fully by the EPU analysis and partially by the VIX and JLN analyses. The third hypothesis, that recoveries are characterized by overshooting, is consistent only with the behavior of the Chinese stock responses to EPU and VIX shocks. Our results demonstrate the advantages of the NARDL model in characterizing asymmetry. They suggest that while long-run asymmetry is fairly consistent across countries, short-run asymmetry is more country-specific.

B7-H3 as a Novel CAR-T Therapeutic Target for Glioblastoma

Glioblastoma (GBM) remains one of the most malignant primary tumors in adults, with a 5-year survival rate less than 10% because of lacking effective treatment. Here, we aimed to explore whether B7-H3 could serve as a novel therapeutic target for GBM in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy. In this study, a CAR targeting B7-H3 was constructed and transduced into T cells by lentivirus. Antitumor effects of B7-H3-specific CAR-T cells were assessed with primary and GBM cell lines both in vitro and in vivo. Our results indicated that B7-H3 was positively stained in most of the clinical glioma samples, and its expression levels were correlated to the malignancy grade and poor survival in both low-grade glioma (LGG) and GBM patients. Specific antitumor functions of CAR-T cells were confirmed by cytotoxic and ELISA assay both in primary glioblastoma cells and GBM cell lines. In the orthotropic GBM models, the median survival of the CAR-T-cell-treated group was significantly longer than that of the control group. In conclusion, B7-H3 is frequently overexpressed in GBM patients and may serve as a therapeutic target in CAR-T therapy.

Oil price and inflation dynamics in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries

This paper employs the linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the asymmetric nonlinear ARDL model, and the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) method to examine the symmetric and asymmetric effects of oil price changes on inflation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Short-run and long-run asymmetries are introduced via positive and negative partial sum decompositions of oil price. The results suggest that the variables are cointegrated and that there is significant evidence of long-run asymmetry. This implies that rising and falling oil prices have different effects on inflation. In particular, while rising oil price has a significant positive effect on inflation in all the cases, falling oil price is either insignificant or has a negative effect on inflation. The PMG model indicates that only rising oil price has a positive significant effect on inflation. Moreover, the results suggest that positive oil price changes have a larger impact than the negative ones, that the effect of an oil price shock is larger in the long-run than in the short-run, and that there is incomplete pass-through effect of oil price on domestic inflation.

On a class of nonsingular matrices containing B-matrices

A real matrix with positive row sums and all its off-diagonal elements bounded above by their corresponding row means was called in [12] a B-matrix. The classes of doubly B-matrices and of BπR-matrices were introduced in [13] and [11] as generalizations of the previous class. We present characterizations and properties of BπR–matrices and we consider the problem of when a subdirect sum of two matrices in this class lies in the same class.

Is Microfinance Service a Positive Sum Game? A Qualitative Study on Financial Sustainability of Microfinance Clients

To explore the impact of microfinance on the financial sustainability of clients. The author set out to determine to what extent do the clients utilize the funds to gain and reinvest in the business to accomplish sustainability.The study is based on an in-depth interview which was conducted with microfinance clients. A qualitative approach was used to capture the data. In-depth interviews were conducted using Thematic analysis method and secondary data from microfinance office records to capture their practices in operational utilization of funds. The finding of the study shows that the loan amount was not fully utilized for specified purposes and was used to meet the basic needs and contingencies. The respondents were influenced and unbalanced during the utilization of funds. Most of them treat their debt as an additional source of fund to meet their family responsibility. Keywords: Financial sustainability of clients, operational evaluation, qualitative method, thematic analysis, Biases, Microfinance, India DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-10-05 Publication date : April 30 th 2019

Соціальне вчення Митрополита Андрея Шептицького як чинник економічного піднесення Галичини (кінець ХІХ – початок ХХ ст.)

The article deals with the principles and elements of social teaching as well as socio-economic activities of the UGCC Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi in the context of their influence on economic development and formation of cooperative movement in Galicia in the late XIX – early XX century. It has been shown that the development of appropriate agricultural and cooperative education as well as active support of the private initiative by UGCC clergy appeared to be the key prerequisites for the successful cooperation. Andrei Sheptytskyi became not only an influencer but also initiator and active leader of the implementation of social teaching principles into practice of socio-economic transformations that prompted a rapid modernization of the economic and increased efficiency of economic and social processes. Thanks to the implementation of ideas and principles of social teaching, a real revolution occurred in many public spheres such as education, banking, cooperation and entrepreneurship. However, the crucial results of spreading social teaching ideas were changing in the economic culture and activities of Ukrainians, who henceforth considered not only their personal interest but tended to develop such a model of economic interaction, which creates a "positive sum” effect for other society members and for society as a whole. The optimal organizational form that allowed combining interests of different economic agents was cooperation, which, thanks to the ascetic work of the Metropolitan, covered almost all spheres of Ukrainian society life, became an economic base for solving most economic and social problems, and shaped an effective national business environment.

What is new? The role of asymmetry and breaks in oil price–output growth volatility nexus

AbstractThis study examines the role of asymmetry and breaks in oil price–output growth volatility nexus. A representative of 10 countries was selected from net oil‐exporting and‐importing economies for the period 1986–2017. It is hypothesised that countries respond differently to changes in oil price. To prove this point, we use the recent nonlinear ARDL of Shin et al. (), based on the framework of the dynamic common correlated effect of the heterogeneous panel of Chudik and Pesaran (), to decompose oil price into positive and negative partial sums. Our results show that without accounting for breaks, asymmetry only matters for net oil exporters in both short‐ and long run. However, accounting for breaks expanded the importance of asymmetry to net oil importers (in the short run). These results are robust to changes in the measures of oil price and growth volatility.

English

A 0/1-simplex is the convex hull of n+1 affinely independent vertices of the unit n-cube In. It is nonobtuse if none of its dihedral angles is obtuse, and acute if additionally none of them is right. Acute 0/1-simplices in In can be represented by 0/1-matrices P of size n × n whose Gramians G = P⊤P have an inverse that is strictly diagonally dominant, with negative off-diagonal entries. In this paper, we will prove that the positive part D of the transposed inverse P−⊤ of P is doubly stochastic and has the same support as P. In fact, P has a fully indecomposable doubly stochastic pattern. The negative part C of P−⊤ is strictly row-substochastic and its support is complementary to that of D, showing that P−⊤ = D−C has no zero entries and has positive row sums. As a consequence, for each facet F of an acute 0/1-facet S there exists at most one other acute 0/1-simplex Ŝ in In having F as a facet. We call Ŝ the acute neighbor of S at F. If P represents a 0/1-simplex that is merely nonobtuse, the inverse of G = P⊤P is only weakly diagonally dominant and has nonpositive off-diagonal entries. These matrices play an important role in finite element approximation of elliptic and parabolic problems, since they guarantee discrete maximum and comparison principles. Consequently, P−⊤ can have entries equal to zero. We show that its positive part D is still doubly stochastic, but its support may be strictly contained in the support of P. This allows P to have no doubly stochastic pattern and to be partly decomposable. In theory, this might cause a nonobtuse 0/1-simplex S to have several nonobtuse neighbors Ŝ at each of its facets. In this paper, we study nonobtuse 0/1-simplices S having a partly decomposable matrix representation P. We prove that if S has such a matrix representation, it also has a block diagonal matrix representation with at least two diagonal blocks. Moreover, all matrix representations of S will then be partly decomposable. This proves that the combinatorial property of having a fully indecomposable matrix representation with doubly stochastic pattern is a geometrical property of a subclass of nonobtuse 0/1-simplices, invariant under all n-cube symmetries. We will show that a nonobtuse simplex with partly decomposable matrix representation can be split in mutually orthogonal simplicial facets whose dimensions add up to n, and in which each facet has a fully indecomposable matrix representation. Using this insight, we are able to extend the one neighbor theorem for acute simplices to a larger class of nonobtuse simplices.

The opportunities and challenges of institutional arrangement for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco cultivation business: case study in Jember Regency Indonesia

Purpose. This research aims at formulating the development strategy for institutional pattern amongst the stakeholders and the policy makers for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco in Jember Regency.
 Methodology / approach. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Qualitative Descriptive are applied to obtain and elaborate the perception of all stakeholders related to Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco Institution in Jember Regency. Samples are collected by using in-depth interview and focus group discussion involving farmer groups, exporters, and policy makers (government).
 Results. The analysis indicates that the main factor which becomes the priority for developing the institution for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco Cultivation is access to all stakeholders, amongst farmers, exporters and policy makers. 
 Originality / scientific novelty. The access to information and technology becomes crucial to increase productivity, the quality, and the sustainability of Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco.
 Practical value / implications. The effectiveness and the sustainability of producers as well as the institutional arrangement with market players and the policy makers are the result of the Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco stakeholders’ relation, which are bonding, bridging and linking. These are essential in the access to national and international market and also yield a positive sum game to cooperate, reach and increase profit as well as share advantages and loss.

The opportunities and challenges of institutional arrangement for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco cultivation business: case study in Jember Regency Indonesia

Purpose. This research aims at formulating the development strategy for institutional pattern amongst the stakeholders and the policy makers for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco in Jember Regency. Methodology / approach . Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Qualitative Descriptive are applied to obtain and elaborate the perception of all stakeholders related to Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco Institution in Jember Regency. Samples are collected by using in-depth interview and focus group discussion involving farmer groups, exporters, and policy makers (government). Results . The analysis indicates that the main factor which becomes the priority for developing the institution for Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco Cultivation is access to all stakeholders, amongst farmers, exporters and policy makers. Originality / scientific novelty. The access to information and technology becomes crucial to increase productivity, the quality, and the sustainability of Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco. Practical value / implications . The effectiveness and the sustainability of producers as well as the institutional arrangement with market players and the policy makers are the result of the Besuki Na-Oogst Tobacco stakeholders’ relation, which are bonding, bridging and linking. These are essential in the access to national and international market and also yield a positive sum game to cooperate, reach and increase profit as well as share advantages and loss.

Eris and Epos

Abstract This article examines the development of the theme of eris in Hesiod and Homer. Starting from the relationship between the destructive strife in the Theogony (225) and the two versions invoked in the Works and Days (11–12), I argue that considering the two forms of strife as echoing zero and positive sum games helps us to identify the cultural and compositional force of eris as cooperative competition. After establishing eris as a compositional theme from the perspective of oral poetics, I then argue that it develops from the perspective of cosmic history, that is, from the creation of the universe in Hesiod’s Theogony through the Homeric epics and into its double definition in the Works and Days. To explore and emphasize how this complementarity is itself a manifestation of eris, I survey its deployment in our major extant epic poems.

Preference Changes in New Liberalism: The Impact of Changes of Government on US Trade Negotiations with South Korea and Colombia

AbstractIn classical two-level games, international cooperation is less likely when there is large programmatic distance and smaller domestic win-sets as a result of changing preferences. TheUStrade negotiations with South Korea and Colombia question this hypothesis and emphasize two empirical insights that can be integrated into the two-level game to improve its explanatory power. First, smaller win-sets due to preference changes can mitigate conflicts of distribution and make cooperation more likely if the negotiators are aware of the smaller win-sets. Second, when negotiators perceive the already achieved bargaining results as a new status quo, former positive sum games can transform into zero sum games, which makes cooperation more difficult, irrespective of the size of the win-sets. Negotiators who perceive conflicts as zero sum games will put more effort into avoiding losses and, as a result, domestic constraints cannot be used as bargaining levers vis-à-vis a foreign country.

Benefit-sharing framework in transboundary river basins: the case of the Eastern Kabul River Basin-Afghanistan

This research explores the benefit of collaboration between the littoral countries beyond water allocation and sharing as a theoretical framework that would be a useful tool for extending Afghanistan and Pakistan cooperation for a sustainable improvement and development of the Kabul River Basin (KRB). The main goal is to highlight the concept of benefit sharing and its framework in general terms as well as in the context of KRB. The basin planning and water transboundary issues could greatly be changed in accordance with this theoretical framework, leading the game from a zero sum to a positive sum. In addition to that, it potentially results in avoidance of conflicts and pave the ground for a motivated cooperation. Mutual cooperation can bring more water for sustainable use in the basin, reducing soil erosion, mitigating drought, and ensuring food security. The findings of this study have shown that the benefits of water sharing in transboundary river basins are, mainly, due to co-riparian states’ collaborative efforts to decrease the expenses and increase the outcomes. The impacts of joint investments in both states can yield a bundle of benefits including, but not limited to, flood control, reduction of sedimentation, availability of more water and hydropower production. The points mentioned above, in turn, can also ensure food security, mitigate drought, and avail renewable energy. In transboundary rivers all attempts and efforts should be geared towards identifying the typologies of benefits, aspects of benefits, scenarios of benefits, and the optimization/maximization of benefits.

Asymmetric dynamics of insurance premium: the impacts of output and economic policy uncertainty

This paper investigates the asymmetric and nonlinear transmission of real output and economic policy uncertainty to insurance premiums for the US economy over the annual period of 1980–2014. Using the most up-to-date nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags framework, we simultaneously examine short- and long-run asymmetric responses of insurance premiums through positive and negative partial sum decompositions of changes in the explanatory variables. Our empirical results reveal that real output and economic policy uncertainties both affect insurance premiums in an asymmetric and nonlinear manner, but the transmission mechanism is not the same. As to the impact of real output, we find that an increase in real output leads to enhancing the insurance premiums, while a decrease in output has a greater impact causing insurance premiums to move down. For the impact of economic policy uncertainty, the results also suggest that total and non-life insurance premiums increase with rising uncertainty, while life insurance premiums decrease with rising uncertainty. These results have significant implications for insurance-related econometric analysis, investment decisions, forecasting, and policy-making.

Nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials and a refinement of Kostka–Foulkes polynomials

We study the specialization of the type A nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials at $t=0$ based on the combinatorial formula of Haglund, Haiman, and Loehr. We prove that this specialization expands nonnegatively into the fundamental slide polynomials, introduced by the author and Searles. Using this and weak dual equivalence, we prove combinatorially that this specialization is a positive graded sum of Demazure characters. We use stability results for fundamental slide polynomials to show that this specialization stabilizes and to show that the Demazure character coefficients give a refinement of the Kostka–Foulkes polynomials.

The Dynamic Synergies between Agricultural Financing and Economic Growth of Tanzania

We apply the recently developed asymmetric ARDL cointegration methodology of Shin et al. (2011) to analyse the relationship between agricultural financing and economic growth of Tanzania. In this approach, short run and long run asymmetries are introduced via positive and negative partial sum decompositions of exogenous variables, and the model is estimable by standard OLS. Our findings reveal supporting evidence of asymmetric interactions among the examined variables in the short run and long run. The findings further reveal that endogenous variables react differently to positive and negative shocks of exogenous variables. Positive shocks of agricultural financing have considerably larger positive impacts on economic growth compared to negative shocks, while any unfavourable economic conditions would clobber agricultural financing. In light of our findings, we conclude that the existing asymmetric relationship between agricultural financing and economic growth should be taken into account and the government should increase its financing of the agriculture sector. Keywords: Agricultural financing, Economic growth, Asymmetric ARDL model, Tanzania

Theoretical Approach and Conflict Resolution Alternatives in the Conflicting Korean Situation

The paper attempts to analyze conflicting Korean situation and find conflict resolution alternatives in application of international theories and models. In describing these, the paper focuses on theoretical review and its application related to conflicting Korean situation, mainly as concerns military issues. Then, the concern is to consider conflict resolution alternatives in application of the related international theories and models in the situation of Korean conflict. On the whole, the international theories - rational choice theory, game theory, theory of interdependent decision, negotiation theory, bargaining theory, and prospect theory - are analytically reviewed. The models of rational model, action-reaction process model, stimulus-response model, punishment model are also looked over. They are to contribute theoretically to find rational value-maximizing mode of behaviors and actions for producing cooperation and positive sum game in the action-reaction process based upon rationality and rational choice with an expectation of getting gains and benefits, and loss-averse at least in the situation of Korean conflict.

Trajectories of depressive symptoms in the acute phase of psychosis: Implications for treatment

Depression is common in schizophrenia and associated with negative outcomes. Previous studies have identified heterogeneity in treatment response in schizophrenia. We aimed to investigate different trajectories of depression in patients suffering from psychosis and predictors of change in depressive symptoms during antipsychotic treatment. Two hundred and twenty-six patients >18 years acutely admitted due to psychosis were consecutively included and the follow-up was 27 weeks. The Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS) sum score was the primary outcome. Latent growth curve (LGCM) and Growth Mixture Models (GMM) were conducted. Predictors were the Positive sum score of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia (PANSS), Schizophrenia spectrum/non-spectrum psychoses, gender and being antipsychotic naive at inclusion. We found support for three depression-trajectories, including a high- (14.7%), a low depression-level (69.6%) class and a third depressed class quickly decreasing to a low level (15.7%). Change in CDSS was associated with change in PANSS positive score in all time intervals (4 weeks: b = 0.18, p < 0.001, 3 months: 0.21, p < 0.023, 6 months: 0.43, p < 0.001) and with a diagnosis within schizophrenia spectrum but not with antipsychotic naivety or gender. The schizophrenia-spectrum patients had less depressive symptoms at inclusion (−2.63, p < 0.001). In conclusion, an early responding and a treatment refractory group were identified. The treatment-refractory patients are candidates for enhanced anti-depressive treatment, for which current evidence is limited. The post-psychotic depression group was characterized by depressive symptoms in the acute phase as well. We could not identify differentiating characteristics of the depression trajectories.

The Revival of Economic Nationalism and the Global Trading System

The election of Donald J. Trump to the US Presidency coincided with the US adoption of an “America First” policy in trade. This policy reflects an underlying theory of economic nationalism that is fundamentally at odds with the current approach of the multilateral trading system established by the GATT/WTO. The current multilateral system is based on a “positive sum game” theory, i.e. the view that cooperative trade concessions can increase the volume of trade for all nations involved and result in reciprocal and mutual benefits. A large body of theoretical and empirical work, discussed and analyzed in this Article, supports the conclusion that the GATT/WTO system has historically achieved significantly increased trade volumes on both a multilateral and national scale since its creation at the end of the Second World War. By contrast, President Trump’s economic nationalism holds that trade is a “zero sum game” in which a gain in trade by one nation must be accompanied by a corresponding trade loss by another nation. Under the view of the current Administration, the US has often been the loser in the global trade deals of the GATT/WTO. The current Administration now seeks to dictate the terms of any future trade agreements so that the US wins at the expense of its trading partners, if necessary, in a zero sum game. The economic nationalism espoused by the current Administration, if unconstrained, could result in the dismantling of the current multilateral trading system leading to long-term negative, if not catastrophic, consequences for the world economy.