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Over the past two decades, EU employment supported by extra‐EU exports of goods and services has increased markedly, with a shift towards jobs supported by services exported as part of manufactured goods. The authors seek further insight into this trend through the full decomposition of trade flows using a multi‐regional input–output model and the World Input–Output Database for 40 countries and 35 industries over the period 1995–2011. Their findings call for reflection by policy‐makers regarding the four traditional modes of service supply under the General Agreement on Trade in Services with a view to adequately capturing this new reality in global trade.

En las dos ultimas decadas, el empleo sostenido por las exportaciones extracomunitarias de bienes y servicios ha crecido considerablemente en la UE, con un giro hacia el empleo sostenido por los servicios exportados como parte de productos manufacturados. Para estudiar este fenomeno, los autores descomponen totalmente los flujos comerciales de 40 paises y 35 sectores durante el periodo 1995-2011 utilizando un modelo input-output multirregional y la base de datos mundial input-output (WIOD). Los resultados indican que los cuatro modos de suministro de servicios tradicionales del Acuerdo General sobre el Comercio de Servicios deberian revisarse para adecuarlos a la nueva realidad del comercio mundial.

We present a multidimensional generalization of the GRAS method (nD-GRAS) for the estimation of multiple matrices in an integrated framework. The potential applications of this method in regional and multi-regional input–output analyses based on national/regional accounts frameworks are many. We provide two real applications, a 3D-GRAS that estimates a use table at basic prices jointly with valuation matrices for Denmark; and a 4D-GRAS for estimating intercountry input–output tables with OECD data. We show that higher dimensional GRAS methods provide more consistent and accurate estimates than those with lower number of dimensions. We provide the analytical closed-form solution and the RAS-like algorithm for an easy operationalization.

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This article quantifies for the first time the European employment effects of extra-EU exports and the correct number of jobs generated through the intra-EU trade (single market) associated with the production of such exports. The literature has neglected very often the latter effects mainly due to the lack of an appropriate methodology and data. The main results of the article show that, between 2000 and 2007, an increasing number of European jobs were dependent on extra-EU exports and on the strengthening of the trade linkages across the internal market. During the period considered, the EU employment supported by extra-EU exports grew from 22 to 25 million jobs, out of which 9 million jobs (in 2007) were due to spillover and feedback effects associated with the single market. Between 2000 and 2007 the EU also became a more vertically integrated economy, and reduced the labour intensity of the extra-EU exports.

Proteins of the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) family present numerous attractive targets for rational drug design, but also a formidable challenge for identification and conformational modeling of their 3D structure. A recently performed assessment of blind predictions of adenosine A2a receptor (AA2AR) structure in complex with ZM241385 (ZMA) antagonist provided a first example of unbiased evaluation of the current modeling algorithms on a GPCR target with approximately 30% sequence identity to the closest structural template. Several of the 29 groups participating in this assessment exercise (Michino et al., doi: 10.1038/nrd2877) successfully predicted the overall position of the ligand ZMA in the AA2AR ligand binding pocket, however models from only three groups captured more than 40% the ligand-receptor contacts. Here we describe two of these top performing approaches, in which all-atom models of the AA2AR were generated by homology modeling followed by ligand guided backbone ensemble receptor optimization (LiBERO). The resulting AA2AR-ZMA models, along with the best models from other groups are assessed here for their vitual ligand screening (VLS) performance on a large set of GPCR ligands. We show that ligand guided optimization was critical for improvement of both ligand-receptor contacts and VLS performance as compared to the initial raw homology models. The best blindly predicted models performed on par with the crystal structure of AA2AR in selecting known antagonists from decoys, as well as from antagonists for other adenosine subtypes and AA2AR agonists. These results suggest that despite certain inaccuracies, the optimized homology models can be useful in the drug discovery process.