Airport infrastructure spillovers in a network system

Airports in the US air transport network have become increasingly congested, leading to delays for business travelers and freight shipments. Since disruptions in one part of the network exacerbate problems throughout the system, airport infrastructure expansions to enhance air traffic flows confer travel-time savings and reliability benefits, and thus increased worker productivity and shipping efficiency for manufacturing firms. We evaluate such spillovers, and find that higher own-state airport infrastructure implies lower manufacturing costs from both labor- and materials-savings. Airport expansion in connected states has a comparable effect for states with hub airports, and an even greater impact for other states.     

Growth and equity effects of changing demographic structures in the Netherlands: simulations within a social accounting matrix

"This paper deals with the economic consequences of a changing demography in an industrialized country, namely the Netherlands. The analytical framework chosen is that of general equilibrium as statistically given by the social accounting matrix (SAM) in which we introduce households by size for the present economic demographic situation (1981) and for a future simulated situation (2010) featuring in particular a relative increase in one-person households (individualization). The income (output) multipliers of both SAMs show a positive growth bias towards three and more person households and towards mining, public utilities, trade and banking."     

More pessimism than greediness: a characterization of monotone risk aversion in the rank-dependent expected utility model

Summary. This paper studies monotone risk aversion, the aversion to monotone, mean-preserving increase in risk (Quiggin [21]), in the Rank Dependent Expected Utility (RDEU) model. This model replaces expected utility by another functional, characterized by two functions, a utility function u in conjunction with a probability-perception function f. Monotone mean-preserving increases in risk are closely related to the notion of comparative dispersion introduced by Bickel and Lehmann [3,4] in Non-parametric Statistics. We present a characterization of the pairs (u,f) of monotone risk averse decision makers, based on an index of greediness G _u of the utility function u and an index of pessimism P _f of the probability perception function f: the decision maker is monotone risk averse if and only if . The index of greediness (non-concavity) of u is the supremum of taken over . The index of pessimism of f is the infimum of taken over 0 < v < 1. Thus, , with G _u = 1 iff u is concave. If then , i.e., f is majorized by the identity function. Since P _f = 1 for Expected Utility maximizers, forces u to be concave in this case; thus, the characterization of risk aversion as is a direct generalization from EU to RDEU. A novel element is that concavity of u is not necessary. In fact, u must be concave only if P _f = 1.Received: 10 April 2001, Revised: 18 November 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: D81. Correspondence to: Michéle CohenAlain Chateauneuf, Michéle Cohen, Isaac Meilijson: We are most grateful to Mark Machina, Peter Wakker and two anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions and comments.     

Information Disclosure as Environmental Regulation: A Theoretical Analysis

Governments around the world are beginning to embrace a new form of environmental regulation – mandatory disclosure of information. While information disclosure programs appear to have an impact on subsequent firm behavior – often resulting in lower levels of pollution – little is known about the costs and benefits of these programs and whether or not they enhance social welfare. This paper presents a simple bargaining model where mandatory information disclosure is used to overcome a lack of information on the part of the public. We characterize the conditions under which information disclosure will lead to a reduction in emissions, and ultimately, the conditions under which it will enhance social welfare. Several extensions of the model are briefly explored, including the effect of two sources of pollution – only one of which is subject to information disclosure. This paper was prepared while V. Santhakumar was a Visiting Scholar at the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies, Vanderbilt University.