Distinguishing external from internal scale effects: The case of public infrastructure

The recent applied production theory literature focusing on the economic performance of firms has increasingly recognized the importance of scale effects on costs and therefore efficiency. These scale effects may include short run returns due to fixity of privately demanded inputs (i.e., capital, long run internal returns to scale, and external factors affecting costs. Since these different types of scale effects can be thought of as shifts in and movements along cost curves, the different cost effects of such factors can be identified in a framework which explicitly takes them into account in the definition ofscale.In this article we formalize such a framework, and then use it to measure short run, long run (internal) and external scale effects from fixity of private capital, nonconstant returns to scale and public infrastructure. We then use these measures to identify the impacts of these different scale factors on productivity growth. The focus on public infrastructure as an important external scale factor is motivated by the current theoretical and policy interest in this issue; we show how a structural production theory model provides a rich basis for the analysis of the cost effects of infrastructure investment.     

Institutionelle Diversität ist wichtig

2009 erhalten zwei ?konomen den Wirtschaftsnobelpreis, die sich mit institutionellen Fragen auseinandergesetzt haben. Elinor Ostrom besch?ftigt sich mit einer spezifi schen Form der Organisation von Wirtschaft, den sogenannten „Commons“. Sie zeigt, dass diese der Privatwirtschaft einerseits und der staatlichen Verwaltung andererseits in vielen Bereichen überlegen sind. Elinor Ostrom wurde als erste Frau in dieser Disziplin ausgezeichnet.     

‘I’ve been to Bali too’ (and I will be going back): are terrorist shocks to Bali's tourist arrivals permanent or transitory?

International visitor arrivals to Bali are examined using univariate and panel Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root tests with one and two structural breaks to ascertain if shocks to the time path of tourist arrivals are permanent or transitory. The univariate LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks fail to reject the null hypothesis of a unit root in international visitor arrivals to Bali. However, the panel LM unit root tests with one and two structural breaks applied to a panel of Bali's 11 major source markets reject the null and support the alternative hypothesis of a joint trend-stationary series with transitory shocks. This result suggests that, the effects of the recent terrorist acts on Bali on the growth path of tourist arrivals from major markets are only transitory and that as a consequence Bali's tourism sector is sustainable in the long run.     

应用分析技术管理银行风险

对银行业来说,当前是一个比较混乱而且艰难的时期.美围次贷危机的爆发波及金融业的各个领域,同时也激发了人们探寻如何避免类似危机,以及如何让金融机构快速恢复放贷的兴趣.对金融机构米说,发展的关键在于在买卖抵押或类似金融工具时更好地了解自己所面对的风险.做到这一点的最佳方法是通过技术来深入了解整个企业或资产组合存在的风险.     

Precautionary Demand for Education, Inequality, and Technological Progress

This paper offers an explanation for the evolution of wage inequality within and between industries and education groups over the past several decades. The model is based on the disproportionate depreciation of technology-specific skills versus general skills due to technological progress, which occurs randomly across sectors. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that increasing randomness is the primary source of inequality growth within uneducated workers, whereas inequality growth within educated workers is determined more by changes in the composition and return to ability. Increasing randomness generates a precautionary demand for education, which we show empirically to be significant.