General competetive equilibrium of the spatial economy

The spatial economy is analyzed in the general equilibrium framework by considering the production and the utility functions depending on spatial distribution and sets. The geometric constraint between the location and the extension of goods supplies the equilibrium condition for space. The existence of an equilibrium is demonstrated by extending the Gale-Nikaido theorem to the case under examination. Consequently, the competetive equilibrium exists, under the assumptions of the theorem, although each point of space is heterogeneous with any other point (because of the different location): the existence is allowed by the perfect partibility of space.     

THE EBB AND FLOW OF FISCAL ACTIVISM

During the last quarter of the 20th Century, the conventionalwisdom prevailing in academic, political and financial circleswas definitely against government deficits. At the turn of thecentury, however, a substantial recourse to deficit spendingpractices in the United States reopened the debate on the usefulnessof countercyclical fiscal policies. This essay discusses themain contents of this debate, reviewing the contributions tovarious symposiums held at a number of U.S. Federal ReserveBanks. A comparison with the views on this issue prevailingin Europe is also provided.     

Anne G. Hanley. Native Capital: Financial Institutions and Economic Development in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1850-1920. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005. xviii + 286 pp. ISBN 0-8047-5072-6, $55.00 (paper).

Anne Hanley presents a lucid and impressive narrative of theevolution of financial markets in São Paulo, Brazil.She traces the evolution of the banking sector and SãoPaulo stock exchange from the end of the Empire (Brazil wasan empire with a constitutional monarchy between 1822 and 1889)through the first three decades of the Republic (1889–1920)and the contemporaneous evolution of capital markets from theirearly "personalistic" stage to "maturity" in the early twentieth     

COMMUNICATION PROCESSES AND THE ‘NEW PUBLIC SPACE’ IN ITALY AND THE USA: A LONGITUDINAL APPROACH

Since the time of ancient Greece, democracy and communication have ineluctably been linked. Seen with the eyes of the Greek citizens, the agora was a somewhat mystical space where direct involvement and face‐to‐face communication processes paved the way to the kratos of the demos. After more than two thousand years, communication still remains closely linked to democracy, but the ever expanding dimension of modern societies calls for political representation. Consequently, the electoral arena has become a fictitious public space making democracy work. With the agency and the communication theories in the background, the present authors claim that following the advent of the most incredible technological discontinuity in history, things seem to have taken a jump back in time. The widespread dissemination of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in fact, was crucial to the emergence of a ‘new public space’ bringing with it the poetry of a mirrored image of the ancient agora. Such new public space will be analysed with reference to the US and Italian governments at a federal and central level in order to gain a better understanding of how government‐citizens relationships are fashioned in both contexts. As we will see, each understanding of democracy argues for a different design of government‐citizens relationships. Consequently, both positive and recalcitrant attitudes towards a citizens’ greater involvement in policy making are often due more to cultural than to technological barriers. Their removal has to pass through the awareness that ICT may have profound consequences for democracy: their real power lies in their capacity to integrate political representation with new forms of citizens’ direct involvement in public life while consequently reinvigorating the pluralistic attitudes of the agora even in large‐scale modern democracies.