Existence and uniqueness of equilibrium and optimal land use: Boundary rent curve approach

This paper presents a simple constructive proof of the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium or optimal solution for a class of residential land use problems. Our approach is based on the concept of boundary rent curves, and provides a direct computational algorithm. Although our approach works only for a limited class of problems, the most land use problems for which definite results can be obtained from comparative statics or stability analysis are included in this class.     

亚洲管理模式创造——以老子思想为核心的环境管理论

人类对自然界进行过度物质索取的发展模式终将变得难以为继。由人类活动导致的全球气候变暖或将毁掉整个地球。人类文明面临着世纪转捩点。《马太福音》记载，在世界经历系列灾象之后，太阳将失却光辉，月亮变得黑暗，众星从天空坠落，行星纷纷脱离轨道。人类对过度的物质文明应有所认识并遏制自己膨胀的欲望。老子思想启示我们有足够的理由得出这样的结论：有所失才能有所得。人类必须共同恪守健康和可持续的生活方式。     

Multiple equilibria and structural transition of non-monocentric urban configurations

A model of non-monocentric urban land use is presented, which requires neither employment nor residential location to be specified a priori. It is shown that the model is capable of yielding multicentric pattern as well as monocentric and dispersed patterns, and that the model generally yields multiple equilibria under each fixed set of parameter values. It is also shown that the city may undergo a catastrophic structural transition when the parameters take critical values.     

GLOBALIZATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN: WHO GAINS AND WHO LOSES?*

This article focuses on two distinct facets of globalization: decrease in the trade costs of goods and the decline of communication costs between headquarters and production facilities. When the unskilled have about the same wage in two regions, decrease of these costs fosters the agglomeration of plants in the core accommodating headquarters. When the wage gap is significant, process of integration eventually triggers the relocation of plants into the periphery. When this process of relocation is driven by falling communication costs, the welfare of all workers in the core falls whereas that in the periphery rises.     

A rational expectations equilibrium model of urban growth and land markets

This paper presents a simple model of urban spatial growth under uncertainty with an infinite time horizon. The rational expectations equilibrium path (REE path) of the urban land market is obtained in explicit form as a function of exogenously given stochastic processes of future population, transport and household income in the city. Spatial and temporal characteristics of asset prices along the REE path are examined in detail.     

KNOWLEDGE CREATION AS A SQUARE DANCE ON THE HILBERT CUBE*

This article presents a micromodel of knowledge creation through the interactions among a group of people. The model features myopic agents in a pure externality model of interaction. Surprisingly, for a large set of initial conditions we find that the equilibrium process of knowledge creation converges to the most productive state, where the population splits into smaller groups of optimal size; close interaction takes place within each group only. This optimal size is larger as heterogeneity of knowledge is more important in the knowledge production process. Equilibrium paths are found analytically; they are a discontinuous function of initial heterogeneity.     

A Secure and Fair Protocol that Addresses Weaknesses of the Nash Bargaining Solution in Nonlinear Negotiation

Negotiation with multiple interdependent issues is an important problem since much of real-world negotiation falls into this category. This paper examines the problem that, in such domains, agent utility functions are nonlinear, and thereby can create nonconvex Pareto frontiers. This in turn implies that the Nash Bargaining Solution, which has been viewed as the gold standard for identifying a unique optimal negotiation outcome, does not serve that role in nonlinear domains. In nonlinear domains, unlike linear ones, there can be multiple Nash Bargaining Solutions, and all can be sub-optimal with respect to social welfare and fairness. In this paper, we propose a novel negotiation protocol called SFMP (the Secure and Fair Mediator Protocol) that addresses this challenge, enabling secure multilateral negotiations with fair and pareto-optimal outcomes in nonlinear domains. The protocol works by (1) using nonlinear optimization, combined with a Multi-Party protocol, to find the Pareto front without revealing agent’s private utility information, and (2) selecting the agreement from the Pareto set that maximizes a fair division criterion we call approximated fairness. We demonstrate that SFMP is able to find agreements that maximize fairness and social welfare in nonlinear domains, and out-performs (in terms of outcomes and scalability) previously developed nonlinear negotiation protocols.     

Regional growth in postwar Japan

We show that a shift from light to heavy industries brought about the fast regional transformation from the Tokyo-Osaka bipolar system to the Pacific industrial belt system, and a shift from heavy to high-tech and service industries induced the second transformation to the Tokyo monopolar system. We also show that the recent development in telecommunications and transportation technologies tend to agglomerate knowledge-intensive activities in the core regions of Japan while dispersing mass-production activities to nonmetropolitan regions and overseas. This partly explains the recent renewed tendency of the increasing income differential between the core and peripheral regions.     

Examining consumers’ sensory experiences with color: A consumer neuroscience approach

This research advances neuroscience as a tool with which to study consumers’ visual mental imagery. Applying these methods, we suggest that the presence or absence of color is a critical dimension along which consumers’ visualizations can vary, and explore when and why color of visual mental imagery becomes more prominent. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we find neural evidence for distinguishing black-and-white (BW) versus color visualization, and that visual mental imagery becomes increasingly monochrome (vs. colorful) when consumers imagine distant (vs. near) future events. Our neural evidence further suggests construal level as the underlying mechanism of this effect, showing common regions of activation for imagining distant future events, engaging in high-level construal, and forming BW mental imagery. We discuss the implication of these findings and the benefits of fMRI techniques for marketing in general.