Economic Growth and Transboundary Pollution in Europe: An Empirical Analysis

The existing empirical evidence suggests that environmental Kuznets curvesonly exist for pollutants with semi-local and medium term impacts.Ansuategi and Perrings (2000) have considered the behavioral basis for thecorrelation observed between different spatial incidence of environmentaldegradation and the relation between economic growth and environmentalquality. They show that self-interested planners following a Nash-typestrategy tend to address environmental effects sequentially: addressingthose with the most immediate costs first, and those whose costs aredisplaced in space later. This paper tests such behavioral basis in thecontext of sulphur dioxide emissions in Europe.     

Herd Behaviour in Adoption of Network Technologies

In technology adoption, herd behaviour can lead to a suboptimal outcome as shown, among others, by Choi (1997). However, empirics find little support for the idea that a less efficient technology can conquer the market and lock out a more efficient one. Accordingly, we improve and generalize Choi's results, by introducing an additional source of uncertainty: the economic environment. We investigate how the economic environment can affect herding and consequently the efficiency of the technology choice. The result is a smaller adoption bias. In the limit, firms may optimally experiment with the new technology that turns out to be social welfare improving.     

社会资本外部性的经济分析——以信任关系为例

以往理论研究与经验研究均指出社会资本具有正面的效应,但对这种效应是怎样取得的并无共识.我们尝试建立一个不完全信息动态博弈模型,说明社会资本-信任如何产生正的外部性,亦即产生超出个体理性计算之外的利益.我们的分析得出这样的结论,在一个多人互动的环境中,能否达到彼此合作或彼此信任,虽然会受到欺骗者所遭到的惩罚与欺骗利益多少的影响,但主要受到所处环境中具有社会资本者人数比例的影响.因此,可以说社会资本具有正的网络外部性,信任者人数越多,信任者所享受到的利益越大.     

城市环境外部性的经济分析与对策研究

本文将就环境外部性的特点进行经济分析,提出运用经济学、伦理学及政治学综合性知识,在追求高效率、确立道德约束、建立政治规则和明确衡量标准的基础上,制定治理环境外部性的积极对策。     

中国经济增长与能源消费空间面板分析

近年来面板数据广泛应用于各类统计分析,但变量的空间相关并没有引起足够的重视。本文引入空间面板回归模型研究中国各省市区经济增长和能源消费的关系。利用matlab软件及其spatial econometric模块建立和比较传统面板回归模型与空间面板回归模型,结果表明空间面板回归模型较传统面板回归模型优越,本文的研究为空间面板数据分析提供了一个应用实例。     

Poverty Traps, Indeterminacy, and the Wealth Distribution

We consider a one-sector growth model in continuous time with a production externality and endogenous labor supply. There is a continuum of households who have identical preferences but differ with respect to their initial wealth. We show that there exist economies such that an indeterminate steady state exists for some wealth distribution but not for others. A second result is that a redistribution of wealth may drive the economy from a steady state with strictly positive output to a poverty trap in which output converges asymptotically to zero. These results indicate that differences in the wealth distribution may be responsible for drastic differences in the long-run standard of living. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D31, D50, O41.     

Network externalities and long-run market shares

We study a dynamic duopoly model with network externalities. The value of the product depends on the current and past network size. We compare the market outcome to a planner. With equal quality products, the market outcome may result in too little standardization (i.e. too many products active in the long run) but never too much. The potential inefficiency is non-monotonic in the strength of the network effect, being most likely for intermediate levels. When products differ in quality, an inferior product may dominate even when the planner would choose otherwise, but only if the discount factor is sufficiently large     

Complementarity, coordination and compatibility: The role of fixed costs in the economics of systems

We analyze industry equilibrium and incentive to compatibility when goods produced by different producers generate utility only when consumed as component parts of a system. We assume the presence of two systems, each composed of some basic component and a set of differentiated complementary products. The combination of complementarity between the two components of the system and of fixed costs in the production of the complementary product results in a form of network effect. We focus on the role played by the size of the fixed costs in the production of the complementary products in determining the size of this system effect and, by this means, the structure and types of equilibria that may be observed: monopolistic or duopolistic, symmetric or asymmetric. We also highlight the consequence of the same fixed costs for the private and social incentives to render the systems compatible.     

Spatial Competition and Shopping Externalities: Evidence from the Housing Market

In search markets, greater spatial concentration of sellers increases price competition. At the same time, though, a greater concentration of sellers can create a shopping externality by attracting more buyers to the site. Using housing sales data, we test for spatial competition and shopping externality effects on prices and marketing time. We find that they reflect both competitive and shopping externality effects from surrounding houses, although the relative strength varies with how fresh the house is in the market, the freshness of surrounding houses, and the phase of the market cycle. New listings have the strongest shopping externality effect on neighboring houses that have been on the market for some time. Vacant houses have their strongest competition effects in the declining market and externality effects in the rising market. Fresh houses on the market reap little benefit from shopping externalities in all phases of the market cycle.