Where Should the Elderly Live and Who Should Pay for Their Care?*

We consider a model with a population consisting of earners and retired persons; elderly care is publicly provided. There is one big city, where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work, and a number of small villages. We show how the externalities related to population mobility lead to an inefficient spatial distribution of earners and retirees, and we characterize the second‐best solution. Decentralization of this solution in a fiscal federalism structure requires the use of taxes and subsidies proportional to the number of earners and retired persons living in the city and the villages.     

人力资本存量、R&D投资与中国工业增长转型

工业是中国当前三大产业中的支柱产业,工业增长模式的体制转轨很大程度上反映了中国经济增长模式的转轨方向和现状。文章借助1990年-2007年的统计数据进行计算和实证检验发现：中国工业企业从上世纪90年代初以依靠人力资本存量和物质资本存量积累的增长模式转变为新世纪以来以R＆D投资带来的技术进步和工业劳动力投入为主要产出支撑的新模式,虽然这种增长转轨并未彻底完成,但已经证明集约化增长模式将逐步成为中国经济可持续发展的主要途径。     

Agglomeration economies with consistent productivity estimates

This paper investigates the relative impact of microeconomic agglomeration mechanisms on plant's total factor productivity (TFP) using German establishment and employment-level data. Contrasting different strategies for estimating TFP from plant-level production functions reveals that unobserved output prices bias true productivity and lead to underestimated agglomeration economies. With the corrected TFP measure, the largest impact is found for labor market pooling, which is captured by the correlation of the occupational composition between one county-industry and the rest of the county. This main result is robust, even when the spatial units are resized from counties to larger labor market regions. Input linkages appear to be relevant only at this larger regional scale. Overall, agglomeration economies differ substantially across industries. Only for a subset of industries, some positive evidence is detected for knowledge spillovers.     

COOPERATION: THE POWER OF A SINGLE WORD? SOME EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON WORDING AND GENDER EFFECTS IN A GAME OF CHICKEN

Framing has been widely shown to affect decision making. In this paper, we investigate experimentally whether, and to what extent, cooperative behaviour in a Game of Chicken may be impacted by a very basic change in the labelling of the strategies. Our within‐subject experimental design involves two treatments. The only difference between them is that we introduce either a socially‐oriented wording (I cooperate/I do not cooperate) or colours (red/blue) to designate strategies. The level of cooperation appears to be higher in the socially‐oriented context, but only when uncertainty as regards the type of the partner is manipulated, and especially among females.     

PRICING,CAPACITY, AND CONSTRUCTION BOUNDARY OF A CONGESTIBLE HIGHWAY WITH AN ELASTIC DEMAND: SOCIAL OPTIMUM,SECOND BEST,PRIVATIZATION, AND VERTICAL DISINTEGRATION*

This paper uses a spatial model to analyse first‐ and second‐best policies, impacts of privatization and vertical disintegration of a congestible highway with elastic demand. The paper also uses simulation methods to analyse the welfare cost of a uniform‐toll constraint. Results show, inter alia, that the social optimum requires the marginal cost of highway extension to be equal to the net consumer benefit at the boundary, while in the second‐best case the aggregate user cost must be measured in terms of the shadow price. In turn, a profit‐maximizing firm equates the marginal extension cost to the markup revenue at the boundary.     

Leverage and growth: Effect of stock options

Previous literature documents a negative relationship between leverage and firm growth. This paper finds that once the incentives provided by stock options are accounted for, leverage does not affect firm growth. The paper also finds that the sensitivity of CEOs’ wealth to stock price (i.e. option delta) instead of leverage has a negative relationship with growth. These findings suggest that incentive contracts that tie managers’ wealth to firm value prevent managers from overinvesting. Thus in presence of options the role of debt as a disciplining mechanism has become less important.     

Housing tenure choice and the dual income household

Housing tenure choice has been the subject of a very large literature. Many treatments have sought to estimate the effect of household income on the likelihood of home ownership. To date, no study has ever disaggregated the household income of married couples into the separate labor income components to see if one partner’s income has a different effect than the other. Using a derived likelihood function to control for censoring in the wife’s income, this paper estimates the effect of separate incomes on housing tenure choice, accounting for possible endogeneity of the wife’s income. To compare the results of this estimation method, the paper also estimates the standard IV models, 2SLS and IV probit. While the results show that there is no endogeneity of the wife’s income, ignoring the censoring of the endogenous variable (when a large fraction of observations are censored) can possibly lead to biased coefficient estimates. Also, this paper confirms the importance of total household income, which has a larger effect than the total disaggregated components.     

Anatomy of Russia’s market segmentation1

Based on a relationship between price difference and demand difference among locations, the role of various market frictions in causing segmentation of the Russian goods market is analysed. The spatial sample covers most of Russian regions (70 of the 89); the data are annual, spanning 1992 to 2000. Spatial disconnectedness of regions is found to be responsible for about 70 percent of the average price differential, while the rest is caused by ‘artificial’ impediments to market integration such as regional protectionism, organized crime and intra‐region shipping conditions.     

基于古诺竞争模型的我国航空产业技术提升策略研究——以大飞机为例

在扩展古诺竞争模型的基础上,通过比较不同技术提升策略对我国大飞机厂商收益的影响,考察了发展大飞机产业自主研发与技术引进的选择问题。研究结果表明,在单一机型竞争市场上,若自主研发的成功概率很大,则国内厂商在未来两期的最优技术提升策略是自主创新;在两种机型竞争市场上,若自主研发的成功概率很大,则国内厂商在未来两期的最优技术提升策略是第一期技术引进、第二期自主研发。     

“Development strategies at station areas in southwestern China: The case of Mianyang city”

This paper analyses the possibilities for implementing a TOD model around a railway station in Mianyang City, in southwestern China, through a Node-Place model to determine the potential for developing the areas around railway stations to foster a sustainable economic and urban development. For this purpose, the implementation of a TOD model means an interesting sustainable way for smart growth, whose successful implementation will strongly depend on the context, where the Growth Pole Theory is being implemented through the Western Development Strategy to strengthen the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone. The Hukou system (household registration) and the current rapid urbanization and motorization trends are featuring the economic growth, creating inequities among urban population, informal settlements and problems in the accessibility of low-income residents. Therefore, not only does it lead to an analysis of the most important station areas in northeastern Sichuan Province but also of the socio-economic trends of one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country, yet with a high potential to be developed. Consequently, the real situation of the Northeast of Sichuan province is studied through fieldworks which complement the lack of reliable information, determining the most suitable features for achieving the best urban planning solution.