The knowledge management strategy and the formation of innovative networks in emerging industries

This paper presents an agent-based simulation model with local network externality to analyze strategic interactions over investment on new economic knowledge. R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are the results of non-cooperative games played between neighboring agents in the model. The model demonstrates a situation where no agents have incentives to hide their economic knowledge, a situation that is observed in open source software development projects. The likelihood of obtaining a stable situation where new economic knowledge is openly shared is increased when heterogeneity of agents is introduced.      

GMO-free regions in Europe: an analysis of diffusion patterns

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been a controversial issue in the European Union (EU). A growing number of member states and regions within the member states oppose the EU’s agro-biotechnology policy, resulting in a complex multi-level structure of policy-making. This study is interested in the regional opposition to GMOs and scrutinises the determinants of membership in the European Network of GMO-free Regions. In terms of theory, this study builds on the literature of policy diffusion. For the analytical purpose, we distinguish among four diffusion mechanisms: learning from earlier adopters, economic competition among proximate regions, imitation of economically powerful regions and deviation from national law. Our research questions are the following: How has membership developed since the foundation of the network? Which mechanisms explain the diffusion patterns observed? The empirical findings show that membership in the network has grown substantially between 2003 and 2014, which supports the general expectation that there is a diffusion of GMO-free regions. Yet, most new member regions are located in the same member states as the regions that founded the network. In other words, what is observed is intra-country diffusion rather than inter-country diffusion. The empirical findings provide support for the importance of learning from earlier adopters for the growing of the European Network of GMO-free Regions.     

Is protection really for sale? A survey and directions for future research

This paper critically and selectively surveys the literature on protection for sale and discusses directions for future research in this area. It suggests that the standard approach needs to be augmented to provide more compelling tests of this model.     

Menu Dependence and Group Decision Making

This paper is concerned with the problem of group decision making. We introduce the notion of a collective system rule. A collective system rule maps each preference profile to a group-preference system, which is a collection of social preferences on the subsets of the alternatives. By formulating the Arrovian conditions, we show the Arrow-type impossibility theorems. We also discuss how our approach is related to the standard group decision-making process.     

The dual attitudinal dynamics of public opinion: an agent-based reformulation of L. F. Richardson’s war-moods model

This study proposes a new model of public opinion dynamics, focused specifically on attitudes toward war. The model consists of citizen-agents who have dual (public and private) attitudes. While they change the two levels of attitude according to different rules of two-layered interactions with neighboring agents, they also change their own attitudes internally. Our model shows that public opinion has “meta-stable” states, which generate overlapping, or two-valued, stable states. This characteristic can explain how public opinion responds to the outbreak and continuation of war very differently, not just in our model, but also in the opinions of European citizens on the First World War and those of American citizens on U.S. wars after the Second World War.     

From engineer to taxi driver? Language proficiency and the occupational skills of immigrants

We examine the ability of immigrants to transfer the occupational human capital they acquired prior to immigration. We first augment a model of occupational choice to study the implications of language proficiency on the cross‐border transferability of occupational human capital. We then explore the empirical predictions using information about the skill requirements from O^*NET and a unique dataset that includes both the last source country occupation and the first four years of occupations in Canada. We supplement the analysis using Census estimates for the same cohort with source country occupational skill requirements predicted using detailed human capital related information such as field of study. We find that male immigrants to Canada were employed in source country occupations that typically require high levels of cognitive skills, but rely less intently on manual skills. Following immigration, they find initial employment in occupations that require the opposite. Consistent with the hypothesized asymmetric role of language in the transferability of previously acquired cognitive and manual skills, these discrepancies are larger among immigrants with limited language fluency.     

Local envy-freeness and equal-income Walrasian allocations

This paper introduces a local version of envy-freeness and investigates its implications in a continuum agent economy with connected preferences. We show that the set of locally envy-free and Pareto efficient allocations coincides with the set of equal-income Walrasian allocations.     

Fair allocations in large economies with unequal production skills

This paper considers the problem of fair allocation among individuals with unequal production skills. We introduce the concept of productivity‐adjusted average no‐envy. It is shown that equal‐income Walrasian allocations are the only surviving allocations that are productivity‐adjusted average envy‐free and efficient when the original economy is infinitely replicated. We also examine local versions of productivity‐adjusted average no‐envy and other equity concepts.