econometric issues in estimating consumer preferences from stated preference data a case study of the value of automobile travel time this paper explores a number of methodological issues related to the econometric analysis of stated preference data in the context of estimating the value of automobile travel time estimates of parameters and the willingness to pay wtp to save time are obtained using conventional ordered probit and rank ordered logit models and an innovation called mixed logit we find that the average wtp is low and does not exhibit much variation among motorists although our findings using data on respondents rankings of alternatives are robust we find that caution should be used in estimating stated preferences based on respondents ratings

information sharing in dea a cooperative game theory approach abstract in this paper a cooperative dea game is proposed based on the idea that different organizations can gain if they share data on the input consumption and output production of their processing units a larger data sample allows a more complete description of the production possibility set and consequently of the efficient frontier however since not all organizations will benefit in the same way it is convenient to use cooperative game theory in order to share the benefits of the cooperation the proposed cooperative dea game is shown to be subadditive and balanced models for computing the value of the game and checking its stability taking into account the exponential number of coalitions that exist when the number of organizations is large are also presented the approach is illustrated with a dataset from the literature

comparative statics analysis of a fully closed city abstract this paper extends the existing comparative statics analysis about open or semiclosed cities notably that of w wheaton j econom theor 9 2 223 237 1974 to a fully closed city where urban land rent is redistributed to the city population specifically we examine the effects on changes in exogenous variables such as population size agricultural rent and initial endowments on endogenous variables such as welfare level city size and rent schedule most but not all of the existing results are reestablished surprisingly it is shown that in contrast to the existing literature and perhaps to intuition the city area may shrink when the city population increases the paper also extends the existing literature by analyzing the effect of the exogenous variables on the endogenous income and the demand for transportation it is shown that under plausible assumptions the quantity of transportation demanded declines with its price

did migration in the 1980s narrow the north south divide this paper integrates empirical analysis of the decision to migrate from a region with that of destination choice thus we are able to study how net migration and not just gross outflows are influenced by regional labour market circumstances the results suggest that relative regional wages rates but not relative unemployment and vacancy rates are effective in reallocating labour from regions experiencing adverse demand shocks we find little evidence that manual labour is migrating from those regions with relatively high manual unemployment but that migration plays a more conventional role in the regional adjustment process for non manual workers

income residential location and mode choice abstract commuters choose a mode defined in terms of trip speed and time to minimize the money and opportunity costs of travel new results the wage rate elasticity of marginal commuting cost may be zero negative greater than one or declining with the wage rate a constant wage rate elasticity is possible only if the marginal money cost of commuting is zero a positive value of the marginal money cost of commuting implicitly assumes mode choice the relationship between income and location seems due largely to technological change in intraurban transportation differences in the money cost of commuting by alternative modes and differences in real wages

optimal environmental road pricing abstract an optimal first best road charge should not only be differentiated with respect to factors that affect the direct external environmental and time costs from the road user himself indirect effects such as the fact that others cars will be more polluting when congestion increases should also be taken into account

cost allocation and convex data envelopment abstract this paper considers allocation rules first we demonstrate that costs allocated by the aumann shapley and the friedman moulin cost allocation rules are easy to determine in practice using convex envelopment of registered cost data and parametric programming second from the linear programming problems involved it becomes clear that the allocation rules technically speaking allocate the non zero value of the dual variable for a convexity constraint on to the output vector hence the allocation rules can also be used to allocate inefficiencies in non parametric efficiency measurement models such as data envelopment analysis dea the convexity constraint of the bcc model introduces a non zero slack in the objective function of the multiplier problem and we show that the cost allocation rules discussed in this paper can be used as candidates to allocate this slack value on to the input or output variables and hence enable a full allocation of the inefficiency on to the input or output variables as in the ccr model

dual labor markets urban unemployment and multicentric cities a two sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary sector demand shock the optimal location of this single firm sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed these results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector c 1997 academic press

allocating the fixed cost as a complement of other cost inputs a dea approach in cost allocation problem traditional dea approaches allocate the fixed cost among a group of decision making units dmus and treat the allocated cost as an extra input of each dmu if costs except for the fixed cost are regarded as inputs in the cost allocation problem then it is obvious that the fixed cost is a complement of other inputs rather than an extra independent input therefore it is necessary to combine the allocated cost with other cost measures in cost allocation problem based on this observation this paper investigates the relationship between the allocated cost and the dea efficiency score and develops a dea based approach to allocate the fixed cost among various dmus an example of allocating advertising expenditure between a car manufacturer and its dealers is presented to illustrate the method proposed in this paper

value of time speeding behavior and gasoline prices abstract value of time vot is a key parameter in economics and policy this paper presents an alternative method to estimate vot by analyzing an hourly dataset on drivers speeding behavior as a function of the gasoline price our identification strategy is novel as it is based on the intensive margin in comparison previous studies reveal vot on the extensive margin but choice alternatives have multiple attributes thereby potentially confounding estimates consistent with the range of the prior literature we find a vot of about 50 of the wage rate and analyze sources of bias from accidents and traffic tickets these bias functions suggest that previous stated preference vot estimates are likely downward whereas previous revealed preference estimates are likely upward biased

spatial competition with a land market hotelling and von thunen unified we introduce into the standard spatial competition model the consumption of land by households and study the spatial competition under the influence of a land market in contrast to the standard assumption of a fixed given distribution of households we introduce the possibility of households relocation in reaction to firms location decisions thus the spatial distribution of households is treated as endogenous and a land market is introduced on which households compete for land use households consume simultaneously land and firms output accordingly the demand of each household becomes in turn endogenous as it depends on the income left after the land rent is paid not surprisingly the results obtained within this more general framework prove to be very different from the standard results for example in the 2 and 3 firm cases the optimal configuration of firms is a nash equilibrium when transport costs are high enough or the amount of vacant land is large enough the existence property is restored in the 3 firm case when the transport costs are high enough the introduction of vacant land causes a discontinuous change in the set of equilibrium configurations

a ranked voting system using a dea ar exclusion model a note abstract this paper addresses ranked voting systems to determine an ordering of candidates in terms of the aggregate vote by rank for each candidate it is shown that specifying nothing arbitrary we can obtain a total ordering of candidates by using a dea ar data envelopment analysis assurance region exclusion model explaining the evaluation criterion used to rank candidates it is concluded that we may consider the system proposed at least as an alternative to determine an ordering of candidates

cost minimizing target setting heuristics for making inefficient decision making units efficient abstract a problem of increasing the efficiencies of inefficient decision making units dmus with known marginal costs of reducing inputs is considered it is shown that the problem is difficult to solve exactly and has exponential computational complexity two heuristics heuristic i and heuristic ii that consider cost minimizing dea frontier projections for inefficient dmus are proposed the proposed heuristics are tested by using several simulated and real world datasets with linear and fibonacci marginal input reduction costs the results of the proposed heuristics are compared with traditional cost insensitive dea frontier projections and it is shown that heuristic i results in approximately 18 58 lower costs

it pays to be different endogenous heterogeneity of firms in an oligopoly abstract heterogeneous firms can be supported by familiar conditions of technology and demand in a two stage duopoly game firms choose technologies simultaneously in stage i from a continuous technology set in stage ii once technological commitments have been made firms choose quantities and the equilibrium price is determined if the technology set is insufficiently convex firms choose only the extreme production technologies in some cases they choose the same technology in others they choose different technologies when compared to socially optimal industry structures equilibria tend to have too little heterogeneity uncertainty about demand or costs favors the emergence of heterogeneous firms

the effects of new public projects to expand urban rail transit abstract many us cities invest in large public transit projects in order to reduce private vehicle dependence and to reverse the downward trend in public transit use using a unique panel data set for five major cities that upgraded their rail transit systems in the 1980s we estimate new rail transit s impact on usage and housing values using distance as a proxy for transit access new rail transit has a small impact on usage and housing values this impact is enough to represent tangible benefits of new transit to nearby residents new transit s benefits are not uniformly distributed we document which demographic groups are over represented in transit growth areas and the changes in transit usage by different demographic groups

the distributional effects of local labor demand and industrial mix estimates using individual panel data abstract this paper finds that increases in local labor demand have significant progressive effects on the income distribution and significantly reduce poverty the anti poverty effects of stronger demand have not lessened in recent years local labor demand s benefits are particularly great for younger less educated men labor demand s benefits are similar for blacks and whites and men and women the paper also finds that shifts in the local industrial mix toward manufacturing or other high wage industries do not have progressive effects and do not reduce poverty

the political economy of urban transport system choice this paper analyzes the political economy of transport system choice with the goal of gaining an understanding of the forces involved in this important urban public policy decision transport systems pose a continuous trade off between time and money cost so that a city can choose a fast system with a high money cost per mile or a slower cheaper system the paper compares the socially optimal transport system to the one chosen under the voting process focusing on both homogeneous and heterogeneous cities while considering different landownership arrangements the analysis identifies a bias toward underinvestment in transport quality in heterogeneous cities

recovering individual preferences for non market goods a collective travel cost model traditional recreation demand models do not make a distinction between a household and an individual as the reference decision making unit thus assuming that a family maximizes a single utility function even if the family consists of different individuals such models ignore the possibility of family members divergent preferences for non market goods this study proposes a novel approach the collective travel cost model ctcm to eliciting individual preferences for a non market good such as a recreation site by using revealed preference data this approach accounts for the intra household resource allocation and the role of each household member s preferences we show that the collective travel cost model can be applied to estimating a recreation demand model that yields individual welfare estimates appropriate for policy analysis of non market goods such as the willingness to pay to access a recreation site we find that how resources are distributed within the household reflects significant differences in welfare measures

efficient allocation of co2 emissions in china a zero sum gains data envelopment model abstract the appropriate allocation of co 2 emission quotas can build up a solid foundation for future emissions trading building co 2 emissions allocation mechanism has significant practical implications based on radial zero sum gains data envelopment zsg dea allocation model this paper uses a non radial zsg dea model to allocate co 2 emissions between different chinese provinces unlike previous studies treating co 2 as the input variable we treat co 2 as the undesirable output variable the modified model can better reflect macro production process while earlier relevant models treated co 2 emissions as inputs this paper contributes to the existing resource allocation method and allocates china s provincial co 2 emissions from the view of technical efficiency the results of our paper reveal that 1 between 2006 and 2010 the cumulative optimal amounts of co 2 emissions were higher than the actual amounts in 12 provinces and lower in other 18 provinces 2 several energy abundant provinces such as shanxi and inter mongolia need to take more responsibilities in co 2 emissions reduction 3 after the zsg dea allocation all provinces co 2 emissions are on zsg dea frontier which reflects the overall pareto optimality

infrastructure investment a review essay economists try not to be faddists but they often cannot help themselves while work on a topic should mirror the prospective importance of the topic that situation seems to occur with disappointing frequency instead the usual pattern is that some reasonably important topic will be totally ignored for the longest time then recognized and then the subject of a flurry of work all out of proportion to its likely long run importance nowhere has this speculative bubble of economic research been more clearly illustrated than with infrastructure investment macroeconomists havelong felt that the stock of public capital is an important factor input in the production of total output macroeconomists have known that u s productivity growth slowed dramatically in about 1973 and macroeconomists should have known that united states investment in public capital has been down since the late 1960s yet analysis of the u s productivity slowdown completely ignored infrastructure investment for the first fifteen years of this slowdown concentrating instead on energy prices social regulation the composition of the work force research and development different rates of obsolescence of the private capital stock and any number of other matters the public capital stock was hardly ever even mentioned as a potential factor in the productivity slowdown aschauer changed all that he wrote a series of papers 1989a 1989b 1989c that put these two movements together econometrically infrastructure investment turned down and aggregate productivity turned down slightly later both in the united states and in some other developed countries his work hit the magic button those who had worried about the productivity puzzle for fifteen years welcomed a new suspect those who were worried about low rates of u s national saving welcomed a new way to make their argument even more forcefully than with official figures on saving and investment which do not count infrastructure investment as investment political liberals and liberal politicians saw a way to rescue government spending and projects from the assaults of reaganism and even a way to avoid oth

parking transit and employment in a central business district abstract in this paper we present a general equilibrium model to examine the role of parking and transit subsidy policy on the size of a central business district cbd cbd land values and the market shares of cars and transit the three main features of the model are 1 agglomeration economies increase continuously with labor market size 2 congestion arises from auto use only transit is noncongestible and 3 locational equilibrium is maintained in the sense that firms and individuals cannot reduce costs or increase utility by moving given equilibrium prices and city size we derive the conditions under which parking taxes can be levied and used to subsidize transit and increase equilibrium cbd size and land values we compute an optimal parking tax that maximizes cbd size and land values and derive relationships among parking taxes transit use and congestion we find nonmonotonic relationships among parking taxes land values and transit use

an alternative approach to monetary aggregation in dea this paper proposes a set of alternative dea based money indices that are proved to be both theoretically and empirically competing monetary aggregates since they perform as good as the divisia aggregates based on all the results concerning causality forecasting and money demand we conclude that dea money aggregates prove to be at least competing alternatives to the divisia aggregates and hence suggest that these new aggregates may be considered along with the existing weighted monetary aggregates like the divisia ones given the inherent benefit of the doubt weighting mechanism underlying the dea models where the optimal weight assigned by dea to each monetary asset reflects the ongoing financial innovation and the reserve bank of india s policy priority in the distribution of total liquidity we feel that the dea money indices can truly capture the liquidity better with ongoing financial innovations in the economy

prioritization models for frontier decision making units in dea abstract data envelopment analysis dea has received significant attention in recent years as a tool for measuring the relative efficiency of each member of a set of decision making units dmus typically a relatively large proportion of the dmus will be credited with an efficiency score of 1 with no clear means of discriminating among such units in a number of applications however it may be necessary to select a winning dmu from this set of frontier units this paper examines various conditions that are imposed on the multipliers in a dea analysis in each case an approach is suggested for breaking ties on the frontier

willingness to pay for snowmobile recreation travel cost method models with and without post season resurvey of trip count annual willingness to pay wtp for snowmobile recreation in idaho is estimated using the travel cost method tcm on site snow conditions are important and erratic thus we collect two measures o

wage competition with heterogeneous workers and firms we study imperfect competition in the labor market when both workers and firms are heterogeneous when firms cannot observe workers skill firms pay workers equal wages but workers absorb training costs when firms can identify worker types firms pay different net wages to different workers voters select the level of general education that is financed by a lump sum tax workers are on average better off when firms can observe workers skill for a given level of general human capital but the median voter prefers a higher level of general human capital when firms cannot observe worker types

assistance to the poor in a federal system abstract this paper explores the roles of different levels of government in assisting the poor using a model incorporating utility interdependence the paper first presents some theoretical results indicating how levels of poor relief vary with the extent of mobility of the poor under both centralized and decentralized systems of support it then provides a survey of the empirical work on migration of the poor along with a brief historical discussion of the experience under the english poor laws the concluding section turns to normative issues and contends that mobility of the poor is a basic source of inefficiency in wholly decentralized systems of support this inefficiency along with certain other equity considerations establishes a role for the central government in assistance to the poor

a comparative static analysis of urban structure in the setting of endogenous income abstract wheaton j econom theory 9 223 237 1974 thoroughly did a comparative static analysis of urban spatial structure for both the closed and the open city models his analysis presupposed the simple alonso type city model where per capita income is treated as an exogenous variable however in some research including that of wheaton amer econom rev 67 138 143 1977 and sasaki and co workers the land rent payment is distributed to each citizen and thereby per capita income is determined endogenously treating income level as endogenous makes a comparative static analysis so complicated that the sign of the effects is indeterminate without specifying a utility function in some cases and cannot be determined even with a specific utility function in some cases this paper performs a comparative static analysis in the setting of endogenous income and thereby clarifies which impacts cannot be qualitatively assessed until a utility function is specified

does city structure affect job search and welfare we develop a model in which workers search efficiency is negatively affected by access to jobs workers location in a city is endogenous and reflects a trade off between commuting costs and the surplus associated with search different configurations emerge in equilibrium notably the unemployed workers may reside far away segregated city or close to jobs integrated city we prove that there exists a unique and stable market equilibrium in which both land and labor markets are solved for simultaneously we find that despite inefficient search in the segregated city equilibrium the welfare difference between the two equilibria is not so large due to differences in commuting costs we also show how a social planner can manipulate wages by subsidizing taxing the transport costs and can accordingly restore the efficiency

anti poverty competences in a multilevel government an empirical analysis of citizens preferences in europe abstractthis article aims to investigate individuals perceptions about institutions that should be primarily responsible for reducing or preventing poverty which is a dramatic phenomenon that became a crucial issue in european countries over recent years we propose an empirical analysis based on european survey data and investigate some citizens level and country level variables that potentially affect individuals attitudes our results suggest that country level economic and institutional characteristics do significantly affect individual preferences for the governance of anti poverty policies

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

goal congruence analysis in multi division organizations with shared resources based on data envelopment analysis abstract in multi division organizations goal congruence between different divisions and top management is critical to the success of management in this paper drawing upon a nonparametric framework to model production technology we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a firm with multiple divisions to be goal congruent and then extend it to a goal congruence testing measure which coincides with a data envelopment analysis dea model the goal congruence measure not only shows empirically whether the firm is goal congruent or not but also provides a measurement for the degree of goal incongruence to be goal congruent resources shared among divisions are suggested to be allocated so that the conditions for an optimizable operation are satisfied in addition goal congruent firms are verified to be cost efficient all findings in this research are examined and illustrated with a dataset of 20 bank branches with shared resources for service and sales divisions

regional allocation of co2 emissions allowance over provinces in china by 2020 the mitigation efforts of china are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of china has led to an increasing share in the world s total co2 emissions this paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing china s national mitigation targets submitted to the unfccc as part of the copenhagen accord that is to reduce the intensity of co2 emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 by 2020 as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non fossil fuel consumption through regional allocation of emission allowance over china s provinces since the realization of china s mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation is proposed in this study by utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of china s economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for china by 2020 is proposed the allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction energy intensity reduction and share of non fossil fuels increase

the value of commuting time in an empirical on the job search model an application based on moments from two samples this article estimates the value of commuting time voct among swedish males in an empirical on the job search model it uses a large sample of employee establishment linked data obtained from administrative registers the sample lacks information on mode choice for the journey to work we therefore estimate a mode choice model on another sample and use this model to link the administrative data to the relevant set of travel times costs and distances the voct is found to be 1 8 times the net hourly wage rate in the sample the relatively high estimate results from a high voct among cohabiting men

the trade off between money and travel time a test of the theory of reference dependent preferences we formulate a model of reference dependent preferences based on the marginal rate of substitution at the reference point of a reference free utility function using binary choices on the trade off between money and travel time reference dependence is captured by value functions that are centered at the reference the model predicts a directly testable relationship among four commonly used valuation measures willingness to pay wtp willingness to accept wta equivalent gain eg and equivalent loss el moreover we show that the model allows recovering the underlying reference free value of time based on a large survey data set we estimate an econometric version of the model allowing for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity in a series of tests of high statistical power we find that the relationship among the four valuation measures conforms to our model and that the constraints on the parameters implied by the model are met the gap between wtp and wta is found to be a factor of four loss aversion plays an important role in explaining responses moreover participants are more loss averse in the time dimension than the cost dimension we further find evidence of asymmetrically diminishing sensitivity finally we show that the fraction of mistakes in the sense that participants are observed to sometimes select dominated options varies systematically in a way consistent with the model of reference dependence the results of the paper have important implications for the evaluation of infrastructure investment and pricing reforms in the transport sector

time is money improved valuation of time and transportation costs the proper valuation of time isimportant for estimating the demand for severaleconomic goods this paper explores the propervaluation of time when estimating recreationaldemand where time costs represent asubstantial portion of the purchase price toestimate demand this paper uses a travel costframework to analyze actual behavior revealedpreference data and hypothetical behavior stated preference data which is induced byhypothetical increases in access fees traveltime and travel distance by comparing theresponses to these three contingencies theanalysis adjusts and improves the valuation oftime costs as evidence of this improvement this analysis demonstrates a great increase inthe consistency between the revealed and stateddata similarly this paper improves thevaluation of transportation related costs

competition and teacher pay i introduction recent policy initiatives are increasing the degree of competition in primary and secondary education the number of charter schools is growing at an astounding rate vouchers are available to eligible children in florida utah and a number of cities including washington d c kafer 2005 school districts throughout the country are experimenting with subcontracting campuses to private firms the increasing popularity of policies that foster school competition dovetails with a burgeoning literature on the effects of educational competition researchers have examined the effects of educational competition on academic outcomes average public school spending and school district efficiency l this research has largely ignored the effects of increased competition on teacher pay yet reductions in the market power of school districts could have a significant impact on teacher earnings if school districts behave as typical monopsonists or oligopsonists when hiring then a lack of competition suppresses wages and policies that are designed to enhance competition among schools could lead to higher teacher salaries ceteris paribus 2 alternatively if a school district s position as a monopolistic provider of education services generates economic rents there are few parties to whom those rents might be dissipated besides school district personnel if teachers have been able to appropriate a share of the economic rents generated by the market power of school districts then increased competition could lower teacher salaries 3 this study uses individual data on more than 335 000 teachers from 670 texas school districts to explore the empirical relationship between competition and teacher pay the analysis suggests that a lack of competition in the public school system has led to significant market power for texas school districts resulting in lower wages for most texas teachers but higher wages for teachers in relatively concentrated markets ii theoretical models the elementary and secondary education industry in the united states is often highly concentrated more than 30 of u s educational markets are served by a single public school district and there are many more that are served by only a handful of educational providers 4 the concentrated nature of education markets suggests two alternative models of teacher wage determination the first is a classic oligopsony model and the second is a rent sharing model an oligopsony model of teacher wage determination boal and ransom 1997 lay out a classic cournot model of oligopsony that can be directly applied to the educational labor market 5 firms school districts choose an employment level l sub i to maximize the firm s revenue function r sub i given the employment level of all other firms in the market l sub i 1 r sub i l sub i w l sub i l sub i l sub i the market wage is determined by the total employment of all firms the first order condition for each firm implies that it chooses l sub i such that 2 mrp sub i w w l sub i l epsilon sup 1 in this model the gap between the marginal revenue product of firm i mrp sub i and the wage rate w depends on the firm s employment share l sub i l and the inverse wage elasticity of labor supply for the market epsilon sup 1 6 assuming that firms have different marginal revenue products the employment weighted average across all the firms in the market is 3 summation over i mrp sub i w l sub i wl epsilon sup 1 summation over i l sub i l sup 2 the last term on the right hand side is the familiar herfindahl index of market concentration thus wages are a function of market concentration h the employment weighted average marginal revenue profit per worker bar

outsourcing labor market pooling and labor contracts this paper considers the interaction between input sharing and labor market pooling in urban areas in particular it examines the impact of the size of a city and business risks on the organizational structures of firms located in urban agglomerations and it also discusses the impact of organizational structure on incentives to insure workers against income risks it is shown that manufacturing firms suffer from a coordination game in their decision to outsource production the existence of idiosyncratic risks causes manufacturers to refrain from outsourcing the incentives to offer wage and employment protection to workers are more pronounced when manufacturers outsource the production of their inputs to a local market which mitigates the impact of labor market pooling

fixed cost and resource allocation based on dea cross efficiency abstract in many managerial applications situations frequently occur when a fixed cost is used in constructing the common platform of an organization and needs to be shared by all related entities or decision making units dmus it is of vital importance to allocate such a cost across dmus where there is competition for resources data envelopment analysis dea has been successfully used in cost and resource allocation problems whether it is a cost or resource allocation issue one needs to consider both the competitive and cooperative situation existing among dmus in addition to maintaining or improving efficiency the current paper uses the cross efficiency concept in dea to approach cost and resource allocation problems because dea cross efficiency uses the concept of peer appraisal it is a very reasonable and appropriate mechanism for allocating a shared resource cost it is shown that our proposed iterative approach is always feasible and ensures that all dmus become efficient after the fixed cost is allocated as an additional input measure the cross efficiency dea based iterative method is further extended into a resource allocation setting to achieve maximization in the aggregated output change by distributing available resources such allocations for fixed costs and resources are more acceptable to the players involved because the allocation results are jointly determined by all dmus rather than a specific one the proposed approaches are demonstrated using an existing data set that has been applied in similar studies

the adjusted spherical frontier model with weight restrictions abstract this paper presents the asfm lp model a parametric data envelopment analysis dea model for allocating resources commonly called inputs this model considers that a fair allocation of inputs is one that maximizes the dea ccr efficiencies of the decision making units dmus the main assumption of the asfm lp is the predefined spherical shape of the efficiency frontier we have demonstrated that our method extends the existing parametric model asfm to allow the introduction of weight restrictions which has great importance in practical applications of dea numeric examples are presented to show the application of the method

characterizing an equitable allocation of shared costs a dea approach abstract in many applications to which dea could be applied there is often a fixed or common cost which is imposed on all decision making units this would be the case for example for branches of a bank which can be accessed via the numerous automatic teller machines scattered throughout the country a problem arises as to how this cost can be assigned in an equitable way to the various dmus in this paper we propose a dea approach to obtain this cost allocation which is based on two principles invariance and pareto minimality it is shown that the proposed method is a natural extension of the simple one dimensional problem to the general multiple input multiple output case

china s regional natural resource allocation and utilization a dea based approach in a big data environment abstract china s economic reform and opening policy has resulted in china s rapid growth especially in terms of economy the growth however is mainly based on huge consumption of natural resources and that consumption should be reduced by significant amounts to protect global ecosystems emerged in 1980s big data has developed very quickly in recent years bringing new perspectives and opportunities for all kinds of academic fields especially in dea since it is a research highly based on data in this paper we propose a sbm dea model based on natural resource input orientation to evaluate the efficiency of natural resource utilization for 26 provincial regions in mainland china from 2005 to 2012 a dea based approach is developed to allocate a reduced total of natural resources among the 26 provincial regions drawing support from the developments of big data we use each provincial region s previously observed production data to characterize its own production technology which allows a better analysis of how the production will change after allocations of natural resources are reduced our empirical study shows that most provincial regions perform well in terms of efficiency in utilizing natural resources but that is based on huge consumption of natural resources from an area perspective the eastern area of china achieved the highest average efficiency value followed by the central and western areas our study also indicates that the most effective allocation of the natural resources requires about half of the 26 provincial regions to reduce their natural resource consumption while the remaining ones can maintain their original consumption

allocating fixed costs and resources via data envelopment analysis abstract in this paper we show that data envelopment analysis dea can be viewed as maximising the average efficiency of the decision making units dmus in an organisation building upon this we present dea based models for a allocating fixed costs to dmus and b allocating input resources to dmus simultaneous to allocating input resources output targets are also decided for each dmu numeric results are presented for a number of example problems taken from the literature

decentralization and corruption evidence across countries the relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design the theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship and it has remained virtually unexamined by empiricists the authors make a first attempt at examining the issue empirically by looking at the cross country relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption as measured by a number of different indices their estimates suggest that fiscal decentralization in government spending is significantly associated with lower corruption moreover they find that the origin of a country s legal system for example civil versus common legal code performs extremely well as an instrument for decentralization the estimated relationship between decentralization when so instrumented and corruption is even stronger the evidence suggests a number of interesting areas for future work including investigating whether there are specific services for which decentralized provision has a particularly strong impact on political rent extraction and understanding the channels through which decentralization succeeds in keeping corruption in check

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

a data envelopment model for aggregating preference rankings this paper presents a general model for aggregating votes from a preferential ballot the thrust of the model is to accord each candidate a fair assessment in terms of his overall standing vis a vis first place second place kth place votes the form of the model is a combined index j 1kwjvij where vij is the number of the jth place votes received by the ith candidate the weights wj are assumed to form a monotonically decreasing sequence with wj wj 1 dj e these constraints correspond to the assurance region ar side constraints in the dea framework the properties of the model are examined in terms of this discrimination intensity function d and in the special case that dj e e our model is shown to be equivalent to the consensus models of borda and kendall

uncovering the distribution of motorists preferences for travel time and reliability we apply recent econometric advances to study the distribution of commuters preferences for speedy and reliable highway travel our analysis applies mixed logit to combined revealed and stated preference data on commuter choices of whether to pay a toll for congestion free express travel we find that motorists exhibit high values of travel time and reliability and substantial heterogeneity in those values we suggest that road pricing policies designed to cater to such varying preferences can improve efficiency and reduce the disparity of welfare impacts compared with recent pricing experiments

spatial mismatch transport mode and search decisions in england abstract we develop a theoretical model in which whites mainly use private vehicles to commute whereas nonwhites use public transportation we show that for both whites and nonwhites higher time distance to jobs leads to lower search effort because of different transport modes we also show that at exactly the same time distance to jobs white unemployed workers search more intensively than nonwhites because it is less costly for them to gather information about jobs we then test this model using english sub regional data we find that for each race indeed living in areas where distance to jobs is higher yields the unemployed to search less than in areas with better job access we also find that having access to a car increases search intensity for both whites and nonwhites finally closing the racial gap in car access and distance to jobs would considerably narrow the difference in search intensities between whites and nonwhites

social welfare and income inequality in a system of cities abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of a system of core periphery cities to examine the main determinants of intra and inter regional income disparities the economy is populated by a continuum of homogeneous unskilled and heterogeneous skilled workers unskilled workers whose wages are determined competitively specialize in food production in local cities skilled workers whose wages are determined according to a nash bargain manufacture a high tech commodity in the metropolis we establish conditions under which this core periphery equilibrium spatial configuration emerges we show that both intra and inter regional income disparities are present the determinants of each type of disparity and the social welfare implications are fully investigated our results suggest that public policy programs that improve income equality may not be necessarily welfare enhancing

transport tax reform commuting and endogenous values of time abstract we consider a model of urban transport with two trip purposes commuting assumed perfectly complementary to labour supply and noncommuting to analyse the effects of transport tax reform on the value of time and marginal external congestion costs higher commuting taxes plausibly reduce time values but higher noncommuting transport prices will typically raise the value of time the intuition for this latter finding is that the reduction in congestion that follows from the tax increase itself raises net wages per hour of work inclusive of commuting time empirical illustrations with belgian data show a potentially large effect of transport tax reform on time values in quite a few of the tax reforms studied traffic levels are reduced but the increase in time values implies that marginal external congestion costs actually increase

endogenous job destruction and job matching in cities we propose a spatial search matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shock which decreases their productivity they reside in a city and commuting to the job center involves both pecuniary and time costs as a result workers with high wages are willing to live closer to jobs to save on time commuting costs we show that in equilibrium there is a one to one correspondence between the productivity space and the urban location space workers with high productivities and wages reside close to jobs have low per distance commuting costs and pay high land rents we also show that higher per distance commuting costs and higher unemployment benefits lead to more job destruction

who s in charge of the central city the conflict between efficiency and equity in the design of a metropolitan area abstract a circular metropolitan area consists of a central city surrounded by a suburb households sort over the two jurisdictions based on public service levels and their costs of commuting to the metropolitan center using numerical simulations we show that 1 there typically exist two equilibria one in which the poor form the voting majority in the central city and the other in which the rich form the majority in the central city 2 there is an efficiency vs equity trade off as to which equilibrium is preferred and 3 if the central city contains only poor households equity favors expanding the central city to include rich households the third result arises not because of a fiscal subsidy from rich to poor households induced by a property tax but rather because of a change in house price capitalization

how urbanization affect employment and social interactions we develop a model where the unemployed workers in the city can find a job either directly or through weak or strong ties we show that in denser areas individuals choose to interact with more people and meet more random encounters weak ties than in sparsely populated areas we also demonstrate that for a low urbanization level there is a unique steady state equilibrium where workers do not interact with weak ties while for a high level of urbanization there is a unique steady state equilibrium with full social interactions we show that these equilibria are usually not socially efficient when the urban population has an intermediate size because there are too few social interactions compared to the social optimum finally even when social interactions are optimal we show that there is over urbanization in equilibrium

the value of automobile travel time implications for congestion policy abstract public policy has remained stoutly resistant to the economic profession s call to use congestion tolls to minimize the social costs from automobile congestion this paper explores this issue by using stated preference models to estimate the value that commuters are willing to pay to save travel time we find that this value is low and surprisingly insensitive to travel conditions and how toll revenues are used it appears that even high income commuters having adjusted to congestion through their modal residential workplace and departure time choices simply do not value travel time savings enough to benefit substantially from tolls

income class modal choice and urban spatial structure abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of urban transportation system changes and income changes on the welfare of people and on the urban spatial structure in a setting where the income level differs between two groups and two transportation modes compete with each other in a city it is demonstrated that an improvement in some transport facility will not necessarily increase the welfare level of every household and at times decreases the welfare of some households it also is argued that under particular situations an improvement in a particular transport mode may produce a contraction in the city size rather than an expansion similarly an increase in income of one group might have an adverse effect on the welfare of another income group as a result of competition in the land market

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

local labor markets job matching and urban location we present a new way of modeling local labor markets by linking the space of workers skills and the physical space of cities the key lesson of our analysis is that firms exploit workers in these two spaces by setting wages that are below the competitive level the degree of monopsony power depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor pool which is inversely related to the costs workers incur in commuting and acquiring skills our analysis thus shows how socioeconomic ghettos emerge as workers with poor skill matches are also those who incur the highest commuting costs

search in cities the aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search matching framework using these models we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city how city structure affects workers labor market outcomes how unemployment benefits and the job destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs we are also able to explain why as compared to whites black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area

private versus public schools in post apartheid south african cities theory and policy implications blacks and whites have different incomes decide where to locate in the city and which school to send their children to we show that despite the tuition fees imposed by whites and their remote location some black pupils attend the private school this market solution is shown not to be optimal because whites overprice education in order to limit black attendance at the private school three types of education policies are then considered transportation subsidies private school vouchers and public school spending the efficiency of such policies depends on the fee setting behavior of whites that strongly varies from one policy to another

political economy of commuting subsidies abstract we study the political economy of commuting subsidies in a model of a monocentric city with two income classes depending on housing demand and transport costs either the rich or the poor live in the central city and the other group in the suburbs commuting subsidies increase the net income of those with long commutes or high transport costs they also affect land rents and therefore the income of landowners the paper studies how the locational pattern of the two income classes and the incidence of landownership affects the support for commuting subsidies

white knuckle externalities i introduction urban motorists are well acquainted with the frustrations of traffic congestion as calfee and winston 1998 put it everyone knows the toll congestion can take on drivers nerves and everyone knows how costly it can be in terms of wasted time and lost productivity this statement illustrates two distinct externalities that are generated during a typical rush hour commute first congested travel is simply unpleasant 1 second congested travel means delayed travel economists have devoted considerable attention to estimating travel delay externalities and the marginal value of travel time savings often referred to as the value of time vot typically dominates the estimation of highway improvement benefits small 1992 the sheer unpleasantness of congestion however has received little attention presumably because it is difficult to quantify or even observe yet it may represent a substantial portion of the wedge between the social and the private costs of highway travel for example consider this familiar scenario a ball game or concert lets out spectators flock to their vehicles and parking lot gridlock ensues several motorists decide to stay put turn on the radio and wait it out for these motorists the cost of delayed travel is dominated by another distinct cost one that is difficult to observe but is certainly palpable for rush hour commuters schedule delay costs are too large for most motorists to wait it out and this additional congestion cost must be incurred there is no conventional label for such costs so the term white knuckle costs is introduced here to describe them 2 the existence of white knuckle costs helps to explain a recurring finding that the value of time increases with the severity of congestion hensher 2001 small et al 1999 wardman 2001 for instance wardman s 2001 meta analysis of several vot studies finds that time spent in congested traffic is valued 48 more highly than time spent in free flowing conditions suggesting that more difficult driving conditions linked with greater stress frustration and perhaps travel time uncertainty lead to higher time valuations the finding provides an initial gauge on the size of these white knuckle costs and suggests that traditional vot estimates may reflect them to some extent how successfully these vot estimates capture white knuckle costs however depends on the degree to which they are correlated with travel delay costs unfortunately in such studies no precise method has been offered for disentangling travel delay and white knuckle influences as such there has been no way to determine how closely vot estimates approximate the value of both reduced travel time and relief from other knuckle whitening factors moreover separate estimates would allow for a more thorough understanding of how the stress and frustration of congestion compare to the travel delays it causes this paper exploits a unique set of toll road data to obtain separate estimates for travel delay and white knuckle costs so that their magnitudes can be compared this is accomplished by analyzing the real world trade offs that rush hour commuters make between congested travel and uncongested travel for a fee holding constant the influence of travel times on this choice 3 the basic idea is that both travel times and unobservable influences such as stress and frustration naturally increase with congestion by simultaneously estimating the influences of congestion and travel time on route choice the resulting value of reduced congestion is purified of travel time influences thus revealing the value of nontime factors that cause white knuckles likewise the value of time is purified of white knuckle influences revealing the pure opportunity cost of motorists time applying these valuations to a suitable travel cost framework yields separate estimates of travel delay externalities and white knuckle externalities where the latter measures the unobservable externalities that motorists generate during congested travel

labor specialization and the extent of the market this paper presents an analytical model of labor specialization workers make human capital investment decisions on the depth and the breadth of their skill given that firms have diverse job requirements and increasing returns to scale workers invest more for the depth of their human capital and less for the breadth as the size of the labor market increases also the larger the size of the market the more varieties of job requirements are used so that the average match between a worker and a firm improves

monopsony power pay structure and training although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic in this article the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure using a direct measure of labor market thinness the authors find evidence of monopsony power as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees but not to unskilled labor the findings have important implications for the economic theory of training as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay setting for skilled labor but not for trainees

is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants the authors investigate immigrants and natives labor supply to the firm within an estimation approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework applying duration models that account for unobserved worker heterogeneity to a large administrative employer employee data set for germany they find that immigrants supply labor less elastically to firms than do natives under monopsonistic wage setting the estimated elasticity differential predicts a 7 7 log points wage penalty for immigrants thereby accounting for the entire unexplained native immigrant wage differential of 5 8 to 8 2 log points when further distinguishing immigrant groups differing in their time spent in the german labor market their immigration cohort and their age at entry the authors find that the observed unexplained wage differential is larger for those groups that show a larger elasticity differential relative to natives these findings not only suggest that search frictions are a likely cause of employers more pronounced monopsony

the incidence of congestion tolls on urban highways abstract the incidence of an optimal short run congestion toll is investigated using an equilibrium model of modal choice and congestion on a highway corridor served by express bus transit it is argued that for an externality tax the usual equi revenue analysis of burdens is inappropriate instead welfare effects are computed under three alternative assumptions about redistribution of toll revenues in almost all cases the net result is benefits for all income groups it is concluded that congestion tolls should not be rejected on grounds of income distribution but that an explicit package of tolls and revenue uses is probably a political prerequisite for adoption

support and opposition to a pigovian tax road pricing with reference dependent preferences abstract loss aversion can affect support and opposition to pigovian taxes to reduce externalities this paper studies road pricing with reference dependent preferences modeled by a linear gain loss utility function given this specification we find that the socially optimal road toll is smaller than the optimal toll in the absence of reference dependence and it declines in the degree of loss aversion loss aversion can also explain the empirical observation that support for road pricing is lower before than after its introduction we further show that loss aversion may increase or reduce lobbying efforts by driver organizations against the introduction of tolling it will increase lobbying if a high toll is proposed but drivers initially believe that the probability that it will be introduced is small lastly loss aversion unambiguously reduces lobbying by organizations of non drivers representing for example environmentalists or public transport users in favor of the introduction of a toll