a general equilibrium model with external scale economies in production abstract a general equilibrium model of an urban economy is described the standard residential land use model is extended to include a well defined production employment sector external scale economies occur in the production of the city s export good the model is designed for the numerical computation of equilibria and optima

how do households cope with aggregate shocks evidence from the mexican peso crisis abstract household surveys are used to examine the micro impact of a large aggregate shock the 1995 mexican peso crisis this paper examines how the impact of the crisis differed across households and the adjustment mechanisms used by households to cope with this shock the coping strategies examined include changes in household structure fertility household labor supply child schooling and interhousehold transfers many of the mechanisms households use to adapt to idiosyncratic shocks are found not to work with an aggregate shock

energy production system optimization evidence from pakistan abstract the ongoing energy crisis in pakistan and the dependency on thermal electricity generation has contributed to the necessity to optimize energy production system the expensive thermal electricity and inability to recover its cost gives unprecedented rise to the electricity tariffs in this study optimization of the energy production system has been performed using linear programing model as the high cost of electricity generation has been found as the root cause of energy crises the objective function of the proposed model is cost minimization that will also reduce the circular debt specifically it has examined the optimum proportion of energy production from each available source under two different scenarios the first scenario considers that the existing system should be used at its maximum capacity in the second scenario seventy percent utilization of power plants has been examined the second scenario summarizes the optimum mix of energy production which minimizes the cost of electricity production the differential cost that is payable by the government as a subsidy is also compensated similarly it reduces circular debt that is a bottleneck between power generation companies and oil supply companies thus the proposed model has a tendency to minimize the cost of energy production and further reduce circular debt as well as the burden of a subsidy on the government the study specifies the problems confronting pakistan s energy sector and identifies the key elements of a potential policy response to address the country s severe power crisis

nutritional status during an economic crisis evidence from russia between 1996 and 1998 russia experienced a spectacular decline in economic activity which was followed by a dramatic rebound between 1998 and 2000 we use panel data to examine the impact of variation in household resources on six dimensions of nutritional status distinguishing longer run from short term fluctuations in resources nutritional status is very resilient to short term variation in household resources gross energy intake adult weight and child stature change very little as expenditure deviates from its long run average longer run resources have a substantively large positive and significant effect on energy intake diet quality adult weight and child stature the evidence indicates that individuals and households are able to weather short term fluctuations in economic resources at least in terms of maintaining body mass and energy intake increased globalisation has resulted in many less developed countries becoming more integrated into world markets this integration carries both benefits and costs for the populations of those countries an oft cited cost is elevated risk of exposure to economic fluctuations which has been manifest in several spectacular economic crises across the globe in the last few decades there is however little evidence on the extent to which individuals and families are able to mitigate deleterious effects of these economic upheavals on their well being in spite of its importance for understanding the consequences of globalisation this article provides new evidence on this issue specifically we examine the relationship between several dimensions of nutritional well being and variation in household resources during the russian economic crisis in the late 1990s the economies of the former soviet bloc have been especially volatile since the transition to market based economies which began in the early 1990s nowhere has this been more true than in russia where in the last half of 1998 real gdp collapsed by around 30 and then rapid growth brought the economy back to its pre crisis level by 2000 the time path of changes in gdp is closely mimicked by changes in the incomes and expenditures of russian households using extremely rich longitudinal household survey data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms we examine the impact of these large fluctuations in household resources on nutrient intake and on anthropometric markers of nutritional status at the individual level in so doing we address an important issue in the literature regarding the extent to which households in low income settings are able

second best congestion pricing schemes in the monocentric city abstract this paper considers second best congestion pricing in the monocentric city with endogenous residential density and endogenous labour supply a spatial general equilibrium model is developed that allows consideration of the three way interactions between urban density traffic congestion and labour supply congestion pricing schemes are analysed that are second best by design and not because distortions exist elsewhere in the spatial economy like cordon charging and flat kilometre charges both for cobb douglas utility and for ces utility the analyses suggest that the relative welfare losses from second best pricing compared to first best pricing are surprisingly small

energy investment risk assessment for nations along china s belt road initiative abstract overseas energy investment as an effective way of securing energy supply is being favored by the world s leading energy consuming countries however energy investment has the potential high risk on multiple forms including political and regulatory risk currency liquidity and refinancing risk as well as resource risk and so on to effectively evaluate overseas energy investment risk this study proposed a new indicator system from six dimensions furthermore a fuzzy integrated evaluation model based on the entropy weight was constructed to rate the energy investment risk for 50 nations along china s belt road initiative the findings indicate that resource potential and chinese factors have become the main determinant of energy investment risk while environmental constraints and political risk should also be considered for investing decisions in conclusion saudi arabia united arab emirates pakistan kazakhstan and russia are the most ideal choices for china s energy investment balancing resource potential and investment environment

income distribution political instability and investment abstract this paper successfully tests on a sample of 71 countries for the period 1960 85 the following hypotheses income inequality by fuelling social discontent increases sociopolitical instability the latter by creating uncertainty in the politico economic environment reduces investment as a consequence income inequality and investment are inversely related since investment is a primary engine of growth this paper identifies a channel for an inverse relationship between income inequality and growth we measure socio political instability with indices which capture the occurrence of more or less violent phenomena of political unrest and we test our hypotheses by estimating a two equation model in which the endogenous variables are investment and an index of socio political instability our results are robust to sensitivity analysis on the specification of the model and the measure of political instability and are unchanged when the model is estimated using robust regression techniques

violence and risk preference experimental evidence from afghanistan we investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in afghanistan combining i a two part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences violations of expected utility and specific preferences for certainty ii controlled recollection of fear based on established methods from psychology and iii administrative violence data from precisely geocoded military records we document a specific preference for certainty in violation of expected utility the preference for certainty which we term a certainty premium is exacerbated by the combination of violent exposure and controlled fearful recollections the results have implications for risk taking and are potentially actionable for policymakers and marketers

gas fired power plants investment timing operating flexibility and co2 capture we analyze investments in gas fired power plants based on stochastic electricity and natural gas prices a simple but realistic two factor model is used for price processes enabling analysis of the value of operating flexibility the opportunity to abandon the capital equipment as well as finding thresholds for energy prices for which it is optimal to enter into the investment we develop a method to compute upper and lower bounds on plant values and investment threshold levels our case study uses representative power plant investment and operations data and historical forward prices from well functioning energy markets we find that when the decision to build is considered the abandonment option does not have significant value whereas the operating flexibility and time to build option have significant effect on the building threshold furthermore the joint value of the operating flexibility and the abandonment option is much smaller than the sum of their separate values because both are options to shut down the effects of emission costs on the value of installing co2 capture technology are also analyzed

externalities in urban sustainability environmental versus localization type agglomeration externalities in a general spatial equilibrium model of a single sector monocentric industrial city abstract this paper studies urban sustainability from the perspective of externalities we develop a general spatial equilibrium model of a monocentric city in which two types of externalities occur on the one hand pollution in the industrial center leads to a spatially differentiated deterioration of the environmental quality in the residential area on the other hand the existence of the city is explained by agglomeration economies represented as simple marshallian external benefits in production we investigate free market versus first best and second best optimal spatial equilibria and conclude that the pursuit of environmental goals may sometimes come at the expense of reduced agglomeration economies but may actually sometimes also stimulate these economies

sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi criteria decision analysis abstract solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the world s energy demand requires a balanced approach the aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry the study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants the technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi attribute utility method the indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type followed by small hydro onshore wind and solar photovoltaic we argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions

second best policies for congestion externalities abstract this is the third in a series of three articles on the topic of congestion externalities we use an urban general equilibrium model to test the efficiency of several second best policies for congestion externalities the most efficient second best policy is a program of land use controls the program generates a welfare gain of 3 38 per household per week a unit tax on commuting is a less efficient policy with a welfare gain of 1 15

civil conflict and human capital accumulation the long term effects of political violence in peru this paper provides empirical evidence of the persistent effect of exposure to political violence on human capital accumulation i exploit the variation in conflict location and birth cohorts to identify the long and short term effects of the civil war on educational attainment conditional on being exposed to violence the average person accumulates 0 31 less years of education as an adult in the short term the effects are stronger than in the long run these results hold when comparing children within the same household further exposure to violence during early childhood leads to permanent losses i also explore the potential causal mechanisms

household behaviour in times of political change evidence from egypt abstract using representative household survey data we study the short term effects of the 2011 egyptian uprisings on household behaviour in terms of education and health expenditure as well as savings we construct a measure of political instability by analysing the number of fatalities during political protests throughout the country difference in difference estimations show that affected households increased spending on education especially on their sons higher education the increase in education expenditure is particularly prominent in areas where households were in favour of a regime change we argue that after the fall of mubarak those households had a positive outlook towards the future with better labour market prospects and therefore invested more in their sons education at the same time households decreased spending on health and increased savings which can be interpreted as precautionary behaviour our results are robust to placebo tests excluding cairo spillovers and alternative ways of measuring political instability

the general equilibrium effects of congestion externalities abstract this is the second in a series of three articles on the topic of congestion externalities we use an urban general equilibrium model to compute two types of cities the market equilibrium city in which congestion externalities occur and the optimum city the optimum city has a more dispersed distribution of employment and a more concentrated distribution of residence if the population of the city is fixed the optimum pricing of transportation generates a per capita welfare gain of 3 78 per week if the population of the city is endogenous the internalization of congestion externalities causes the city to grow

child health and conflict in cote d ivoire we examine the impact of the 2002 07 civil conflict in cote d ivoire on children s health status measured by height for age we use pre and post war survey data coupled with information on the location of violent incidents to capture exposure to the conflict of children born during 1997 2007 our results indicate that children from regions more affected by the conflict suffered significant health setbacks compared with children from less affected regions further household level victimization such as war related economic stress health stress and displacement has a large and negative effect on child health in conflict affected regions

telecommuting traffic congestion and agglomeration a general equilibrium model abstract we develop a fully closed general equilibrium model of a monocentric city in which land is allocated to production housing and roads cbd workers and telecommuters are imperfectly substitutable in production cbd workers contribute to the cbd s agglomeration economies but cause traffic congestion in commuting telecommuters do not cause congestion and do not contribute to agglomeration the effects of telecommuting on the urban economy and land use pattern are studied the first best optimal policy in the presence of agglomeration economies congestion and telecommuting is derived and its impacts are compared with the effects of different second best policies

employment decentralisation polycentricity or scatteration the case of barcelona at the present time most large cities in the world are polycentric and at the same time they are undergoing processes of employment decentralisation and deconcentration it has been argued that polycentricity is just an intermediate stage between monocentricity and a more unstructured chaotic and amorphous location model scatteration for the case of the polycentric barcelona the aims of this study are to test whether its employment is moving from polycentricity to scatteration and whether its employment location model is increasingly random and unstructured the results show that in spite of the decentralisation and deconcentration processes employment concentrated in centres still represents a significant percentage of total employment and new sub centres have emerged in the periphery what is more the results also show an increasing influence of employment sub centres on employment location and density conditions as a result polycentricity has been reinforced

congestion land use and job dispersion a general equilibrium model abstract in dispersed cities congestion tolls would drive up central wages and rents and would induce centrally located producers to want to disperse closer to their workers and their customers paying lower rents and realizing productivity gains from land to labor substitution but the tolls would also induce residents to want to locate more centrally in order to economize on commuting and shopping travel in a computable general equilibrium model we find that the centralizing effect of tolls on residences dominates on the decentralizing effect of tolls on firms causing the dispersed city to have more centralized job and population densities under stylized parameters we find that efficiency gains from levying congestion tolls on work and shopping travel are 3 0 of average income about 80 of such gains come from road planning and 20 from tolls

a general equilibrium model with agglomerative economies and decentralized employment abstract the standard urban general equilibrium model is extended in two ways first the central part of the city is occupied by the officer sector the office sector is subject to agglomerative economies arising from the need for face to face contact second residents choose between two employment areas in addition to the employment opportunities in the centralized office sector employment opportunities exist in a decentralized manufacturing sector the model is used to explore the general equilibrium effects of zoning policies

wage and rent capitalization in the commercial real estate market abstract in this paper we develop three simplified models of the commercial land market within a two center metropolis in each model we focus on how exogenous differences in production costs between centers are capitalized into differences in commercial space rents and wages we show that in a competitive land market wages must account for most of the capitalization as zoning or density regulations limit commercial development at the most advantageous center space rent differences begin capturing more and wage differences less locational value we conclude that the simple application of hedonic theory to the commercial real estate market may be quite misleading

a new look at the determinants of the intrametropolitan distribution of population and employment in this paper we develop an econometric model that relates intra urban employment and population distributions to a variety of explanatory factors the geographical focus is on the united states the results suggest that housing costs and quality are the most important determinants of the population distribution which is the most important determinant of the employment distribution however causation between population and employment runs both ways excerpt

structural changes of global power generation capacity towards sustainability and the risk of stranded investments supported by a sustainability indicator abstract global power plant capacity has experienced a historical evolution showing noticeable patterns over the years continuous growth to meet increasing demand and renewable energy sources have played a vital role in global electrification from the beginning first in the form of hydropower but also wind energy and solar photovoltaics with increasing awareness of global environmental and societal problems such as climate change heavy metal induced health issues and the growth related cost reduction of renewable electricity technologies the past two decades have witnessed an accelerated increase in the use of renewable sources a database was compiled using major accessible datasets with the purpose of analyzing the composition and evolution of the global power sector from a novel sustainability perspective also a new sustainability indicator has been introduced for a better monitoring of progress in the power sector the key objective is to provide a simple tool for monitoring the past present and future development of national power systems towards sustainability based on a detailed global power capacity database the main findings are the trend of the sustainability indicator projecting very high levels of sustainability before the middle of the century on a global level decommissioned power plants indicating an average power plant technical lifetime of about 40 years for coal 34 years for gas and 34 years for oil fired power plants whereas the lifetime of hydropower plants seems to be rather unlimited due to repeated refurbishments and the overall trend of increasing sustainability in the power sector being of utmost relevance for managing the environmental and societal challenges ahead to achieve the 2 c climate change target zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 may be required this would lead to stranded assets of about 300 gw of coal power plants already commissioned by 2014 gas and oil fired power plants may be shifted to renewable based fuels present power capacity investments have already to anticipate these environmental and societal sustainability boundaries or accept the risk of becoming stranded assets

intra metropolitan shifts in labor demand and the adjustment of local markets abstract i offer new evidence on the adjustment of local labor markets to geographic shifts in labor demand within us metropolitan areas using a unique data set in which metropolitan subregions are geographically matched across the 1970 1980 and 1980 1990 decades the evidence uncovered paints the following picture workers especially those with less education make incomplete adjustments within metropolitan areas in response to intra metropolitan demand shifts although blacks may not make especially limited adjustments they have disproportionately suffered deleterious effects from job movements because the demand shifts have tended to be away from their places of residence

income distribution and sociopolitical instability as determinants of savings a cross sectional model the purpose of this cross national study is twofold first it introduces income distribution and sociopolitical instability as arguments in the savings function second it presents some empirical evidence in relation to their quantitative effects on savings it is shown that sociopolitical instability has profound effects on the savings ratio it is also shown that the bulk of savings is produced by the middle income class as a result a redistribution of income at the expense of the upper income class yields a constant or an increased savings ratio developing on whether such a redistribution includes the lower income class or not

the general equilibrium effects of the residential property tax incidence and excess burden abstract an urban general equilibrium model is used to explore the efficiency effects and distributional consequences of the residential property tax in a model of a small open city the replacement of a nondistortionary land tax with the residential property tax reduces the land area density and population of the city the aggregate net return on land falls by an amount equal to 164 93 of total tax revenue in a model of a closed region when city q replaces the land tax with the residential property tax production and employment shift to other cities in the region the net return on land decreases in city q and increases in other cities in the region in aggregate landowners are made better off by the change in tax policy while residents are made worse off the excess burden of the property tax is computed as 6 5197 of tax revenue

civil war crop failure and child stunting in rwanda economic shocks at birth have lasting effects on children s health several years after the shock the authors calculate height for age z scores for children under age five using data from a rwandan nationally representative household survey conducted in 1992 they exploit district and time variation in crop failure and civil conflict to measure the impact of exogenous shocks that children experience at birth on their height several years later they find that boys and girls born after the shock in regions experiencing civil conflict are both negatively affected with height for age z scores 0 30 and 0 72 standard deviations lower respectively conversely only girls are negatively affected by crop failure with these girls exhibiting 0 41 standard deviation lower height for age z scores and the impact is worse for girls in poor households results are robust to using sibling difference estimators household level production and rainfall shocks as alternative measures of crop failure

jeux sans frontieres tax competition and tax coordination when countries differ in size closer international integration is putting increasing pressure on existing national tax structures this paper uses a simple two country model to address a range of consequent policy concerns focusing particularly on the role of country size differences in size exacerbate the inefficiency from noncooperative behavior harming both countries the smaller country loses from harmonization to any tax rate between those set in the noncooperative equilibrium but both countries gain from the imposition of a minimum tax anywhere in that range the fully optimal response to freer cross border trade however may be to do nothing jel h20 h77

taxation of investment and savings in a world economy the equilibrium of capital and equilibrium market prices are derived for a world economy with a unified securities market mobile capital no uncertainty and varying tax rates on different sources of income in each country the paper then characterizes optimal tax rates for a small country in this setting focusing on the peculiar incentives created when the before tax rate of return differs among securities due to differences in their typical tax treatment copyright 1986 by american economic association

a three input model of the spatial effects of a central city wage tax abstract this paper considers the short run and long run spatial effects on wages employment and business capital as functions of location of a localized increase in wage tax rates the model is most applicable to a central city that has a higher wage tax rate than the surrounding suburbs the inclusion of land as a third input in production significantly reduces the long run effects of a central city wage tax on employment near the central city boundary as compared with a model in which labor and capital are the only two inputs the short run effects are significantly less than the long run effects