consistent voting rules for competitive local public goods economies abstract we establish the existence of a voting market equilibrium for a large class of local public goods economies where faced with prices of the private goods and with the public goods produced by the local governments each firm maximizes its profits and each individual maximizes his utility subject to his budget constraint in addition each local government taking the prices of private goods as given i has a balanced budget and ii chooses its production of public goods in such a way that no group that contains more than q q 1 of its residents where q denotes the number of public goods produced will unanimously prefer another affordable vector of public goods

transfers in a polarized country bridging the gap between efficiency and stability we consider a political economy model of country whose citizens have heterogeneous preferences for a national policy and some regions may contemplate a threat of secession the country is efficient if its break up into smaller countries leads to aggregate utility loss we show that in an efficient country whose citizens preferences exhibit a high degree of polarization a threat of secession cannot be eliminated without interregional transfers we also demonstrate that if majority voting is used to determine the redistribution schemes within the country then a high degree of polarization yields the full compensation scheme as the unique political equilibrium

one size fits all towards a differentiated regional innovation policy approach innovation has moved to the foreground in regional policy in the last decade concrete policies were shaped by best practice models derived from high tech areas and well performing regions these are often applied in a similar way across many types of regions here an attempt is made to show that there is no ideal model for innovation policy as innovation activities differ strongly between central peripheral and old industrial areas in this paper we analyse different types of regions with respect to their preconditions for innovation networking and innovation barriers based on this classification different policy options and strategies are developed

beyond the hype intellectual property and the knowledge society knowledge economy this paper explores the debates surrounding whether or not we have now moved into a new knowledge economy andsor knowledge society and if so whether this shift is as significant and as far reaching as the industrial revolution in this possible transformation the place of information communications technologies has been crucial debate has occurred across both economics and sociology with differing emphases as is shown in the ranges of definitions that we review in the paper one consistent factor is the lack of clarity and consistency between them both within and across the disciplines in order to explore the issues that the debates raises in a more grounded way the paper explores them in relation to intellectual property ip and the intellectual commons in the process of innovation growth and economic development the paper is developed through an analysis first of the industrial revolution and the role within this of uncertainty technologies complementarities and elective affinities and the way ip was protected and controlled through patents secrecy being first to the market and copyright the second part of the paper examines definitions of the knowledge economy and society and the role within these of information communication technologies in order to explore whether the ways that ip is protected and controlled have changed in the debate about the knowledge economy and society the role of innovation via human capital with a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities has been emphasized the role of ip thus remains central but is now challenged by the rise of new forms of communication which make its protection harder and move much of the concern with respect to regulation to a global rather than national and local level copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

the effect of technology spillover on co2 emissions embodied in china australia trade abstract co2 emissions embodied in international trade have drawn wide attention in the academia and national climate negotiations in this study we estimate the embodied co2 emissions in the trade between china and australia using long time series disaggregated sectoral data based on missions embodied in bilateral trade eebt method and analyse the major driving forces for these emissions changes based on structural decomposition analysis sda method the results show that export volume contributed to these embodied co2 emissions increase while emission intensity could offset these co2 emissions increase we further predict embodied co2 emission in sino australia trade under different scenarios and the results indicate that technology spillover can significantly reduce embodied co2 emissions in trade electricity transportation and cement industries have significant potential to reduce carbon emissions in addition we evaluate future carbon reduction potential till 2030 the results in this study can inform decision makers for australia and china to formulate energy conservation and emission reduction policies

the use and impact of business advice by smes in britain an empirical assessment using logit and ordered logit models this study assesses the effect of differences in types of client on the use and impact of business advice by smes in britain using new survey evidence from the cambridge esrc centre for business research survey of 1997 the survey covering over 2500 respondents is the largest and most definitive assessment available in britain moreover the survey allows an assessment of the full range of providers of external advice the private sector business associations and various public sector bodies as well as the fields of advice using multivariate logit models it is found that size of firm rate of growth and innovation appear to be the main variables influencing the likelihood of firms seeking external advice both from different sources and from different fields other variables which are investigated include age profitability skill levels manufacturer services and exporter nonexporter ordered logit models of the impact of the advice demonstrate that there are significant differences between client

in or out centralization by majority vote we present a positive theory of centralization of political decisions voters choose centralization or decentralization depending on their forecast of the political organization that will favor the policies they prefer we study the induced preferences for centralization as well results of different forms of referenda

nash equilibria in models of fiscal competition abstract this paper analyzes nash equilibria in a simple model of an economy with jurisdictions engaging in fiscal competition small number nash equilibria in which tax rates are the strategic variables are shown not to coincide with nash equilibria in which public expenditure levels are the strategic variables

constitutional rules of exclusion in jurisdiction formation the rules under which jurisdictions nations provinces can deny immigration or expel residents are generally governed by a constitution but there do not exist either positive or normative analyses to suggest what types of exclusion rules are best we stylize this problem by suggesting four constitutional rules of admission free mobility admission by majority vote admission by unanimous consent admission by a demand threshold for public goods in a simple model we characterize the equilibria that result from these rules and provide a positive theory for which constitutional rules will be chosen

second best taxation as a game second best theory usually lies in the realm of normative analysis it focuses attention on the best solutions which still can be obtained in problems where constraints of various natures forbid the attainment of first best pareto optimal situations its central concern is the characterization of such second best solutions and a large part of the literature concentrates on the optimal design of taxes or of policies of public firms taking a second best problem we try in this paper to shift the emphasis from normative to positive considerations the solution we are interested in is not optimal with respect to some a priori given social welfare function embodying justice objectives but it is supposed to reflect the power of the different agents in a negotiation process clearly the conceptual tools required for such an analysis are to be found in game theory and it is actually a game theoretical approach that we follow here the model we are looking at is presented in section ii it formalizes one of the simplest second best problems that can be imagined we have a twogood economy with one private good and one public good agents have different wealth in private good and the public good is financed through a wealth tax this latter fiscal system is clearly not flexible enough to adjust contributions with marginal willingnesses to pay so that we actually face a second best situation there is one decision variable in the society the tax rate which determines the public good production about which the agents have conflicting desires to this problem we associate a game which provides a precise framework for the analysis of the power of the agents the positive outcomes of the negotiation process are supposed to belong to the core of this game sections iii and iv concentrate on the analysis of the core the results strongly contrast with those obtained in the classical studies of the core of 67 0022 053 l 81 040067 25 02 00 o

an assessment of a proposed ets in australia by using the monash green model abstract using the monash green model and a database containing detailed energy sectors this paper evaluates the effects of a proposed emissions trading scheme on the australian economy and the emissions levels the simulation results indicate that the price of carbon permits has to increase from a 4 1 per tonne in 2015 through a 13 1 per tonne in 2020 to a 41 3 per tonne in 2030 to achieve a target of 28 below the 2005 level in 2030 the main buyers of permits would be the agricultural sector black coal electricity sector and brown coal electricity sector compared to the business as usual scenario australia s gdp is projected to be 0 85 lower in 2020 and 1 6 lower in 2030 household welfare measured in terms of equivalent variations will increase due to compensations provided by the government the results also lend strong support towards the transition to renewable energy the stylised model was adapted to inform the results of the full model

equilibrium in a finite local public goods economy abstract this paper examines the existence of a noncooperative equilibrium in a finite local public goods economy where consumers have quasi linear preferences jurisdictions consist of consumers who chose the same public project and finance the cost of production of public goods through either a proportional income tax or a poll tax we show that under a proportional income tax scheme a nash equilibria may fail to exist under a poll tax scheme an equilibrium always exists but in general nash equilibria violate a very weak efficiency condition we conclude by commenting on the stabilizing effect of zoning policies journal of economic literatureclassification number c71

fishing upstream firm innovation strategy and university research alliances this paper examines how innovation strategy influences firms level of involvement with university based research our results suggest that firms with internal r d strategies more heavily weighted toward exploratory activities allocate a greater share of their r d resources to exploratory university research and develop deeper multifaceted relationships with their university research partners in addition firms with more centralized internal r d organizations spend a greater share of their r d dollars on exploratory research conducted at universities in contrast to other external partners we find evidence suggesting that universities are preferred when the firm perceives potential conflicts over intellectual property 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

poverty and distributional effects of a carbon tax in mexico abstract mexico recently declared ambitious goals in reducing domestic co2 emissions and introduced a carbon tax in 2014 although negative effects on household welfare and related poverty measures are widely discussed as possible consequences empirical evidence is missing we try to fill this gap by simulating an input output model coupled with household survey data to examine the welfare effects of different carbon tax rates over the income distribution the currently effective tax rate is small and has negligible effects on household welfare higher simulated tax rates maintaining the current tax base show a slight progressivity but welfare losses remain moderate welfare losses regressivity and poverty rise more with widening the tax base towards natural gas and the other greenhouse gases methane ch4 and nitrous oxide n2o mainly through food price increases for a complete analysis of the policy we simulate a redistribution of calculated tax revenues and find that the resulting effects become highly progressive also for high rates wider tax bases and even in the absence of perfect targeting of social welfare programs

the environmental and economic impact of the carbon tax in australia to fulfil its emission reduction target pledged in the copenhagen accord the australian government has determined to introduce a carbon tax from july 1st 2012 this paper simulates the effects on the environment and on the economy of a carbon tax of a 23 per tonne of carbon dioxide proposed by the government with and without a compensation policy we employ a computable general equilibrium model with an environmentally extended social accounting matrix according to the simulation results the carbon tax can cut emissions effectively but will cause a mild economic contraction because the price signal is intact the proposed compensation plan has little impact on emission cuts while significantly mitigating the negative effect of a carbon tax on the economy

incentives for separation and incentives for public good provision in this paper i examine how the incentives of regions to unite and to separate are related to the incentives to provide public goods separation allows for greater influence over the nature of political decision making while unification allows regions to exploit economies of scale in the provision of public goods from a social welfare perspective there are excessive incentives for separation and for the provision of public goods when incentives for public good provision are not taken into account however these incentives can be misinterpreted as incentives for separation

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

a volatility based theory of fiscal union desirability abstract heterogeneous countries may rationally choose to form a currency union first and a fiscal union later we find and illustrate empirically for the emu countries reasonable volatility conditions under which this sequencing in the deepening process is indeed rationalizable changes in the distribution of expected income shocks require a reassignment of political weights to restore unanimous support for an added fiscal dimension the bargaining space depends on countries relative income size and cross correlation of shocks

impact of an emissions trading scheme on australian households a computable general equilibrium analysis abstract following the international commitment to tackle climate change issues many countries have introduced climate change policies to reduce emission levels australia also expects to follow the international pathways to implement a climate change policy to curb its greenhouse gas emissions in this context the former labor government in australia intended to switch its carbon tax policy to an emissions trading scheme ets after 2 years of its initial operation to achieve an emission target of 5 per cent below the 2000 level by 2020 by employing a computable general equilibrium model and a social accounting matrix database this article analyses the potential impacts of an ets with various revenue recycling options on australian households results show that an emission permit price of a 20 per tonne of co2 e would help australia to achieve the 2020 emission reduction target this permit price is likely to have a small contraction in australia s real gdp i e about 0 3 per cent and in real household consumption i e about 0 19 per cent the price of electricity is projected to increase by 13 per cent the revenue recycling options seem to create an improvement in the macro economy and there is a trade off between economic efficiency and equity in the australian economy with compensations the personal income tax reduction policy results in an economic efficiency with a positive change in real aggregate household consumption whereas providing an equal lump sum transfer brings benefits equally for all household groups increased government transfers based on recipients current pension and allowance rates generate more welfare gains for middle income household groups

externally assisted product innovation in the manufacturing sector the role of location inhouse r d and outside technical support makun p and macpherson a d 1997 externally assisted product innovation in the manufacturing sector the role of location in house r d and outside technical support reg studies 31 659 668 this paper examines the role of internal and external technical activity in the product innovation tendencies of new york state manufacturing firms evidence from a sample of electrical industrial equipment producers suggests that innovation rates are significantly higher among firms that subcontract specialized technical work to external consultants a set of logistic regression and discriminant models are presented which show that locational factors play an important role in the innovation relationship specifically the probability of successful product development is found to be noticeably higher in regions that contain rich stocks of advanced producer services the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the role of regional factors in successful product innovation makun p et macpherson a d 1997 l in

voting with ballots and feet existence of equilibrium in a local public good economy abstract this paper proves a general existence theorem for equilibrium in a local public good economy with free mobility by extending greenberg and shitovitz s j econ theory46 1988 223 236 approach each jurisdiction s collective choice rule is the d majority voting rule proposed by greenberg econometrica47 1979 627 636 spillover effects of local public goods externalities due to the population distribution and snob effects are all allowed we need transitivity and completeness of preferences these assumptions are not used by greenberg and shitovitz because they do not permit consumers to move free mobility of consumers causes disconnections in consumption sets a problem addressed here journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c62 d72 h72 r13

r d internationalization r d collaboration and public knowledge institutions in small economies evidence from finland and the netherlands this paper investigates domestic and foreign innovating firms determinants of r d collaboration with domestic universities and public knowledge institutes in finland and the netherlands we put particular emphasis on the impact of incoming academic spillovers on the probability to co operate with these public r d institutes based on data from community innovation surveys we find that foreign firms in the netherlands are less likely to co operate with domestic public knowledge institutions than domestic firms while in finland no significant difference can be detected another result is that incoming knowledge spillovers are an important determinant for r d collaboration with domestic public knowledge institutions in both countries in case of foreign firms in finland incoming knowledge spillovers affect the probability to co operate with public knowledge institutions more positively as compared with domestic firms for the netherlands no substantial difference could be found in this respect further innovating firms in finland that require academic or basic knowledge do not co operate significantly more with public knowledge institutions than those that need applied knowledge at the same time they are willing to share knowledge with public r d partners in the netherlands innovating firms that require relatively more basic than applied knowledge increase the probability of co operation with dutch universities and public knowledge institutions but there is reluctance to share proprietary knowledge with public r d partners for both countries no significant difference between foreign and domestic firms with regard to academic knowledge requirements could be found this raises the issue whether finnish innovation policies with a strong focus on r d co operation provide incentives for strategic behaviour by domestic public partners to put more emphasis on applied research

impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources a systematic review of the literature this study summarizes the main conclusions from a systematic review of the empirical literature regarding the impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources universities research institutes and knowledge intensive business services with the aim to organize the literature we classify the different works according to the research question addressed i which firms use knowledge external sources ii do firms using knowledge external sources achieve better results and iii which firms benefit the most from using knowledge external sources stylized facts are that larger more r d intensive and high tech firms are more likely to use knowledge external sources and that use of knowledge external sources is associated to firms higher technical results less attention has been paid to the third question and evidence is not conclusive several recommendations for future research emerge first to take in greater consideration methodological issues so that potential biases in the results caused by sample selection and endogeneity are handled properly second to pay more attention to heterogeneous outcomes third to use continuous indicators of depth and breadth of links allowing for non linear relationships and fourth to extend evidence for developing countries and service industries

federalism equalization and risk aversion abstract what causes a group of countries to agree to form a federation other alternative arrangements which often are chosen instead are to form a unitary state or to remain autonomous federations usually allow for considerable freedom of movement among constituent regions they also provide a fairly limited redistribution of any rents earned in these regions these two features together imply that residents of poor regions can share in the rents in rich regions by migration this fiscal migration may waste resources why not simply share the rents equally among residents of all regions such a unitary arrangement although efficient would not appeal to residents of a country which is likely to be the best off region in a federation complete autonomy may expose residents of the separate countries to considerable idiosyncratic risk here i demonstrate that federation may be chosen by a group of countries even though it is a more wasteful arrangement than either other alternative if asymmetries among countries and the degree of risk aversion are large federal states also often implement transfers among the regions these transfers can be viewed as substitutes for fiscal migration i also show that the possibility of transfers even without any commitment to specifics makes federalism a more attractive option a federal constitution which requires transfers in excess of what would be made voluntarily may make federalism more attractive still

effect of corporate scientists on firms innovation activity a literature review this study reviews the literature on the effect of corporate scientists on firms innovation activities traditionally the scientist s role in a firm is linked to the processes of generation and absorption of scientific knowledge however a growing number of studies over the years show that the scientist s role in firm innovation processes is more extensive and that they contribute to the development of successful new products processes and services however there are no comprehensive reviews of this literature this paper fills the gap by providing a systematic review of the empirical literature on the role of the corporate scientists in the innovation process by investigating 1 theoretical approaches used to evaluate the impact of scientists 2 the importance for the firm s innovation activity of scientists heterogeneity 3 those firm innovation activities over which scientists exhibit more influence 4 the variables moderating the effect of scientists and 5 research implications for managers

profit maximizing clubs abstract we study a nash equilibrium among profit maximizing clubs which choose facility size and admission price the number of clubs is endogenous entry is deterred whenever the symmetric nash equilibrium with one additional firm would yield negative profit equilibrium exists with positive profit the equilibrium price is higher than the congestion price and the equilibrium number of clubs is bounded below by one fewer than the efficient number in general there will be too much entry than too little one can choose an economy sufficiently large that the equilibrium price is within epsilon of the competitive price

the breakup of nations a political economy analysis this paper develops a model of the breakup or unification of nations in each nation the decision to separate is taken by majority voting a basic trade off between the efficiency gains of unification and the costs in terms of loss of control on political decisions is highlighted the model emphasizes political conflicts over redistribution policies the main results of the paper are i when income distributions vary across regions and the efficiency gains from unification are small separation occurs in equilibrium and ii when all factors of production are perfectly mobile all incentives for separation disappear i introduction following the demise of communism the entire map of europe from the atlantic coast to the urals is being redrawn and issues of separation unification and the redrawing of borders are yet again at the forefront of european concerns many of the issues raised by this process are primarily of a political cultural or linguistic nature however there are also economic considerations that bear on this problem the objective of this paper is to analyze some important economic and political determinants of the process of unification and separation of democratic nations the starting point of our analysis is to suppose that from an economic efficiency point of view separation of nations is never desirable a unified nation is always more efficient since free trade among regions is guaranteed duplication costs in defense and law enforcement are avoided and local public goods provision such as transportation and communication networks or common standards can be coordinated furthermore any benefits of decentralization that might be obtained in a world with several nations may also be achieved within a unified nation by replicating the administrative structure of the world with several

economic theories of political dis integration abstract this paper surveys the recent political economy literature on countries incentives to form international unions and or to disintegrate in smaller jurisdictions the main factors that affect these incentives are i economic integration ii the international order iii international spillovers and iv the institutional setting some implications are drawn for the current debate in europe on the political effects of economic integration on the enlargement process and on the distribution of prerogatives between the european union and national governments

gale nikaido debreu and milgrom shannon communal interactions with endogenous community structures abstract this paper examines nash jurisdictional stability in a model with a continuum of agents whose characteristics are distributed over a unidimensional interval communal benefits and costs of each individual depend on her identity and the composition of the community which she belongs to since the framework is too general to yield an existence of nash equilibrium we introduce the essentiality of membership in one of the communities for all individuals we highlight the border indifference property bip when all individuals located on a border between two adjacent jurisdictions are indifferent about joining either of them and show that bip is a necessary condition for yielding a nash equilibrium we invoke the celebrated gale nikaido debreu lemma to guarantee the existence of a partition that satisfies bip we then proceed to demonstrate that bip is not sufficient to yield a nash equilibrium the equilibrium existence under bip is rescued when we use the milgrom shannon monotone comparative statics conditions

social mobility and stability of democracy re evaluating de tocqueville an influential thesis often associated with de tocqueville views social mobility as a bulwark of democracy when members of a social group expect to join the ranks of other social groups in the near future they should have less reason to exclude these other groups from the political process in this article we investigate this hypothesis using a dynamic model of political economy as well as formalizing this argument our model demonstrates its limits elucidating a robust theoretical force making democracy less stable in societies with high social mobility when the median voter expects to move up respectively down she would prefer to give less voice to poorer respectively richer social groups our theoretical analysis shows that in the presence of social mobility the political preferences of an individual depend on the potentially conflicting preferences of her future selves and that the evolution of institutions is determined through the implicit interaction between occupants of the same social niche at different points in time

carbon taxation in russia prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency russia is not only one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy coal oil and gas but is also one the most intensive users of energy furthermore russia accounts for a disproportionately large share of global carbon dioxide emissions some 5 to 6 of global carbon dioxide emissions eia 2011a it has been estimated world bank 2008 that russia could reduce its use of primary energy use by 45 with consequent economic and environmental benefits high energy and carbon intensity of the russia economy is inter alia explained by low energy prices due to high export taxes as well as administrative regulation of domestic prices of gas and electricity and low environmental taxes carbon taxes are one such pigouvian tax and they would address concerns on several fronts simultaneously in the short to medium term they would inter alia lead to lower ghg emissions and encourage the diffusion of more energy efficient technologies in the longer term the increased cost of energy inputs is expected to induce technological progress in this analysis the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of carbon taxes on the russia economy are examined this analysis addresses the following objectives i to test the double dividend hypothesis under perfect and imperfect competition in output markets to analyse ii the incidence of carbon taxes iii impacts on sectoral competitiveness iv effects on income equity and v interactions of carbon taxes with other taxes a computable single country multi sector comparative static cge model is employed russland verfugt nicht nur uber einen der grosten vorrate an kohlenstoffbasierter energie wie kohle rohol und gas sondern ist auch einer der grosten energieverbraucher daruber hinaus ist russland fur einen uberproportional grosen anteil von kohlendioxid emission etwa 5 bis 6 der weltweiten kohlendioxidemission verantwortlich mit der einfuhrung einer kohlendioxidsteuer konnten gleichzeitig unterschiedliche wirkungen erzielt werden kurz und mittelfristig wurden kohlenstoffsteuern sowohl zu einer reduzierung von treibhausgasemissionen als auch zur einfuhrung von energieeffizienteren technologien fuhren langfristig wird erwartet dass hohe energiekosten den anreiz zur entwicklung und zur investition in energiesparenden technischen fortschritt erhohen die vorliegende arbeit analysiert und bewertet die makrookonomischen und sektoralen auswirkungen einer einfuhrung von kohlenstoffsteuern auf die russische wirtschaft die ziele der arbeit bestehen darin die hypothese der doppelten dividende fur den fall des vollkommenen und des unvollkommenen wettbewerbs auf gutermarkten zu uberprufen und die inzidenz einer kohlenstoffsteuer ihre auswirkungen auf die sektorale wettbewerbsfahigkeit ihre auswirkungen auf die einkommensverteilung und die interaktion von kohlenstoffsteuern mit anderen steuern zu analysieren und zu bewerten als methodischer ansatz wurde ein single country und multi sektor model gewahlt

the impact of an ets on the australian energy sector an integrated cge and electricity modelling approach this paper utilises a new computable general equilibrium cge model which integrates an electricity supply model to gauge the effects of a national emissions trading scheme ets on the australian energy sector and the broader economy the modelling results show that an ets can reduce emissions effectively and with a relatively small impact on the overall economy but the impact of the ets on individual sectors varies wind electricity generation is projected to benefit greatly brown coal electricity and gas electricity are expected to be adversely affected substantially somewhat surprisingly the impact on black coal electricity is negative but relatively small

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

factors affecting university industry r d projects the importance of searching screening and signalling this paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of research cooperation between firms and public research organisations pros for a sample of innovating small and medium sized enterprises smes the econometric analysis is based on the results of the know survey carried out in seven eu countries during 2000 in contrast to earlier works that provide information about the importance of pros research we know the number of firm pro collaborative research and development r d projects this allows us to study the determinants of firm collaboration with pros in terms of both the propensity of a firm to undertake r d projects with a university do they cooperate or not and the extent of this collaboration number of r d projects two questions are addressed which firms cooperated with pros and what are the firm characteristics that might explain the number of r d projects with pros the results of our analysis point to two major phenomena first the propensity to forge an agreement with an academic partner depends on the absolute size of the industrial partner second the openness of firms to the external environment as measured by their willingness to search screen and signal significantly affects the development of r d projects with pros our findings suggest that acquiring knowledge through the screening of publications and involvement in public policies positively affects the probability of signing an agreement with a pro but not the number of r d projects developed in fact firms that outsource research and development and patent to protect innovation and to signal competencies show higher levels of collaboration

a mechanism design approach to the tiebout hypothesis we revisit the tiebout hypothesis in a world in which agents may learn extra information as to how they value the various local public goods once located and jurisdictions are free to commit to whatever mechanism to attract citizens it is shown in quasi linear environments that efficiency can be achieved as a competitive equilibrium when jurisdictions seek to maximize local revenues but not necessarily when they seek to maximize local welfare interpretations and limitations of the result are discussed

tradeable carbon permit auctions how and why to auction not grandfather abstract an auction of carbon permits is the best way to achieve domestic carbon caps designed to limit global climate change to minimize administrative costs permits would be required at the level of oil refineries natural gas pipe lines natural gas liquid sellers and coal processing plants to maximize liquidity in secondary markets permits would be fully tradable and bankable the government would conduct quarterly auctions a standard ascending clock auction in which price is gradually raised until there is no excess demand would provide reliable price discovery an auction is preferred to grandfathering giving companies permits based on historical output or emissions because it allows reduced tax distortions provides more flexibility in distribution of costs provides greater incentives for innovation and reduces the need for politically contentious arguments over the allocation of rents

how to set the proper level of carbon tax in the context of chinese construction sector a cge analysis abstract under global warming and severe environmental problems the paris agreement urges china to accelerate the pace of the low carbon economy improving the energy efficiency of the construction sector may be an important way to reduce co2 emissions as a reasonable energy policy instrument a carbon tax can effectively improve energy efficiency and reduce co2 emissions in this study a dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to explore the possible impacts of different carbon tax conditions on the energy consumption of the construction sector and the macroeconomy of china results show that the appropriate carbon tax is 60 rmb t which cannot only achieve the emission reduction target but also minimize the negative impact on the macroeconomy however the proper level of the carbon tax varies by building stage under the proper carbon tax level the peak of carbon emissions could be reached in 2025 the main purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical basis for the government in formulating different energy policies

two tier pricing of shared facilities in a free entry equilibrium we explore how well the market will provide shared facilities which are subject to congestion it is usually efficient to have multiple facilities because it is more efficient to spend resources on facilities than to endure crowding costs we assume firms can charge a membership price and a visit price we present a symmetric nash equilibrium in these two prices we show that ifthe number offirms is large the membership price will be small thus the membership price is a measure of market power when entry occurs in response to positive profit but such that entry is deterred by the prospect of negative profit in a symmetric nash equilibrium the endogenous number offirms is bounded below by one fewer than the efficient number thefees paid by a client converge to an appropriately defined competitive price as the economy is replicated

the political economy of regionalism we examine the incentives of regions to unite and separate separation allows for greater influence over the nature of political decision making while unification allows regions to exploit economies of scale in the provision of government our paper explores the influence of size location and the diversity within regions in shaping this trade off we then examine the way in which alternative political institutions aggregate regional preferences and thereby define the number of countries

firms transfer strategies with universities and the relationship with firms innovation performance based on a representative sample of swiss firms we empirically investigated strategies for knowledge and technology transfer ktt activities between business firms and universities as well as other public research institutions based on a cluster analysis of 19 different forms for ktt three types of ktt strategies were identified they were significantly correlated mainly to i the absorptive capacity of a firm ii several factors hampering ktt activities and iii some characteristics of the transfer process such as the number of partners the existence of contacts to foreign universities and the utilization of the mediating services of transfer offices furthermore it was found that ktt strategies related to the core transfer activities such as r d contracts are stronger correlated with innovation performance compared to strategies related to softer transfer forms copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

meritocracy egalitarianism and the stability of majoritarian organizations we gratefully acknowledge support from the severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev 2011 0075 barbera and bevia acknowledge support from grants consolidated group c eco2008 04756 and feder and sgr2014 515 ponsati acknowledges support from grants eco2012 37065 and sgr2009 1142

strong tiebout equilibrium under restricted preferences domain abstract we investigate the existence and give a partial characterization of a strong tiebout equilibrium which consists of an endogenously formed partition of the individuals into disjoint jurisdictions with each jurisdiction producing and financing its own public goods and moreover there exists no group of individuals who can all benefit by establishing their own community in particular no single individual finds it desirable to migrate from his equilibrium jurisdiction the existence proof makes use of the notion of consecutive games which we introduce and show that for such games there always exists a partition with a nonempty core

government advice networks for smes an assessment of the influence of local context on business link use impact and satisfaction business link in britain is one of the main recent government initiatives to support smes in the eu the paper uses a 1997 survey of smes to determine how business link use impact and satisfaction are influenced by firm characteristics local partnership characteristics local geographical context service intensity and other explanatory variables the paper presents econometric estimates based on logit and ordered logit models a key finding of the paper is to demonstrate that local context is not very significant to service use impact or satisfaction but local business link management and adviser performance are important influences on the impact and satisfaction major differences in the way smes use government backed services are also found there are high volumes of use of gateway information services producing only low impact and low volumes but high impacts and satisfaction with intensive advice services governed by contracts between the clients and the adviser implications for the small bus

decentralization in replicated club economies with multiple private goods abstract we show that exhaustion of blocking opportunities is a sufficient condition such that every allocation in the core of a replicated club economy can be decentralized as a competitive equilibrium and that a related condition efficient scale is necessary and under an assumption on endowments sufficient such that competitive equilibrium exists and the core is nonempty these results do not require the euclidean structure and monotonicity assumed in lindahl equilibrium do not require convexity of preferences or costs and do not require the strong assumption that private goods are essential journal of economic literature classification numbers d46 d50 d61 h40

antitrust policy towards co operative r d ventures this paper surveys the theoretical literature on r d cartels and the empirical literature on problems of appropriability in order to evaluate the case for encouraging antitrust authorities to treat r d cooperative ventures leniently the case for r d cooperative ventures trades potential gains from internalizing technological spillovers off against a possible reduction in output market competition but the empirical evidence suggests that r d spillovers can easily be exaggerated this suggests that the design of antitrust policy towards r d cooperative ventures is likely to be of major importance if they are to yield net social gains and the paper concludes with a critical examination of the ncra introduced in u s and block exemption introduced in europe in the 1980s copyright 1993 by oxford university press

on the political economy of immigration the authors study how immigration policies that impose capital and skill requirements would be determined under majority voting when native agents differ in their wealth holdings and vote to maximize their income the results of the model calculations indicate that the native population will be polarized between those who would like an immigration policy to maximize the domestic capital labor ratio and those who would like an immigration policy that would minimize it

does endogenous formation of jurisdictions lead to wealth stratification conditions under which endogenous processes of jurisdiction formation entail wealth stratification are examined in a model where unequally wealthy households with identical preferences form jurisdictions in order to produce a public good financed by proportional taxation we define a stable jurisdiction structure to be a partition of the households into jurisdictions that is immune to individual deviations we define a jurisdiction structure to be wealth stratified when each jurisdiction is composed of households who form an interval with respect to the ordering of their wealth we show that a necessary and sufficient condition for the stratification of any stable jurisdiction structure is for the individual preferences for the public and the private good to exhibit a relation of gross substitutability complementarity between the public good and the private good that is independent from prices and wealth

almost subsidy free spatial pricing in a multi dimensional setting consider a population of citizens uniformly spread over the entire plane the population faces a problem of locating public facilities financed by its users who face an idiosyncratic private access cost to the facility we show that under mild assumptions an external intervention that covers a tiny portion of the facility cost is sufficient to guarantee secession proofness or no cross subsidization where no group of individuals is charged more than the cost incurred if it had acted on its own moreover we demonstrate that in this case the rawlsian access pricing is the only mechanism that rules out secession threats

who co operates for innovation and why an empirical analysis abstract in recent years there has been growing interest in co operative arrangements for innovation with some commentators arguing innovation is no longer the province of individual firms but depends increasingly on collective action this paper examines the response to the uk s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 to investigate the patterns of co operation between innovating firms and external partners the analysis shows the relationship between innovation and co operation is not straightforward from a subjective i e firm based perspective it is clear that most firms still develop their new products processes and services without forming formal co operative arrangements for innovation with other organisations however firms that engage in r d and that are attempting to introduce higher level innovations i e new to the market rather than new to the firm innovations are much more likely to engage in co operative arrangements for innovation consequently if an objective i e innovation based perspective is taken which weighs innovations by their significance then it is likely that a significant proportion of high level innovations are developed through co operative arrangements although unfortunately the cis 2 does not indicate the direct significance of these arrangements to the development of the innovations in summary the extent of co operative arrangements for innovation appears to depend on the type of firms being considered and on what is meant by innovation

assessing the effect of public subsidies on firm r d investment a survey this survey examines the empirical literature on the relationship between public r d subsidies and private r d investment over the past five decades the survey reveals a considerable heterogeneity of empirical results that cannot be explained fully by methodological issues we aim to provide further explanations of the possible causes of that heterogeneity in particular we emphasise a set of issues that in our view are critical to understanding the potential effect of public r d subsidies on private r d spending special attention is paid to the dynamic aspects and composition of firm r d the constraints faced by the firm such as financial constraints and the amount and source of public subsidies none of these issues have been investigated in depth we formulate a set of research assumptions to guide future empirical research in this field

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

co operative r d why and with whom an integrated framework of analysis abstract firms use r d partnerships to access knowledge and build global r d networks this article develops an integrated framework to examine the determinants of the choice of partners with which firms co operate on r d this resource based perspective underscores the interactions between three major questions why co operate who does and with whom it argues in particular that the choice of partners is dictated by the complementary resources which the latter command the framework is then expanded to predict the relative efficiency of r d co operation with different partners including suppliers clients rivals academic institutions and foreign firms the empirical analysis which is based on responses to france s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 strongly supports the overall framework of analysis

the environmental and economic impact of the emissions trading scheme ets in vietnam abstract this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the impacts of an emissions trading scheme ets in vietnam as the policy has been discussed for a decade in the country but the likely impacts on the economy and different sectors are still unidentified the simulations are carried out in a global energy computable general equilibrium cge model an extension of the gtap e model which treats vietnam as a country region results show that restricting the number of industrial sectors in the emissions trading market substantially affects the country s economy with a decline in real gdp by 4 57 however the country experiences much smaller adverse impacts e g real gdp declines by 1 78 when all industries participate in the emissions trading market in either case of the ets design the coal mining manufacturing transportation and electricity sectors are highly adversely affected however the crude oil and natural gas extraction sectors would experience expansion in their production levels due to substitutions for coal in general under the policy the emission levels from burning fossil fuels decline at significant rates particularly from the electricity generation sector

on the number and size of nations this paper studies the equilibrium determination of the number of countries in different political regimes and in different economic environments with more or less economic integration we focus on the trade off between the benefits of large jurisdictions and the costs of heterogeneity of large and diverse populations our model implies that i democratization leads to secessions ii in equilibrium one generally observes an inefficiently large number of countries iii the equilibrium number of countries is increasing in the amount of economic integration

bargaining between benevolent jurisdictions or when delegation induces inefficiencies this paper considers the problem of bargaining between benevolent jurisdictions about local public goods and head taxes it is shown that delegation to benevolent jurisdictions will in general induce distortions away from efficiency where efficiency means an efficient provision of local public goods and an efficient distribution of consumers this distortion is caused by 1 the divergence between social and jurisdictional objectives and 2 the impossibility for jurisdictions to realize side payments without modifying either the provision of local public goods or the distribution of consumers

political economy in a changing world we provide a general framework for the analysis of institutional dynamics in an environment in which payoffs and political powers change stochastically assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered and preferences and the distribution of political power satisfy natural single crossing increasing differences conditions we prove existence of a pure strategy markov voting equilibrium provide conditions for its uniqueness and present a number of comparative static results we then use this framework to study the dynamics of political rights and repression in the presence of threats from extremist groups and the dynamics of collective experimentation

aviation and the eu emissions trading scheme lessons learned from previous emissions trading schemes designing an emissions trading scheme requires in depth knowledge regarding several aspects this paper attempts to clarify some important design points of the forthcoming emissions trading scheme

dynamics and stability of constitutions coalitions and clubs a central feature of dynamic collective decision making is that the rules that govern the procedures for future decision making and the distribution of political power across players are determined by current decisions for example current constitutional change must take into account how the new constitution may pave the way for further changes in laws and regulations we develop a general framework for the analysis of this class of dynamic problems under relatively natural acyclicity assumptions we provide a complete characterization of dynamically stable states as functions of the initial state and determine conditions for their uniqueness we show how this framework can be applied in political economy coalition formation and the analysis of the dynamics of clubs the explicit characterization we provide highlights two intuitive features of dynamic collective decision making 1 a social arrangement is made stable by the instability of alternative arrangements that are preferred by sufficiently many members of the society 2 efficiency enhancing changes are often resisted because of further social changes that they will engender

the stability of hedonic coalition structures we consider the partitioning of a society into coalitions in purely hedonic settings i e where each player s payoff is completely determined by the identity of other members of her coalition we first discuss how hedonic and nonhedonic settings differ and some sufficient conditions for the existence of core stable coalition partitions in hedonic settings we then focus on a weaker stability condition individual stability where no player can benefit from moving to another coalition while not hurting the members of that new coalition we show that if coalitions can be ordered according to some characteristic over which players have single peaked preferences or where players have symmetric and additively separable preferences then there exists an individually stable coalition partition examples show that without these conditions individually stable coalition partitions may not exist we also discuss some other stability concepts and the incompatibility of stability with other normative properties journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 a14 d20

innovation and university collaboration paradox and complexity within the knowledge economy the paper will explore the nature and impact of universities and other higher education institutions heis on firms innovation and growth in an increasingly distributed and open innovation system using a survey of some 400 firms in the uk the analysis reveals significant differences in firms collaboration with heis across the uk and the value and impact that such collaborations have on a firm s development the nature and effects of such collaboration vary significantly between the type of firm involved and their location and the analysis investigates this in relation to various aspects of innovative activity and firms performance much of the nature and effects of such collaboration are as one would expect counterintuitive and highlight the care we should place on assessing the role of universities and other heis in open innovation systems

the welfare effects and the distributive impact of carbon taxation on italian households in this work the welfare effects and the distributive impact on italian households of the italian carbon tax are calculated the carbon tax has been introduced in italy at the beginning of 1999 asking for smooth increases over a number of years in the prices of most fossil fuels its welfare effects have been calculated using true cost of living index numbers and the compensating variation the parameters have been obtained through estimation of a complete almost ideal demand system using households data from 1985 to 1996 the welfare loss turns out to be quite substantial and affects italian households in a non negligible way but the distribution of welfare losses across different levels of total monthly expenditures does not allow sustaining the regressivity of carbon taxation as the effect becomes bigger as we move up the income distribution this evidence might encourage the use of carbon taxes at least in the transport sector as cost effective instruments of environmental policy especially after the ratification of the kyoto protocol on climate change

innovation and cooperation in the small firm sector evidence from northern britain freel m s and harrison r t 2006 innovation and cooperation in the small firm sector evidence from northern britain regional studies 40 289 305 over the last 20 years network based models of innovation led economic development have grown increasingly popular to both the polity and the academy in contrast to earlier linear conceptions innovation is viewed as a systemic phenomenon in which interactive learning and cooperative entrepreneurship are fundamental the way that systems and in turn networks are usually defined is by the volume and characteristics of the linkages that bind them together accordingly drawing upon a recent survey of small firms in scotland and northern england 1347 responses the paper is concerned with mapping the extent of small firm innovation related networking and understanding the unique contribution such networks make to the successful introduction of new products and processes importantly it investigated the impact of networking on innovation in both manu