the demand for housing in sweden equilibrium choice of tenure and type of dwelling abstract most studies of housing demand and tenure choice only identify two modes of tenure owner occupied one family houses and rental apartments furthermore they are typically based on a cross section across all households in this study we use recent swedish data to overcome these weaknesses we identify owner occupied apartments coop shares as a third mode of tenure and show that this should be treated separately we also use information about the household s own assessment of its probability of moving during the next year we demonstrate that it makes a large difference if likely movers are eliminated from the sample

growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence foreman peck j makepeace g and morgan b 2006 growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence regional studies 40 307 319 policy makers throughout the organization for economic co operation and development oecd are keen to promote the development of small and medium sized enterprises smes by a wide variety of means the present study of over 1600 welsh smes casts doubt on the effectiveness of doing so by grants by encouraging trade associations by pursuing current initiatives in training or by stimulating innovation as defined by sme management on the other hand it finds that support for selective information technology investment and for marketing planning could be beneficial additional results that might be addressed by policy are short termism by older managers preferring current to future profits more than younger managers signs that fixed costs of tax compliance bear substantially more heavily on the profitability of smaller smes and evidence

non cooperative and cooperative climate policies with anticipated breakthrough technology abstract global warming can be curbed by pricing carbon emissions and thus substituting fossil fuel with renewable energy consumption breakthrough technologies e g fusion energy can reduce the cost of such policies however the chance of such a technology coming to market depends on investment we model breakthroughs as an irreversible tipping point in a multi country world with different degrees of international cooperation we show that international spill over effects of r d in carbon free technologies lead to double free riding strategic over pollution and underinvestment in green r d thus making climate change mitigation more difficult we also show how the demand structure determines whether carbon pricing and r d policies are substitutes or complements

collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity lawson c and lorenz e 1999 collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity reg studies 33 305 317 the paper reviews key ideas in the firm capabilities literature and shows how they can be usefully extended to develop a conception of collective learning among regionally clustered enterprises the paper also explores the relationship between codifiable and tacit knowledge in the innovation process and investigates the claim that tacit knowledge because it is difficult to transfer in the absence of labour mobility may constitute a basis for sustained regional competitive advantage the closing section uses case study material based on minneapolis and cambridge to illustrate the importance for innovation of a regional capability for combining and integrating diverse knowledge and of the sources of such capabilities as pre conditions for successful high technology regions lawson c et lorenz e 1999 l apprentissage collectif la connaissance implicite et la capacite regio

best policy response to environmental shocks applying a stochastic framework abstract the paper develops a general framework for the analysis of environmental shocks in growing economies endogenous capital investments allow identifying the dual role of capital as a buffer against shocks and a source of pollution we study the effects of recurring natural disasters on optimal growth and efficient environmental policies emissions may cause continuous fluctuations entail discrete and recurring jumps or trigger so called tipping points with large costs to the economy closed form solutions are provided for all the model variants we discuss possible applications in environmental economics and identify current research gaps

pollution control under a possible future shift in environmental preferences abstract we examine how the possibility of a future shift in environmental preferences affects optimal pollution emissions for example is a more stringent carbon cap called for if excessive carbon emissions today may trigger a shift toward greener preferences in the future in contrast to the related literature which largely focuses on regime shifts in damages not preferences we find that the possibility of a shift in environmental preferences can induce higher or lower optimal current emissions this hinges on an economically interesting interplay between the magnitude of the possible shift whether the shift is endogenous and the magnitude of environmental damages this helps reconcile the tension between the conservationists view of pollution reduction to reduce damage and lessen the likelihood of regime shift and the traditional economic rationale emphasizing risk and discounting

optimal fishery management with regime shifts an assessment of harvesting strategies this paper compares outcomes from informed and uninformed harvesting strategies for a fish stock with switching dynamics where the probability of switching is influenced by climate using data on sea surface temperature anomalies the impacts of climate on the conservation and the welfare that can be extracted from the stock are investigated results indicate that an informed management policy leads to stock biomass and resource rents that are up to 2 7 and 2 times higher respectively than under an uninformed policy also the fishery is open 54 longer under the informed policy the magnitude of these effects depends on the choice of the discount rate indicating that when the future is highly discounted gains from the informed policy dissipate

the changing climate of climate change economics climate change economics is now four decades old much of what it has achieved as a field of academic enquiry can be linked back to issues of integrated assessment modelling this paper shows that the standard approach is going through a major change in scope as of the last five years the conventional focus on determining optimal mitigation paths based on modelling the social cost of carbon is being enlarged to embrace promising new waves of research these are 1 the economics of insurance against catastrophic risks 2 the economics of trade and climate and 3 the economics of climate change adaptation the paper helps to bridge the gap between economics and climate policy by showing that the analytical toolkit of climate change economics has shifted towards more realistic representations of climatic policy

ntbfs the french case abstract new technology based firms ntbfs represent only a small proportion of the firms established in france each year they attract very little specific attention from the national statistical apparatus and are considered to be of marginal significance by both the public authorities and financial institutions although the definition of ntbfs is problematic the available evidence suggests that the survival rate of technology based firms is higher than that of other start ups the most successful in terms of growth belong to dense and convergent networks through which they interact with larger firms and research organisations there is very little public policy specifically targeted on ntbfs in france instead public financing has been devoted mainly to the development of smes in general in support of their role in the creation of new employment and to supporting technology based firms both large and small to strengthen the international competitiveness of the french industry

estimating the income price and interest elasticities of housing demand abstract there are many references in the housing market literature that suggest that the housing market contains characteristics of both stock and flows however most studies focus on either the stock or the flow aspect and ignore the simultaneous nature of the stock flow concept in this paper the dual aspect of the housing market is formally incorporated using a stock flow equilibrium model the income price and interest elasticities are then estimated under the condition that both the flow excess demand and the market excess demand are zero

nuclear power externalities and non standard pigouvian taxes the external effects arising from the use of nuclear power are in a fundamental way related to uncertainty in this paper we locate these external effects and derive a dynamic pigouvian tax in order to make the decentralized economy support the command optimum another interesting result is that a small constant energy tax which we interpret as a second best policy can take the decentralized economy reasonably close to the command optimum

credit rationing and the demand for owner occupied housing abstract this study applies cross sectional data to test whether default risk induced credit constraints affect the demand for owner occupied housing credit constrained households are argued to exhibit different elasticities of demand for housing than less constrained households housing demand elasticities are then estimated separately for households obtaining va insured and non va loans the government guarantee on va loans insures lenders against default enabling lenders to apply easier nonprice terms of credit results indicate that observed demand elasticities differ significantly across va and conventional mortgage holders that marginal changes in credit constraints affect housing demand and that fha financing mitigates the effect of mortgage constraints

international pollution control cooperative versus noncooperative strategies abstract international pollution control involving two neighboring countries is modeled as a simple two player dynamic game each country produces a good that is consumed by domestic households production of each consumption good results in emissions of pollutants households in each country derive utility from the consumption of the domestically produced good but incur costs through the total stock of pollution stock externality in this setting we characterize cooperative as well as noncooperative pollution control strategies of the governments of the two countries that maximize the discounted stream of net benefits of a representative consumer it turns out that when the governments are restricted to use linear strategies noncooperative behavior results in overall losses for both countries if on the contrary governments use nonlinear markov perfect strategies and the discount rate is small enough a pareto efficient steady state pollution stock can be supported as a differentiable subgame perfect equilibrium thus the emergence of first best solutions cooperative outcomes does not require any institutional arrangements threats retaliation etc but can be brought about through the use of nonlinear markov perfect equilibrium strategies

the management of fragile resources a long term perspective excessive exploitation diminishes the capacity of natural resources to withstand environmental stress increasing their vulnerability to extreme conditions that may trigger abrupt changes the onset of such events depends on the coincidence of random environmental conditions and the resource state determining its resilience examples include species extinction ecosystem collapse disease outburst and climate change induced calamities the policy response to the catastrophic threat is measured in terms of its effect on the long term behavior of the resource state to that end the l methodology developed originally to study autonomous systems is extended to non autonomous problems involving catastrophic threats

determinants of household formation in a third world setting this paper analyses the determinants of household formation in a large metropolitan city karachi in a low income developing country pakistan by comparing the sample characteristics of nuclear households with those of nuclei within joint households contrary to expectations the results indicate the lack of influence of income and education the primary impetus to the creation of new households is provided by new migrants by working women and by the number of dependants

managing the endogenous risk of disease outbreaks with non constant background risk there is a growing concern that risks of disease outbreak and pandemics are increasing over time we consider optimal investments in prevention before an outbreak using an endogenous risk approach within an optimal control setting using the threat of pandemic influenza as an illustrative example we demonstrate that prevention expenditures are relatively small in comparison to the potential losses facing the usa and these expenditures need to be flexible and responsive to changes in background risk failure to adjust these expenditures to changes in background risk poses a significant threat to social welfare into the future

an analysis of household mobility and tenure choice an empirical study of korea abstract this paper develops a model of households joint mobility tenure decisions which improves upon the sole existing model in two important ways first the probabilistic structure is appropriately framed to capture the simultaneity of the mobility and tenure decisions second the model is based more directly on utility maximization theory an additionally distinguishing characteristic of the model is the fact that all independent variables in the estimation are expressed in flow terms this is done in an effort to more truly reflect their importance in the decision making of the household the model is estimated using microlevel data from korea the coefficients and derived elasticities are consistent with expectations and korean households are found to behave in a manner similar to that in the united states this suggests that the basic motivations underlying households mobility tenure decisions are invariant across countries

housing demand and community choice an empirical analysis abstract housing demand reflects the household s simultaneous choice of the neighborhood whether to own or rent the dwelling and the quantity of housing services demanded existing literature emphasizes the final two factors but overlooks the choice of community this paper develops an econometric model that incorporates all three components and then estimates this model using a sample of tampa florida households incorporating community choice increases the price elasticity of demand and reduces the differential between white and comparable nonwhite households the results are robust to the inclusion of permanent income and taxes

a dynamic game of emissions pollution with uncertainty and learning we introduce learning in a dynamic game of international pollution with ecological uncertainty we characterize and compare the feedback non cooperative emissions strategies of players when the players do not know the distribution of ecological uncertainty but they gain information learn about it we then compare our learning model with the benchmark model of full information where players know the distribution of ecological uncertainty we find that uncertainty due to anticipative learning induces a decrease in total emissions but not necessarily in individual emissions further the effect of structural uncertainty on total and individual emissions depends on the beliefs distribution and bias moreover we obtain that if a player s beliefs change toward more optimistic views or if she feels that the situation is less risky then she increases her emissions while others react to this change and decrease their emissions

dynamic resource management under the risk of regime shifts abstract this paper provides a framework through which a dynamic resource management problem with potential regime shifts can be analyzed both in a strategic environment and from a social planner s perspective based on a fairly general model a condition for a precautionary policy is discussed by applying the framework to a common property resource problem with a linear production technology we illustrate how the qualitative as well as quantitative nature of equilibrium is altered due to the possibility of regime shifts in particular when the risk is endogenously affected by the players behavior potential regime shifts can facilitate the precautionary management of resources as long as the resource stock is in good shape as the stock of resource becomes scarce however the precautionary effect vanishes and more aggressive resource exploitation emerges the impacts of irreversibility on the equilibrium behavior are highlighted it is also shown that there can exist a resource depletion trap in which a regime shift once it happens triggers a continuous decline of resource stock no matter which regime materializes in the subsequent periods

does the optimal size of a fish stock increase with environmental uncertainties we analyze the effect of environmental uncertainties on optimal fishery management in a bio economic fishery model unlike most of the literature on resource economics but in line with ecological models we allow the different biological processes of survival and recruitment to be affected differently by environmental uncertainties we show that the overall effect of uncertainty on the optimal size of a fish stock is ambiguous depending on the prudence of the value function for the case of a risk neutral fishery manager the overall effect depends on the relative magnitude of two opposing effects the convex cost effect and the gambling effect we apply the analysis to the baltic cod and the north sea herring fisheries concluding that for risk neutral agents the net effect of environmental uncertainties on the optimal size of these fish stocks is negative albeit small in absolute value under risk aversion the effect on optimal stock size is positive for sufficiently high coefficients of constant relative risk aversion

housing tenure choice evidence from time series abstract a model of tenure choice is specified and estimated a simple expression to represent the expected rate of return on equity for a homeowner is developed also the influence of the federal housing subsidy programs is analyzed both plus permanent income and the implicit rental price of owner occupied housing are important determinants of tenure choice other influences are the financing gap with the standard mortgage instrument in an inflationary environment the number of children less than 18 per family assets and liabilities and mortgage credit terms finally the changes in housing tenure choice over the estimation period are analyzed

catastrophes and ex post shadow prices how the value of the last fish in a lake is infinity and why we should not care much abstract catastrophic risk is currently a hotly debated topic this paper contributes to this debate by showing two results first it is shown that for a certain class of optimal control problems the derivative of the value function with respect to the initial state may approach infinity as the state variable goes to zero even when the first order partial derivatives of the integrand and transition functions are finite in the process it is shown that standard phase diagrams used in optimal control theory contain more information than generally recognized and that the value function itself may be easily illustrated in these diagrams second we show that even if the value function has an infinite derivative at some point it is not correct to avoid this point in finite time at almost any cost the results are illustrated in a simple linear quadratic fisheries model and proven for a more general class of growth functions

sunk costs and regulation in the u s pesticide industry abstract this paper examines the impact of sunk costs and market demand on the number of innovative companies the u s market share of foreign based firms and merger choice in the u s pesticide industry results are consistent with sutton s 1991 view of sunk costs and market structure in that rising endogenous sunk research costs and exogenous sunk pesticide product regulation costs and declining demand negatively affect the number of firms in the industry have a stronger negative impact on the number of smaller firms and encourage foreign based firm expansion

the optimal management of renewable resources under the risk of potential regime shift abstract complex dynamic systems can undergo changes in feedbacks between system components causing a rapid and persistent shift in system behavior regime shifts and potentially reduce welfare from declining provision of important ecosystem services in this paper we provide an analytical condition that determinfilefs whether the threat of a potential regime shift causes management to be more aggressive or more precautionary in numerical simulations we find that aggressive management can occur for reasonable parameter values which is counter prior results that the potential for harmful regime shift always leads to precautionary management

tenure choice and expected mobility a synthesis abstract this study employs a joint logit probability model to estimate the effects of a vector of independent variables on the household s current tenure choice and expected mobility which are hypothesized to be simultaneously determined in the empirical analysis it was found that the coefficient on the endogenous variables tenure choice and expected mobility is the most highly significant of all the coefficients estimated in addition in previous analyses the age of the household head has always exhibited a highly significant positive effect on the probability of ownership however in this analysis it is demonstrated that this age variable was acting as a proxy for the expected mobility and wealth of the household

consumption pollution tradeoffs in an environment vulnerable to pollution related catastrophic collapse abstract this paper considers the consequences of an avoidable risk of irreversible environmental catastrophe for society s optimal long run consumption pollution tradeoffs the risk is assumed to be a nondecreasing function of pollution concentration which evolves as a dynamic environmental renewal process the main objective of the paper is to derive qualitative insights regarding the effects of such risk on optimal management

abrupt positive feedback and the social cost of carbon optimal climate policy should act in a precautionary fashion to deal with tipping points that occur at some future random moment the optimal carbon tax should include an additional component on top of the conventional present discounted value of marginal global warming damages this component increases with the sensitivity of the hazard to temperature or the stock of atmospheric carbon if the hazard of a catastrophe is constant no correction is needed of the usual pigouvian tax the results are applied to a tipping point resulting from an abrupt and irreversible release of greenhouse gases from the ocean floors and surface of the earth which set in motion a positive feedback loop convex enough hazard functions cause overshooting of the carbon tax but a linear hazard function gives rise to undershooting a more convex hazard function and a high discount rate speed up adjustment

optimal management with reversible regime shifts abstract in this paper we examine the management of a natural resource a fishery subject to regime shifting dynamics a regime shift is defined as an episode in which the dynamics of the resource can switch between two alternative regimes at random times specifically we study the impact of reversible regime switching both observed and unobserved on optimal harvesting policy the case in which the regime is not directly observed i e observational uncertainty is addressed by using the extended pomdp approach developed in fackler and pacifici 2014 we illustrate the performance of the model under different assumptions on the underlying stochastic growth variability the biological structure of the stock in different regimes and the resilience of the regimes when the regime is known optimal policies depend on the population level and which regime is currently active when the regime is unobserved on the other hand the optimal policy depends on the population level and a belief distribution about the current regime in general when the probability of regime change is fixed and hence is not affected by harvesting policy the optimal policy is of the constant escapement variety when the probability of switching regime is endogenous the optimal policy is no longer of the constant escapement type optimal policies when the regime is uncertain are approximately equal to a weighted average of the policies when the regime is certain with the weights equal to the beliefs in the associated regimes but there are differences

optimal adaptation strategies to face shocks on groundwater resources we consider an exogenous and reversible shock to a groundwater resource namely a decrease in the recharge rate of the aquifer we compare optimal extraction paths and the social costs of optimal adaptation in two cases under certainty i e when the date of occurrence of the shock is known and under uncertainty when the date of occurrence of the shock is a random variable we show that an increase in uncertainty leads to a decrease in precautionary behavior in the short run and to an increase in precautionary behavior in the long run we apply our model to the particular case of the western la mancha aquifer in spain we show that in this context it is advantageous for the water agency to acquire information on the date of the shock especially for high intensity and intermediate risk events

modelling the interaction between flooding events and economic growth abstract socio hydrology describes the interaction between the socio economy and water recent models analyze the interplay of community risk coping culture flooding damage and economic growth di baldassarre et al 2013 viglione et al 2014 these models descriptively explain the feedbacks between socio economic development and natural disasters like floods contrary to these descriptive models our approach develops an optimization model where the intertemporal decision of an economic agent interacts with the hydrological system in order to build this first economic growth model describing the interaction between the consumption and investment decisions of an economic agent and the occurrence of flooding events we transform an existing descriptive stochastic model into an optimal deterministic model the intermediate step is to formulate and simulate a descriptive deterministic model we develop a periodic water function to approximate the former discrete stochastic time series of rainfall events due to the non autonomous exogenous periodic rainfall function the long term path of consumption and investment will be periodic

a study in structural change relative earnings in wales since the 1970s the welsh economy has undergone rapid structural change in recent years this paper uses data from the new earnings survey to examine how earnings in wales changed relative to those of great britain between 1975 and 1994 there are five main findings first earnings of workers in wales have declined relative to those in great britain second the shift away from full time men has been an important factor in the fall in average relative earnings third the decline in the relative earnings of full time men is mostly explained by falling relative earnings in construction distribution and transport as well as the failure of workers in banking and financial services in wales to keep up with their counterparts in great britain fourth the shift in full time employment to health education and other services has tended to support relative earnings fifth the decline in full time men s earnings relative to great britain seems to have been caused by long run factors that are unlikely to naturally reverse the

interdependencies in social and economic decision making a conditional logit model of the joint homeownership mobility decision homeownership is one of the most important financial and social decisions consumers face typically this decision is made jointly with decisions such as how much to save and whether to move although major consumption decisions most often are studied independently in consumer research modeling interdependencies can contribute to interpretation of influences on their outcomes the interdependency between decisions of homeownership and residential mobility is modeled in a conditional logit specification with household status level and cognitive factors as explanatory variables results indicate that these constructs have indirect effects on ownership through mobility that are unobserved if the decisions are considered independently

accounting for global warming risks resource management under event uncertainty abstract optimal management of atmospheric pollution is discussed with a special emphasis on the uncertainty concerning the occurrence of undesirable events associated with the greenhouse effect the uncertainty considered here stems from our ignorance of the exact pollution level required to trigger the event rather than from the genuinely stochastic nature of the processes involved taking atmospheric pollution level as the state variable it is found that uncertainty implies the existence of an equilibrium interval within which the emission rate of the greenhouse gases should be kept equal to the natural removal rate of these gases processes initiated outside the equilibrium interval must converge monotonically to its nearest endpoint the determination of the interval requires no knowledge of the optimal policy in contrast ignoring event occurrence risk implies a single equilibrium level attracting the optimal process from any initial level

optimal management with potential regime shifts we analyze how the threat of a potential future regime shift affects optimal management we use a simple general growth model to analyze four cases that involve combinations of stock collapse versus changes in system dynamics and exogenous versus endogenous probabilities of regime shift prior work in economics has focused on stock collapse with endogenous probabilities and reaches ambiguous conclusions on whether the potential for regime shift will increase or decrease intensity of resource use and level of resource stock we show that all other cases yield unambiguous results in particular with endogenous probability of regime shift that affects system dynamics the potential for regime shift causes optimal management to become precautionary in the sense of maintaining higher resource stock levels

choosing between adaptation and prevention with an increasing probability of a pandemic abstract the risk of pandemics is increasing driven by changes in human behavior and climate both of which are difficult for policymakers to control there are two main strategies available for reacting to these changes this paper considers the decision to invest in either adaptation domestic capital or prevention foreign capital before a pandemic in an interval of time when pandemic risk is increasing this paper demonstrates how relatively small investments in the two strategies can provide large savings through smaller expected future damages the technical relationships between adaptation prevention and risk also determine the optimal mixture of investment over time as risk increases the technical relationships between these three stocks causes the optimal mixture of strategies to change over time

the rise and decline of nations economic growth stagflation and social rigidities the years since world war ii have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions leading political economist mancur olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world

effects of income variability on the demand for owner occupied housing abstract this study investigates whether the uncertainty associated with an income stream affects the demand for owner occupied housing theoretical models yield an ambiguous sign for the direction of change in consumption but our empirical findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the consumption of housing falls when the uncertainty of receipt of income increases specifically in a sample of military employees the income earned by wives had little or no effect on the demand for housing we also find evidence that suggests the demand for housing is affected by pension rights the closer to retirement the stronger the effect

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

the firm as a communication network this paper analyzes how organizations can minimize costs of processing and communicating information communication is costly because it takes time for an agent to absorb new information sent by others agents can reduce this time by specializing in the processing of particular types of information when these returns to specialization outweigh costs of communication it is efficient for several agents to collaborate within a firm it is shown that efficient networks involve centralization that individuals delegate tasks to subordinates only if they are overloaded and that the number of transits to the top tends to be equalized across individual information items

a panel study of firm growth among smes in networks an underlying assumption in sme literature as well as among policymakers is that networks are good per se especially for smes through accessing and utilising external resources in the network the sme can overcome some of the assumed disadvantages of limited size thus networking is assumed to enhance small firm performance and thereby small firm growth this article investigates this assumption analysis of panel data ascertains that a substantial number of smes are actively networking and that the level of networking has been maintained over a five year period in spite of this there is no evidence of associated short term benefits such as growth in employment or growth in total sales resulting from the networking activities the analyses suggest however that networking is associated with high growth in the geographic extension of markets which suggests that networking sustains long term objectives of the firms

an analysis of the housing market in the netherlands housing research in the netherlands has long been dominated by demographic orientated research this was quite logical because of the distinctive demographic development of the netherlands relative to other west european countries the rate of increase in population in the period 1960 1981 was among the highest in western europe economic influences on housing consumption have therefore long been neglected in the 1980s a period with declining incomes and a government policy to increase rents suddenly economic influences came into the picture housing demand tends to diminish and the traditional housing shortage since the second world war seems to disappear rising rents can even lead to rising vacancy rates because demand diminishes and supply increases because of higher rates of return the reverse of the consequences of rent control this article presents a recent econometric analysis of the housing market in the netherlands and places the results in the context of the broad and sometimes confusing

adaptation mitigation and risk an analytic approach abstract the adaptation vs mitigation dilemma is considered by analyzing a simple dynamic model of managing a polluting process subject to the risk of abrupt occurrences of harmful events the occurrence hazard can be mitigated by reducing the polluting emissions while the occurrence damage can be controlled via investments in adaptation activities a full dynamic characterization of the optimal mitigation adaptation processes is presented the adaptation and mitigation policies interact strongly and the evolution in time of each is affected by the option to implement the other the conditions under which adaptation investments should begin promptly take place after some delay or be avoided altogether are derived in terms of some key model parameters

between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions rodriguez pose a and fratesi u 2004 between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions reg studies 38 97 113 european regional support has grown in parallel with european integration the funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the european union eu have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s making development policies the second most important policy area in the eu the majority of the development funds have been earmarked for objective 1 regions i e regions where gdp per capita is below the 75 threshold of the eu average however the european development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence this paper assesses using cross sectional and panel data analyses the failure so far of european development policies to fulfil their objective of de

insurance and climate driven extreme events abstract we investigate how insurance affects agents decisions when being faced by endogenous climate driven extreme events this is not only important in order to understand how the possibility of insurance augments mitigation and saving decisions but it also improves our understanding of how insurance should be provided since there are no studies as of now that rely on such an integrated approach we extend the literature along two lines firstly we develop a neoclassical growth framework with endogenous extreme events and an insurance sector secondly we introduce a simulation method that allows us to explicitly take these extreme events into account and which yields additional numerical insights in doing so we can fully characterize and quantify the impact of different insurance policies for mitigation and economic growth decisions our analytical results and computational experiments show that i transparency of the insurance sector is the decisive requisite for abatement activities implying substantial policy opportunities ii a decentralized economy will under invest in abatement without adequate policy interventions iii precautionary beliefs on the frequency of extreme events lead to more sustainability iv a social security system which prices insurance fairly is preferable to an insurance industry which provides insurance with an overhead

entrepreneurship in a modern network economy n ijkamp p 2003 entrepreneurship in a modern network economy reg studies 37 395 405 in this survey paper the literature on entrepreneurship is summarized from the perspective of geographical seedbed conditions and network constellations we argue that in many cases urban areas offer favourable incubator conditions for innovative entrepreneurship as a result of economies of density and the opportunities created by the city as a nucleus of a broader network both local and global clearly network participation by creative entrepreneurs does not necessarily need an urban base although informal spatial networks among specific business segments e g ethnic niches may be favourable for economic performance we conclude that a modern entrepreneur tends to become increasingly a creative network operator and manager n ijkamp p 2003 l esprit d entrepise dans une economie de reseau moderne reg studies 37 395 405 cet article cherche a resumer la documentation sur l esprit d entreprise du point d

pollution control in an uncertain environment abstract the effects of the threat of occurrence of environmental catastrophes on optimal pollution control are considered recent analysis of irreversible events is extended to two types of reversible events single occurrence and multiple occurrence recurrent events while it is possible that the threat of irreversible events induces more pollution we show that reversible events under quite general conditions induce more conservation less pollution the analysis is carried out via a simple method the h method to identify optimal steady states by comparing steady state policies with small variations from them for recurrent events the optimal state process must approach a unique steady state from any initial level in this case the h method characterizes the dynamic behavior of the optimal state process without actually solving for it

targets for global climate policy an overview a survey of the economic impact of climate change and the marginal damage costs shows that carbon dioxide emissions are a negative externality the estimated pigou tax and its growth rate are too low to justify the climate policy targets set by political leaders a lower discount rate or greater concern for the global distribution of income would justify more stringent climate policy but would imply an overhaul of other public policies catastrophic risk justifies more stringent climate policy but only to a limited extent

small firms social capital and the enhancement of business performance through innovation programmes the paper explores the extent to which social capital is advantageous to small and medium enterprise sme growth social capital is a communal property involving civic engagement associational membership high trust reliability and reciprocity in social networks it is capable of being identified in social political and economic contexts often associated with strong communities however not all strong communities exert the effects of social capital in respect of business activities this paper assesses government programmes to promote collaboration amongst smes for improving innovation capacity by increasing social capital through networking it shows that for a sizeable proportion of programme funded firms in denmark ireland and wales u k social capital building was associated with enhanced business knowledge and innovation performance of particular importance was the opportunity afforded to firms for linkage with external innovation networks and the build up of embeddedness or the institutional basis for the enhancement of social capital as a consequence of discovering the advantages of social capital over a third of respondents planned to continue to develop it in future in many cases funding such activities privately rather than calling on the public purse

grouping tests for misspecification an application to housing demand we consider several grouping tests for regression misspecification with reference to housing demand function estimation we compare three existing test procedures demonstrate modifications necessary in most applications and propose a fourth test to distinguish between two categories of potential specification error the test procedures are evaluated in artificial simulations of alternative errors finally we apply the tests to fha home purchase data we reject the hypothesis that household and grouped regressions differ only by sampling error or random mismeasurement of household income or price our results have implications for choices among test procedures and interpretations of previous housing demand analysis

what makes a new business start up successful this paper seeks a good measure of new business performance and then explains this measure by various dimensions of business strategy three criteria are used to create a one dimensional ordinal ranking of high medium and low performance for new business starts employment growth return on capital employed and labour productivity it is shown that statistical cluster analysis provides a convincing separation of a sample of new business starts into high medium and low performance categories using a minimum distance criterion for clustering an ordinal logit model with selection is then used to explain this performance ranking the results indicate that many widely discussed features of small business strategy have little or even negative impact on performance of the numerous aims that owner managers may adopt survival growth etc only one appears to have a major impact on performance the pursuit of the highest rate of return on investment many entrepreneurial perceptions of their own capabilities appear false or unimportant with the exception of organisational features and systems

cross sectional estimation of a simultaneous model of tenure choice and housing services demand abstract in this paper we analyze the demand for housing services integrating into a single analysis a systematic treatment of several important conceptual and empirical issues our three major objectives are to 1 evaluate the empirical importance of the simultaneity between the tenure choice and consumption level decisions 2 analyze the relationship between household type and housing demand and 3 present new estimates of the parameters of housing demand which are based on detailed microdata in the process we derive and estimate overall income and price demand elasticities which incorporate the impacts of income and price on both the tenure choice and consumption level decisions

does inflation affect real behavior the case of housing an important tradition in economics is to assume that demand depends upon relative prices and is homogenous of degree zero for the most part this has been interpreted as meaning inflation changes in the price level leaves demand unchanged recent work by a number of economists has challenged this position for the case of housing demand two arguments have been made that inflation acting in concert with existing institutions alters the quantity of housing demanded and the decision to rent or own a house the first argument states that inflation and the standard fixed payment mortgage combine to reduce the size of the mortgage loan a household can obtain for the purpose of buying a home this works to reduce the quantity of owner occupied housing demanded given the importance of mortgage finance to the demand for owner occupied housing the second argument focuses on the inflation adjusted after tax cost of owner occupied housing it simply states that an increase in the rate of anticipated inflation of the general price level reduces the after tax cost of housing thus increasing the demand for housing and the demand for homeownership there has been little empirical testing of these two arguments the purpose of this paper is to formulate and estimate a model which will give an indication of the quantitative significance of the two arguments a housing demand equation and a tenure choice equation own versus rent are estimated using a sample of about 6000 households from the 1975 annual housing survey 10 the estimates suggest that inflation dampens housing demand and homeownership opportunity for most households even though the inflation adjusted after tax cost of owner occupied housing declines as inflation heats up the paper consists of six sections including the introduction section two examines the ways inflation affects housing choices in more detail the third section contains the specification of the econometric model that forms the basis of the study section four is a discussion of econometric problems and the data used the results of the estimates are discussed in the fifth section the paper concludes with a presentation of the major conclusions and policy implications of the study

the displacement and multiplier effects of regional selective assistance a computable general equilibrium analysis this paper uses a hybrid approach to simulate the effects of regional selective assistance rsa for scotland this combines industrial survey estimation of the direct impacts and computable general equilibrium cge modelling of the system wide effects the results are compared to those derived using the method currently adopted in official evaluation studies of rsa and other regional regeneration policy instruments the cge approach captures capacity labour market displacement and migration effects ignored in existing studies simulation identifies the conditions under which these effects are likely to be quantitatively important a partir d une facon hybride cet article cherche a simuler pour l ecosse l impact des primes regionales une estimation des effets directs a partir d une enquete aupres de l industrie se voit allier a la modelisation des effets generalises par une analyse d equilibre general sur ordinateur on compare les resultats a ceux qui proviennent des methodes employees actuellement

a joint model of tenure choice and demand for housing in the city of karachi the paper estimates a joint model of tenure choice and demand for housing for the city of karachi pakistan using a two stage estimation procedure permanent income and demographic variables are included in the analysis the study uses data collected at the household level in the city in 1987 88 results show that ownership rates are high in karachi ownership is more likely with increases in permanent income age household size and residence in the unauthorised areas permanent income transitory income age and education of the head significantly affect the consumption of housing both for renter and owner households results of the analysis and the estimated income elasticities of demand are comparable and consistent with those reported for other developing countries

central government support to smes compared to business link business connect and business shop and the prospects for the small business service in this issue of the policy review section p j a robson and r j bennett of the esrc centre for business research consider the most appropriate delivery mechanisms for the government s new small business service in the second article philip boland of the department of city and regional planning university of cardiff reflects on the experience of the european union objective 1 programme for merseyside 1994 99 and considers the lessons for the design of the next programme finally richard williams of the centre for research in european urban environments university of newcastle upon tyne considers the significance of the completion of the european spatial development perspective which was adopted by an informal council of european union ministers at potsdam in may 1999

regime shifts and uncertainty in pollution control we develop a simple model of managing a system subject to pollution damage such as climate change under the risk of an abrupt and random jump in the damage function the model allows the full dynamic characterization of the optimal emission policies under uncertainty the results imply precautionary behavior in contrast with the ambiguous outcomes reported in the literature for models of catastrophic occurrences the framework is used to analyze the adaptation vs mitigation dilemma and provides a simple criterion to determine when adaptation activities should be undertaken

on modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change with climate change as prototype example this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low probability high impact catastrophes even when updated by bayesian learning uncertain structural parameters induce a critical tail fattening of posterior predictive distributions such fattened tails have strong im plications for situations like climate change where a catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages this paper shows that the economic consequences of fat tailed structural uncertainty along with unsureness about high temperature damages can readily outweigh the effects of discounting in climate change policy analysis

small enterprise affiliations to business associations and the collective action problem revisited the objective of this study is to determine whether there is a consistent case for encouraging business representation through encompassing sector wide associations rather than narrowly constituted trade associations the study draws on evidence from a large scale survey of smes in new zealand to examine whether trade and sector associations attract different types of enterprise the motivations for membership the benefits obtained and how association membership can be made more attractive results suggest that each type of association appeals to a particular range of enterprises and that trade associations play a more diverse role than simply lobbying for a narrow constituency

the relationships between income and price elasticities in studies of housing demand tenure choice and household formation abstract three decisions pertaining to the demand for housing are 1 household formation 2 tenure choice and 3 how much housing to consume given the household formation and tenure choice decisions income and price elasticities can be estimated that include one two or all three of these decisions the relationships between these elasticities are developed

coalition formation in fisheries with potential regime shift a system can undergo rapid regime shift in which the growth of natural resources suddenly and permanently declines we examine how the threat of such a shift alters the strategic management of a common pool renewable resource we consider exogenous and endogenous threats and examine their effects on both incentives to join a coalition and harvest decisions we find that an exogenous threat of reduced resource growth may cause the coalition to grow in size and perhaps of most interest we identify conditions under which members of the stable coalition reduce harvest while non members increase harvest in response to the threat in contrast an exogenous threat of total stock collapse may destabilize coalitions resulting in higher harvest from former members but reduced harvest by non members when the threat of either type of shift is endogenous the threat of regime shift can induce stable coalitions with more than two members in particular we identify cases in which the first best full cooperation is sustained as an equilibrium outcome finally we find that the relation between the magnitude of the shift and the size of stable coalitions may be negative

endogenous discounting and climate policy under risk of abrupt climate change the occurrence hazard is added to the social discount rate as a result the social discount rate 1 increases and 2 turns endogenous to the global warming policy the second effect bears profound policy implications that are magnified by economic growth in particular we find that greenhouse gases ghg emission should be terminated at a finite time so that the ensuing occurrence risk will vanish in the long run due to the public bad nature of the catastrophic risk the second effect is ignored in a competitive allocation and unregulated economic growth will give rise to excessive emissions in the long term the ghg emission paths under the optimal and competitive growth regimes lie at the extreme ends of the range of feasible emissions

international aspects of pollution control pollution is a by product of production is only gradually dissolved by the environment and crosses national borders the market outcome ignores the adverse effects of pollution and thus yields higher levels of output and pollution than would prevail under a supranational social planner which does care about pollution in practice governments often do not cooperate and this leads to outcomes of pollution and production in between the market outcomes and the outcomes under supra national social planning absence of precommitment leads to lower emission charges less cleaning up activities and more pollution appropriate levels of emission charges under the various outcomes are a result of this analysis attention is also paid to investment in clean technology the debate between optimists who believe that higher production is compatible with sound environmental policy and pessimists can be analysed in this way