marshall s scale economies using panel data this paper estimates plant level production functions for machinery and high tech industries that allow for scale externalities from other plants in the same industry locally and from the scale or diversity of local economic activity outside the own industry the paper finds that the count of other own industry plants representing a count of local information spillover sources has strong productivity effects in high tech but not machinery industries single plant firms both benefit more from and generate greater external benefits than corporate plants given their greater reliance on external environments on dynamic externalities high tech single plant firms benefit also from the scale of past own industry activity i find little evidence of economies from the diversity or scale of local economic activity outside the own industry

immiserized growth in liberalized agriculture abstract this paper offers a simple model that reconciles rivalrous claims about liberalization s impact on low income agrarian economies growth can accompany smallholder welfare reduction the model developed here reverses the causality of bhagwati s immiserizing growth model price shocks cause welfare effects that drive output response rather than output shocks causing price shocks and then welfare effects as in the trade theoretic original immiserized growth seems a plausible explanation for some important cases e g the malagasay case considered here in which liberalization appears to have engendered both real agricultural growth and heightened food security stress among smallholder food producers

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

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

egypt s development in the seventies this paper seeks to examine aspects of the changes in the economic performance and management of the economy that occurred in egypt during the 1970s this era of change began with the death of nassar in 1970 and was given its impetus in 1973 with the presentation of the new policy of opening egyptian economy and society to the rest of the world this liberalization was a movement away from a ussr type of physical planning toward a greater use of market mechanisms to guide the economy section i is a brief discussion of the general social and political environment within which the economy had to be managed and development effected in section ii the conventional national accounts are examined and tables showing gdp gross domestic product growth balance of payments exports and employment by sector are presented in section iii monetary developments and exchange rate issues are reviewed and tables provide data on government revenues and expenditures foreign exchange in deposits and growth in liquidity the final section offers some conclusions about the development process that the egyptian story reveals the delicate political and social environment within which economic policy is made is a factor in every decision egypts social and political stability is 1 of its great assets and to jeopardize it by policies that may penalize key groups is to be avoided the government hopes to provide all egyptians with a high level of consumption by the year 2000 at no cost to the people themselves by means of a series of large sector projects this approach will not succeed unless a way is found to use foreign exchange to create an indigenous dynamic to enable egypts own resources to achieve continually increasing productivity what foreign exchange rich countries are now learning is that the heart of development must be indigenous resources and their commitment to the nations development

the egyptian farm labor market revisited abstract egyptian evidence loomed large in the old debate between proponents of surplus labor and their neo classical critics the paper uses the recent experience of this labor market to revisit the issues the unprecedented changes engendered by the oil boom basically confirm the neo classical view one may discern the following stylized facts of the egyptian farm labor market 1 both supply and demand for labor are inelastic with respect to the wage 2 real wages are very flexible rising and then falling sharply with international oil prices 3 supply shifts explain these real wage changes 4 these are in turn primarily the outcome of international labor migration 5 regional wage disparities remained roughly constant during the past decade the conclusion draws some implications for poverty alleviation and for the political economy question of how the benefits of the regional oil boom were shared

a political economy theory of partial decentralization we revisit the classic problem of tax competition in the context of federal nations and derive a positive theory of partial decentralization a capital poor median voter chooses to use redistributive capital taxes to provide public goods the expectation of high capital taxes however results in a small capital stock which lowers returns to redistribution the median voter therefore wants to commit to a lower level of capital taxes she does so by setting a partial degree of decentralization in the constitution the equilibrium degree of decentralization balances the positive effect of tax competition on capital taxes with the loss in redistribution that results we show that the degree of decentralization is nonmonotonic in inequality increasing in the redistributive efficiency of public good provision and decreasing in capital productivity when public goods are heterogeneous in their capacity to transfer funds all voters agree that goods with high redistributive capacity should be decentralized

second generation fiscal federalism political aspects of decentralization and economic development summary this essay contributes to second generation fiscal federalism sgff which traces the implications of incentives created by political and fiscal institutions the approach explores how various forms of fiscal federalism work in the presence of political officials who rather than being benevolent social planners face various forms of political incentives the paper focuses on three sets of positive models first it explores self enforcing federalism that is how federal systems are held together given various tendencies for federal systems to become centralized or fall apart second it considers how specific political institutions such as democracy interact with decentralization finally it studies various political impediments to economic growth again highlighting the interaction with decentralization 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

an equilibrium voting model of federal standards with externalities this paper proposes a framework for studying policy making in a federal system in the presence of spillover externalities local jurisdictions choose local policies by majority rule subject to standards that are set by majority rule at the federal level we characterize the induced preferences of voters for federal policies prove existence of local majority rule equilibrium provide an example of non existence of global majority rule equilibrium and explore the welfare properties of federal standards in the presence of spillovers

the dynamics of agglomeration externalities along the life cycle of industries neffke f henning m boschma r lundquist k j and olander l o the dynamics of agglomeration externalities along the life cycle of industries regional studies this paper investigates the changing roles of agglomeration externalities along the industry life cycle it is argued that industries have different agglomeration needs in different stages of their life cycles because their mode of competition innovation intensity and learning opportunities change over time for twelve swedish manufacturing industries it is determined for each year between 1974 and 2004 whether the industry is in a young intermediate or mature stage whereas marshall arrow romer mar externalities steadily increase with the maturity of industries the effects of local diversity jacobs externalities are positive for young industries but decline and even become negative for more mature industries neffke f henning m boschma r lundquist k j et olander l o la dynamique des effets externes d agglomeration tout

on government centralization and fiscal referendums abstract several authors have argued that a centralization of fiscal powers in a federation is less likely to occur if citizens have to approve a change in the assignments of responsibilities by a popular referendum this outcome may be due to the fact that logrolling is more difficult under direct than under representative democracy it may also be caused by citizens fear that a centralization of fiscal authority facilitates the extraction of rents by the government or the legislature in this paper we test the hypothesis that centralization is less likely under referendum decision making in the unique institutional setting of switzerland using a panel of swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998 the empirical analysis provides evidence that referendums induce less centralization of fiscal activities

technical change employment and supply response of agriculture in the nile delta a system wide approach abstract in this paper a system wide model of crop production in the delta region is developed in order to comprehensively analyze egyptian agricultural policies and also to identify the main causes of the slow growth of the sector in the seventies previous studies based on single crop models have blamed the government s price policies as the culprit our estimation results show that although there might have been some gains from appropriate changes in the relative prices of crops price policies in general were not responsible for the poor performance of the sector since the aggregate supply response of crops to the price levels in indeed quite low the main factor which seems to explain the slow growth of agriculture is the decline in the level of investment in irrigation and drainage investment in land reclamation on the other hand has had negative effects on the short run growth of the sector on the question of the impact of increased mechanization on egyptian agriculture we find that mechanical power has essentially displaced animals in crop production without much affecting the growth rate of the sector or its employment opportunities directly

an evaluation of competitive industrial structure and regional manufacturing employment change drucker j an evaluation of competitive industrial structure and regional manufacturing employment change regional studies this paper examines the relationship between regional industrial structure and employment change in the manufacturing sector and nineteen subsectors in the united states from 1987 to 1997 the relative associations of economic diversity industrial specialization and competitive structure with economic performance are assessed using a non causal regression framework multiple facets of industrial structure at the regional scale including competitive structure are considered together by exploiting confidential microdata to construct and evaluate detailed metrics across broad geographic and industrial ranges the findings suggest the importance of industrial competitive structure for understanding regional employment change economic performance and industrial development

energy subsidies and policy commitment in political equilibrium abstract because non renewable energy subsidies affect incentives for investing in energy saving technologies they entail a classic investment hold up problem once investment has taken place policymakers will tend to overuse them for distributional reasons which will in turn depress investment by forward looking agents reforming energy subsidies thus requires overcoming a policy commitment problem in this paper we show that even when commitment is feasible it may fail to materialize in a political equilibrium due to politicians re election incentives in particular it will be those politicians who are comparatively less favorable to energy subsidies who may fail to commit to phase them out

public budget composition fiscal de centralization and welfare we study the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization in a dynamic federal economy where governments decide on budget size and its allocation between public education and infrastructure spending we find that full centralization of tax and expenditure policies is optimal when infrastructure productivity is similar across regions when differences are not too large partial centralization is optimal with strong differences full decentralization becomes optimal national steady state output tends to be highest under full decentralization we provide a justification for the mixed evidence regarding the oates conjecture by showing that full dominates partial decentralization despite being inferior to complete decentralization on etudie le degre optimal de decentralisation fiscale dans une economie federale dynamique ou les gouvernements decident de la taille du budget et de son allocation entre les depenses en education publique et en infrastructures on decouvre qu une pleine centralisation des taxes et des depenses est optimale quand la productivite des infrastructures est la meme dans toutes les regions quand les differences ne sont pas trop importantes une centralisation partielle est optimale en presence de fortes differences la pleine decentralisation est optimale la production nationale en regime permanent tend aetre la plus elevee quand il y a pleine decentralisation on fournit une justification pour les resultats mixtes obtenus quant a la conjoncture de oates en montrant que la pleine decentralisation est preferable a la decentralisation partielle meme si elle est inferieure a la decentralisation complete

price responsiveness efficiency and the impact of structural adjustment on egyptian crop producers abstract this paper examines the role of prices and the impact of the structural adjustment reforms undertaken by the government of egypt in 1986 on the producers of five major crops the results indicate that the program had a positive net impact on the welfare of individual crop producers evaluated as a gain in production efficiency crop profitability was also found to be highly responsive to input and output prices the results highlight the importance of market based prices in agricultural development

the spatial evolution of the british automobile industry does location matter this article aims to describe and explain the spatial evolution of the automobile sector in great britain from an evolutionary perspective this analysis is based on a unique database of all entries and exits in this sector during the period 1895 1968 collected by the authors cox regressions show that spinoff dynamics agglomeration economies and time of entry have had a significant effect on the survival rate of automobile firms during the period 1895 1968

long waves and uneven regional growth in recent years the phenomenon of uneven economic growth between different regions of the country has received increasing attention in the academic literature 16 17 20 27 the conventional explanation of uneven growth centers on disparities between regions in such things as unionization labor costs local taxes energy costs climate extent of local government regulation the availability of technology and access to markets the purpose of the present paper is to suggest that uneven regional development is a manifestation of regional long waves of economic growth and decline and that disparities between regions in such things as unionization labor costs and taxes are simply the result of different regions being at different phases of development in their respective long waves the essence of the view to be presented in the following pages is that regions experience long periods of sustained rapid economic growth followed by relatively lengthy periods of slow economic growth or economic decline the growth retardation stage of the long wave sets up the conditions for an eventual economic recovery and a return to a more rapid rate of growth the first section of the paper will be devoted to presenting the theoretical underpinnings of regional long waves supporting empirical evidence will be provided in the second section

federal mandates by popular demand this paper proposes a new framework for studying federal mandates regarding public policies in areas such as environmental quality public health highway safety and the provision of local public goods voters have single peaked preferences along a single policy dimension there are two levels of government federal and local the federal level can constrain local policy by mandating a minimum or maximum policy localities are free to adopt any policy satisfying the constraint imposed by the federal mandate we show that voters choose federal mandates that are too strict which leads to excessively severe mandates we show that similar results can obtain when federal provision of the public provided good is more efficient than local provision

egypt s multiproduct agricultural technology and agricultural policy based on the hypothesis that egyptian farmers maximise economic profits the multiproduct translog profit function is used to estimate input demand and output supply functions for corn rice and cotton crops grown in egypt s nile delta elasticity estimates indicate a generally high degree of price responsiveness the estimates are used to evaluate egyptian agricultural policies concerning labour mechanisation and output prices the results show that egypt s agricultural policies of taxing output and subsidising certain inputs have hada substantial negative impact on agricultural productivity

tracing the sources of local external economies in a cross sectional establishment level analysis using confidential secondary data the paper evaluates the influence of commonly postulated sources of localised external economies supplier access labour pools and knowledge spillovers on the productivity of two us manufacturing sectors farm and garden machinery and measuring and controlling devices measures incorporating different distance decay specifications provide evidence of the spatial extent of the various externality sources chinitz s 1961 hypothesis of the link between local industrial organisation and agglomeration economies is also investigated the results show evidence of labour pooling economies and university linked knowledge spillovers in the case of the higher technology measuring and controlling devices sector while access to input supplies and location near centres of applied innovation positively influences efficiency in the farm and garden machinery industry both sectors benefit from proximity to producer services although primarily at a regional rather than a highly localised scale

distributive politics and the costs of centralization this paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting with centralization regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region specific projects the outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within region benefits the number of projects funded may be non monotonic in the strength of project externalities the efficiency gains from decentralization and the performance of constitutional rules such as majority voting which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization are then discussed in this framework weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization

spatial externalities relatedness and sector employment growth in great britain bishop p and gripaios p spatial externalities relatedness and sector employment growth in great britain regional studies this paper examines the impact of externalities on employment growth in sub regions of great britain by estimating ordinary least squares ols and maximum likelihood spatial models at the two digit level for 23 sectors issues arising from relatedness sector differences competition cross boundary spillovers and spatial autocorrelation are explicitly addressed results indicate that specialization has a generally negative impact on growth whilst the impact of diversity is heterogeneous across sectors and strong local competition has a typically positive impact the results question the merits of policies primarily aimed at promoting regional specialization and suggest that diversity local competition and sector heterogeneity are important policy issues bishop p et gripaios p les effets externes geographiques la connectivite et la croissance de l emploi sectoriel en grand