Pacific Economic Monitor: Budget Analysis

The Monitor provides an update of developments in Pacific economies and explores topical policy issues

Implementation of the Walrassian Correspondance by Market Games

In this paper we present a set ofaxioms guaranteeing that, in exchange economies with or without indivisible goods, the set of Nash, Strong and active Walrasian Equilibria aH coincide in the framework of market games

Economic Impacts of GO TO 2040

The economy of the Chicago metropolitan region has reached a critical juncture. On the one hand, Chicagoland is currently a highly successful global region with extraordinary assets and outputs. The region successfully made the transition in the 1980s and 1990s from a primarily industrial to a knowledge and service-based economy. It has high levels of human capital, with strong concentrations in information-sector industries and knowledge-based functional clusters -- a headquarters region with thriving finance, business services, law, IT and emerging bioscience, advanced manufacturing and similar high-growth sectors. It combines multiple deep areas of specialization, providing the resilience that comes from economic diversity. It is home to the abundant quality-of-life amenities that flow from business and household prosperity.On the other hand, beneath this static portrait of our strengths lie disturbing signs of a potential loss of momentum. Trends in the last decade reveal slowing rates, compared to other regions, of growth in productivity and gross metropolitan product. Trends in innovation, new firm creation and employment are comparably lagging. The region also faces emerging challenges with respect to both spatial efficiency and governance.In this context, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) has just released GO TO 2040, its comprehensive, long-term plan for the Chicago metropolitan area. The plan contains recommendations aimed at shaping a wide range of regional characteristics over the next 30 years, during which time more than 2 million new residents are anticipated. Among the chief goals of GO TO 2040 are increasing the region's long-term economic prosperity, sustaining a high quality of life for the region's current and future residents and making the most effective use of public investments. To this end, the plan addresses a broad scope of interrelated issues which, in aggregate, will shape the long-term physical, economic, institutional and social character of the region.This report by RW Ventures, LLC is an independent assessment of the plan from a purely economic perspective, addressing the impacts that GO TO 2040's recommendations can be expected to have on the future of the regional economy. The assessment begins by describing how implementation of GO TO 2040's recommendations would affect the economic landscape of the region; reviews economic research and practice about the factors that influence regional economic growth; and, given both of these, articulates and illustrates the likely economic impacts that will flow from implementation of the plan. In the course of reviewing the economic implications of the plan, the assessment also provides recommendations of further steps, as the plan is implemented, for increasing its positive impact on economic growth

The prospects for African urban economies

Cities generally function as sources of economic development and human progress. One of the puzzles about Africa's urbanization is that it has not been accompanied by greater economic dynamism. The paper considers the distinctive development trajectory of African urban economies. It considers the applicability of the argument that cities are drivers of economic growth, and the idea that cities develop more complex, higher-value functions over time. It examines the recent revival of African economies, and asks whether the fashionable idea of enhanced international integration through cross-border collaboration might facilitate greater urban prosperity

Equilibrium Participation in Public Goods Allocations

An alternative notion of individual rationality for mechanism design is studied in which mechanisms suggest public goods allocations and individuals then choose whether or not to submit their requested transfer to the central planner. The set of allocations such that unanimous participation is a Nash equilibrium is shown to be sub-optimal in a wide variety of environments and shrinks to the endowment as the economy is replicated. Therefore, any non-trivial mechanism suffers from non-participation in the selected outcome when agents cannot be coerced to contribute.

Regionalism and trade facilitation : a primer

This paper investigates when trade facilitation reform should be undertaken at the regional level. First, looking at both efficiency and implementation considerations, it confirms the perception that the regional dimension matters. Investigating where efficiency gains can be made, this research explains why national markets alone fail to produce the full scale economies and positive externalities of trade facilitation reform. Second, because trade facilitation policies need to address coordination and capacity failures, and because of the operational complexity challenge, the choice of the adequate platform for delivering reform is crucial. The lessons are that regional trade agreements offer good prospects of comprehensive and effective reform and can effectively complement multilateral and national initiatives. However, examples of implementation of trade facilitation reform in regional agreements do not seem to indicate that regional integration approaches have been more successful than trade facilitation through specific cooperation agreements or other efforts, multilateral or unilateral. Customs unions may be an exception here, and the author suggests reasons why this could be the case.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Trade Law,Trade and Regional Integration,Free Trade,Trade Policy

Commodities and Linkages: Meeting the Policy Challenge

The results of detailed empirical enquiry into the nature and determinants of the breadth and depth of linkages in and out of the commodities sector in eight SSA countries (Angola, Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa Tanzania, and Zambia) and six sectors (copper, diamonds, gold, oil and gas, mining services and timber) has shown extensive scope for industrial development (MMCP DP 13, 2011). A primary conclusion of this research was that policy in both the private and public realm was a prime factor holding back the development of linkages. Addressing this problem requires the closing of three sets of misalignments between policy and practice – within the corporate sector, within the public sector, and between the public sector and other stakeholders involved in linkage development. In addition, specific policies need to be developed, monitored and implemented in relation to the three contextual drivers of linkages from the commodity sector – skills and capabilities, infrastructure and policies towards ownership

Efficiency, Monotonicity and Rationality in Public Goods Economies

In economies with public goods, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of cost monotonic selections from the set of Pareto optimal and individualIy ratiollal allocations. Such selections exist if and only if the preCerences of the agents satisfy what we call the equal ordering property. This requirement is very restrictive in the context of more than one public good. However, whenever it holds any such mechanism must choose an egalitarian equivalent allocation

The Economic Impacts of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on Ten Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States

Assesses outcomes of the first U.S. market-based program to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants, including impact on electricity markets, power companies' costs, and consumer prices; use of auction proceeds; and states' economic benefits