The Effect of Spillovers and Congestion on the Segregative Properties of Endogenous Jurisdiction Structure Formation

This paper analyzes the effect of spillovers and congestion of local public goods on the segregative properties of endogenous formation of jurisdiction. Households living in the same place form a jurisdiction and produce a local public good, that creates positive spillovers in other jurisdictions and suffers from congestion. In every jurisdiction, the production of the local public good is financed through a local tax on household's wealth. Local wealth tax rates are democratically determined in all jurisdictions. Households also consume housing in their jurisdiction. Any household is free to leave its jurisdiction for another one that would increase its utility. A necessary and sufficient condition to have every stable jurisdiction structure segregated by wealth, for a large class of congestion measure and any spillovers coefficient structure, is identified: the public good must be a gross substitute or a gross complement to the private good and the housing.Jurisdictions, Segregation, Spillovers, Congestion

An investigation in the theory of voluntary provision of public goods and income tax evasion under the hypothesis of ethical behaviour on the part of economic agents

In this work we discuss a number of issues in the theory of voluntary provision of public goods and income tax evasion under the assumption that individuals are ruled by a notion of Kantian morality. Our justification for imposing such an assumption is that models incorporating the traditional assumption of rational egoism are unable to explain the many real world examples of successful private provision of public goods, of which compliance to tax rules can be taken as an example. In the first part of this work, after having reviewed the literature on private provision of public goods and justified our alternative approach, we introduce and formalize the notion of Kantian behaviour. We investigate efficiency of private provision of public goods under Kantian behaviour and we also compare Kantian provision with alternative models of public goods supply. Precise conditions on the structure of individual preferences which would ensure efficiency of private provision of a public good under Kantian, behaviour are derived. It is also shown that while Kantian supply of a public good is in general, still characterized by, underprovision it tends to be more efficient than public good provision under a democratic system as represented by the Median voter. theorem. Finally, using the notion of Lindahl equilibrium, a different way of assessing under/over provision of a public good under Kantian behaviour is derived. In the second part of this work, building upon the analysis on Kantian behaviour developed in the previous sections, we address the phenomenon of income tax evasion as an example of voluntary (non) provision of a public good. We present a model where the amount of tax that a taxpayer wishes to evade is determined on the basis of his perception of the fairness of his fiscal treatment, with respect to both governmental supply of public goods and the perceived behaviour of the other taxpayers. The coercive powers of the state, as well as the taxpayer's attitude toward risk, determine only the extent, to which this desired level of tax evasion is reached in practice. It is shown that this approach is able to produce implications for the relationship between the characteristics of public expenditure, the tax rates and tax evasion which are more consistent with both intuition, and empirical evidence than the results of the conventional model of income tax evasion. Furthermore, it also allows one to address other important questions such as the effect of government X-inefficiency on tax evasion

Advances in Spatial Theory and Dynamics

This book originates from two meetings, set apart in time but closely connected by continuing collaborative efforts between researchers in an international network. The first of these meetings took place at IIASA in October 1984, organized by IIASA's Regional Issues Project under the title "Dynamic Analysis of Spatial Development". About half of the papers in this volume were presented at that meeting. These contributions have been elaborated and revised considerably during the preparation of this volume, and can now be regarded as mature papers embracing the frontiers of spatial and economic dynamics. Another set of contributions was presented during the European Summer Institute in Regional Science held at the University of Umea in June 1986. The Summer Institute was organized by CERUM in collaboration with the Departments of Economics and Geography at the same university. The contributions have been drawn from the sessions on technological change, nonlinear dynamics in spatial networks and infrastructure development. This is reflected in the three parts of the volume (1) Competition, specialization and technological change, (2) Spatial interaction, (3) Urban and regional infrastructure

Carrots and Rainbows: Motivation and Social Practice in Open Source Software Development

Open source software (OSS) is a social and economic phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the motivations of contributors to information systems development. Some developers are unpaid volunteers who seek to solve their own technical problems, while others create OSS as part of their employment contract. For the past 10 years, a substantial amount of academic work has theorized about and empirically examined developer motivations. We review this work and suggest considering motivation in terms of the values of the social practice in which developers participate. Based on the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we construct a theoretical framework that expands our assumptions about individual motivation to include the idea of a long-term, value-informed quest beyond short-term rewards. This motivation-practice framework depicts how the social practice and its supporting institutions mediate between individual motivation and outcome. The framework contains three theoretical conjectures that seek to explain how collectively elaborated standards of excellence prompt developers to produce high-quality software, change institutions, and sustain OSS development. From the framework, we derive six concrete propositions and suggest a new research agenda on motivation in OSS

Trademark Monopolies

Since 1742, when Lord Hardwicke seemingly equated trademark protection with monopoly in one of the first trademark cases, until the mid-1950s, concerns that trademarks represented a form of illegitimate monopoly effectively constrained the growth of trademark protection. In the twentieth century, Edward Chamberlin became the leading proponent of the trademark as monopoly view with the publication of his work, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, in 1933. In his work, Chamberlin argued that a trademark enabled its owner to differentiate her products and then to exclude others from using the differentiating feature. By doing so, trademark protection can effectively cede control over distinct product markets to individual producers and thereby generate for trademark owners the downward sloping demand curve of a monopolist, with its associated monopoly rents and deadweight losses. Although Chamberlin himself recognized the need for product differentiation and rejected the supposed ideal of the perfect competition model, his work became a common rallying point for the trademark as monopoly argument. During the legislative debates leading to the Trademark Act of 1946, his work served as a basis for the Justice Department\u27s opposition to broad trademark protection

Trademark Monopolies

Since 1742, when Lord Hardwicke seemingly equated trademark protection with monopoly in one of the first trademark cases, until the mid-1950s, concerns that trademarks represented a form of illegitimate monopoly effectively constrained the growth of trademark protection. In the twentieth century, Edward Chamberlin became the leading proponent of the trademark as monopoly view with the publication of his work, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, in 1933. In his work, Chamberlin argued that a trademark enabled its owner to differentiate her products and then to exclude others from using the differentiating feature. By doing so, trademark protection can effectively cede control over distinct product markets to individual producers and thereby generate for trademark owners the downward sloping demand curve of a monopolist, with its associated monopoly rents and deadweight losses. Although Chamberlin himself recognized the need for product differentiation and rejected the supposed ideal of the perfect competition model, his work became a common rallying point for the trademark as monopoly argument. During the legislative debates leading to the Trademark Act of 1946, his work served as a basis for the Justice Department\u27s opposition to broad trademark protection