Transboundary Pollution, R&D Spillovers and International Trade

We consider a symmetric three-stage game played by a pair of regulator-firm hierarchies to capture the scale and technology effects. Each firm produces one good sold on the market. The production process generates pollution characterized by a fixed emission/output ratio, and cross-borders. Firms can invest in R&D in order to lower their emission/output ratio, and this activity is characterized by positive R&D spillovers. We show that R&D spillovers and the competition of firms on the common market help non-cooperating countries to internalize transboundary pollution more efficiently. Consequently, in most cases, when the positive externality increases, the levels of R&D and production increase while pollution decreases, implying an increase of the social welfare. However, in some other cases, pollution under common market increases with the R&D externality implying a decrease of the social welfare. Opening markets to the international trade leads to more investment in R&D and more production. In most cases, pollution under common market is lower than under autarky, implying a greater social welfare. Nevertheless, in some other cases, pollution under common market is higher than under autarky implying that opening markets deteriorates social welfare.Transboundary pollution, R&D spillovers, common market, social welfare

Adoption of a clean technology using a renewable energy

We consider a monopolistic firm producing a good while polluting and using a fossil energy. This firm can adopt a clean technology by incurring an investment cost decreasing exponentially with the adoption date. This clean technology does not pollute and has a lower production cost because it uses a renewable energy. We determine the optimal adoption date for the firm in the cases where it is regulated at each period of time and when it is not regulated. Interestingly, the regulated firm adopts the clean technology earlier than what is socially-optimal. However, the non-regulated firm adopts later than what is socially desired. The regulator can compensate the regulated firm for the loss incurred if he wants that it delays its adoption date to the socially-optimal one. Nevertheless, the regulator may be interested in letting the firm adopts earlier to encourage the diffusion of the use of green technologies in other industries.regulation; clean technology; renewable energy; adoption date.

Transboundary pollution, asymmetric information and social welfare

We consider two regulator-firm hierarchies with transboundary pollution, and firms may have private information about their marginal cost of production. The pollution of each firm is proportional to its production. The impact of asymmetric information on social welfare can be explained by a positive effect, which is the reduction of transborder pollution one negative effect is the socially costly informational rents captured by firms. We show that, when the damage function is as such, the non-internalization of the transfrontier pollution is sufficiently important, then non-cooperating countries can get a higher expected or ex ante social welfare under incomplete information.Expected social welfare

Adoption of a Cleaner Technology by a Monopoly Under Incomplete Information

We consider a model consisting of a monopolistic firm producing a certain good with pollution. This firm can adopt a cleaner technology within a finite time by incurring an investment cost decreasing exponentially with the adoption date. At each period of time, the firm is regulated by an emission tax which induces the socially optimal pollution and production levels, and a lump sum tax on profit. The firm is induced to adopt the cleaner technology at the socially optimal date by an appropriate innovation subsidy. In the incomplete information context, the firm has private information concerning the cost of acquiring the new technology. By an appropriate contract consisting of an adoption date and a R&D subsidy depending on the value of the innovation cost parameter announced by the firm, the regulator can induce the latter to reveal the true value of its private information in compensation of a socially costly intertemporal informational rent. However, the socially optimal adoption date of incomplete information is delayed with respect to the complete information one.cleaner technology; adoption date; incomplete information

Adoption of a cleaner technology by a monopoly under incomplete information

We consider a monopolistic firm producing a good while polluting. This firm can adopt a cleaner technology within a finite time by incurring an investment cost decreasing exponentially with the adoption date. The firm is induced to adopt the cleaner technology at the socially optimal date by an appropriate innovation subsidy. In the incomplete information context, the firm has private information concerning the cost of acquiring new technology. Interestingly, the regulator can induce the firm to reveal the true value of its private information by a contract consisting of an adoption date which is increasing with the value of the innovation cost parameter announced by the firm, and a R&D subsidy which is decreasing with the value of the innovation cost parameter announced by the firm. Nevertheless, the socially optimal adoption date of incomplete information is delayed with respect to the complete information one.cleaner technology, adoption date, R&D subsidy, incomplete information.

R&D in Cleaner Technology and International Trade

We consider a dynamic three-stage game played by two regulator-firm hierarchies to capture the scale and technological effects of opening markets to international trade. Each firm produces one good sold on the market. Firms can invest in R&D in order to lower their fixed emission/output ratio and are regulated with costly public funds. We take the context of sufficiently high market sizes and investment cost parameters. Opening markets to international trade yields more investment in R&D, more production and a lower emission ratio. When the market size is low enough and the investment cost parameter is high enough, pollution in common market is higher than in autarky. International trade reduces the social welfare.R&D, Cleaner technology, Common market, Social welfare

Impact of the Euro Med Free-Exchange Agreement on the Agro-Food Firms in Tunisia

The Tunisian agro-food sector is characterized by the prevalence of small and middle-sized firms, which requires a restructuration to contribute to the development of the agriculture and deal with the processes of liberalisation of agro-food industry. After studying the association agreement between Tunisia and the European Union, we must say that the process of exchanges liberalisation of the agro-food products is conveyed by the operational strategies of the firms to research competitiveness by the control of the costs or the differentiation of the product. This obliges to interest us in exports like a crenel of development of the tunisian agro-food sector.International Relations/Trade,

Articulatory features for speech-driven head motion synthesis

This study investigates the use of articulatory features for speech-driven head motion synthesis as opposed to prosody features such as F0 and energy that have been mainly used in the literature. In the proposed approach, multi-stream HMMs are trained jointly on the synchronous streams of speech and head motion data. Articulatory features can be regarded as an intermediate parametrisation of speech that are expected to have a close link with head movement. Measured head and articulatory movements acquired by EMA were synchronously recorded with speech. Measured articulatory data was compared to those predicted from speech using an HMM-based inversion mapping system trained in a semi-supervised fashion. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) on a data set of free speech of 12 people shows that the articulatory features are more correlated with head rotation than prosodic and/or cepstral speech features. It is also shown that the synthesised head motion using articulatory features gave higher correlations with the original head motion than when only prosodic features are used. Index Terms: head motion synthesis, articulatory features, canonical correlation analysis, acoustic-to-articulatory mappin