Endogenous Amenities and the Spatial Structure of Cities

This paper examines the endogenous dynamics of the social structure of a city where the spatial repartition of amenities is endogenously modified by the spatial repartition of social groups. We start from the fact that, in most European cities, central locations are occupied by rich households; while in American cities, they are occupied by poor households. In a standard urban model without amenities, for rich households to locate downtown, their unit transport cost must be very high compared to the poor. Bruckner et al. (1999) show that, when there are historical amenities mainly located in the city center, we no longer need a high differential between transport costs: if demand for amenities by the rich is strong enough, this advantage could attract the rich households in the city centre. This explanation fits well with the fact that the most European cities have a long history, with the consequence that they accumulated many amenities in their city centre. However, the paper by Brueckner et al. is purely static and does not explicitly consider the historical dimension of the process generating amenities. Our model explicitly takes account of time: at every period, the equilibrium spatial structure of the city is determined by the transport costs and by the spatial repartition of amenities; but, between periods, the spatial repartition of amenities changes, rich households generating local amenities in the locations they occupy, and then the spatial structure of the city changes. We show that this endogenous generation of local amenities has two consequences. The first one is that the city may have several long term equilibria. We explicitly analyse two of them: an “American equilibrium†with the poor living in the centre, and a “European equibrium†with the rich living in the centre. We show that the conditions for the existence of an European equilibrium are more restrictive. The second consequence is that, when the city develops, it may move from an American equilibrium to an European one. If the city starts without amenities, poor households locate in the city centre, rich households in the periphery. However, the production of new local amenities by the rich generates a lock in effect: rich go on occupying locations where they were living previously and, as the city develops, these locations become central ones.

Set-Aside versus Quotas in Contracts for Agro-Environmental Regulation

In this paper, we analyze the simultaneous regulation of several goods produced on agricultural land such as environmental amenities and crops. This analysis is conducted using a general two goods model where all agricultural land is used for production. The regulation authority can regulate these goods either through set aside requirements or production quotas. The paper focuses on information asymmetry about some farm performance index creating adverse selection. When public funds are non costly we show that the net social welfare induced by the two types of contracts are equal. In general we also show that if the goal of the regulation is to decrease the production of the quota good it is better to use the quota contract. On contrary if the regulation aims at increasing the production of the quota good, it is better to use a set aside contract.Political Economy,

Optimal Immigration Policy When the Public Good Is Rival

In this model, we characterize optimal immigration and fiscal policies in presence of a rival public good and heterogeneous discounting. Surprisingly, even if the government is benevolent towards natives only, it is optimal to keep borders open. Indeed, in the long run, patient natives hold the whole stock of capital, while impatient immigrants work. Moreover, since capital intensity is stationary, capital per native, consumption and the public good increase with the number of (immigrant) workers. This positive effect offsets the disutility deriving from the congestion of the public good. Howevern when we account for the costs associated to cultural heterogeneity, we find that it is optimal to regulate immigration inflows. We also interpret the long-run sensitivity of the optimal policy mix with respect to the fundamentals.Heterogenous discounting, public good, immigration policy, cycles.

Impacts of Promoting Perennial Crops in the French Agriculture

This paper is devoted to a quantitative analysis of the introduction of perennial crop in a short-term supply model. The analysis provides assessment of impacts regarding land use and N-input demand. We show that a variation in yield or the subsidy amount of miscanthus leads to a significant change in land use and N-input.lignocellulosic perennial crop, bio-energy, mathematical linear programming, land use, N-input demand, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Tax Interactions among Belgian Municipalities: Does Language Matter?

This paper tests the existence of strategic interactions among municipalities using a panel of Belgian local tax rates from 1985 to 2004. A special emphasis is put on the role of the language spoken in the various municipalities. Our results first confirm previous findings for Belgium suggesting that municipalities interact with each other over the two main local tax rates, the local surcharge on the (labour) income tax rate and the local surcharge on the property tax. Using tools of spatial econometrics and an original methodology for specifying weights matrices, we find out that municipalities are sensitive to tax rates set by their close neighbours only. We also reject the hypothesis that the language does not matter: in the within model and for the local income tax rate, the intensity of interactions is shown to be lower between municipalities speaking different languages than between municipalities speaking the same language. That observation is particularly relevant for today Belgium and might be viewed as a contribution to the ongoing debate on the regionalisation or partial decentralization of some taxes.tax interactions, panel data, spatial econometrics, local tax rates, tax competition, yardstick competition

A "winner" under any voting rule ? An experiment on the single transferable vote

In this paper, we expose the results of a voting experiment realised in 2007, during the French Presidential election. This experiment aimed at confronting the Single Transferable vote (SVT) procedure to two criteria : simplicity and the selection of a Condorcet-winner. Building on our electoral sample's preferences, we show that this voting procedure can design a different winner, depending on the vote counting process. With the vote counting process advocated by Hare, the winner is Nicolas Sarkozy, while the Coombs vote counting process has François Bayrou as winner. For these two vote counting processes, the details of the experiment are the same and it is shown that the simplicity criterion is respected. However, with regard to the Condorcet-winner criterion, the Coombs methods is the only one to elect the Condorcet-winner, i.e. François Bayrou.Field experiments, elections, Single Transferable Vote, voting system, Condorcet Winner.

Managing a Common Renewable Resource in Asymmetric Information

The clear definition of property rights is not a sufficient condition to prevent congestion effects in commons. In this paper we present how interesting can be the coordination among owners in the preservation of the common good. Our approach takes into account economic dynamics and incentive mechanisms in a hidden information context. We consider a natural resource which is being used up for a continuum of producers on a common property regime. We also consider that each producer has an individual performance index which is a hidden information of the rest of players. We introduce coordination in the sense of a global maximization of the joint profit. If there is no coordination among the producers, their behavior leads to complete rent dissipation. We focus our model in the case of the producers convinced to coordinate their actions in order to preserve their own economic sustainability. Under perfect information we find that the exclusion of at subset of producers can appear and how it is endogenously determined. Under asymmetric information we propose a quantity-transfer contract which lead us to the previous stationary disposal stock of the resource without exclusion.Commons, Natural Resources, Dynamics, Asymmetric Information, Contracts, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the EU: A spatial assessment of sources and abatement costs

Agriculture contributes significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gases in the EU. By using a farm-type, linear-programming based model of the European agricultural supply, we first assess the initial levels of methane and nitrous oxide emissions at the regional level in the EU. For a range of CO2 prices, we assess the potential abatement that can be achieved through an IPCC-based emission tax in EU agriculture, as well as the resulting optimal mix of emission sources in the total abatement. Further, we show that the spatial variability of the abatement actually achieved at a given carbon price is large, indicating that abatement cost heterogeneity is a fundamental feature in the design of a mitigation policy. We assess the efficiency loss associated with uniform standards relative to an emission tax.Climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture, methane, nitrous oxide, European Union, marginal abatement costs, Environmental Economics and Policy, Q25, Q15,

Short-term Farm Level Adaptations of EU15 Agricultural Supply to Climate Change

Assessing climate change impact on agriculture is a complex task involving a wide range of economical and physical processes, leading to significant uncertainties. At European scale, climate change impacts on agricultural supply have been appraised to be of relatively less important driver by the end of century compared to other global drivers. However these diagnoses are incomplete due to a limited representation of both spatial heterogeneity in important determinants of agricultural supply (soil, management practices and producer typology) and fine scale processes such as farm scale autonomous adaptation. We propose a complementary approach based on a modeling framework including a spatially explicit representation of productivity and producer behavior with regard to heterogeneity in soil, climate, and producer socio-economic context to appraise climate change impacts including autonomous farm-scale adaptations of EU15 agricultural supply to climate change. Our results suggest that without accounting for autonomous adaptation European agricultural supply may have interesting resilience properties at an aggregated scale despite significant heterogeneity at smaller resolution. Accounting for autonomous adaptations result in significant yield gains, and may lead to (i) a significant increase in the relative profitability of crops compared to other land-covers, thus possibly increasing its agricultural land-use share over other land covers, and (ii) an increase in total European production which may have impacts on agricultural goods markets, thus highlighting the need for integrating fine scale processes such as autonomous adaptation.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,