Invariance Principle for the one-dimensional dynamic Random Conductance Model under Moment Conditions

Recent progress in the understanding of quenched invariance principles (QIP) for a continuous-time random walk on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ in an environment of dynamical random conductances is reviewed and extended to the $1$-dimensional case. The law of the conductances is assumed to be ergodic with respect to time-space shifts and satisfies certain integrability conditions.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure; submitted to the Proceedings of the "RIMS Symposium on Stochastic Analysis on Large Scale Interacting Systems", October 2015, Kyoto, Japa

Heat kernel estimates and intrinsic metric for random walks with general speed measure under degenerate conductances

We establish heat kernel upper bounds for a continuous-time random walk under unbounded conductances satisfying an integrability assumption, where we correct and extend recent results by the authors to a general class of speed measures. The resulting heat kernel estimates are governed by the intrinsic metric induced by the speed measure. We also provide a comparison result of this metric with the usual graph distance, which is optimal in the context of the random conductance model with ergodic conductances.Comment: 19 pages; accepted version, to appear in Electron. Commun. Proba

Cost of living differences between urban and rural areas in Indonesia

It is commonly assumed that the cost of living is much higher in cities than in the country because housing rents are higher in urban areas and food staples cost more. This assumption has important implications for sectoral comparisons of welfare levels and distributions. The authors suspect that comparisons of housing rent and food prices overstate the cost-of-living differential. For one thing, the quality of dwelling stock is better on the whole in urban areas, reflecting income differences. For another, the urban consumer is able to substitute in favor of other goods and services which do not cost any more in urban areas. This paper finds that the true cost of living in cities is substantially overestimated by conventional methods. This is more pronounced at low incomes, since the marginal cost of utility is larger (relative to expenditures) in urban areas - implying that the relative cost of urban living increases with income. In a neighborhood on the poverty line, the results suggest that an urban-rural cost-of-living difference of about 10 percent is closer to the truth than the values (as high as 66 percent) used in past work on Indonesia.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Housing&Human Habitats,Poverty Lines,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies

Does rising landlessness signal success or failure for Vietnam's agrarian transition?

In the wake of reforms to establish a free market in land-use rights, Vietnam is experiencing a pronounced rise in rural landlessness. To some observers this is a harmless by-product of a more efficient economy, while to others it signals the return of the pre-socialist class-structure, with the rural landless at the bottom of the economic ladder. The authors'theoretical model suggests that removing restrictions on land markets will increase landlessness among the poor, but that there will be both gainers and losers, with uncertain impacts on aggregate poverty. Empirically, they find that landlessness is less likely for the poor and that the observedrise in landlessness is poverty reducing on balance. However, there are marked regional differences, notably between the north and the south.Land Use and Policies,Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction,Rural Poverty Reduction,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems

Breaking up the collective farm : welfare outcomes of Vietnam's massive land privatization

The decollectivization of agriculture in Vietnam was a crucial step in the country's transition to a market economy. But the assignment of land use rights had to be decentralized, and local cadres ostensibly had the power to corrupt this process. The authors assess the realized land allocationagainst explicit counterfactuals, including the simulated allocation implied by a competitive market-based privatization. The authors find that 95-99 percent of maximum aggregate consumption (depending on the region) was realized by a land allocation that reduced overall inequality, with the poorest absolutely better off. They attribute this outcome to initial conditions at the time of reform and actions by the center to curtail the power of local elites.Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Municipal Housing and Land,Land Use and Policies,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Forestry,Urban Housing,Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction,Land Use and Policies

Quenched invariance principles for the random conductance model on a random graph with degenerate ergodic weights

We consider a stationary and ergodic random field $\{\omega(e) : e \in E_d\}$ that is parameterized by the edge set of the Euclidean lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$, $d \geq 2$. The random variable $\omega(e)$, taking values in $[0, \infty)$ and satisfying certain moment bounds, is thought of as the conductance of the edge $e$. Assuming that the set of edges with positive conductances give rise to a unique infinite cluster $\mathcal{C}_{\infty}(\omega)$, we prove a quenched invariance principle for the continuous-time random walk among random conductances under relatively mild conditions on the structure of the infinite cluster. An essential ingredient of our proof is a new anchored relative isoperimetric inequality.Comment: 22 page