Migration, Tied Foreign Aid and the Welfare State

In this paper we highlight aspects related to the links between international migration, foreign tied aid and the welfare state. We model migration as a costly movement from an aid-recipient developing country with low income, poor infrastructure, and no welfare system, towards a rich donor, developed country with a well-developed welfare system. Within this model we find, among other things, that the best response of the developed donor country is to increase aid as the co-financing rate by the recipient country increases. When the immigration cost decreases, e.g. due to greater economic integration between the two countries, it is beneficial for the donor country to increase aid.migration, tied foreign aid, welfare state

Sequential Synthesis of Distributed Controllers for Cascade Interconnected Systems

We consider the problem of designing distributed controllers to ensure passivity of a large-scale interconnection of linear subsystems connected in a cascade topology. The control design process needs to be carried out at the subsystem-level with no direct knowledge of the dynamics of other subsystems in the interconnection. We present a distributed approach to solve this problem, where subsystem-level controllers are locally designed in a sequence starting at one end of the cascade using only the dynamics of the particular subsystem, coupling with the immediately preceding subsystem and limited information from the preceding subsystem in the cascade to ensure passivity of the interconnected system up to that point. We demonstrate that this design framework also allows for new subsystems to be compositionally added to the interconnection without requiring redesign of the pre-existing controllers.Comment: Accepted to appear in the proceedings of the American Control Conference (ACC) 201

Charge separation in organic photovoltaic cells

We consider a simple model for the geminate electron-hole separation process in organic photovoltaic cells, in order to illustrate the influence of dimensionality of conducting channels on the efficiency of the process. The Miller-Abrahams expression for the transition rates between nearest neighbor sites was used for simulating random walks of the electron in the Coulomb field of the hole. The non-equilibrium kinetic Monte Carlo simulation results qualitatively confirm the equilibrium estimations, although quantitatively the efficiency of the higher dimensional systems is less pronounced. The lifetime of the electron prior to recombination is approximately equal to the lifetime prior to dissociation. Their values indicate that electrons perform long stochastic walks before they are captured by the collector or recombined. The non-equilibrium free energy considerably differs from the equilibrium one. The efficiency of the separation process decreases with increasing the distance to the collector, and this decrease is considerably less pronounced for the three dimensional system. The simulation results are in good agreement with the extension of the continuum Onsager theory that accounts for the finite recombination rate at nonzero reaction radius and non-exponential kinetics of the charge separation process

Reforms of Environmental Policies in the Presence of Cross-border Pollution and Two-stage Clean-up

We construct a two-country model where pollution from production is transmitted across borders. Pollution abatement is undertaken sequentially by private producers and the public sector. We characterize the Nash optimal levels of the policy instruments in the two countries: emission taxes and funds allocated for public abatement activities. We examine the implications of a number of multilateral policy reforms. One of our findings is that the magnitude of the beneficial e.ect of a reform depends on the scope of the reform, and if it is restricted to a subset of policy instruments, then the efficacy of environmental policy reform can be greatly undermined.cross-border pollution, private pollution abatement, public pollution abatement, multilateral policy reform.

Integrated Reforms of Indirect Taxes in the Presence of Pollution

The literature on indirect tax reforms in pollution-ridden economies is quite limited. This paper, using a model of a small open economy with production and consumption generated pollution, considers the welfare implications of tax reforms within an integrated structure of consumption and production taxes. Specifically, both in the presence and absence of a binding government revenue constraint, we derive sufficient conditions for welfare improvement in the case where we implement (i) reforms in either production or consumption taxes, (ii) reforms in both consumption and production taxes and (iii) uniform changes in consumption taxes.indirect tax reforms, production and consumption generated pollution, welfare, government tax revenues

Can Cross-Border Pollution Reduce Pollution?

We develop a North-South model of foreign aid and cross-border pollution resulting from production activities in the recipient country. There is both private and public abatement of pollution, the latter being financed through emissions tax revenue and foreign aid. We characterise a Nash equilibrium where the donor country chooses the amount of aid, and the recipient chooses the fraction of aid allocated to pollution abatement and/or the emission tax rate. At this equilibrium, an increase in the donor's perceived rate of cross-border pollution reduces net emission levels.Cross-border pollution, pollution abatement, foreign aid

Optimal Tax Policies under Two-Stage Clean-Up, Cross-Border Pollution and Capital Mobility

The literature has identified cross-border pollution, capital mobility and two-stage clean-up as the key features in the «trade Vs environment» debate, yet no study examines all three simultaneously. We build a two country trading block model with cross-border pollution and free movements of goods and capital between the two countries. Pollution reduces welfare and there is simultaneous private and public pollution abatement. Public pollution abatement is financed with the use of lump-sum and pollution tax revenue. We, also, examine how cross-border pollution and capital mobility affect each country’s optimal tax policies. Finally, we examine how the existence of capital mobility alters the effectiveness of pollution taxes on net pollution.Optimal Taxes, Two-stage Clean-Up. Cross-Border Pollution, Capital Mobility.

Optimal Tax Policies with Private-Public Clean-Up, Cross-Border Pollution and Capital Mobility

This paper builds a model of a region with two non-identical countries, cross-border pollution and free movements of goods and capital within the region. Pollution reduces welfare and there is simultaneous private and public pollution abatement. Public pollution abatement is financed with the use of lump-sum and pollution tax revenue. The introduction of public pollution abatement enables us to derive the optimal pollution taxes in terms of the marginal cost of public pollution abatement. We derive and compare for each country the Nash and cooperative lump-sum and pollution taxes and examine how cross-border pollution and capital mobility affect them. Finally, we examine the impact of capital mobility on the effectiveness of pollution taxes on net pollution.optimal taxes, public pollution abatement, cross-border pollution, capital mobility

Pollution and Capital Tax Competition within a Regional Block

The paper examines the interaction among taxes on factors income, environmental quality and welfare. We construct a two-country regional block model with capital mobility and cross-border pollution. Pollution in the two countries is simultaneously abated by the private sector, in response to a pollution tax and by the public sector utilizing income and pollution tax revenue. We demonstrate, among other things, that due to the existence of cross-border pollution in many cases the Nash optimal policy on capital income is a positive tax, even if taxes on the income of immobile factors are chosen optimally. This tax rate increases with the degree of cross-border pollution.optimal income taxes, public pollution abatement, cross-border pollution, capital mobility

Tax Competition, Capital Mobility and Public Good Provision Within a Trading Block

We construct a general equilibrium model of a two-country trading block where governments through tax policies attract mobile capital, and provide an imported public consumption good. At Nash equilibrium, when the public good is under-provided, (i) a country with a large GDP, has a large Nash equilibrium income tax rate, (ii) if initially the existing foreign capital in the country is zero or small, then the country with a large population or high individual marginal willingness to pay for the public good has a large Nash equilibrium income tax rate. When the two countries act cooperatively, then for each country, the cooperative optimal income tax rate is positive, and if they are identical then the cooperative income tax rate is greater than the Nash. When the two countries are different, then it is possible that the cooperative income tax rate is less than the Nash.Nash and cooperative income taxes,capital mobility, public goods