The Impact of Optimal Tariffs and Taxes on Agglomeration

This paper extends an economic geography model by tariffs to analyze their impact on welfare and sustainability of agglomerations. Policies with and without cooperation are compared, with the goal of maximizing aggregated welfare in the former and regional welfare in the latter case. The main result is that under cooperation poorer regions are worse off in two respects. In the short-run they loose even more welfare and in the long-run sustainable agglomerations in richer regions get more likely. Thus, although cooperation could generate aggregated welfare gains the potential losers face even in the short-run no incentive to remove tariffs unless they are compensated appropriately, for instance by transfers. In this sense transfers from the rich to the poor are not only a policy to reach the goal of equity but also a necessary precondition to reach aggregated efficiency.

The Impact of Optimal Tariffs and Taxes on Agglomeration

This paper extends an economic geography model by tariffs to analyze their impact on welfare and sustainability of agglomerations. Policies with and without cooperation are compared, with the goal of maximizing aggregated welfare in the former and regional welfare in the latter case. The main result is that under cooperation poorer regions are worse off in two respects. In the short-run they loose even more welfare and in the long-run sustainable agglomerations in richer regions get more likely. Thus, although cooperation could generate aggregated welfare gains the potential losers face even in the short-run no incentive to remove tariffs unless they are compensated appropriately, for instance by transfers. In this sense transfers from the rich to the poor are not only a policy to reach the goal of equity but also a necessary precondition to reach aggregated efficiency.optimal tariffs, optimal taxation, policy coordination, economic geography, economic integration, Political Economy, F13, H21, F42, R12, F15,

Contesting neoliberalism in an ‘activist city’: working towards the urban commons in Berlin

No abstract available

The impact of optimal tariffs and taxes on agglomeration

This paper extends an economic geography model by tariffs to analyze their impact on welfare and sustainability of agglomerations. Policies with and without cooperation are compared, with the goal of maximizing aggregated welfare in the former and regional welfare in the latter case. The main result is that under cooperation poorer regions are worse off in two respects. In the short-run they loose even more welfare and in the long-run sustainable agglomerations in richer regions get more likely. Thus, although cooperation could generate aggregated welfare gains the potential losers face even in the short-run no incentive to remove tariffs unless they are compensated appropriately, for instance by transfers. In this sense transfers from the rich to the poor are not only a policy to reach the goal of equity but also a necessary precondition to reach aggregated efficiency

The Impact of Optimal Tariffs and Taxes on Agglomeration

This paper extends an economic geography model by tariffs to analyze their impact on welfare and sustainability of agglomerations. Policies with and without cooperation are compared, with the goal of maximizing aggregated welfare in the former and regional welfare in the latter case. The main result is that under cooperation poorer regions are worse off in two respects. In the short-run they loose even more welfare and in the long-run sustainable agglomerations in richer regions get more likely. Thus, although cooperation could generate aggregated welfare gains the potential losers face even in the short-run no incentive to remove tariffs unless they are compensated appropriately, for instance by transfers. In this sense transfers from the rich to the poor are not only a policy to reach the goal of equity but also a necessary precondition to reach aggregated efficiency

Transfers, agglomeration and German unification

This paper analyses in the framework of a 2-region economic geography model the impact of transfers on agglomeration of economic activity. Two main results can be derived: First, subsidies to the activity of firms are more efficient to avoid agglomeration than subsidies to consumers (social policy). Second, if a less developed region starts its catch up process first increasing and afterwards decreasing transfers are necessary to avoid agglomeration. Due to these results east Germany's slowdown of convergence may be a consequence of too less transfers and especially too less firm subsidies. Furthermore, if east Germany locates still at the first stage of convergence even increasing transfers would be necessary to guarantee convergence.Im Rahmen eines 2-Regionen Modells der ?ökonomischen Geographie? wird der Einfluss von Transfers auf die Konzentration wirtschaftlicher Aktivität untersucht. Zwei entscheidende Ergebnisse ergeben sich aus dem theoretischen Modell: Erstens sind Transfers, die für die Subventionierung von Unternehmen verwendet werden, wirkungsvoller als sozialpolitisch motivierte Transfers. Zweitens kann der Anpassungsprozeß einer geringer entwickelten Region in zwei Phasen eingeteilt werden, wobei während der ersten Phase zunehmende und während der zweiten Phase abnehmende Transfers erforderlich sind, um Einkommenskonvergenz zu gewährleisten. Im Lichte dieser theoretischen Ergebnisse können in der Konstanz der Transfers in die neuen deutschen Bundesländer und in der gleichzeitigen Abnahme der Unternehmenssubventionen weitere Erklärungen der mangelnden Einkommenskonvergenz gesehen werden. Befinden sich die neuen Bundesländer noch in der ersten Phase des Anpassungsprozesses, dann wären sogar steigende Transfers notwendig, um Konvergenz zu garantieren

Sky View Factor footprints for urban climate modeling

Urban morphology is an important multidimensional variable to consider in climate modeling and observations, because it significantly drives the local and micro-scale climatic variability in cities. Urban form can be described through urban canopy parameters (UCPs) that resolve the spatial heterogeneity of cities by specifying the 3-dimensional geometry, arrangement, and materials of urban features. The sky view factor (SVF) is a dimension-reduced UCP capturing 3-dimensional form through horizon limitation fractions. SVF has become a popular metric to parameterize urban morphology, but current approaches are difficult to scale up to global coverage. This study introduces a Big-Data approach to calculate SVFs for urban areas from Google Street View (GSV). 90-degree field-of-view GSV photos are retrieved and converted into hemispherical views through equiangular projection. The fisheyes are segmented into sky and non-sky pixels using image processing, and the SVF is calculated using an annulus method. Results are compared to SVFs retrieved from GSV images segmented using deep learning. SVF footprints are presented for urban areas around the world tallying 15,938,172 GSV locations. Two use cases are introduced: (1) an evaluation of a Google Earth Engine classified Local Climate Zone map for Singapore; (2) hourly sun duration maps for New York and San Francisco

Adding Context Information to Part Of Speech Tagging for Dialogues

Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Editors: Markus Dickinson, Kaili Müürisep and Marco Passarotti. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 9 (2010), 115-126. © 2010 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/15891

Enhancement of the interface of friction welded steel-aluminium joints

Lightweight multi-material components are of great importance for the transport industry. Not only the component’s weight can be decreased, but also its local properties can be adapted to different loading profiles. Tailored Forming is a novel concept for producing multi-material components. By using a joining process, the creation of a bond between different materials takes place in the first step of the process chain. In the subsequent steps, multi-material workpieces are processed in their joined state while maintaining or improving the joint strength. This study focuses on steel-aluminium joints, which were created by friction welding and further processed by induction heating and impact extrusion. A counter pressure superposition mechanism was implemented in the extrusion tooling to control the stress state during plastic deformation. Flow behaviours of steel and aluminium are largely different at a given temperature, which necessitates a near step-function temperature distribution in the hybrid billet to obtain matching flow stresses. An inductive heating strategy was developed which led to a temperature gradient in the billets before extrusion. Extruded billets were analysed by destructive testing methods and metallography. The bond could be maintained after extrusion when counter pressure superposition was used; but no improvement could be obtained. Without counter force superposition, however, cracks were observed in the joining interface and the joint strength decreased. This paper discusses the aforementioned findings in the current process design and makes suggestions on how the involved processes should be reconfigured to improve the joint strength. © 2020, The Author(s)

Physician and Other Healthcare Personnel Responses to Hospital Stroke Quality of Care Performance Feedback: A Qualitative Study

Background Understanding how physicians and other healthcare personnel respond to hospital performance feedback initiatives may have important implications for quality improvement efforts. Our objective was to explore responses to the inaugural feedback of hospital performance on stroke quality of care measures among relevant physicians and personnel at the US Department of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals. Methods Qualitative interviews with hospital administrators, physicians, nurses and quality managers at 12 VHA hospitals in the USA after the inaugural national release of the report on quality of acute stroke care processes. Interview transcripts were analysed using an immersion/crystallisation approach to identify recurrent themes. Results Interviews were completed with 41 individuals at 12 VHA hospitals from diverse regions of the USA; the majority were clinicians, either physicians or nurses, and nearly all had 20 years of experience or more. Interviewees described general perceptions of internal performance feedback that were both positive and negative, such as the notion that performance feedback could provide value to clinicians and hospitals, but at the same time voiced concerns about being inundated with such data. Interviewees also expressed scepticism about public reporting of performance data, citing numerous concerns and limitations. However, when interviewees described specific experiences with performance feedback, nearly all reactions were positive, including excitement, interest and feeling validated about a job well done. Discussion Physicians and other healthcare personnel described hospital performance feedback on stroke quality of care measures to be broadly valuable but identified areas of concern related to the measurement process and public reporting