55 research outputs found
Racial environment and political participation
This research addresses the determinants of mass participation by developing
a model of how the racial environment influences mass participation in the United
States. Prior literature on this research question presents two competing expectations.
The power-threat hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial groups in
local areas increases citizen participation because of more intensive interracial con-
flicts, while the relational goods hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial
groups decreases participation because of less frequent interaction with other in-group
members. Both hypotheses, however, are derived from rather weak theoretical expectations,
and neither is consistently supported in empirical analyses. This research
offers a solution to this puzzle by arguing that economic and political characteristics of
local areas determine how the racial composition influences mass participation. Local
economic and political competition is expected to structure the nature of interracial
and intraracial relations and therefore influence the utility calculation associated with
political participation. I hypothesize that the power-threat effect on citizen participation
is observed only when the degree of economic or political competition is high,
while the relational goods effect is observed only when the degree of economic or
political competition is low. Empirical analysis using Verba, Schlozman, and Brady’s
Citizen Participation Study offers supportive evidence for my hypotheses. This research
offers the first theoretically-motivated, rigorous analysis and evidence of the impact of immediate racial environment on individuals’ participation
Intergovernmental transfers as magnets for low-income people
We demonstrate that intergovernmental transfers affect migration decisions. If local governments with large distributive allocations offer greater government employment, public works projects, and assistance to (small) businesses, they attract low-skilled or unemployed residents to move or stay in. We find that more allocations increase not only the share of low-income residents but also the economic disparity in the city. We exploit the major electoral reform in Japan as an instrumental variable.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Applied Economics Letters on 01 Nov 2022, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2022.2139801
Strategic multi-store opening under financial constraint
This paper analyzes strategic store openings in a situation in which firms can open multiple stores depending on the financial constraints of the firm. Specifically, given any upper limit of the number of store openings that two potentially symmetric firms can open, they sequentially determine the number of store openings, including their locations, to maximize their profits. As a result of our analysis in a microeconomic framework, we show that the equilibrium strategy can be wholly classified into only two following opposite strategies according to the level of their financial constraints involved. When firms can afford to invest significant amounts of money in the market, the leader chooses "segmentation strategy," in which a part of the market can be monopolized by opening a chain of multiple stores and deterring the follower's entry. In contrast, when the leader has a severe financial constraint so that it can only monopolize less than half of the market, the leader chooses "minimum differentiation strategy," where firms open each of their stores at exactly the same point as the rival's. Under this strategy, the leader necessarily captures just half of the market. Furthermore, we show that regardless of potential symmetry between firms, both first and second mover advantages in terms of profit can occur in the equilibrium.Marketing Game theory Chain store Entry deterrence Differentiation Hotelling model
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