111 research outputs found
On Convergence in the Spatial AK Growth Models
Recent research in economic theory attempts to study optimal economic growth
and spatial location of economic activity in a unified framework. So far, the
key result of this literature - asymptotic convergence, even in the absence of
decreasing returns to capital - relies on specific assumptions about the
objective of the social planner. We show that this result does not depend on
such restrictive assumptions and obtains for a broader class of objective
functions. We also generalize this finding, allowing for the time-varying
technology parameter, and provide an explicit solution for the dynamics of
spatial distribution of the capital stock
Invalid Ballots and Electoral Competition
We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and the fraction of invalid ballots. This correlation is not driven by voters' behavior, the biased actions of election officers, or the strategic pressure by parties. The theory that garners most support is that of unbiased election officers that increase their effort in response to higher (expected) closeness of electoral race, so as to reduce the likelihood of incorrectly adjudicating the victory. We also find large North-South differences in the patterns of invalid ballots: (i) electoral districts and municipalities in Southern Italian regions have a substantially higher level of invalid ballots, and (ii) the correlation between the closeness of electoral race and the fraction of invalid ballots is absent in the South. Social capital and organized crime explain these differences: once these two features are accounted for, the districts and municipalities in the South behave similarly to those in the North.invalid ballots; electoral competition; social capital; voting technology; Italian parliamentary elections
Deadly Anchor: Gender Bias under Russian Colonization of Kazakhstan, 1898-1908
We study the impact of a large-scale economic crisis on gender equality, using historical data from Kazakhstan in the late 19th – early 20th century. We focus on sex ratios (number of women per man) in Kazakh nomadic population between 1898 and 1908, in the midst of large-scale Russian in-migration into Kazakhstan that caused a sharp exogenous increase in land pressure. The resulting severe economic crisis made the nomadic organization of the Kazakh economy unsustainable and forced most Kazakh households into sedentary agriculture. Using a large novel dataset constructed from Russian colonial expedition materials, we document a low and worsening sex ratio (in particular, among poor households) between 1898 and 1908. The theoretical hypothesis that garners most support is that of excess female mortality in poorer households (especially among adults), driven by gender discrimination within households under the increasing pressure for scarce food resources.
When NGOs Go Global: Competition on International Markets for Development Donations
Why many large non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are becoming multinational entities? What are the welfare implications of this integration of markets for development donations? To answer these questions, we build a simple two-country model with horizontally differentiated NGOs competing through fundraising effort. We find that NGOs become multinational if the economies of scale in fundraising are sufficiently large. In that case, national NGOs in the smaller country disappear, while some national NGOs remain in the larger country only if the difference in the countries' size is large enough. Social welfare is higher in the regime with multinationals than under autarky.non-governmental organizations, charitable giving, globalization, multinational firms
Awareness and AIDS: A Political Economy Model
We present a simple political economy model that explains two major puzzles of government policies to combat HIV/AIDS epidemic: the lack of policy response in many countries where the epidemic is massive and the reversal of the downward trend in HIV prevalence in the countries that have adopted early agressive prevention campaigns. The model builds on the assumption that the unaware citizens impose a negative externality on the aware by increasing the risk of contagion. Prevention campaigns raise awareness of the current generation, which then partially transmit this awareness to the next generation, thus creating political support for the next-period awareness campaigns. The economy has two steady-state equilibria: the "good" one (with high awareness and low prevalence) and the "bad" one (low awareness, high prevalence). The "good" equilibrium is fragile, i.e. a sufficiently large exogenous drop in HIV prevalence undermines the next-generation political support for campaigns and makes the economy drift away towards the "bad" equilibrium.HIV/AIDS, voting, overlapping generations, awareness
Adaptive Expectations, Confirmatory Bias, and Informational Efficiency
We study the informational efficiency of a market with a single traded asset.
The price initially differs from the fundamental value, about which the agents
have noisy private information (which is, on average, correct). A fraction of
traders revise their price expectations in each period. The price at which the
asset is traded is public information. The agents' expectations have an
adaptive component and a social-interactions component with confirmatory bias.
We show that, taken separately, each of the deviations from rationality worsen
the information efficiency of the market. However, when the two biases are
combined, the degree of informational inefficiency of the market (measured as
the deviation of the long-run market price from the fundamental value of the
asset) can be non-monotonic both in the weight of the adaptive component and in
the degree of the confirmatory bias. For some ranges of parameters, two biases
tend to mitigate each other's effect, thus increasing the informational
efficiency
Benefits of Diversity, Communication Costs, and Public Opinion Dynamics
We study the dynamics of public opinion in a model in which agents change
their opinions as a result of random binary encounters if the opinion
difference is below their individual thresholds that evolve over time. We
ground these thresholds in a simple individual cost-benefit analysis with
linear benefits of diversity and quadratic communication costs. We clarify and
deepen the results of earlier continuous-opinion dynamics models (Deffuant et
al., Adv Complex Systems 2000; Weisbuch et al., Complexity 2002) and establish
several new results regarding the patterns of opinions in the asymptotic state
and the cluster formation time.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, 2 table
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