Costly Enforcement of Property Rights and the Coase Theorem

We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle privately, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. Despite the additional costs of going to court, other ex post ine.ciencies, and the absence of incomplete information, however, going to court may be an equilibrium or ex ante Pareto-superior over settlement; this is especially true in dynamic settings whereby a court decision saves on future enforcement costs. When the parties do not negotiate and go to court the Coase theorem ceases to hold, and a simple rule for the initial assignment of rights maximizes net surplus.

The Welfare Cost Of Capital Immobility And Capital Controls

This paper examines the macroeconomic welfare effects of interest risk premia and controls that limit international capital mobility. Using extended loanable funds analysis, it first demonstrates how perfect capital mobility maximises national income, contrary to a prevalent view that it is inimical to economic welfare. As a corollary, the analysis then shows that capital controls, irrespective of their form, generally reduce national income and economic welfare by widening real cross-border interest differentials. Capital controls in the form of quantitative controls, such as the Chilean unremunerated reserve requirement system, and explicit taxes on foreign investment flows impose similar welfare losses. However, quantitative controls are relatively more costly than options to tax capital flows, due to revenue effects.

Multi-item contests

Contests are games in which the players compete for a valuable prize by exerting effort or using resources so as to increase their probability of winning. This paper examines two player multi-item contests, a class of games in which players are faced with a decision about how much of a given resource to devote to an entire collection or sequence of different contests. Applications include multi-item rent-seeking behavior, multi-good marketing and advertising, multi-jurisdictional political contests. In these games, even when the (uncertain) outcomes in each contest are assumed to be mutually statistically independent, equilibrium efforts can exhibit strong interdependencies. Changes in either the contest success function or value of the prize in one contest usually alter the equilibrium amount of resources devoted to all contests by both players. We unify and extend results from marketing and political science, and also derive conditions under which both players exert zero effort in equilibrium in some subset of contests

Normal fault growth analysis using 3D seismic datasets located along Australia’s southern margin

Understanding and constraining the growth of normal faults continues to remain a grand challenge for geoscientists. Normal faults have long been interpreted to grow symplistically with an elliptical fault surface growing radially and accrued displacement increasing from the fault tip‐line to the centre of the fault surface. However, continued rigorous analysis of normal fault arrays in rock outcrop and 3D seismic datasets has revealed that normal fault growth is substantially more complex. This is due to the growth and interaction of multiple fault segments, spatial heterogeneity in rock properties and a more detailed three‐dimensional analytical approach to understanding displacement variations, rather than in two‐dimensional analysis in the plane of view. The interpretation of normal fault growth has long been analysed on the centimetre and metre scale in rock outcrop. However, with increasingly available, high quality seismic datasets, constraints on normal fault growth can now be interpreted on the kilometre scale. Our present understanding of small‐scale normal fault growth using rock outcrop is crucial information if we are to constrain the growth of normal faults on the kilometre scale in 3D seismic datasets, with limitations such as data quality, resolution, depth penetration and spatial coverage. Seismic interpretation of normal fault geometry and development, explicitly or implicitly, will be influenced by, and in some cases rely on, preconceived and idealized conceptual models. Continued analysis of high quality seismic datasets, in order to further understand the development of normal fault systems, will create greater predictive ability in seismic interpretation and static modelling of the subsurface when a poorer quality seismic dataset does not provide a complete and obvious answer. Factors controlling normal fault growth, such as crustal extension, gravitational instability, thermal subsidence and sediment loading need to be better understood and constrained to allow for greater prediction of normal fault evolution in any given tectono‐stratigraphic setting. This thesis consists of four papers, each of which analyses the growth of Upper Cretaceous normal fault arrays along Australia’s rifted‐to‐passive southern margin providing implications for other rifted and passive margins around the world, including the North Sea, Suez Rift, East African Rift, Niger Delta, Gulf of Mexico and Baram Delta. Australia’s southern margin and its constituent basins (Bight, Otway, Sorell, Gippsland and Bass basins) was formed from the Australian‐Antarctica continental break‐up since the Middle to Late Jurassic. The four papers comprising this thesis provide analysis, interpretation and discussion on the development of normal fault arrays located in the Ceduna Sub‐ Basin of the Bight Basin and the Gambier Embayment, the present‐day shelf‐edge break and the Shipwreck Trough of the Otway Basin. This thesis aims to qualitatively constrain the influence of controls such as crustal extension, gravitational instability, deltaic sediment loading, perturbation of stress orientations and basin compartmentalisation on the spatial and temporal development of normal fault arrays in differing tectono‐stratigraphic settings. Therefore, the findings of this thesis may be used as a predictive tool for normal fault geometry, linkage, displacement distribution and the spatial and temporal development of normal fault arrays in known tectono‐stratigraphic settings around the world.Thesis (Ph.D.) (Research by Publication) -- University of Adelaide, School of Physical Sciences, 201

The Welfare Cost Of Capital Immobility And Capital Controls

This paper examines the macroeconomic welfare effects of interest risk premia and controls that limit international capital mobility. Using extended loanable funds analysis, it first demonstrates how perfect capital mobility maximises national income, contrary to a prevalent view that it is inimical to economic welfare. As a corollary, the analysis then shows that capital controls, irrespective of their form, generally reduce national income and economic welfare by widening real cross-border interest differentials. Capital controls in the form of quantitative controls, such as the Chilean unremunerated reserve requirement system, and explicit taxes on foreign investment flows impose similar welfare losses. However, quantitative controls are relatively more costly than options to tax capital flows, due to revenue effects

Costly Enforcement of Property Rights and the Coase Theorem

We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle privately, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. Despite the additional costs of going to court, other ex post ine.ciencies, and the absence of incomplete information, however, going to court may be an equilibrium or ex ante Pareto-superior over settlement; this is especially true in dynamic settings whereby a court decision saves on future enforcement costs. When the parties do not negotiate and go to court the Coase theorem ceases to hold, and a simple rule for the initial assignment of rights maximizes net surplus

How robust are the surface temperature fingerprints of the Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation on monthly time‐scales?

It has been suggested that changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) can drive sea surface temperature (SST) on monthly timescales [Duchez et al., 2016]. However, with only 11 years of continuous observations, the validity of this result over longer, or different, time‐periods is uncertain. In this study, we use a 120‐yr long control simulation from a high‐resolution climate model to test the robustness of the AMOC fingerprints. The model reproduces the observed AMOC seasonal cycle and its variability, and the observed 5‐month lagged AMOC‐SST fingerprints derived from 11‐years of data. However, the AMOC‐SST fingerprints are very sensitive to the particular time‐period considered. In particular, both the Florida current and the upper mid ocean transport produce highly inconsistent fingerprints when using time‐periods shorter than 30 years. Therefore, several decades of RAPID observations will be necessary to determine the real impact of the AMOC on SSTs at monthly time‐scales

Phonon bottleneck in GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs quantum dots

We report low-temperature photoluminescence measurements on highly-uniform GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs quantum dots grown by droplet epitaxy. Recombination between confined electrons and holes bound to carbon acceptors in the dots allow us to determine the energies of the confined states in the system, as confirmed by effective mass calculations. The presence of acceptor-bound holes in the quantum dots gives rise to a striking observation of the phonon-bottleneck effect

A detailed comparison of measured and simulated optical properties of a short-period GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs distributed Bragg reflector

A 6-period GaAs/Al$_{0.9}$Ga$_{0.1}$As distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) has been grown and its optical properties have been both measured and simulated. Incremental improvements were made to the simulation, allowing it to account for internal consistency error, incorrect layer thicknesses, and absorption due to substrate doping to improve simulation accuracy. A compositional depth profile using secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) has been taken and shows that the Al fraction averages 88.0$\pm0.3\%$. It is found that the amplitude of the transmission is significantly affected by absorption in the n-doped GaAs substrate, even though the energy of the transmitted light is well below the GaAs band gap. The wavelength of the features on the transmission spectrum are mostly affected by DBR layer thicknesses. On the other hand, the transmission spectrum is found to be relatively tolerant to changes to Al fraction