Evaluating Urban Transport Improvements: Cost Benefit Analysis in the Presence of Agglomeration and Income Taxation

There is a substantial empirical literature quantifying the positive relationship between city size and productivity. The paper draws out the implications of this productivity relationship for evaluations of urban transport improvements. A theoretical model is developed and used to derive a wider cost-benefit measure that includes productivity effects. The order of magnitude of such effects is illustrated by calculations in a simple computable equilibrium model. It is argued tht productivity effects, particularly when combined with distortionary taxation, are quantitatively important, substantially increasing the gains that are created by urban transport improvements.Agglomeration, productivity, urban transport

To Migrate or to Commute?

In this paper, we investigate the agglomeration patterns in a New Economic Geography model when commuting is allowed. The introduction of both commuting and housing costs leads to a disentangling of the agglomeration of firms and people. Commuting al- lows workers to continue living in agglomerations and enjoying the benefits of a larger product variety, despite high housing costs, since they may choose to commute to another place where they receive higher wages, which in turn enables them to cover high housing costs at their place of living. This observation is especially true for skilled workers, who generally are more mobile than unskilled workers.New Economic Geography, Commuting, Mobility of workers, Commuting costs, Housing costs

Advertising and the rise of the free daily newspapers

We analyze the competition between two newspapers in a vertical differentiation model where the qualities of the journals are determined endogenously in the first stage of the game. We show that when the advertising revenues per reader increase there is a critical value above which the quality of the low quality newspaper discontinuously falls while it become similtaneously a free newspaper. This is beneficial to the high quality journal and detrimental to the readers.Advertising, Newspaper quality

Price Competition and Product Differentiation when Goods have Network Effects

The objective of our approach is to develop a model which captures horizontal product differentiation under environmental awareness, product innovation under network effects, and price competition whereby environmentally friendly products are costlier to produce. As an example, we refer to automobile producers, offering cars with a gasoline powered engine and one with a natural gas powered engine. The network of petrol stations provide the complementary good. The fulfilled expectation equilibrium could be either one with the firm offering the conventional engine as the only producer, one with the firm offering the new technology as the only producer, or one in which both firms share the market. Which equilibrium will emerge depends on the cost of producing energy efficient engines and on environmental awareness of the consumers. Due to the latter aspect the innovative firm has a chance to enter the market. We use a two stage game in prices and characteristics to analyse the respective market structure. We show that if environmental awareness is strong, the firm with the conventional technology will improve energy efficiency of its product. If the network effect is weak, both firms will be in the market. Prices and profits will decline if the role of the network effect becomes important. In order to find out whether private decision on the type of engine coincides with a socially optimal product differentiation, we determine the position of the two types of engine by a welfare maximizing authority.Price competition; Quality competition; Environmental awareness; Network effects; Automobiles.

Equilibrium Nonexistence in Spatial Competition with Quadratic Transportation Costs

Under quadratic transportation costs, the existence of the sequential first-locate-thenprice equilibrium in spatial competition is well known in the literature. In this paper, we find that the equilibrium may fail to exist under certain restrictions with respect to the location of firms and consumers in the market. This result is valid for both the linear and the circular modelsProduct differentiation; circular model; linear model; quadratic transportation costs; sequential equilibrium

International Vertical Specialization, Imperfect Competition and Welfare

This paper looks at the impact of international vertical specialization when the final good industry is imperfectly competitive. Final goods are assembled out of different fragments. In the absence of international vertical specialization all fragments required to produce a given final good must be produced in the same country. International vertical specialization unambiguously reduces the costs of production of all final good producers, albeit not necessarily in the same proportion. If the cost of production of a less efficient producer is reduced to a lesser extent than that of a more efficient producer, vertical specialization may lead to exit in the final good industry. This anti-competitive effect may be strong enough that international vertical specialization leads to a Pareto inferior outcome. On the other hand, we can characterize two sets of policies, which, combined with vertical specialization, are Pareto improving compared to autarky regardless of consumer preferences and of the form of competition in the final good industry.fragmentation; vertical specialization; imperfect competition; welfare; anti-competitive effect of trade

Demand for quality-differentiated beef in Japan

In this article, we apply a model of vertical product differentiation to the Japanese beef market. We theoretically derive a system of consumer demand functions for quality-differentiated beef in Japan. We choose a particular utility function which is nonlinear in the consumption of the quality-differentiated product and linear in the consumption of all other goods. We employ a seemingly unrelated econometric model to estimate Japanese consumer demand functions for four beef types from the four origins. The empirical results show Japanese consumers prefer domestically produced beef to imported US and Australian. We also find seventeen substitution and two complementary effects among the various origins.vertical quality differentiation, consumer demand, beef, Japan, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,

Is Central Paris still that rich?

From 1975 to 1999, employment in Paris metropolitan area has become more and more decentralized. This deconcentration is almost half spread and half clustered. Parallel to the sprawl of jobs, the growth of a services oriented economy has led to an increase in sectoral concentration. But there are no clear evidences of a vertical spatial desintegration, because by the same time the places tend to diversify. An explanation might be that the sprawl relies both on endogenous job creations and on job relocations: the relocations tend to increase the specialisation of the clusters but endogenous growth is more diverse and residential.

Environmental Policy in a Linear City Model of Product Differentiation

This paper analyzes how a tax/subsidy policy affects consumers? behavior when choosing between green (pollution free goods) and conventional products and its effects on welfare when some consumers have strong preferences for green goods. We develop a three stage complete information game, using the Hotelling?s linear city model. We show that when products are identical in all respects except in their environmental properties, a tax/subsidy policy performs better than the case without policy. Our efficiency comparisons suggest that under a setting of horizontal product differentiation a tax/subsidy (either on consumers or polluting ?firms) produces higher social welfare than the absence of policy. Moreover, the proportion of consumers who prefer green products affects the welfare gains from a subsidy or tax policy.Green products, environmental policy, horizontal product differentiation

Do Incumbents Improve Service Quality in Response to Entry? Evidence from Airlines’ On-Time Performance

We examine if and how incumbent firms respond to entry, and entry threats, using non-price modes of competition. Our analysis focuses on service quality within the airline industry. We find that incumbent on-time performance actually worsens in response to entry, and even entry threats, by Southwest Airlines. Given Southwest’s general superiority in on-time performance, this result is consistent with equilibria of theoretical models of quality and price competition, which generally predict differentiation along quality. We corroborate this intuition with further analysis, showing there is no notable response by incumbents when an airline with average on-time performance (Continental) threatens to enter or enters a route.