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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Lenka Gregorová (Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic) |
| Abstract: | Local expenditures in neighbouring municipalities can be spatially interdependent due to spillovers, cooperation effects, competition effects or mimicking. In this paper, we aim to test the spatial interdependence of local public expenditures using data on 205 Czech municipalities. We found positive spatial interdependence in expenditures on housing and culture and negative spatial interdependence for expenditures on industry and infrastructure and environmental protection. Additionally, we observed that political characteristics affect the size of spending; left-wing parties tend to increase expenditures on culture and decrease expenditures on industry and infrastructure; and higher party fragmentation decreases overall capital expenditures and expenditures on housing. |
| Keywords: | spillovers, fiscal competition, local public finance |
| JEL: | C72 H77 R12 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2009_12&r=geo |
| By: | Berliant, Marcus; Watanabe, Hiroki |
| Abstract: | We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fact and work backward to obtain assumptions on primitives. The induced theoretical assumptions on consumer behavior, particularly about their inability to insure against the city-level productivity shocks in the model, are untenable. With either self insurance or insurance markets, and either an arbitrarily small cost of moving or the assumption that consumers do not perfectly observe the shocks to firms' technologies, the agents will never move. Even without these frictions, our analysis yields another equilibrium with insurance where consumers never move. Thus, insurance is a substitute for movement. We propose an alternative class of models, involving extreme risk against which consumers will not insure. Instead, they will move, generating a Fréchet distribution of city sizes that is empirically competitive with other models. |
| Keywords: | Zipf's Law; Gibrat's Law; Size Distribution of Cities; Extreme Value Theory |
| JEL: | R12 |
| Date: | 2009–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:13671&r=geo |
| By: | Lall, Somik V.; Timmins, Christopher; Yu, Shouyue |
| Abstract: | How can policies improve the welfare of people in economically lagging regions of countries? Should policies help jobs follow people? Or should they enable people to follow jobs? In most countries, market forces have encouraged the geographic concentration of people and economic activities - policies that try to offset these forces to encourage balanced economic growth have largely been unsuccessful. However, policies that help people get closer to economic density have improved individual welfare. In this paper, the authors examine the migration decisions of working-age Brazilians and find that the pull of higher wages in leading regions has a strong influence on the decision to migrate. However, many people are also"pushed"to migrate, starved of access to basic public services such as clean water and sanitation in their hometowns. Although migration is welfare-improving for these individuals, the economy may end up worse off as these migrants are more likely to add to congestion costs in cities than to contribute to agglomeration benefits. Encouraging human capital formation can stimulate labor mobility for economic gain; and improving access to and quality of basic services in lagging regions will directly improve welfare as well as reduce the type of migration motivated by the search for life-supporting basic services. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Population Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Labor Policies,Access to Finance |
| Date: | 2009–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4843&r=geo |
| By: | Mara Nogueira (Cedeplar-UFMG); Ana Tereza Lanna Figueiredo (Cedeplar-UFMG e PUC-MG); Marco Crocco (Cedeplar-UFMG) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to investigate in what extent there is a differentiated regional bank strategy. Based on the post-Keynesian theory of regional liquidity preference (DOW, 1993), the article analyses the consolidate balance sheet of bank’s branches in 27 Brazilian states. Through the analyses of some of the indicators that has been built using the balance sheet, the paper concludes that there are evidences that supports the statement that the state’s Bank System works in a different way over the space. This behavior reinforces the uneven regional patterns of development in its economy. |
| Keywords: | Bank’s Strategy, Regional Economy, Banks |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td344&r=geo |
| By: | Pagiola, Stefano; Zhang, Wei; Colom, Ale |
| Abstract: | Payments for environmental services (PES) are a promising mechanism for conservation. PES could either provide additional funding for protected areas, pay land users to conserve biodiversity outside protected areas, or both. For PES to work, it requires a secure long-term source of financing. Obtaining payments directly for biodiversity conservation is difficult, however. In most cases, water users are the most likely such source, either directly or indirectly. Thus the potential for PES to help conserve biodiversity depends, in a large measure, on the degree to which areas of interest for conservation of water services overlap with areas of interest for conservation of biodiversity. This paper examines the extent of such overlap in the case of highland Guatemala. The results show that this potential varies substantially within the country, with some biodiversity conservation priority areas having very good potential for receiving payments, and others little or none. Overall, about a quarter of all biodiversity conservation priority areas have potential for receiving payments. Thus PES is far from being a silver bullet for biodiversity conservation, but it can make a meaningful contribution to this objective. |
| Keywords: | payments for environmental services; pes; watershed; biodiversity |
| JEL: | Q25 Q57 |
| Date: | 2009–01–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:13728&r=geo |