Abstract Which are the factors affecting the long run sustainability of GDP growth? This paper discusses a potentially important one that has been disregarded so far: the shift in advanced economies from quantity to quality growth. First, the paper lays down a simple model introducing the quality dimension of consumption into the IPAT analytical framework….
Abstract We consider two families of strategy-proof social choice functions based on the majority principle: extended majority voting rules on the universal domain of preferences over two alternatives and generalized median voter schemes on the domain of single-peaked preferences over a finite and linearly ordered set of alternatives. We characterize their respective subclasses of obviously…
Abstract In this paper a dynamic model of economic growth, tourism and environment is studied. The model considers tourists in the economy as optimizing agents, interacting with domestic consumers. The number of tourists arriving in the country follows the Tourism Are Life-cycle model with a tourism carrying capacity dependent on environmental quality. Tourism hurts environment and abatement activities have…
Abstract The appeal of the concept of perfectly competitive equilibrium (PCE), to describe the outcome of trade in competitive markets, relies on three assumptions: 1) in the absence of frictions, PCE is the result of the centralized or decentralized interaction of rational agents, 2) whenever the market is out of equilibrium, an adjustment process would…
Abstract In a two-sector economy, we consider the endogenous determination of the level of competition in the imperfectly competitive sector, under democratic, non-manipulated voting. In the context of the Salop’s (1979) circular model, we identify conditions such that besides a competitive equilibrium (with most voters choosing the efficient level of transport cost), a «populist» equilibrium…
Abstract We provide a model of dynamic duopoly in which firms take into account the financial constraints of all firms. The study of the equilibria of our dynamic game leads to the concept of Bankruptcy-Free outputs (BF) in which no firm can drive another firm to bankruptcy without becoming bankrupt itself. We show that, in…
Abstract: Neoclassical models of international trade do not grant firms any role in shaping countries’ export specialization. However, the evidence shows that in many countries few firms dominate sectoral exports. In this paper we propose an easy-to-implement methodology to determine the contribution of country-level variables, fundamental comparative advantage, and firm-level variables, granular comparative advantage, to…
Abstract: For the funding period of 2014-2020, the European Union demanded from all regions or countries the design of a ‘smart specialisation’ strategy. One of the main goals of this strategy was to shift cohesion fund spending away from infrastructure and to encourage policies that stimulate innovation and increase business competitiveness. A second major goal…
Microeconometric analysis of tourist expenditure as a function of traveler characteristics has focused on total absolute expenditure, on absolute expenditures per trip budget parts, and in relative terms per trip budget parts. The analysis of absolute trip expenditure by budget parts confounds how much (budget volume) and how (budget allocation) tourists spend, while that of…
Abstract: We present a factor-proportions trade model in which heterogeneous firms can offshore intermediate inputs subject to fixed offshoring costs. In the skill-abundant country, high-productivity firms offshore a larger range of labor-intensive inputs to the labor-abundant countries than low-productivity firms. Differently from the traditional versions of factor-proportions trade theory, Heckscher-Ohlin forces operate at the within-industry…
