Quality of service is of major economic significance in natural monopoly infrastructure industries. In this paper we present an efficiency analysis of electricity distribution networks from seven European countries. We apply the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method on multi-output translog input distance function models to estimate cost efficiency and scale economies. We show that introduc...

This paper contains a description of a general class of city formation models. Individual economic agents have preferences for locations that depend upon the population distribution. A location's attractiveness depends upon some combination of its population and its average distance to other agents. Economic variables enter indirectly. Taking this broad perspective leads to a deeper understandi...

Achieving balanced and inclusive economic growth is a key challenge faced by policymakers in countries around the world. The gains of economic growth are accessible to a greater extent by the relatively advantaged, who find it easier to participate in the growth process. Poorer people, who are separated by distance from the urban areas where economic activity is concentrated, have to wait much ...

This paper presents a quantitative model of economic transitions. We explicitly model resource misallocation and financial frictions to explain observed transitional dynamics that are not consistent with the standard neoclassical growth theory. When calibrated to empirical evidence on resource misallocation and financial frictions in less developed countries, our model economy converges slowly ...

This paper investigates parametric pricing kernels for interest rate options within the intertemporal CAPM framework. The usual GMM estimation produces problematic pricing kernels that either fail statistical robustness tests or are inconsistent with economic theory in terms of being hump-shaped and having negative segments. Adopting the second Hansen-Jagannathan (HJ) distance, the four-term po...

Data mining, as one of active fields nowadays, is to discover useful knowledge from large data sets. This paper focuses on continuous time-series data that have often been encountered in real applications (e.g., sales records, economic data, and stock transactions), and discusses how to discover the hidden relationship among time-series patterns in terms of their similarities. Fuzzy clustering ...

Number of distance degree programs continues to increase [1] [2]. These programs may eventually require distance lab modules to accompany the distance courses. In addition, for expensive and/or dwindling experimental facilities such as training and research reactors distance lab modules may become an economic necessity. While distance lab modules just like distance courses may never be as meani...

Theoretical considerations suggest that the option of waiting under conditions of uncertainty affects the relative importance of firm-level productivity and distance-related transaction costs as driving forces of FDI. Yet the timing of FDI has received little attention in the empirical literature on FDI determinants. To help close this gap we analyze FDI decisions by German firms with and witho...

When impulse responses in dynamic multivariate models such as identified VARs are given economic interpretations, it is important that reliable statistical inferences be provided. Before probability assessments are provided, however, the model must be normalized. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this paper argues that normalization, a rule of reversing signs of coefficients in equations in ...