Abstract. This paper adapts the model developed by Dixit (1996) to analyze the case of interest group competition over land reform politics in Brazil. The model presents some important advances over earlier seminal economic models of interest group competition in the literature, such as Peltzman (1976), Becker (1983) and Denzau and Munger (1986) in that it considers that government agencies res...

Regionalization is a part of globalization and a dynamic process of marching towards globalization. The so-called NADEs (Northeast Asia’s Dynamic Economies) including Japan, Korea and China are expected to lead economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper analyzes the trade and investment relationships among the three countries, points out the necessity for their technological coopera...

This paper uses model-based recursive partitioning to study economic growth in the 255 European Union NUTS2 regions over the period 1995–2005. The starting point of the analysis is a human-capital augmented Solow-type growth equation similar in spirit to Mankiw et al. (1992). Initial GDP and the share of highly educated in the working age population are found to be important for explaining econ...

Argentina experienced an important increase in wage dispersion in the last 20 years. This increase occurred not only across different education groups, but also within these groups. In spite of exceptional economic growth rates, after the 2001/2002 macroeconomic crisis, residual inequality remained high. This paper applies a search model with exogenous human capital accumulation to Argentinean ...

The size distribution of firms in each industry will usually be highly skew, and empirical evidence shows that it is approximated closely by the Pareto distribution. In this paper we make an attempt to explain why the Pareto law applies to the size distribution of firms based on their innovation and investment behavior, and then develop a model of economic growth that take into account this emp...

Collapsed gully erosion constantly plagues the sustainability of rural areas in China. To control collapsed gully erosion, an ecological and economic approach, which uses tree plantation to gain economic benefits and control soil erosion, has been widely applied by local governments in Southern China. However, little is known about the economic feasibility of this new method. The objective of t...

Nitrogen is produced mainly from its most abundant source, the air, using three processes: membrane, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and cryogenic. The most common method for evaluating a process is using the selection diagrams based on feasibility studies. Since the selection diagrams are presented by different companies, they are biased, and provide unsimilar and even controversial results. I...

When machine learning (ML) and data mining (DM) methods construct models in complex domains, models can contain less-credible parts [2], which are statistically significant, but meaningless to the human analyst. For example, let us consider a decision tree model presented in Figure 1. The tree is constructed with the J48 algorithm in Weka [8] for a complex domain indicating which segments of re...

Emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Fairmaire) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), plays a significant role in the health and extent of management of native North American ash species in urban forests. An economic analysis of management options was performed to aid decision makers in preparing for likely future infestations. Separate ash tree population valuations were derived from the i-Tree Street...