The commercialisation of the Internet raises many interesting economic questions of whether and how the whole economy will be changed. This thesis investigates the effect of cheaper technical distribution and better access to information systems and networks on information markets. Because investments are information sensitive, the market for financial information is used as an example and illustration of a market for information. A comparative static equilibrium analysis based on the Hotelling-model is given. Different information providers offer information that can differ in price and quality. The model also accounts for externalities, which are pivotal for many different information markets. (author's abstract)

Based on a previous study by Amador and Weill (2009), I study the diffusion of dispersed private information in a large economy subject to a ”catastrophe risk” state. I assume that agents learn from the actions of oth- ers through two channels: a public channel, that represents learning from prices, and a bi-dimensional private channel that represents learning from lo- cal interactions via information concerning the good state and the catastrophe probability. I show an equilibrium solution based on conditional Bayes rule, which weakens the usual condition of ”slow learning” as presented in Amador and Weill and first introduced by Vives (1993). I study asymptotic conver- gence ”to the truth” deriving that ”catastrophe risk” can lead to ”non-linear” adjustments that could in principle explain fluctuations of price aggregates. I finally discuss robustness issues and potential applications of this work to models of ”reaching consensus”, ”investments under uncertainty”, ”market efficiency” and ”prediction markets”. / text

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays of which contributions consist, first, in developing spatial weight matrices based on more than just pure geographical proximity for the modeling of interregional externalities. Second, my essays propose different approaches to discover spatial heterogeneity in the data generating processes, including the interregional externalities, under investigation. This dissertation provides Economic Geographers and Regional Scientists interested in the modeling and measurement of spatial externalities a set of practical examples based on new datasets and state-of-the-art spatial econometric techniques to consider for their own work. I hope my dissertation will provide them with some guidance on how various aspects of spatial externalities can be incorporated in traditional spatial weight matrices and of how much the impact of externalities can be spatially heterogeneous. The results of the dissertation should help spatial and regional policy makers to understand better various aspects of interregional dependence in regional economic systems and to devise locally effective and place-tailored spatial and regional policies. The first essay investigates the negative spatial externalities of irrigation on corn production. The spatial externalities of irrigation water are well known but have never been examined in a spatial econometric framework so far. We investigate their role in a theoretical model of profit-maximizing farming and verify our predictions empirically in a crop production function measured across US Corn Belt counties. The interregional groundwater and surface water externalities are modeled based on actual aquifer and river stream network characteristics. The second essay examines the positive spatial externalities of academic and private R&D spending in the frame of a regional knowledge production function measured across US counties. It distinguishes the role of local knowledge spillovers that are determined by geographical proximity from distant spillovers that we choose to capture through a matrix of patent creation-citation flows. The advantage of the latter matrix is its capacity to capture the technological proximity between counties as well as the direction of knowledge spillovers. These two elements have been missed in the literature so far. The last essay highlights and measures the presence of spatial heterogeneity in the marginal effect of the innovation inputs, more especially of the interregional knowledge spillovers. The literature of knowledge production function has adopted geographically aggregated units and controlled for region-specific conditions to highlight the presence of spatial heterogeneity in regional knowledge creation. However, most empirical studies have relied on a global modeling approach that measures spatially homogenous marginal effects of knowledge inputs. This essay explains the source of the heterogeneity in innovation and then measures the spatial heterogeneity in the marginal effects of knowledge spillovers as well as of other knowledge input factors across US counties. For this purpose, the nonparametric local modeling approaches of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) and Mixed GWR are used.

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This dissertation extends the Grossman-Helpman models of endogenous trade policy formation to incorporate local and global production and consumption externalities, and to allow governments to choose domestic production or consumption policies together with trade interventions. The models presented are among the first to allow environmental quality and the structure of industry protection to be simultaneously evaluated in a political economy framework, when some industry groups lobby their governments for higher output prices. The equilibrium tax and subsidy policies are implicitly expressed as the sum of distinct political support, terms-of-trade, and local and global environmental effects. Whether these effects reinforce or counterbalance each other depends on whether an industry is organized, whether the good is imported or exported, whether the externality is caused by production or consumption, and, in the large-country models, on whether governments set policies noncooperatively or cooperatively. The model results imply a political economy version of Bhagwati's normative targeting principle: governments use the most efficient policy available to satisfy the lobbies, to address the externalities, and, in the noncooperative large-country model, to exploit international market power. All of the initial Grossman-Helpman results (for the small-country model and the noncooperative and cooperative large-country models) are shown to be special cases where governments have only trade policy available and there are no externalities. In the small-country model and the cooperative large-country model, when there are production externalities, the lobbying of a polluting industry usually leads to lower environmental quality than socially optimal, but with terms-of-trade effects or for particular preferences cases the equilibrium policies may induce environmental quality higher than socially optimal. When there are consumption externalities, and the government has consumption (or production) as well as trade policy available, environmental quality will be socially optimal (again, unless governments exploit market power). Thus, depending on the policies available, a local or global consumption externality will be fully internalized, even though polluting industries lobby and production may be distorted. This dissertation also shows that--in contrast to standard economic theory--the use of trade policy alone can lead to higher environmental quality than a more direct domestic policy alone. / Ph. D.

The Family as an Externality within a Market Economy: Evidence from the Czech Republic The dissertation thesis deals with an issue of fertility decline in developed countries from a perspective of relationship between the family and the market economy. The family is perceived as an externality with respect to theoretical economic framework as well as to real economy of the Czech Republic in the period of economic transition. In other words, neither theory nor applied policy fully reflects contribution of the family for the whole society. The thesis goes into the family specification from distinct standpoints, its development within time, relationship to economy and briefly introduces economic approaches to the family at both micro and macro level. In addition, the thesis carries out analyses of Czech data in the period 1989-2010. While the macro analysis is focused on interaction between fertility and economy performance, the micro analysis is devoted to financial support provided by state to the family via the social scheme and the tax system. Keywords: the family, fertility, economy, the Czech Republic, the social scheme, the tax system

This dissertation focuses on the spatial aspects of oil and natural gas production to investigate the extent and effects of inefficient and unnecessary spatial competition. Because oil and natural gas are migratory, operators can cause hydrocarbon resources to flow from a neighboring property onto his or her own through rapid extraction. This problem is compounded when productive leases are comparatively small, as is the case in Texas. Following an introduction and literature review, the third chapter takes advantage of a natural experiment to demonstrate how spillovers in production limit total cumulative recovery, and how the assignment of secure property rights can enhance economic outcomes. The chapter examines production from wells in Oklahoma and Texas near the panhandle border. While wells on either side of this line have similar geologies and so should be similarly productive they are exposed to different treatments: Oklahoma has a much higher rate of unitization (a contractual scheme where competing owners hire a common operator and share profits), whereas the unitization rate in Texas is lower. Using regression discontinuity design, I find that Oklahoma wells are produced more slowly early on, and that this results in greater cumulative recovery over the course of a well’s life (150% more relative to Texas). These results are robust after controlling for reservoir specific effects, and across parametric, semi-parametric and nonparametric specifications. xiiThe fourth chapter quantifies the degree to which competing owners interfere with each other’s production through spatial spillovers. I use a spatial econometric model that controls for spatial autocorrelation and spatial dependence and can therefore identify the spillovers in production. Additionally, by comparing leases owned by competing producers to leases owned by a common producer, I show empirically how securing property rights through common ownership can alleviate the externality in production. A priori, one would expect that when a common producer owns adjacent leases, the producer has the incentive to fully account for how spillovers in production affect neighboring wells. Conversely, when adjacent landowners are in competition to extract the resource, they will not account for the damage rapid production causes at neighboring wells. After controlling for secondary injection I find that this is indeed the case for Slaughter field of West Texas. The fifth chapter investigates the statistical properties of oil and natural gas production. I find striking evidence that both oil and natural gas production are power-law distributed with the exponent approximately equal to one. This distribution might arise from disequilibrium in production and exploration. Highlighting this distribution is important because it has potential consequences for the political economy of regulation as well as for resource management. For example, because the most productive wells lie in the far-right tail of the distribution, regulation geared to prevent a Deepwater Horizon scale spill need fall on a vanishingly small percent of wells. The distribution also has consequences for management because a company profitability depends disproportionately on how it manages its most productive wells. The sixth chapter provides a short conclusion.

If you have to wear a seat belt when you drive, are you safer? Intuitively, it may seem that the answer is yes. After all, if you are wearing a seat belt and get in an accident, you are half as likely to die, and 62% of fatal accident victims were not wearing seat belts at the time of accident. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration, the Governors' Highway Safety Administration, and many other organizations highly recommend wearing seat belts. The NHTSA claims that in 2010 alone, approximately 12,500 deaths were prevented by seat belt use alone. Seat belt laws clearly reduce the chance of death to vehicle occupants in a given auto accident. In response to these findings, the federal government has made the release of highway funds to states contingent on the passage of state laws mandating seat belt adoption. Laws mandating seat belt use, along with extensive campaigns to raise public awareness, have caused seat belt use to rise from 69% in 1998 to 88% in 2009. As of this writing, laws mandating the use of seat belts when driving have been passed in every state save New Hampshire. Intuitively, this should make roads safer because seat belts make an accident more survivable. Does wearing a seat belt, however, make that accident more likely to occur in the first place? If a driver wears a seat belt now and I didn't before, does he feel safe enough to take more risk? In this paper, I examine this question using insurance premiums as a proxy for the likelihood of an accident. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 offers background information, including a framework with which to interpret a driver’s actions and a review of the relevant literature. Section 3 contains details on the data analyzed. Section 4 covers the results of my preliminary data analysis, model specifications, and robustness checks. Section 5 concludes.