<p>Declining industries are privileged at the expense of new innovative ones in some cities but not others. In order to understand why, I develop an argument about how politics aggregates the demand for industrial rents across space. Geographically concentrated industries produce electorates with homogenous preferences in favor of supporting established local firms. In electoral systems where politicians are beholden to voters in a narrow geographic constituency, politicians will support efforts to prop up these industries even as these measures stymie innovation. Conversely, in electoral systems where politicians are beholden to broad party interests, politicians will support nationally important and geographically dispersed industries. Concentrated industries, by contrast, are more likely to die a rapid death and leave public resources available for new pioneering firms. Thus, the intersection between electoral and political geography provides insight into the Schumpeterian creative destruction needed to transform a city into a post-industrial economy. I formalize my argument in two models: one analyzing the demand of subsidies over public goods by voters and another exploring the tradeoff between rent-seeking and innovation by firms. I test the resulting hypotheses through cross-country statistical regressions and two in-depth case studies. Using firm-level data across many countries I show that political geography conditions the provision of subsidies to declining firms, and that electorally important firms are less likely to innovate. Then, using original field data I investigate the causal impact of political institutions and economic geography on the provision of subsidies by utilizing exogenous shocks in Thailand and India.</p> / Dissertation

Orientador: Walter Belik / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T05:44:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Quadros_AllanVieiradeCastro_M.pdf: 1920709 bytes, checksum: 8c2e451ff93c3fa9f3d59bfa8074cc8a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: O consumo crescente de cafés de melhor qualidade no Brasil e no mundo, assim como a busca de maior rentabilidade e proteção no segmento rural vêm estimulando a diferenciação do café commodity. Essa diferenciação é realizada por meio de investimentos específicos na produção, os quais geram quase-rendas. No entanto, mesmo cafeicultores que venceram concursos de qualidade encontram dificuldades em comercializar o café gourmet a um preço diferenciado, não se apropriando, portanto, das quase-rendas geradas. Com base na Economia dos Custos de Transação, pode-se asseverar que a apropriação dessas quase-rendas depende de fatores institucionais que caracterizam a relação produtor - indústria - consumidores. Para avaliar quais seriam as estruturas de governança redutoras de custos de transação e que permitiriam apropriação de quase-rendas pelo segmento rural, optou-se por realizar estudo de caso dos produtores da região da Alta Mogiana. Foram entrevistados cinco produtores cooperados de porte pequeno e médio, a cooperativa local e um grande produtor. Partiu-se da hipótese de que a integração vertical seria a estrutura mais adequada à produção gourmet. Para os grandes produtores, essa seria uma estratégia viável, dado o nível de capitalização. Contudo, os pequenos e médios produtores teriam de adotar a coordenação horizontal (cooperativa) a fim de possibilitar a integração vertical e apropriação de uma marca, bem como facilitar a obtenção de contratos de comercialização de cafés gourmet com outras torrefadoras. De ambas as formas, os pequenos e médios produtores poderiam se apropriar das quase-rendas oriundas da diferenciação. Os resultados demonstraram que para o grande produtor a estrutura verticalizada é adequada. No entanto, o sistema de cooperativa com torrefadora e marca própria de café gourmet não se apresentou como uma estrutura de governança eficiente quando os pequenos e médios produtores cooperados vendem café diferenciado diretamente à cooperativa. Por outro lado, a coordenação horizontal demonstrou ser eficiente na intermediação/ facilitação de contratos de comercialização de cafés gourmet por esses produtores com outras torrefadoras / Abstract: The growing consumption of better quality coffee in Brazil and worldwide, as well as the search for more profitability and protection in the rural segment have stimulated the differentiation of the commodity coffee. This differentiation is achieved by specific investments in production, which generate quasi-rents. However, even coffee growers who have won quality contests face difficulties to commercialize the gourmet coffee at a differentiated price, not appropriating so, the generated quasi-rents. Based on the Transaction Costs Economics, it is possible to assert that the appropriation of these quasi-rents is contingent on institutional factors that characterize the grower - industry- customer relationship. In order to evaluate which would be the transaction cost reducing governance structures that would allow appropriation of quasi-rents by the rural segment, it was opted to accomplish a case study of the Alta Mogiana's region growers. Five small and medium cooperated growers, the local cooperative and one major grower were interviewed. The starting point was the hypothesis that the vertical integration would be the most adequate structure. For major growers, that would be a feasible strategy, given the capitalization level. However, the small and medium growers would have to adopt horizontal coordination (cooperative) in order to make vertical integration and brand appropriation possible as well as to facilitate the obtainment of gourmet coffees commercialization contracts with other roasters firms. Either way, the small and medium growers would be able to appropriate the quasi-rents from differentiation. The results demonstrated that for the major grower the verticalized structure is adequate. However, the cooperative system with roaster and own gourmet coffee brand did not present itself as an efficient structure when the small and medium cooperated growers sell differentiated coffee to the cooperative. On the other hand, the horizontal coordination demonstrated being efficient in the intermediation / facilitation of gourmet coffee commercialization contracts for these growers with other roaster firms / Mestrado / Desenvolvimento Economico, Espaço e Meio Ambiente / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Andrew P. Barkley / Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) are one of the most widely used trade policy instruments in agricultural trade. The issue of whether TRQs are efficient trade policy instruments for improving market access has been widely debated. Some believe that TRQs impose an extra barrier to trade, circumvent the reforms sought under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and may not be as attractive as initially envisioned. Others believe that the TRQs are useful and facilitate trade and liberalization. Any expansion in quota, or decrease in tariffs, or combinations of the two, has the potential to liberalize trade in a specific industry. There is strong clamor for continued reforms in the conduct of agricultural trade – including the implementation of TRQs. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of TRQs, and determine the impact of their implementation on the Philippine corn market. Specifically, the study will estimate the quantities of supply, demand, imports, domestic equilibrium prices, and border prices under different TRQ liberalization regimes. In this study, an existing TRQ model was utilized to determine how effective TRQs are as a trade policy instrument for trade liberalization and increasing market access. The results reveal that the Philippine corn market was restricted by the out-quota tariff. De facto liberalization of the TRQ at the level of the out-quota rate (50%) or even at 35% (in-quota rate), does not completely liberalize the corn market. Progressively reducing both tariffs liberalizes the market and leads to increases in surpluses. The lower tariffs, however, lead to less government revenues. The smaller the gap between the in-quota and out-quota, the smaller the quota rents become. Increasing the quotas has no significant impact in liberalizing the corn market, and the increase in imports decrease producer surplus in all cases. The TRQ model of the Philippine corn sector reveals that changing the components of the TRQ would lead to different impacts on supply, demand, consumer, producer and net surplus, and government revenues. Knowledge of the regime in which the country is trading can determine which individual policy instrument of the TRQ, the in-quota and out-quota tariff and the quota, should be used to increase market access or address the concerns of stakeholders in the corn sector. It is thus important for policy makers to find a workable tariff level that would serve the interest of all stakeholders in the sector.

No / This paper examines the effects of geopolitical risks on renewable energy demand in 20 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries from 1970 to 2019. The renewable energy demand function includes carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic globalisation, natural resources rents, and per capita income as control variables. It is found that geopolitical risks reduce the demand for renewable energy and threaten climate change mitigation policies. Degrading the environment in terms of rising CO2 emissions is detrimental to the renewable energy demand. Natural resource rents also decrease renewable energy consumption. However, higher per capita income and economic globalisation significantly increase renewable energy consumption. These findings bear crucial policy implications for the Russia-Ukraine War era, suggesting that geopolitical risks discourage renewable energy demand. Therefore, policymakers in the OECD countries should focus on geopolitical harmony among economic agents, groups, and regions.

Over the past decade, fuzzy systems have gained remarkable acceptance in many fields including control and automation, pattern recognition, medical diagnosis and forecasting. The fuzzy system application has also been accepted as a promising approach to dealing with uncertainty in real estate valuation analysis. This is mainly due to the necessity of coping with a large number of qualitative and quantitative variables that affect the value of a real property. The appraisers use a great deal of judgment to identify both the characteristics that contribute to property values and the relationships among these characteristics in order to derive estimates of market values. This thesis uses the two widely-used fuzzy rule-based systems / namely the Mamdani and Takagi- Sugeno-Kang (TSK) type fuzzy models in an attempt to examine the main determinants of office rents in Istanbul Central Business District (CBD). The input variables of the fuzzy rule-based systems (FRBS) comprise: i) physical attributes of office spaces and office buildings, ii) lease contract terms, and iii) tenants&rsquo / perception of the office rent determinants, tenants&rsquo / location of residence, tenants&rsquo / transportation modes, etc and as the output the system proposes the office property&rsquo / s rental price. Obtaining office rent determinants is a significant issue for both practitioners and academics. While,practitioners use them directly in demand and sensitivity analyses, academics are more interested in the relative significance of these variables and their effect on the variation in office rent to forecast market behavior. Our data set includes a detailed survey of 500 office spaces located in Istanbul CBD. We have carried out two Mamdani-type FRBS and two TSK-type FRBS for the office space and office building data sets. In these FRBS analyses, firstly the so-called representative office spaces are determined, then the average office space rents are estimated. Finally, the spatial variation in the average office rents across the CBD sub-districts, along with the Office space rent variations with respect to different clusters, like number of workers, number of floors and so on, have been analyzed. We believe that presenting the spatial variation in office rents will make a noteworthy contribution both to the real estate investors and appraisers interested in Istanbul office market.

This thesis studies the poor development performance of resource-rich developing economies, known as the resource curse. In the first chapter we provide a comprehensive literature review of the topic and the channels through which resource abundance can result in the resource curse. Issues of corruption and governance have been emphasised to be the main driver of the resource curse. This has been illustrated by a negative relationship between resource abundance and corruption control in the literature. However, there is a gap in how natural resources facilitate corruption. In the second chapter, using empirical analysis, we study the role of taxation in the relationship between natural resources and corruption. Taxation is usually seen as a social contract between citizens and government -- people pay taxes and in return they hold their government accountable for efficient allocation of their taxes. Resource abundance shifts the reliance of government from tax incomes to resource rents. People therefore, have no sustainable mechanism to hold their government responsible for corruption and wrongdoings inside public institutions. Using different econometric methods, Pooled OLS, Fixed Effects and 3SLS, our results show that natural resource revenues crowd out incomes from tax revenues. Meanwhile, taxation has a positive and significant impact on the control of corruption throughout our analysis. The results suggest that resource-rich developing countries should invest in building their tax systems to increase their non-resource tax revenues. This will increase state capacity and demand for accountability in the public sector among citizens and hence decreases corruption. Related to our second chapter, in the third chapter we study a cash transfer programme, known as oil-to-cash, which has gained support as a tool to re-establish taxation and fight corruption. Under such a plan, resource revenues are distributed directly among the public and then each citizen is taxed optimally. Through this, government relies directly and fully on its citizens for its income. Hence, taxation is reinstated and the social contract is revived. Within a general equilibrium model we show how this happens and what the implications are of the oil-to-cash programme for economic growth. Our results clearly show how corruption results in a resource curse. Furthermore, the model explains the variation that is seen in the degree of the resource curse across countries. The study also analyses the practical barriers of the oil-to-cash plan. The study suggests that parallel to (or even prior to) such a plan countries need to invest in building their tax system and increasing their administrative capacities.

The resource curse hypothesis suggests that resource-rich countries show lower economic growth rates compared to resource-poor countries. We add to this literature by providing empirical evidence on a new transmission channel of the resource curse, namely, the negative effect of rents on the quality of education. The cross-country analysis for more than 70 countries shows a significantly positive effect of oil rents on the quantity of education measured by government spending on primary and secondary education. Hence, the underspending hypothesis championed by Gylfason (2001) no longer holds with newer data. However, we find a robust and negative effect of oil rents dependency on the current objective and subjective indicators of quality of education, controlling for a set of other drivers of education quality and regional dummies. Despite spending significant shares of GDP on education, oil-rich countries still suffer from an insufficient quality of primary and secondary education, which may hamper their growth potentials. The significant negative effect of oil rents dependency on education quality can be explained by both the demand (e.g., skill acquisition) and supply (e.g., teacher quality) side channels.

The aim of my diploma thesis is to prepare documents for price calculation and determination of the common rent in the suburb of Brno - Žabovřesky. In this work, I used information from executed leases Realtors Matras&Matras & Real Estate Ltd. and Dvorak. Analysis of factors affecting price formation I have devoted the factors that I considered at that locality as valid for determining the price and verifying their influence on rental prices. I added my own factor into the monitored critical factors. This factor is noise. As the analysis results showed it was a major factor that significantly affects the final price of the lease. His inclusion among the decisive factors was correct. By setting standards and calculation of coefficients, I obtain results that helped determine the normal cost of rent and contributed to the view of the importance of determining the level of the individual factors to calculate the final rental price. Data collection, analysis and examination of the relationships between the key factors, I see as a guide for calculating the normal price, which will be used by districts and the real estate market.

The thesis is devoted to finding the percentage relationship between the advertised rent and the advertised price of commercial land in selected cities. Furthermore, determining the percentage relationship between the advertised rents and the price of commercial land price map.

The resource curse hypothesis suggests that resource-rich countries show lower economic growth rates compared to resource-poor countries. We add to this literature by providing empirical evidence on a new transmission channel of the resource curse, namely, the negative effect of rents on the quality of education. The cross-country analysis for more than 70 countries shows a significantly positive effect of oil rents on the quantity of education measured by government spending on primary and secondary education. Hence, the underspending hypothesis championed by Gylfason (2001) no longer holds with newer data. However, we find a robust and negative effect of oil rents dependency on the current objective and subjective indicators of quality of education, controlling for a set of other drivers of education quality and regional dummies. Despite spending significant shares of GDP on education, oil-rich countries still suffer from an insufficient quality of primary and secondary education, which may hamper their growth potentials. The significant negative effect of oil rents dependency on education quality can be explained by both the demand (e.g., skill acquisition) and supply (e.g., teacher quality) side channels.