This paper applies the concept of damage coefficients introduced in Houba and Kremers (2008) to provide an estimate of the cost of climate change in particular the cost of changes in mean regional temperature and precipitation to the fruit vegetation sector. We concentrate on the production of apples in the German ‘Alte Land’ region. The estimated cost of climate change on apple-growing in the ...

A two-region model is proposed in this paper. Manufactured goods can be produced with cottage technology under constant returns to scale or with modern technology using differentiated intermediate goods, which are produced with increasing returns to scale technology. In the model, there may be multiple equilibria, and, in such cases, the initial conditions determine the equilibrium that the eco...

We examine stability under learning of sunspot equilibria in Real Business Cycle type models with indeterminacies. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of examining alternative representations of sunspot solutions. A general bivariate reduced form contains parameter regions in which sunspots are stable under learning. However, for parameters restricted to those generated by standard models of...

Using data from the General Social Survey, we study the role of income in self-reported happiness. Unexpected income gains increase happiness but individual happiness is not very persistent over time. Relative income is more important than absolute income, in particular, income relative to individuals’ own cohort working in the same occupation group, and living in the same region. Perceptions a...

This paper analyses the role barriers to trade in the form of high transaction costs have on market participation and supply response in rural food markets in developing countries. We present an empirical application on a sample of households in the Tanzanian region of Kagera. Exploiting the availability of a long term panel dataset to develop an error components switching regression model we c...

Migration, Transfers and Child Labor We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children’s...

This paper investigates the relationship between the cooperative behavior of manufacturing establishments in a region and the efficiency of their R&D activities using data for eleven European regions. Some significant differences in the attitude towards R&D cooperation, as well as with regard to the efficiency of R&D activities between the regions can be found. However, these two issues appear ...

This paper investigates the growth factors of EU regions in the 1990s. We test the hypothesis that regional growth is determined by endogenous growth factors, trade and technological catching-up in a growth accounting framework. Our estimations suggest that growth of EU regions is positively related to the accumulation of physical and human capital. Innovation activity as well as international ...

UK regional policy has been advocated as a means of reducing regional disparities and stimulating national growth. However, there is limited understanding of the interregional and national effects of such a policy. This paper uses an interregional computable general equilibrium model to identify the national impact of a policy-induced regional demand shock under alternative labour market closur...

We study pure exchange economies with symmetries on preferences up to taste intensity transformations. In a 2-person, 2-good endowment economy, we show that bilateral symmetry on each utility functional precludes a rectangle in the Edgeworth box as the location of Pareto optimal allocations. Under strictly quasi-concave preferences, a larger set can be ruled out. The inadmissible region is stil...