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Many empirical studies have shown that government quality is a key determinant of vulnerability to natural disasters. Protection against natural disasters can be a public good -- flood protection, for example -- or a natural monopoly --…
Opportunities, such as access to education or family background, shape income inequality by influencing the chances of economic success. Unequal opportunities create uncertainty about whether success is merit- or luck-based. We examine how…
We demonstrate by mathematical analysis and systematic computer simulations that redistribution can lead to sustainable growth in a society. The human capital dynamics of each agent is described by a stochastic multiplicative process which,…
This paper reexamines the validity of the natural resource curse hypothesis, using the database of mineral exporting countries. Our findings are as follows: (i) Resource-rich countries (RRCs) do not necessarily exhibit poor political,…
The consequences of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, are evident: death, coordination problems, destruction of infrastructure, and displacement of population. However, according to empirical research, the impact of a natural disaster…
We study how efficient resource reallocation across cities affects potential aggregate growth. Using optimal resource allocation models and data on 284 China's prefecture-level cities in the years 2003--2019, we quantitatively measure the…
The concept of capacity value is widely used to quantify the contribution of additional generation (most notably renewables) within generation adequacy assessments. This paper surveys the existing probability theory of assessment of the…
The sustainability of cooperation is crucial for understanding the progress of societies. We study a repeated game in which individuals decide the share of their income to transfer to other group members. A central feature of our model is…
In contemporary society, the effective utilization of public resources remains a subject of significant concern. A common issue arises from defectors seeking to obtain an excessive share of these resources for personal gain, potentially…
Despite rapidly-expanding academic and policy interest in the links between natural resource wealth and development failures (commonly referred to as the resource curse) little attention has been devoted to the psychology behind the…
We introduce a highly stylized, yet non trivial model of the economy, with a public and private sector coupled through a wealth tax and a redistribution policy. The model can be fully solved analytically, and allows one to address the…
Recent studies have found evidence of a negative association between economic complexity and inequality at the country level. Moreover, evidence suggests that sophisticated economies tend to outsource products that are less desirable (e.g.…
Using administrative data on Taiwanese lottery winners, this paper examines the effects of cash windfalls on entrepreneurship. We compare the start-up decisions of households winning more than 1.5 million NTD (50,000 USD) in the lottery in…
In the so-called ``fair'' models of peer-to-peer wealth exchanges, economic inequality tends to reach its maximum value asymptotically. This global trend is evident as the richest continuously accumulate a larger share of wealth at the…
Many studies have analyzed how variability in reproductive success affects fitness. However, each study tends to focus on a particular problem, leaving unclear the overall structure of variability in populations. This fractured conceptual…
Many outputs of cities scale in universal ways, including infrastructure, crime, and economic activity. Through a mathematical model, this study investigates the interplay between such scaling laws in human organization and governmental…
We show that when firms compete via supply functions, transferring high-cost capacity to the largest, most efficient firm--thereby diversifying its production technologies while increasing concentration--can lower prices by prompting the…
This paper analyzes the strategic interactions between a profit-maximizing monopolist and a free, capacity-constrained public option. By restricting its own supply, the monopolist intentionally congests the public option and induces…
This paper explores the interplay between transfer policies, R\&D, corruption, and economic development using a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and a government. The government collects taxes, redistributes fiscal…
In the study of the Political Resource Curse (Brollo et al.,2013), the authors identified a new channel to investigate whether the windfalls of resources are unambiguously beneficial to society, both with theory and empirical evidence. This…