We study whether pessimism and optimism about the future by forward looking agents provides a rationale for social security. We first distinguish between an agent's true and pessimistic preferences and then analyze whether this agent's level of saving depends on the pessimism parameter (π) and...

We analyze inefficiency and inequality associated with the use of creative capital to produce a final good. We first study a case in which the creative capital units are perfect substitutes in the production of the final good. We show that the equilibrium outcome is inefficient and that there is...

We analyze inefficiency and inequality associated with the use of creative capital to produce a final good. We first study a case in which the creative capital units are perfect substitutes in the production of the final good. We show that the equilibrium outcome is inefficient and that there is...

The regional economics and geography literature on urban population size has in recent years shown interesting conceptual and methodological contributions on the validity of Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law. Despite distinct modeling features, they express similar fundamental characteristics in an...

The regional economics and geography literature on urban population size has in recent years shown interesting conceptual and methodological contributions on the validity of Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law. Despite distinct modeling features, they express similar fundamental characteristics in an...

The regional economics and geography literature on urban population size has in recent years shown interesting conceptual and methodological contributions on the validity of Gibrat’s Law and Zipf’s Law. Despite distinct modeling features, they express similar fundamental characteristics in...

Since 1990, Central and East European economies have experienced increasing integration with the European Union via trade and direct foreign investments. The spatial implications of this process have not been investigated in-depth so far. Have patterns of regional specialization changed over the...

The geographical distribution and persistence of regional/local unemployment rates in heterogeneous economies (such as Germany) have been, in recent years, the subject of various theoretical and empirical studies. Several researchers have shown an interest in analysing the dynamic adjustment...

An avalanche of empirical studies has addressed the validity of the rank-size rule (or Zipf's law) in a multi-city context in many countries. City size in most countries seems to obey Zipf's law, but the question under which conditions (e.g. sample size, spatial scale) this 'law' holds remained...

The present paper considers urban sprawl in Europe from a multi- dimensional and exploratory point of view. Several literatures on the topic (mainly from urban economics, but also from other fields such as urban planning or regional science) are reviewed to extract the main dimensions of the...