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What explains and justifies factor shares, that is, the returns that workers and capital owners receive on their contribution to economic production? Arguably, neither economic theory nor theories of distributive justice give a satisfactory answer to this question. One important explanation of this shortcoming, this paper argues, lies in the fact that they fail to take the full measure of the phenomenon of increasing returns from specialisation or, as economist often call it, of total factor productivity. This paper aims to fill this gap by asking what follows for distributive justice from taking this phenomenon seriously. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, it demonstrates in detail how a sophisticated division of labour creates a cooperative surplus. Second, it puts forward a counterfactual experiment to measure this surplus. Third and crucially, the paper argues that justice requires an equal division of this surplus and that this idea turns out to be a surprisingly ecumenical one. The final section defends the equal surplus proposal against two objections, namely the suggestion that an equal distribution of the cooperative surplus is either politically unfeasible or economically inefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We strongly reject the hypothesis of theater design revenue neutrality using a large dataset of Chinese theaters. Instead, we find large increasing returns in revenue from adding auditoria up to 9 auditoria, close to constant returns from adding seats up to an intermediate seating capacity of about 120 seats, beyond which decreasing returns prevail, and a large revenue premium to having an Imax auditorium. These revenue gains are largely due to differences in capacity utilization rates, and to a lower extent to differences in screening intensity (more showings per screen), while price differences play a negligible role. We discuss various mechanisms that may rationalize deviations from theater design neutrality. We conclude that a large fraction of Chinese theaters have too few auditoria and too many seats per auditorium, although this is less so for recently built ones. These violations of profit maximization are likely explained by the long-term, irreversible, and risky nature of theater design choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julian Simon famously argued that economic growth is correlated with population growth. The basis for this correlation is what Simon refers to as the "ultimate resource," namely the human mind and the collective stock of dispersed, tacit, and inarticulate knowledge among individuals. Though not incorrect, this simple rendition of his argument does not do full justice to the inspiration that Simon took from the mainline of economic thought. The purpose of this paper is to situate Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource as part of the mainline of development economics. I do so by developing an implicit and underappreciated relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth in Simon's The Ultimate Resource. I argue that this correlation between economic growth and population growth is predicated on what Simon refers to as "economies of scope." This implies twofold. First, that a Smithian division of labor and a Hayekian division of knowledge emerge simultaneously, but are inherently predicated on a Misesian division of private property rights. Secondly, population growth is a proximate cause of economic growth, and therefore a by-product of a more fundamental institutional foundation: an ever-increasing scope in the ability of individuals to exchange ideas, goods, and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work consists of a survey of the academic work of Paul Robin Krugman. It seeks to shed light on his main contributions to economic theory, mainly those for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008. His legacy in academia can be assessed through the recognition of his work on the identification of international trade patterns and the explanation on why spatial imbalances in the distribution of economic activities arise in an increasingly globalized economy. Through these contributions to trade theory and economic geography, Krugman is often credited as being one of the pioneering researchers in the New Trade Theory and the founding father (together with Masahisa Fujita) of the New Economic Geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Buchanan's work on increasing returns and anticommons. The two topics have externality as a common element. And size matters in both cases. Increasing returns is a case of positive externalities, the anti-commons is a case of negative externalities. Buchanan demonstrated that a work ethic generates economy-wide benefits in a setting of generalized increasing returns. In contrast, unanimity (in anticommons) can make it more difficult to address other externality problems in analyzing work ethic and moral community. This article provides an overview of both these areas of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we present a number of urn models in which, contrary to standard Pólya urns, the number of competing alternatives is not given from the outset but may increase with the arrival of innovations. We begin by describing a variant of Pólya urns, first introduced by Fred Hoppe, in which balls of previously non-existing colors are added with some (declining) probability. We then propose new variants in which the probability of the arrival of new colors is itself subject to adaptive change depending on the success of past innovations and discuss applications to evolutionary models of technologies and industries. We numerically simulate different specifications of these urns with adaptively changing mutation rate and show that they can account for complex patterns of evolution in which periods of exploration and innovation are followed by periods in which the dynamics of the system is driven by selection among a stable set of alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential interactions in the global economy between the impacts of climate change on productivity with existing technology, and increasing returns in the development of less vulnerable and lower-emission technology. A simple specification is used in which the global economy can produce a single homogeneous consumption good with two different technologies. The 'old' technology has global diminishing returns to scale and depends on the use of fossil energy that gives rise to long-lived, damaging climate change. The 'new' technology has convex-concave production due to set-up cost and is not vulnerable to climate change. Through simulations we show that if output with the new technology does not grow fast enough to move through the phase of increasing returns, then the economy could experience an 'environmental growth trap'-lingering at a low level of income indefinitely, or achieving some progress but then getting driven back to a lower level of income by productivity-reducing environmental degradation. We discuss how the prospects of such a trap depend on the productivity and energy intensity of the old technology as well as the magnitude of the set-up cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines an efficient market organization for awarding monopoly franchises to assure investment efficiency and revenue sufficiency under conditions of increasing returns. A two-stage auction design achieves ex ante and ex post efficiency by ensuring that the firm with the best technology will be selected, and after winning, the firm will operate at the least cost and price at the marginal cost. Priority-differentiated subscription service fosters self-revelation of demand functions and facilitates fixed cost recovery. With known demand functions, a linear subscription price schedule based on the beneficiary-pay principle achieves efficient fixed cost recovery. With unknown demand functions, a two-part subscription price menu based on nonlinear Ramsey pricing attains an incentive-compatible, second-best result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of industries is studied in a general equilibrium model in which firms producing manufactured products engage in oligopolistic competition. The agricultural product is produced by land and labor and there is intersectoral labor mobility between the agricultural sector and the manufacturing sector. Results are derived analytically. When worker units are divisible, concentration of all workers in one region is not stable. The role of land in the production of the agricultural product is important in affecting the distribution of industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is population not evenly distributed throughout a country’s territory? This paper focuses on the case of Spain, in order to empirically test two complementary theoretical explanations: (a) first nature advantages or locational fundamentals; and (b) second nature advantages or increasing returns. We estimate population density and population growth equations for the case of Spain between 1787 and 2000. Our results suggest that locational fundamentals explain the distribution of population prior to industrialization and that industrialization reinforced the pre-existing regional population disparities, especially as the share of increasing-returns sectors in the Spanish economy became significant. Finally, we perform an ANOVA analysis which shows that although in the pre-industrial economy first nature advantages were the most important in explaining the growth in provincial population densities, these were progressively superseded by the influence of first via second nature effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers implementation of marginal cost pricing equilibrium allocations with transfers for production economies with increasing returns to scale. We present a mechanism whose Nash equilibrium allocations coincide with the set of marginal cost pricing equilibrium allocations with transfers that characterizes Pareto efficient allocations for economies with non-convex production technologies. We allow production sets and preferences to be unknown to the planner. The mechanism has some nice properties such as feasibility, continuity, and finite-dimension of message space. Furthermore, it works not only for three or more agents, but also for two-agent economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the influence on the general equilibrium of an economy of the opening of markets of allowances, such as the European Union Emission Trading Scheme. Assuming there existed an equilibrium before the opening of allowances’ markets, we describe the changes in the firms behavior which guarantee that an equilibrium can be reached in the enlarged economy. Hence we describe under which conditions the economy can undergo the opening of markets of allowances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological knowledge can be understood as a collective good when it is the outcome of the integration between internal to the firm investments in R&D and learning and the absorption of competencies and technologies provided by external organizations (such as, other firms, universities, R&D centers). Technological communication is a crucial strategy in such dynamic interaction between the firm and the system. Only under effective conditions of technological communication the private and social benefits derived from the exploitation of spillovers are higher than the private losses due to partial inappropriability. The article presents a simple microeconomic framework to understand knowledge production and distribution, integrating the effects and conditions of technological communication within a knowledge production function. The interaction between internal investments in R&D and learning, partial inappropriability, the conditions for the access to external knowledge and the exploitation of spillovers explains increasing returns in the production of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fixed budget must be allocated to a finite number of different projects with uncertain outputs. The expected marginal productivity of capital in a project first increases then decreases with the amount of capital invested. Such behavior is common when output is a probability (of escaping infection, succeeding with an R&D project...). When the total budget is below some threshold, it is invested in a single project. Above this cutoff, the share invested in a project can be discontinuous and non-monotone in the total budget. Above an upper cutoff, all projects receive more capital as the budget increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a tighter definition for the marginal (cost) pricing rule. By means of an example, we illustrate the improvements that one gets with the new definition with respect to the former one using Clarke’s normal cone, and we discuss its consequences in terms of the existence of equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ a model with both market production and home production to show that, ignoring administrative costs and indirect effects (such as rent-seeking), even if both the home and the market sectors have the condition of increasing returns and there are no pre-existing taxes, it is still efficient to tax the home sector to finance a subsidy on the market sector to offset the under-production of the latter due to the failure of price-taking consumers to take account of the effects of higher consumption in reducing the average costs and hence prices, through increasing returns or the publicness nature of fixed costs. Within market production, it is efficient to subsidise more the sector with a higher fixed cost, a lower elasticity of substitution between goods (higher value of diversity), and a lower degree of importance in preference, which all increase the degree of increasing returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops mathematically and empirically tractable regional and interregional model of economic development with increasing returns to scale (IRS) under the neoclassical assumptions. A one-sector, two-region model in which one region exhibits IRS is presented and the whole nation presents constant returns to scale. The development of the local IRS economy is shown to be constrained to a “moving equilibrium” path. The preliminary empirical results are sufficiently supportive of the argument to encourage further research along the lines of the model. In particular, the neoclassical model does not predict negative coefficients on the real rental value of capital in regressions explaining population or employment relative to that in the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a simple bilateral oligopoly model in which individual agents, who are initially endowed with capital, decide sequentially (1) whether they want to act as producers (entrepreneurs) or as capital lenders (rentiers) and, then (2) which quantity of capital they would like to borrow or lend, though exchange of capital units against units of the produced good. Production takes place under increasing returns to scale. We show the existence of "natural equilibria", at which wealthier capital owners become entrepreneurs while the remaining ones decide to be rentiers. We also study the efficiency of equilibria which is shown to increase by replication of the economy, but sometimes to decrease as a consequence of wealth redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting homothetic variable returns to scale functional specifications, this study identifies the returns to scale in the aggregate production functions of four East Asian newly industrialized economies–Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan–and the Group of Five economies based on a maximum likelihood estimation. The study finds evidence of increasing returns in the early developmental stage of the East Asian economies. Separating out the scale contribution from the non-scale factor contributions, the decomposition of the sources of East Asian economic growth differs significantly from the conventional constant returns to scale results, indicating that the role of technical progress is overestimated when constant returns to scale is assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates Krugman’s (J Polit Econ 99:413–499, 1991) economic geography model using data from the Spanish NUTS 3 regions. The econometric formalization endogenously determines wages in a region as a function of income and wages in other regions. The specification adopted also allows us to study the relation between the agglomeration of economic activity, increasing returns and market access. The first result obtained is that the Spanish economy exhibits a spatial wage structure: wages in a region are positively determined by income and wages in neighboring regions. In second place it is found support for the structural relations of the underlying theoretical model, indicating the importance of scale economies and transport costs in shaping the Spanish economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to understand the limits of an exhilarationist regime from a theoretical point of view. We propose a model where distributive shares are endogenously determined by assuming labor productivity to vary with the level of output/capacity utilization due to economies of scale. With an additional assumption of investment being determined by profit share we have a self-reinforcing interaction between the level of output and distribution of income in this model. Is there a limit to such a cumulative process? Here we analyze this question without relying on exogenous mechanisms such as ``ceiling/floor'' concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-agent model is presented to discuss the market dynamics and the size distribution of firms. The model emphasizes the effects of increasing returns to scale and gives the description of the born and death of adaptive producers. The evolution of market structure and its behavior under the technological shocks are investigated. Its dynamical results are in good agreement with some empirical “stylized facts” of industrial evolution. With the diversity of demand and adaptive growth strategies of firms, the firm size in the generalized model obeys the power-law distribution. Three factors mainly determine the competitive dynamics and the skewed size distributions of firms: 1. Self-reinforcing mechanism; 2. Adaptive firm growing strategies; 3. Demand diversity or widespread heterogeneity in the technological capabilities of firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper meant to analyze the spatial evolution of a large country in its process of integration with the world economy in general, and, to look into the possible effect of China’s accession into WTO on the future development of its spatial economy in particular. Through an approach of increasing returns, external economy, product differentiation and path-dependence, with foreign trade costs incurred by different regions within the large country discriminated, a model of investment and employment flow is developed as a simulation of a large country’s process of integration with the world economy. The modeling indicates that in the process of integration, as there exist differences in foreign trade costs among different regions within the large country, either the spatial economy of the country deviates from its symmetric structure in autarky and falls into a core-periphery relationship, or the effect of industrial agglomeration is reinforced, amplified and locked in, if the agglomeration had been started. The economic gap on either the aggregate or structural basis between different regions within the large country will increase rapidly as the integration proceeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of economic integration—widening of the trading area—on economic development and the demographic transition. Economies produce with different technologies depending on their scale. Greater integration between regions (greater extensive scale) is instrumental in changing rates of return, which generates an industrial revolution and provokes changes in child bearing behavior. The demographic transition follows from the mortality response to income and birth response to greater scale. The model is calibrated and simulated using historical data from Europe. Historical evidence is cited to support the idea that integration precedes the dramatic rise in economic growth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a case of trade with dynamic learning, a continuum of varieties of a vertically differentiated product, and two countries differing only slightly in population size. The results are as follows. Since increasing returns continuously allow consumers to afford higher-quality versions of the good, a quality-based product cycle is generally required for the two initial market shares to persist over time; however, with dynamic learning the conditions for such a cycle to take place are severe. Then, in spite of the self-reinforcing nature of the pattern of spezialization, one of the two countries' market segments (the lower-quality one) is likely to shrink endogenously over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a general equilibrium model of an economy with increasing returns to scale or more general types of nonconvexity and without ordered preferences. Firms are instructed to set their prices according to general pricing rules which may depend on the production plans of other firms. We suppose, moreover, that the pricing rule of the firms verifies a condition of weak bounded losses. This includes the case of profit maximizing, average cost pricing and marginal (cost) pricing, thanks to a transformation used by Bonnisseau. The tastes of the consumers may depend both on other consumptions and on the prices This paper reports a general existence result in this model which extends the results of Bonnisseau and Cornet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show that equilibria in an economy with increasing returns to scale technologies are computable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]