Tinbergen Institute

About: Tinbergen Institute is a education organization based out in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Volatility (finance) & Competition (economics). The organization has 565 authors who have published 3157 publications receiving 82800 citations.

Fair Agreements for Sharing International Rivers with Multiple Springs and Externalities

Abstract: In this paper we consider the problem of sharing water from a river among a group of agents (countries, cities, firms) located along the river. The benefit of each agent depends on the amount of water consumed by the agent. An allocation of the water among the agents is efficient when it maximizes the total benefits. To sustain an efficient water allocation, the agents can compensate each other by paying monetary transfers. Every water allocation and transfer schedule yields a welfare distribution, where the utility of an agent is equal to its benefit from the water consumption plus its monetary transfer (which can be negative). The problem of finding a fair welfare distribution can be modelled by a cooperative game. For a river with one spring and increasing benefit functions, Ambec and Sprumont (2002) propose the downstream incremental solution as the unique welfare distribution that is core-stable and satisfies the condition that no agent gets a utility payoff above its aspiration level. Ambec and Ehlers (2008) generalized the Ambec and Sprumont river game to river situations with satiable agents, i.e., the benefit function is decreasing beyond some satiation point. In such situations externalities appear, yielding a cooperative game in partition function form. In this paper we consider river situations with satiable agents and with multiple springs. For this type of river systems we propose the class of so-called weighted hierarchical solutions as the class of solutions satisfying several principles to be taken into account for solving water disputes. When every agent has an increasing benefit function (no externalities) then every weighted hierarchical solution is core-stable. In ca! se of satiation points, it appears that every weighted hierarchical solution is independent of the externalities.

Marriage and the City

Abstract: Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing premium remains. We extend the model of Burdett and Coles (1997) with a distinction between efficient (cities) and less efficient (non-cities) search markets. One implication of the model is that singles are more likely to move from rural areas to cities while married couples are more likely to make the reverse movement. A second prediction of the model is that attractive singles benefit most from a dense market (i.e. from being choosy). Those predictions are tested with a unique Danish dataset.

An economic analysis of fuel use per kilometre by private cars.

Abstract: In recent years economists have carried out a lot of research on the effect of fuel prices on car ownership and use but have devoted far less attention to the style of driving the car and its consequences for energy use and environmental damage. Nevertheless, the style of driving the car seems to be an important determinant of total fuel use. Those who take care that their car is well maintained and drive gently cause less environmental damage and have lower fuel expenditure. It seems interesting therefore to investigate the presence of large and systematic inefficiencies in fuel use per kilometre driven and their dependence on fuel prices. Although the effect of fuel prices through driver behaviour on fuel use per kilometre driven is predicted clearly by economic theory, almost no empirical research on the relationship between both variables appears to have been undertaken. The only example that can be cited is an investigation of the possible influence of higher gasoline prices on the average speed of automobiles on highways in the Netherlands (Pronk and Blok, 1991 ). No significant effects could be detected. However, in a recent survey of research on the price elasticity of fuel demand Goodwin (1992) remarks that there are clear indirect indications about the existence of such an effect:

Supplemental health insurance and equality of access in Belgium.

Abstract: The effects of supplemental health insurance on health-care consumption crucially depend on specific institutional features of the health-care system. We analyse the situation in Belgium, a country with a very broad coverage in compulsory social health insurance and where supplemental insurance mainly refers to extra-billing in hospitals. Within this institutional background, we find only weak evidence of adverse selection in the coverage of supplemental health insurance. We find much stronger effects of socio-economic background. We estimate a bivariate probit model and cannot reject the assumption of exogeneity of insurance availability for the explanation of health-care use. A count model for hospital care shows that supplemental insurance has no significant effect on the number of spells, but a negative effect on the number of nights per spell. We comment on the implications of our findings for equality of access to health care in Belgium.