Perfect Mobility Research Articles

The Effects of Roads on Trade and Migration: Evidence from a Planned Capital City

A large body of literature studies how infrastructure facilitates trade. We ask whether infrastructure also facilitates migration. Using a general equilibrium trade model and rich spatial data, we study the impact of a large, plausibly exogenous shock to highways in Brazil on both goods and labor markets. We find the highway system increased welfare by 2.8 percent, of which 76 percent was due to reduced trade costs and 24 percent to reduced migration costs. An implication of costly migration is spatial heterogeneity in benefits: the range of welfare improvement is 1 to 15 percent, as opposed to uniform gains with perfect mobility. (JEL H54, H76, O18, R23, R42, R53)

A stochastic analysis of hedge funds’ higher moments

Utilizing hedge fund data, we investigate the mobility properties of higher moments both individually and jointly. Using a Markov chain model, we estimate, for the first time, transition matrices for the sector and by investment strategy, describing the probabilistic structure of Skewness, Kurtosis and Joint transitions. We further apply various indices to provide the anatomy of the dynamics. Additionally, we estimate three Probit models as a validation tool. We find a near perfect mobility toward Nonnormality across the investment strategies and the sector as a whole, for both higher moments and their joint movement. Only a limited number of investment strategies are capable of maintaining Normality for consecutive periods in the joint framework, while mobility indices confirm the findings of the transition matrices.

A review of electric vehicle technology: Architectures, battery technology and its management system, relevant standards, application of artificial intelligence, cyber security, and interoperability challenges

AbstractCurrently, there is an increased global climate change awareness, and the world is tending towards net zero emissions. The transportation sector is leading in Green House Gas emissions (GHG). Furthermore, the diminishing reserves of fossil fuels, the need for cheaper maintenance vehicles, more efficient drive trains, and better performance vehicles presents a challenge in ICE. Electric Vehicles (EVs) offer the perfect mobility solution which can replace the conventional ICE in the near future. This article comprehensively reviews the components and advances in the various technologies employed in electric vehicles to achieve efficiency in motion and optimise energy management in electric vehicles. This article gives an analysis of the current EV scenario globally. It then details the different configurations of electric vehicle architectures available. The battery is discussed, and the various electrochemical technologies are analysed. Battery Management Systems (BMS) to efficiently manage energy are discussed. The charging methods, voltage levels, and relevant standards are outlined in detail. The traction motors and power conversion technologies are reported with advancements in electric vehicle applications. Furthermore, this article gives a comprehensive overview of various emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML), to improve EVs' performance through digitalisation. On the other hand, cybersecurity has become an ever‐challenging issue in EVs due to the increasing use of digital technologies. This article thoroughly overviews cybersecurity challenges in EV applications and explains possible proactive measures. Interoperability arising from various EV manufacturers' many different charging designs is discussed.

Unemployment, Labor Mobility, and Climate Policy

We develop a computable general equilibrium model of the United States economy to study the unemployment effects of climate policy and the importance of cross-sectoral labor mobility. We consider two alternate extreme assumptions about labor mobility: either perfect mobility, as is assumed in much previous work, or perfect immobility. The effect of a $35 per ton carbon tax on aggregate unemployment is small and similar across the two labor mobility assumptions (0.2–0.3 percentage points). The effect on unemployment in fossil fuel sectors is much larger under the immobility assumption – a 30 percentage-point increase in the coal sector – suggesting that models omitting labor mobility frictions may greatly under-predict sectoral unemployment effects. Returning carbon tax revenue through labor tax cuts can dampen or even reverse negative impacts on unemployment, while command-and-control policies yield larger unemployment effects.

Labor markets: A critical link between global-local shocks and their impact on agriculture

Labor markets can shape the impacts of global market developments and local sustainability policies on agricultural outcomes, including changes in production and land use. Yet local labor market outcomes, including agricultural employment, migration and wages, are often overlooked in integrated assessment models (IAMs). The relevance of labor markets has become more important in recent decades, with evidence of diminished labor mobility in the United States (US) and other developed countries. We use the SIMPLE-G (Simplified International Model of agricultural Prices, Land use, and the Environment) modeling framework to investigate the impacts of a global commodity price shock and a local sustainable groundwater use policy in the US. SIMPLE-G is a multi-scale framework designed to allow for integration of economic and biophysical determinants of sustainability, using fine-scale geospatial data and parameters. We use this framework to compare the impacts of the two sets of shocks under two contrasting assumptions: perfect mobility of agricultural labor, as generally implicit in global IAMs, and relatively inelastic labor mobility (‘sticky’ agricultural labor supply response). We supplement the numerical simulations with analytical results from a stylized two-input model to provide further insights into the impacts of local and global shocks on agricultural labor, crop production and resource use. Findings illustrate the key role that labor mobility plays in shaping both local and global agricultural and environmental outcomes. In the perfect labor mobility scenario, the impact of a commodity price boom on crop production, employment and land-use is overestimated compared with the restricted labor mobility case. In the case of the groundwater sustainability policy, the perfect labor mobility scenario overestimates the reduction in crop production and employment in directly targeted grids as well as spillover effects that increase employment in other grids. For both shocks, impacts on agricultural wages are completely overlooked if we ignore rigidities in agricultural labor markets.

Financial Revolution: From Traditional Finance to Behavioral and Neuro-finance

The paper aims to study the growth and evolution of finance, as well as how the evolution of finance theories aids investors in decision-making. The traditional finance model's perfect mobility and rationality fail to predict the economic events, dot-com bubble, and the European debt crisis. These economic disasters provide the foundation for the development of behavioral finance. Psychology and finance are merged into behavioral finance. It defies the traditional financial premise. The field provides unique insights into financial and investment decision making models. Behavioral finance also serves as a bridge for developing novel financial solutions known as Neurofinance. Neurofinance employs neurotechnology to explain participants' behaviour and predict their future behaviour based on observing their brains and hormonal activity.

Should unemployment insurance be centralized in a state union? Unearthing a principle of efficient federation building*

AbstractOur study compares the efficiency of unemployment insurance programs in a state union. A centralized insurance will pool the cost of unemployment; this results in a collective bargaining in the member states, which leads to excessively high wages and inefficient insurance. Those high wages attract workers who reduce the outsourced economic cost of unemployment. Only with perfect mobility, this opposing migration effect completely outweighs the pooling effect, and the insurance is no longer inefficient when centralized. Furthermore, we conclude that a principle of efficient federal systems might be that fiscally linked economic policies and institutions should be governed on the same federative level.

Testing the Ricardian Model: Do the Data Confirm the Assumptions?

The insight of David Ricardo’s international trade theory can be proved by the way he managed to capture the economic problems of his era and by the fact that his theory is still studied and applied in the construction of new economic models and theories. Ricardo has accepted Adam Smith’s idea, that the “absolute advantage” determines domestic output and trade between countries, under the assumption of perfect mobility of factors of production. The aim of this paper is to do an empirical analysis of Ricardo’s model not only to test the validity of his assumptions, but also to see what are the main categories of goods that the European Union, the United States and Japan export and which specialization should each of them choose.

Economic real-time energy trading services for electric vehicles with uncertain mobility demand

Real-time energy trading services have recently been proposed to facilitate the transition from vehicles with combustion engines to e-vehicles. Such services involve e-vehicle owners and a provider of energy trading skills, where the latter manages e-vehicle (dis-)charging at real-time energy prices. We propose and evaluate a data-driven optimization approach for the operational management of services that address e-vehicle owners with uncertain mobility demand and with a solar generator. We formulate the management problem as a sequential decision problem, and propose to solve it by integrating a lookahead policy with a safety energy buffering approach. We study by computer simulation the economic sustainability and the practical viability of the services under different degrees of mobility demand uncertainty, and for different e-vehicle owner types. We assess the negative impact of the uncertainty on both financial value and mobility demand satisfaction of the services. We show that our optimization approach with time-dependent energy buffering enables high mobility demand satisfaction while achieving, even in the case of extreme mobility demand uncertainty, on average at least 92% of the financial value that can be achieved under quasi-deterministic mobility demand. We show that combining our approach with departure time flexibility is sufficient to reach perfect mobility demand satisfaction and a further increase of the financial value.

Pollution in a globalized world: Are debt transfers among countries a solution?

AbstractWe analyze the effects of a debt relief, that is, a decrease in public debt of a low‐income country financed by a high‐income country, on environmental quality. Under perfect mobility of assets, the debt relief increases the overall capital stock, and environmental quality when public abatements are sufficiently efficient. Welfare in both countries can also improve. Under a weak mobility of assets, capital does no more increase in the richest country, but environmental quality can improve. This comes from a crowding‐out effect of debt in the high‐income country, which does no more take place when the mobility of assets is significant.

Simulating the mechanics behind sub-optimal mobility and the associated economic losses in dairy production

Hoof disorders and sub-optimal mobility (SOM) are economically important health issues in dairy farming. Although the dynamics of hoof disorders have an important effect on cow mobility, they have not been considered in previous simulation models that estimate the economic loss of SOM. Furthermore, these models do not consider the varying severities of SOM. The objective of this study was to develop a novel bio-economic simulation model to simulate the dynamics of 8 hoof disorders: digital dermatitis (DD), interdigital hyperplasia (HYP), interdigital dermatitis/heel-horn erosion (IDHE), interdigital phlegmon (IP), overgrown hoof (OH), sole haemorrhage (SH), sole ulcer (SU) and white-line disease (WLD), their role in SOM, and estimate the economic loss of SOM in a herd of 125 dairy cows. A Reed-Frost model was used for DD and a Greenwood model for the other 7 hoof disorders. Economic analysis was conducted per mobility score according to a 5-point mobility scoring method (1 = perfect mobility; 5 = severely impaired mobility) by comparing a scenario with SOM and one without SOM. Parameters used in the model were based on literature and expert opinion and deemed credible during model validation rounds. Results showed that the mean cumulative incidence for maximum mobility scores 2–5 SOM episodes were respectively 34, 16, 7 and <1 episodes per 100 cows per pasture period and 39, 19, 8, <1 episodes per 100 cows per housing period. The mean total annual economic loss due to SOM resulting from the hoof disorders under study was €15,342: €122 per cow per year. The economic analysis uncovered direct economic losses that could be directly linked to SOM episodes and indirect economic losses that could not be directly linked to SOM episodes but arose due to the presence of SOM. The mean total annual direct economic loss for maximum mobility score 2–5 SOM episodes was €1129, €3098, €4354 and €480, respectively. The mean total annual indirect economic loss varied considerably between the 5th and 95th percentiles: €−6174 and €19,499, and had a mean of €6281. This loss was composed of additional indirect culling due to SOM (∼65%) and changes in the overall herd milk production (∼35%) because of additional younger replacement heifers entering the herd due to increased culling rates. The bio-economic model presented novel results with respect to indirect economic losses arising due to SOM. The results can be used to stimulate farmer awareness and promote better SOM management.

Suresh Narayanan Comments on The Global Macroeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: Seven Scenarios

Suresh Narayanan Comments on The Global Macroeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: Seven Scenarios

Performance of Chromic Acetate-HPAM Gel for Flue Gas Mobility Control in Low-Permeability Reservoir

Chromium acetate-HPAM gel is developed to solve the gas channeling problem in low-permeability flue gas flooding reservoirs. Polyacrylamide with low molecular weight of 2 million is optimized as the main agent to construct an organic chromium gel system. The acid resistance performance and blocking capacity of the gel system are evaluated afterwards. It is revealed by the tests that acid components in flue gas have a severe impact on the gelation time, strength as well as long-term stability of the cross-linked gels. Rheological tests show that the gel system embodies with high elastic modulus in flue gas environment at 42°C, which ensures its favorable performance in core flooding tests. After gel application in cores, the permeability reduction can reach up to 99% and 97% separately while water flooding and flue gas flooding. The chromium acetate-HPAM gel exhibits perfect mobility control ability and possesses immense potential as regulating blocking system in low-permeability flue gas flooding reservoirs.

Accounting for Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in France over the 20th Century: Method and Estimations

We propose a new and simple method to study intergenerational wealth correlation between two generations, which is easy to implement in wealth (and housing) surveys and aims at overcoming the strong data limitation faced in most of the countries. We show that the ownership of housing assets can be used to proxy for three wealth groups for all cohorts. Misclassification induces a low and downward bias in the estimate of the intergenerational correlation. Using France as an example, we estimate intergenerational wealth correlation for cohorts covering the 20th century and focus on the wealth positions measured at the mid-life cycle of both children and parents. First, probabilities to belong to top wealth groups are increasing with the wealth of the parents. This intergenerational correlation has increased over time for most of the top wealth groups. Second, the higher we move up along the children’s wealth distribution, the larger the role of parental wealth: the persistence in the top 50% is 38% higher than under perfect mobility and the deviations from perfect mobility are larger in higher top wealth groups. Third, 50 to 60% of the correlation is accounted for by a mix of intergenerational wealth transfers, fathers’ occupation and children’s education. Fourth, gifts and bequests explain a larger share of the link between parental wealth and the probability to belong to the top 10% compared to larger top wealth groups. We also find evidence of persistence of the effect of parental wealth over the life-cycle.

Metric anticipation to manage mobility in mobile mesh and ad hoc wireless networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), node mobility management is performed by the routing protocol. It may use metrics to reflect link state/quality. But, the delay between measures of the link quality and its integration in the route computation is very detrimental to the mobility management. Consequently, routing protocols may use lossy links for a few seconds leading to a significant performance deterioration. In this paper, we propose a new routing metric technique calculation which aims at anticipating link quality. Basically, the idea is to predict metric values a few seconds in advance, in order to compensate the delay involved by the link quality measurement and their dissemination by the routing protocol. Our technique is based on measurements of signal strength and is integrated in two classical routing metrics: ETX (expected transmission count) and ETT (expected transmission time). Validations are performed through both simulations and a testbed experimentation with OLSR as routing protocol. NS-3 simulations show that our metric may lead to a perfect mobility management with a packet delivery ratio of 100%. Experiments on a testbed prove the feasibility of our approach and show that this technique reduces the packet error rate by a factor of 3 in an indoor environment compared to the classical metrics calculation.

The Implications of Inequality for Fiscal Federalism: Economic Segregation and Spatial Constraints on Redistribution

In designing public policy, a question of first principle is the degree to which government services—and the mechanisms of collecting revenue to finance those services—should be centralized within and across political systems. To inform their assessments of where redistribution properly should occur, public finance researchers have to date worked backwards from different assumptions about the mobility of residents within the political community. Scholars have disagreed about the viability of local governments’ efforts to redistribute wealth—with traditionalists arguing that these efforts are made impossible by residential mobility, and recent reformists countering that limitations on mobility indeed allow for limited redistribution at the local level. But these theoretical arguments have largely sidestepped questions about what level of centralization is optimal for redistributive programs. And by focusing on the empirical question of residential mobility, they have ignored a variable that—I seek to demonstrate—is at least as important. In this paper, I argue that those two deficiencies in the literature are connected. I introduce a simple model to show that economic redistribution becomes more difficult—indeed, approaches impossibility—as economic inequality increases, regardless of one’s assumptions about levels of mobility (by the rich or poor). That is because economic inequality has an inherent spatial dimension: so long as citizens exhibit anything short of perfect mobility (and perfect responsiveness to redistributive policy), its rise will result in an increasing geographic concentration of fiscal resources available to governments. For precisely this reason, higher levels of economic inequality strengthen the case for centralizing the financing of any program with redistributive goals—including the great bulk of what contemporary governments aim to do. I introduce the concept of a “fiscal unit” to refer to the geographic scope of public financing—which might be, depending on the program, a school district boundary, a county, a state, or the entire country. In order to achieve an equitable allocation of public goods, policymakers should respond to rising income inequality by shifting the site of revenue collection to occur at widely drawn “fiscal units”. This can take two forms. It can be done by expanding the scope of fiscal boundaries—for example, by funding locally-administered programs at the state or federal level. Alternatively, policymakers could respond to inequality by increasing fiscal transfers from higher levels of government (wider fiscal units) to lower, geographically smaller governments. Rather than an afterthought, the existing level of economic inequality within a political community may be the single most important question for this aspect of policy design. Where wealth is unequally distributed, the primary responsibility of assessing the revenues used to finance public goods should be assumed by levels of government representing the greatest number of people. This paper thus suggests that policymakers should respond to rising income inequality by shifting not only the burden but also the site of redistributive taxation.

Intra-industry trade in differentiated and homogenous commodities: Brander and Krugman models unified

Research background: This paper extends the early papers by Brander (1981) and Brander and Krugman (1983) who used a simple partial equilibrium Cournot duopoly to a full general equilibrium setting. The explanations of intra-industry trade can be based either on oligopolistic reciprocal dumping idea (Brander, 1981) or product differentiation (Dixit and Norman, 1980; Krugman, 1979, 1980, 1981; Lancaster, 1980; Helpman, 1981). In this paper we combine both explanations in a unified general equilibrium model.&#x0D; Purpose of the article: We develop a two-sector, one-factor general equilibrium model, in which the first sector produces a differentiated good under monopolistic competition and the second sector produces a homogenous good under Cournot oligopolistic competition. In this paper, we study how competition between domestic and foreign firms resulting from trade liberalization affects intra-industry trade in both sectors.&#x0D; Methods: The paper develops a two-sector model based on several assumptions. Consumers have a two-tier utility function of the Cobb-Douglas-Spence-Dixit-Stiglitz form. Firms operate in two sectors and produce goods under increasing returns to scale resulting from the existence of fixed costs. One sector produces homogenous good under Cournot competition, and the second one produces a differentiated product in under Chamberlinian monopolistic competition. Free entry is assumed in both sectors. Labor is assumed to be the only factor of production with perfect mobility and full employment.&#x0D; Findings &amp; Value added: In contrast to previous papers, our study is based on a full general equilibrium Cournot oligopoly framework with many firms. Moreover, we endogenize the number of firms and study the resulting trading equilibria. Therefore, this paper can be regarded as the extension and unification of the early papers by Brander (1981), Brander and Krugman (1983) and Krugman (1979, 1980).

Platform strategies, ground transportation and tourism: towards perfect mobility

This paper analyses the implications of the platform economy on the tourism industry, focusing on the ground transportation sector. The shifts from ownership to access and from products to services have induced dramatic changes triggered by the emergence of innovative digital marketplaces. The tourism industry, considered as a sectoral system of production, has been largely disrupted by the emergence of platforms running two-sided markets. The paper highlights and clarifies the diversity through the analysis of the different economic models at work. The paper provides an analytical framework for characterising the market mechanisms and understanding the dynamics of ground transportation in the tourism industry. Finally, the paper illustrates the evolutions from innovations triggered by start-ups usually running a service to the recent platform strategies implemented by large firms or municipalities, aiming to develop transportation solutions addressing the varieties of tourists' preferences, towards perfect mobility or mobility as a service.

Platform strategies, ground transportation and tourism: towards perfect mobility

This paper analyses the implications of the platform economy on the tourism industry, focusing on the ground transportation sector. The shifts from ownership to access and from products to services have induced dramatic changes triggered by the emergence of innovative digital marketplaces. The tourism industry, considered as a sectoral system of production, has been largely disrupted by the emergence of platforms running two-sided markets. The paper highlights and clarifies the diversity through the analysis of the different economic models at work. The paper provides an analytical framework for characterising the market mechanisms and understanding the dynamics of ground transportation in the tourism industry. Finally, the paper illustrates the evolutions from innovations triggered by start-ups usually running a service to the recent platform strategies implemented by large firms or municipalities, aiming to develop transportation solutions addressing the varieties of tourists' preferences, towards perfect mobility or mobility as a service.

Should Unemployment Insurance Be Centralized in a State Union?

This paper compares the decentral organization of unemployment insurance in member states of a state union with the central organization at the upper union’ level. In a model of two countries the labor force and the firm owners can migrate between the states. Labor markets exhibit unemployment due to trade union’s bargaining about the wage rate. In a decentral scenario the states organize independently unemployment insurance and decide about the rate on wages contributed to the insurance budget. Due to open borders they have to take account of migration effects. However, with perfect mobility between the states each government chooses a socially optimal contribution rate such that workers are fully insured against unemployment. In the central scenario the governments overestimate the costs of insurance when bargaining about the contribution rate and observing the common insurance budget of both countries. This leads to a less than socially optimal contribution rate.