This paper presents a model of international trade in differentiated intermediate goods. Because intermediates are invented through costly R&D investments, employing foreign intermediates implies sharing the return to R&D with the inventor country. We first derive how domestic productivity is...

This paper emphasises the importance of the political-institutional dimension in the understanding of the spatial distribution of economic activity. We introduce the notion of Territorial Authority Scale, which refers to the degree of devolution (towards sub-national tiers of government)...

This paper studies the consequences of parallel import (PI) on process innovation of firms heterogeneous in their production technology. In an international setting where foreign markets differ with respect to their intellectual property rights regime, a move by a technologically inferior firm...

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between dirty (internal combustion engine) and clean (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that firms...

The importance of a focus on mobility and the kilometres travelled using light duty vehicles is reflected in the persistence of strong demand for personal mobility and emissions that tend to be linked with population and economic growth. Simulation results using the WITCH model show that changes...

In this paper we consider a model with two industrialised countries and immigrants that come from "the rest of the world". The countries are distinguished on the basis of three parameters: population size, bias towards immigrants, and production complementarity between native population and...

The present stalemate in climate negotiations has led policy analysts and economists to explore the possible emergence of alternative climate regimes. This paper explores the idea of replacing international cooperation on greenhouse gas emission control with international cooperation on...

The question of the spatial impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has animated intellectual and policy debate for a long time. At the beginning of the 1990s the advent of the Internet brought a new surge of debate: it was argued that the Internet would free the economy from...

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduce the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the...

This study explicitly takes into account that the decision to enter into a cooperative R&D relationship is related to the antecedent decision to carry out R&D. This calls for a methodological approach that, at the same time, allows the joint analysis of the determinants of the two decisions and...