This paper studies the effect that a labour market for older workers will have on the ratchet effect. Even though we assume that the information on worker type that a firm obtains will not be transmitted to the other firms, the presence of the ex post labour market eliminates the ratchet effect....

A spatial model of cities is constructed by combining interaction costs between firms with indivisibility in production. The optimal allocation requires Pigouvian subsidies to firms and the externality version of the Henry George Theorem is obtained: at the optimal city size, the total Pigouvian...

We analyze the formation of a hierarchy of groups such as herds, members of a "rung" in a tennis ladder, students at a particular quality of college, or club members sharing a local public good. An individual is interested in maximizing her individual payoff which depends on a variable...

When lot side is endogenous, hedonic prices do not provide a correct benefit measure of a large public project even if population is homogeneous. Except for some polar cases where they yield correct estimates, the use of hedonic prices results in over-estimation. The results are extended to...

This paper clarifies the source of a difficulty in estimating structural equations in hedonic models and then develops an estimation method which avoids this difficulty. Both Quigley's and our method are applied to Japanese housing data and the estimates compared.

Labor management practices in Japan are quite different from those in the United States. Based on recent developments in contract theory, we develop a conceptual framework to understand why the differences have been maintained for a long period time. Our basic message is that the American and...

This paper examines three benefit measures of a large transportation improvement in a general equilibrium framework. Three issues are analyzed. The first is whether the measures can be reduced to the area to the left of a suitably defined transportation demand curve. Second, the measures are...