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The Efficiency Of U.S. Public Space Utilization During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides Sep 2021

The Efficiency Of U.S. Public Space Utilization During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has called for and generated massive novel government regulations to increase social distancing for the purpose of reducing disease transmission. A number of studies have attempted to guide and measure the effectiveness of these policies, but there has been less focus on the overall efficiency of these policies. Efficient social distancing requires implementing stricter restrictions during periods of high viral prevalence and rationing social contact to disproportionately preserve gatherings that produce a good ratio of benefits to transmission risk. To evaluate whether U.S. social distancing policy actually produced an efficient social distancing regime, we tracked consumer preferences …


Technology Transfer In Spatial Competition When Licensees Are Asymmetric, Sougata Poddar, Swapnendu Banerjee, Monalisa Ghosh Sep 2020

Technology Transfer In Spatial Competition When Licensees Are Asymmetric, Sougata Poddar, Swapnendu Banerjee, Monalisa Ghosh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study technology transfer in a spatial competition with two asymmetric licensees (firms) with an outside innovator who decides how many licenses to offer and the optimal licensing contract. We show the optimal licensing policy is pure royalty contract to both licensees leading to a complete diffusion of the new technology. The result holds irrespective of the cost differentials between the licensees and for innovation of all sizes, that is, drastic or non‐drastic. This robust finding although supports the dominance of royalty licensing in practice; however, consumers may not be necessarily better off. We also throw light on the situation …


Rationing Social Contact During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Transmission Risk And Social Benefits Of Us Locations, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides Jun 2020

Rationing Social Contact During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Transmission Risk And Social Benefits Of Us Locations, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some types of public spaces have been shut down while others remain open. These decisions constitute a judgment about the relative danger and benefits of those locations. Using mobility data from a large sample of smartphones, nationally representative consumer preference surveys, and economic statistics, we measure the relative transmission reduction benefit and social cost of closing 26 categories of US locations. Our categories include types of shops, entertainments, and service providers. We rank categories by their trade-off of social benefits and transmission risk via dominance across 13 dimensions of risk and …


Technology Licensing And Innovation – A Correction On Two-Part Tariff Analysis, Yuanzhu Lu, Swapnendu Banerjee, Sougata Poddar Aug 2019

Technology Licensing And Innovation – A Correction On Two-Part Tariff Analysis, Yuanzhu Lu, Swapnendu Banerjee, Sougata Poddar

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The main purpose of this note is two-fold: (i) Correcting an error in the two-part tariff licensing contract, and (ii) Altering one of the main results following the two-part tariff analysis in Mukherjee and Mukherjee (2013). This also strengthens the primary conclusion of Mukherjee and Mukherjee (2013).


Establishing Cryptocurrency Equilibria Through Game Theory, Carey Caginalp, Gunduz Caginalp May 2019

Establishing Cryptocurrency Equilibria Through Game Theory, Carey Caginalp, Gunduz Caginalp

ESI Publications

We utilize optimization methods to determine equilibria of cryptocurrencies. A core group, the wealthy, fears the loss of assets that can be seized by a government. Volatility may be influenced by speculators. The wealthy must divide their assets between the home currency and the cryptocurrency, while the government decides the probability of seizing a fraction the assets of this group. We establish conditions for existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibria. Also examined is the separate timescale problem in which the government policy cannot be reversed, while the wealthy can adjust their allocation in reaction to the government’s designation of probability.


Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods And The Welfare Gains From Trade After 1492, Jonathan Hersh, Hans-Joachim Voth Jan 2011

Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods And The Welfare Gains From Trade After 1492, Jonathan Hersh, Hans-Joachim Voth

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare rose substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods as a result of overseas trade. Colonial luxuries such as tea, coffee, and sugar transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These goods became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We use three different methods to calculate welfare gains based on price data and …