Natural resource economics | EPFL Graph Search

Natural resource economics deals with the supply, demand, and allocation of the Earth's natural resources. One main objective of natural resource economics is to better understand the role of natural resources in the economy in order to develop more sustainable methods of managing those resources to ensure their availability for future generations. Resource economists study interactions between economic and natural systems, with the goal of developing a sustainable and efficient economy. Areas of discussion Natural resource economics is a transdisciplinary field of academic research within economics that aims to address the connections and interdependence between human economies and natural ecosystems. Its focus is how to operate an economy within the ecological constraints of earth's natural resources. Resource economics brings together and connects different disciplines within the natural and social sciences connected to broad areas of earth science, human economics, and n

Informational frictions in financial markets

Erik Hapnes

This thesis consists of three chapters on informational frictions in financial markets. The chapters analyze problems related to markets' ability to guide real investment, and what drives liquidity. Both problems are important to ensure efficient resource allocation in the economy. The first chapter studies the interaction between financial markets and real investments. I develop a model that simultaneously study the equilibrium in financial markets, the choice of investors to produce information, and real decisions by the firm. The chapter provides a new method to overcome non-linearities in the security price, and the equilibrium is surprisingly simple. The results provide insights into when real investments have a substantial impact on market efficiency and when we can analyze equilibrium market efficiency separately. Equilibrium behavior may hide some inefficiencies from standard empirical tests. Some changes in financial markets may increase or have little effect on market efficiency, but reduce real efficiency by increasing the cost of information production. The second chapter analyzes time-variation in liquidity. I develop a tractable model where conditions among traders vary over time. The resulting equilibrium offers several new predictions on what drives liquidity variation. For example, there may be significant reductions in liquidity from even tiny changes among the traders' conditions. Strategic behavior drives the results, and the model explains how liquidity may suddenly evaporate without a clear cause. Empirical results are in line with the predictions of the model. Surprisingly, everyone may benefit from sometimes restricting some traders from the market. Doing so can reallocate liquidity to periods with more significant liquidity needs. The third chapter studies the choice of anonymity among traders. All traders end up revealing their identity unless doing so is costly, or the order flow is noisy. The intuition is that there is always at least one trader who prefers to reveal his or her identity. If the order flow is noisy, then there is a threshold type, and more patient traders stay anonymous. The results suggest that a fully anonymous market is most efficient, but the gains from anonymity are distributed unevenly. This result explains why different markets vary significantly in choices related to anonymity.

EPFL2021

Conditions to be met for the implementation of urban monitoring systems in western Africa

Alexandre Repetti, Amadou Sall, Marc Soutter

Rapid population growth and city expansion, along with scarce resources for planning and management, are widely shared characteristics of southern cities. The System for Monitoring Urban Functionalities (SMURF) has been designed and developed for the city of Thies (Senegal) as a GIS-based software for supporting participatory planning and management in low resources contexts. The software instrument consists of a geographic database and of spatial indicators, for sharing information and evaluating city development. To collect and update data, the model begins with the gathering of the data from each stakeholder, who, in return, gets a better knowledge of the land and a planning support tool. However, the implementation of these information technologies presents several challenges: create an adapted interface, elaborate a relevant set of data and indicators, manage the data, and institutionalize the instrument. On the basis of the experience gained from the adaptation of the SMURF instrument for several other West African cities, this paper describes the general conditions that should be met by cities willing to implement such tools.

2005

Conditions to be met for the implementation of urban monitoring systems in western africa

Alexandre Repetti, Amadou Sall, Marc Soutter

2005

Informational frictions in financial markets

Erik Hapnes

EPFL2021