Tesis Doctorals - Departament - Econometria, Estadística i Economia Aplicada
URI permanent per a aquesta col·leccióhttps://hdl.handle.net/2445/108637
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TesiThe Economics of Parking: Essays on Regulation, Competition and Information Frictions(Universitat de Barcelona, 2017-10-20) Gragera Lladó, Albert; Albalate, Daniel, 1980-; Universitat de Barcelona. Departament d'Econometria, Estadística i Economia Aplicada[eng] Parking policy has attracted considerable research interest in the past, but it is currently a hotly debated topic given the market-oriented turn taken by the sector and the complexities of the market’s intrinsic distortions. The empirical literature tends to focus on curbside parking and generally considers garage parking simply as an outside option. However, garage parking is just as relevant as curbside parking, to the extent that the vast majority of parking spaces in European cities are provided by off-street parking garage facilities. Indeed, none of the previous studies take into account the impact of curbside parking regulation instruments on garage demand and private operators’ price setting behavior; neither do they analyze the potential contribution of public garage provision to correct market distortions (as a means to counterbalance private garage localized market power), nor take into account potential information frictions that translate into market outcomes that deviate from perfect competition scenario. Thus, Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of garage fee and curbside regulation characteristics (fee and type of dedicated spaces) on garage parking demand (for both occasional parkers and subscribers). It presents an empirical estimation of garage demand elasticity to the garages’ own fee and curbside fee cross-elasticity, which suggests that both goods are not perfect substitutes and curbside parking is preferred. As such, it identifies a relevant pricing distortion in the case of Barcelona. The chapter also provides evidence that the characteristics of curbside space regulation (commercial, mixed or resident-exclusive) has an impact on demand, but not always the one initially intended. Based on these results, we suggest policy interventions to address the pricing distortion and stress the need for an integrated market policy approach. Chapter 3 explores the determinants of private garage prices, focusing specifically on cost shifters and the interaction between curbside regulation and garage price-setting decisions, while also analyzing the role of market structure. It shows that the main price drivers are provision costs and quality shifters (land value, capacity, number of opening hours and type of payment). It suggests a negative relation between garage fee and curbside fee, capturing just how inefficiently the curb is used (cruising) and so giving garage operators the opportunity to further exert their market power. The chapter also challenges the assumption that more competition drives prices down, and shows that current public garage provision does not affect them. It shows that only the dominant position of private operators in the relevant market is positively related to garage prices. Additionally, our findings also confirm the possible theoretical link between parking and retail prices. Given these outcomes, the chapter examines potential policy interventions to address parking market distortions. Chapter 4 provides compelling evidence of the existence, and of the degree, of information frictions in the garage market. It also empirically tests whether parkers’ lack of knowledge affects the level of prices they end up paying, suggesting that information frictions do translate into undesired market outcomes. It shows that information frictions are so pervasive that active search during a given trip does not help drivers reduce the fees they pay and only passive information acquisition through experience seems to help them. The chapter also suggests that garage operators might engage in price obfuscation, which allows them to exploit the consumers’ lack of knowledge. Addressing existing information frictions therefore is a relevant policy issue if parking market efficiency is to be achieved and we make some recommendations regarding policy interventions that might be useful in this regard. Chapter 5 outlines the general conclusions that can be drawn from the thesis and identifies the policy implications derived from the study. The chapter stresses how the curbside premium represents an important price distortion in Barcelona’s parking market and highlights the roles that the private sector and information friction play in this. We specifically stress the need to change current curbside and publicly provided garage parking pricing schemes and the added need of taking the private sector into account in an integrated parking market approach. In this chapter, we also identify the need to address the issue of imperfect information and practices of price obfuscation if market efficiency is to be achieved. Here, we propose a number of policy interventions that exploit the leading role played by the public sector in Barcelona’s parking market and explore potential initiatives for public-private collaboration. Although our recommendations focus on the specific case of Barcelona, they may very well apply to other cities that face parking market distortions. Finally, based on the we identify further lines of research.- TesiJoint Modeling of Longitudinal and Time-to-Event Data with Applications in Health Insurance(Universitat de Barcelona, 2017-09-26) Piulachs Lozada-Benavente, Xavier; Guillén, Montserrat; Alemany Leira, Ramon; Universitat de Barcelona. Departament d'Econometria, Estadística i Economia Aplicada[eng] Health insurance companies accumulate a great wealth of historical data, including policyholder characteristics (age, residence, etc.), death event information, and the frequency and type of medical claims made by each individual, which can be used as an indirect measure of subject's health status. At the same time, the aging processes occurring in most of developed countries generate an interest in assessing the relationship between emergency care demand and survival rate, especially for policyholders over 65. Theoretically, the amount needed by insurance companies to cover the costs of policyholders requiring frequent emergency care should be compensated by a lower survival rate, but this compensation is ambiguous due to heterogeneity between subjects. Indeed, aging and mortality rates are influenced by subject-specific socioeconomic and biological variables, which may vary considerably between individuals, and within a single subject. Consequently, there is both a medical and economic necessity to assess how the individual medical demand of elderly subjects will evolve over time, as their age-related high rate of chronic disease make them require additional medical resources. On one hand, insurance prices are measured in terms of premiums, so individual health status must be considered in order to allow the elderly to sign actuarially fair contracts. On the other hand, an insurance company providing pensions and insurance needs to plan for unexpected costs derived from people having lifespans above mean expectations. Under this interdependency scheme, the joint models for longitudinal and time-to-event data proposed in this thesis provide useful tools to properly address the underlying relationship between the emergency medical demand and the hazard for death event. This thesis makes a contribution to the statistical methodology in the field of joint modeling techniques, which were applied to a large longitudinal dataset, the HI Dataset, provided by a Spanish medical insurance company. From this dataset, we collected those subjects over 65 and living in Barcelona (Spain). For each subject, we have the historical emergency claims information within the study window, as well as the time-to-event information. The longitudinal outcome is of discrete nature, usually restricted to a small range of non-negative integer values which are affected by some degree of overdispersion, i.e. the observed variance exceeds the mean. Additionally, counts with a large number of zeros become quite common due to the incomplete nature of health insurance data. All those subjects entering after the age of 65 are considered as delayed entries, and their time-to-event data are subject to left truncation in addition to the potential (non-informative) right censoring. Then, the implemented joint models must account for the special characteristics of our observed longitudinal response, departing from the common Gaussian responses, together with the specific time-to-event data pattern. There are three main tasks at hand in the joint analysis of the two considered outcomes: 1. To implement a joint model which allows for the handling of longitudinal counts, also considering potential subject-specific overdispersion by means of a model which considers a zero excess (zero inflation). Moreover, survival times can also be subject to both left truncation and right censoring. 2. To assess the functional form to associate each individual's expected longitudinal response with their death risk, investigating the effect of the cumulative longitudinal response on the current death hazard. 3. As a central focus of this thesis, to propose the existence of a time-dependent relationship between the longitudinal process and the time-to-event outcome. This is defined using Bayesian P-splines in order for any specific shape to be conferred. All the analyses included in this thesis have been implemented under the Bayesian framework, in the R and JAGS free-software environments.
- TesiEssays in Empirical Industrial Organization, Finance Market and Public Policies(Universitat de Barcelona, 2017-07-03) Montoya Squif, Ana María; Borrell, Joan-Ramon; Fageda, Xavier, 1975-; Universitat de Barcelona. Departament d'Econometria, Estadística i Economia Aplicada[spa] Debido a la preocupación por la estabilidad del sistema financiero los reguladores han adoptado diversas políticas regulatorias, algunas estructurales como también orientadas al comportamiento de los consumidores. Dichas regulaciones han llevado a reducir las barreras de entrada en el sistema bancario y a incrementar la integración financiera. Como también a disminuir la información asimétrica entre bancos y consumidores. En esta investigación, se analizan distintos tipos de regulación bancaria con el objetivo de contribuir a la literatura orientada a promover la estabilidad y fomentar la competencia en la banca industria. Esta tesis evalúa empíricamente a través de metodologías econométricas los siguientes aspectos de las políticas regulatorias: 1) cómo la penetración extranjera y la dolarización en América Latina han afectado la intensidad de competencia en la industria bancaria; 2) evaluar si los cambios en las exigencias de capital de los bancos afectan su nivel de deuda e inversión; y 3) evaluar si las regulaciones bancaria sobre la forma en que se proporciona la información sobre los costos de los préstamos a los consumidores pueden ayudar a los consumidores a tomar decisiones más informadas. Asimismo como determinar qué mecanismos si la educación financiera y/o los costos de búsqueda influyen en estos. Como implicaciones de políticas, esta investigación sugiere que adoptar la dolarización en los países con crisis financiera tiene un impacto positivo en el nivel de competencia en el sistema bancario comercial. En relación con la penetración extranjera el efecto depende del nivel de la competencia bancaria en distintos países, por lo tanto, es una buena política para reducir barreras estructurales en los países con menor nivel de competencia, pero en donde el nivel de competencia es mayor las autoridades deben aplicar adicionalmente otras políticas para aumentar el nivel de competencia, lo que está en consonancia nuevos tipos de regulaciones relacionadas con la información asimétrica entre consumidores y bancos en el sector bancario. Hemos constatado que el fortalecimiento de la regulación del capital bancario, Basilea II, afecta el nivel de créditos de las firmas, pero este efecto es heterogéneo, esta magnitud depende del tamaño. Esto es coherente, porque la evaluación de riesgo de Basilea II, considera la evaluación de agencias de riesgo en su análisis, que está correlacionada con los ingresos. Por lo tanto, considerando el coste asimétrico del capital bancario entre las firmas pueden reasignar recursos. Otro resultado interesante es que el nivel de crédito aumenta en los países que han implementado Basilea II. Esto podría explicarse porque estos países se consideran mucho más seguros debido a las mayores exigencias impuestas. Sin embargo, en la inversión la regulación no tiene un efecto claro. Significativamente, los cambios en el préstamo como mecanismo de financiamiento no tienen un efecto concluyente sobre el promedio de la inversión. Tiene sentido dado su acceso a recursos financieros con financiamiento propio, en mercado de bonos corporativos y acciones. En un contexto de información asimétrica entre prestatarios y entidades bancarias, existe una creciente preocupación de que las instituciones utilicen la complejidad de la información para morigerar el nivel de competencia. Nuestros resultados de evaluación de política regulatoria de la información en Chile, sugieren que los consumidores en el 40 por ciento superior en la distribución de ingresos lograron tasas de interés más bajas después de la implementación de la regulación. Esto representa una reducción, en promedio, de más de 4 puntos en el promedio Anual. No existen efectos estadísticamente significativos para el resto de los consumidores. Los resultados sugieren que este efecto se explica por el nivel de educación financiera que poseen los consumidores. Las implicaciones de política pública son directas, en los países con mayor dispersión en la distribución del ingreso no sólo es necesario simplificar la información si queremos ampliar los beneficios de reducir la información asimétrica entre las firmas y los consumidores, necesitamos complementar este tipo de políticas con educación financiera.
- TesiAnalysis and Evaluation of Climate Change Policies and their Interaction with Technological Change(Universitat de Barcelona, 2017-02-20) Joseph, Stephan Emanuel; Bel i Queralt, Germà, 1963-; Universitat de Barcelona. Departament d'Econometria, Estadística i Economia Aplicada[eng] The core analysis of this work is divided in three different but thematically related studies, analysing, first, how climate change policies can help to limiting global warming and one of its direct causes, the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG); second, how such policies can foster “green” technological change; and, third, how technological change can help to reach ambitious policy goals outlined in Europe’s 2020 climate and energy package. Respectively, in the first work with the title “Emission Abatement: Untangling the effects of the EU ETS and the Economic Crisis”, I seek to untangle the effects of the European Union Emission Trading System (EU EST) against the impact of the economic crisis 2008/2009 with respect to GHG emissions for sectors subject to the policy. Thereby, an Arellano-Bond regression is performed due to the dynamic character of the estimation equation. One of the major conclusions of this chapter is, that the EU ETS was only responsible for a minor part of emission abatement whilst the economic downturn accounted for the lion’s share which led to the built-up of an excess of emission allowances in the market and hampered policy stringency under the EU ETS. In the second study “Policy Stringency under the European Union Emission Trading System and its Impact on Technological Change in the Energy Sector”, therefore, I am interested to analysis how this negative evolution, on the one side, and an increase of stringency, on the other, affects innovative activity. For this reason, I relate two measures for policy stringency, namely the certificate oversupply in the market and the transition from phase I to phase II under the EU ETS, to “green” technological change approximated by climate change mitigation technology (CCMT) patent counts. Thereby, I am interested to measure the effects of these two different but not mutually exclusive impacts on the estimated number of patents in my data sample. For this empirical exercise, I make use of a panel negative binomial estimator due to the distributional characteristics of the patent data in my data frame. The main results for this study is, that policy stringency matters in order to spur technological change. Thereby, greater stringency measured in the transition from phase I to phase II is related to an increase in the predicted number of patents. On the other side, decreasing stringency, measured by the excess supply of certificates in the market, is related to a decrease in the predicted number of patents. In the last work “Climate Change Mitigation and the Role of Technologic Change: Impact on selected headline targets of Europe’s 2020 climate and energy package” an impact assessment of these CCMTs is performed with respect to different policy goal measures of Europe’s 2020 climate and energy package. Thereby, I relate CCMT patents for energy generation and distribution to the goal of a 20% share of renewables in gross final energy consumption and well CCMTs to total final energy consumption and to final energy consumption in the transport sector, respectively, to the goal of a 20% increase in energy efficiency. As a regression method, a panel fixed effects approach is chosen. Thereby, the main observation is, that these technologies can make a different if goals are reached or not and, that penetration for final users differs among goals and sectors. In the last chapter, a summary of the obtained results is presented and the respective policy implications for the EU ETS and the development and deployment of CCMTs.