Olimpiadas, externalidades y matching tres ensayos en microeconomía

Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays in microeconomics. The first is related to empirical analysis. Particularly, this work study the impact on future performance in Summer Olympic Games for a country which has been host of the event. This study can be seen as another argument in favour of the literature that studies the relationship between economic impact and such events. It is found that the positive effect of being host –measured as medal count– disappears immediately in the next period. This result is robust to a set estimation methods. Given this last the economic impact (due to being host) takes much more importance, since it looks like is the only real benefit of being host. The other two essays are related to economic theory. One of these works sets a general equilibrium model where negative externalities exist. Specifically, it is considered that private consumption generates public bad which can be mitigated by the production of public goods. However, public goods suffer the free rider problem. Thus, this model not only includes voluntary provision, but also mandatory provision through income taxes. This analysis focused on Pareto allocations which are induced by an extension of the Samuelson condition. Through numerical examples it is shown the effect on welfare of re-distribution of wealth, heterogeneity of preferences and technology shocks when income taxes induce Pareto allocations. A set of numerical examples show similar results to the ones claimed by the neutrality theorem. Also, it is found that technologies that reduces the negative impact of private consumption may reduce the welfare of some agents. Moreover, in some cases a technology change of this kind may reduce social welfare. The latter is a point which has not been considered in the literature so far. The second theory work deals with the distinction between individuals and coalitions in a general equilibrium framework. So far, the general equilibrium literature makes no distinction between both situations. Under this framework it is shown that this distinction matters. Here the incentives to form coalitions comes from the capacity of reducing rivalry in consumption. The way the reduction acts is not anonymous. That is, the reduction in rivalry is endogenous to the coalition formed. Here, reduction in rivalry can be modelled as externalities on consumption in a more general framework than the literature of household formation has done so far. Through a series of examples it is shown the difficulties to find an stable equilibrium when individuals have many options to form coalitions. Also, numerical examples show that the relationship between coalition formation and inequality is not so clear.