Recently, Professor Angus Chu and Associate Professor Inácio Bó in Economics of the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS) at the University of Macau (UM) published research articles in internationally renowned journals. Professor Angus Chu is currently the project leader of APAEM Asian Economics, while Associate Professor Inácio Bó is a member of the APAEM Asian Economics team.
Professor Angus Chu, together with Professor Pietro Peretto of Duke University and Professor Yuichi Furukawa of Chuo University, published “Political Fragmentation versus a Unified Empire in a Malthusian Economy” in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Taking the Warring States Period in ancient China as an example, this study develops a Malthusian growth model with multiple states to explore interstate competition under agricultural society and the endogenous emergence of political fragmentation versus a unified empire. The study uses the elasticity of land proportion relative to population proportion to measure the intensity of competition between states. If this elasticity is less than unity, then multiple states coexist. However, if this elasticity is equal to unity, then a unified empire emerges. Which state becomes the unified empire depends on its military power, agricultural productivity, and its rulers’ preference for rent-seeking Leviathan taxation.
Associate Professor Inácio Bó and his team published a paper entitled “Generalized cumulative offer processes” in the Review Economic Design. In the context of the matching-with-contracts model, the study generalizes the cumulative offer process to allow for arbitrary subsets of doctors to make proposals in each round. It is shown that, under a condition on the hospitals’ choice functions, the outcome of this generalized cumulative offer process is independent of the sets of doctors making proposals in each round. The flexibility of the resulting model allows it to be used to describe different dynamic processes and their final outcomes.
Source: Department of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau.