Manh-Hung Nguyen

Valuing Flood Risk Reductions

A choice experiment is used to estimate how Vietnamese households value a flood risk reduction. The empirical analysis is conducted on a sample of households located in the Nghe An Province, one of the provinces which is the most affected by floods in Vietnam. The results reveal that there is a high level of heterogeneity in preferences across households. We compute the willingness to pay (WTP) for a flood risk reduction, and we identify how it relates to different attributes of flood management policies (reduction of economic losses, reduction of human losses, political level in charge of implementing the flood management policy). In particular, the marginal WTP for reducing the flood fatality rate, which can be interpreted as the value of statistical life (VSL), varies from 2 517 million VND (approximately 120,818 USD) to 3 590 million VND (approximately 172,323 USD) depending on the model considered. The VSL represents between 77 and 111 times the annual household average income in our sample, a result in line with previous estimates in similar countries.

New Technology, Human Capital and Growth in a Developing Country

In a developing country with three sectors—consumption goods, new technology, and education—the productivity of the consumption goods depends on new technology and skilled labor used to produce this new technology. In the first stage of economic growth, the country concentrates on the production of consumption goods; in the second, the country must import both physical capital and new technology capital to produce consumption goods and new technology; in the third, the country must import capital and invest in the training and education of highly skilled labor.

On alternative theorems and necessary conditions for efficiency

In this article, we establish theorems of the alternative for a system described by inequalities, equalities and a set inclusion, which are generalizations of Tuckers classical theorem of the alternative, and develop Kuhn–Tucker necessary conditions for efficiency to mathematical programs in normed linear spaces involving inequality, equality and set constraints with positive Lagrange multipliers of all the components of objective functions.

Existence of competitive equilibrium in an optimal growth model with heterogeneous agents and endogenous leisure

This paper proves the existence of competitive equilibrium in a single-sector dynamic economy with heterogeneous agents, elastic labor supply and complete assets markets. The method of proof relies on some recent results concerning the existence of Lagrange multipliers in in nite dimensional spaces and their representation as a summable sequence and a direct application of the inward boundary fixed point theorem.

Arbitrage and asset market equilibrium in infinite dimensional economies with short-selling and risk-averse expected utilities

We consider a model with an infinite number of states of nature, von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities, where agents have different probability beliefs and where short sells are allowed. We show that no-arbitrage conditions, defined for finite dimensional asset markets models, are not sufficient to ensure existence of equilibrium in presence of an infinite number of states of nature. However, if the individually rational utility set U is compact, we obtain an equilibrium. We give conditions which imply the compactness of U. We give examples of non-existence of equilibrium when these conditions do not hold.

Optimal Endogenous Growth With Natural Resources: Theory And Evidence

This paper considers an optimal endogenous growth model where the production function is assumed to exhibit increasing returns to scale and two types of resource (renewable and nonrenewable) are imperfect substitutes. Natural resources, labor, and physical capital are used in the final goods sector and in the accumulation of knowledge. Based on results in the calculus of variations, a direct proof of the existence of an optimal solution is provided. Analytical solutions for the planner case, balanced growth paths, and steady states are found for a specific CRRA utility and Cobb–Douglas production function. It is possible to have long-run growth where both energy resources are used simultaneously along the equilibrium path. As the law of motion of the technological change is not concave, reflecting the increasing returns to scale, so that the Arrow–Mangasarian sufficiency conditions do not apply, we provide a sufficient condition directly. Transitional dynamics to the steady state from the theoretical model are used to derive three convergence equations of output intensity growth rate, exhaustible resource growth rate, and renewable resource growth rate, which are tested based on OECD data on production and energy consumption.