Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Three Essays on Agglomeration and Firm Dynamics(2017) Qiao, Yu; Ding, Chengri; Urban and Regional Planning and Design; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Agglomeration economy has long been proposed to account for an individual firm’s favor for denser environments. Previous strides have linked firm creation and productivity growth to the magnitude of agglomeration. This dissertation addresses three aspects of agglomerative impact on firms’ dynamic that have not been adequately emphasized in the literature. Specifically, the research provides an understanding of how agglomeration affects firms’ decisions on R&D investment, closure and relocation. In Chapter 2, I develop a simple Cournot type, two-stage competition model that reveals firms tend to reduce their R&D investment more in denser locations than in less dense ones with the presence of knowledge spillover. This implies that local agglomeration strengthens the negative relationship between knowledge spillover and R&D efforts. I then use firm-level data from China to test this theoretical prediction. The Tobit model yields estimated results that are consistent with the theoretical prediction. That is, the R&D effort is negatively correlated with knowledge spillover and the magnitude of the negative relationship increases along with localization agglomeration. The impact of geographic concentration on firm survival is studied in Chapter 3. Agglomeration economy encourages firm birth and growth, while agglomeration diseconomy accelerates firm death. The net impact of agglomeration on firm survival depends on the relative strength of agglomeration economy and diseconomy. Drawn upon an establishment-level data from Maryland, the essay finds empirical evidence supporting the claim that urbanization negatively affects survival, while specialization, diversity and employment centers reduce hazards for some industries. The finding indirectly evidences that the firm selection effect contributes to the productivity advantage of big cities. Firms frequently make spatial adjustments to accommodate their change in operation over time. Agglomeration economy could be one essential influence on a firm’s relocation decision-making. Chapter 4 delves into the relocations of service firms within the Baltimore Metropolitan Region. The nested logit model shows a higher probability for firms choosing a location with a high level of agglomeration. The estimates suggest diversity might be more important than specialization at the margin for intra-metropolitan relocation. Also identified is a more prominent localization effect than urbanization effect on firm intra-metropolitan relocation.Item ENERGY TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION(2012) McJeon, Haewon C.; Ruth, Matthias; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the role that technology plays in climate change mitigation. It contains three essays each focusing on different aspects of the process in which advancements in low-carbon energy technologies impact the cost of carbon dioxide (CO2) abatement. The first essay develops the analytical foundation for understanding how heterogeneous low-carbon energy technologies induce differential impacts on the abatement cost. The analysis derives sets of conditions under which different types of advanced technologies can be evaluated for their respective strengths in reducing abatement costs at different levels of abatement. It emphasizes the weakness of a single point estimation of the impact of a technology and the importance of understanding the pattern of abatement cost reductions throughout the potential levels of abatement. The second essay focuses on the interactions of the energy technologies in the market. The analysis uses a combinatorial approach in which 768 scenarios are created for all combinations of considered technology groups. Using the dataset, the analysis shows how the reduction in the abatement cost may change significantly depending on the existence of other advanced technologies. The essay shows that many of the fundamental insights from traditional representative scenario analyses are in line with the findings from this comprehensive combinatorial analysis. However, it also provides more clarity regarding insights not easily demonstrated through representative scenario analyses. The analysis emphasizes how understanding the interactions between these technologies and their impacts on the cost of abatement can help better inform energy policy decisions. The third essay focuses on the impact technological change has on the cost of abatement, but with special attention paid to the issue of delayed technology development. By combining the probability of advanced technology success estimates from expert elicitations with the abatement cost data estimated with an integrated assessment model, a stochastic dynamic programming model is developed. A multi-period extension of the model allows intertemporal dynamic optimization where the policy-maker can select the technologies to be invested in immediately and the technologies to be invested in later. The analysis emphasizes the benefit of having a wait-and-see option that lets the policy-maker further optimize upon the observation of successes and failures of prior investments. The three essays collectively serve to demonstrate the importance of clearly understanding the differences among low-carbon technologies. They also provide methodological foundations upon which such technologies can be assessed and compared. Combining these methods with an enhanced understanding of the technologies will contribute to the body of research aimed at minimizing the cost of mitigating climate change.