ECONOMIC THEORY
Research in Economic Theory at CORE focuses on four main topics:
Industrial Economics
-
Product differentiation: Models of discrete choices; Applications to international trade and economic integration; Imperfect competitive markets with heterogeneous workers; Economic geography models.
-
R&D and innovation: Cooperation and competition in R&D; Knowledge and skill acquisition by teams and individuals; Informational spillovers in industrial districts; R&D and market structure.
-
Mergers, cartels and endogenous coalition formation in industrial change.
-
Regulation of oligopolistic markets: Networks and public utilities; Natural oligopolies; Mixed oligopolly; Pricing schemes; Effects of taxation on industry behavior; Computation of equilibria for oligopolistic industries; Antitrust policy.
-
Regional policy: Competition and agglomeration; Trade and regional issues.
- Optimal fiscal policies and limits to redistribution: International tax competition with mobile factors; Fiscal federalism and regional decentralization.
- Economics of social security and pension systems: Pay as-you-go schemes, Pensions in Belgium and Europe, Public finance.
- Political Economy: Lobbying, and voting behavior and their effects on various aspects of economic allocation; Regional issues and political factors.
- Efficiency in the public
sector: Methodological and applied issues in the measurement of performance;
Incentives for public firms and services; Financing schemes for hospitals
and physicians; Assessment of academic output and performance in Europe
and worlwide.
- Environmental economics:
Transfrontier pollution and international negociations; Theory and simulation
of economico-ecological models; Choice of economic instruments in environmental
policy; Endogenous coalition formation; Cost-benefit analysis.
Game Theory and Social Choice
- Topics in game theory: Equilibrium refinements and selection; Games of incomplete information; Dynamic and stochastic games; Cooperative games and coalition formation, Supermodular games and their economic applications.
- Mechanism design: Incentives in collective decision-making; Auction theory; Design of economic and political institutions.
- Social choice and welfare: Foundations of utilitarianism; Bargaining and sharing rules; Axiomatics of allocation mechanisms; Intergenerational equity.
- Economic foundations for the objectives of the
firm.
General Equilibrium Analysis
- The theory of incomplete markets: The role of money and monetary policy when asset markets are incomplete; General equilibrium with asymmetric information; Uncertainty and insurance in equilibrium models.
- Imperfect competition in general equilibrium with agents having market power: Equilibrium concepts with various feedback effects; Strategic market games; Existence of equilibria; Computation of general equilibria.
- Overlapping generation models: Existence and stability of dynamic equilibria; Macroeconomic fluctuations; Theoretical foundations of unemployment and macroeconomic policies.
