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In status competition studies, the utility of heterogeneous individuals typically depends on an economy-wide average indicator of status. In our model, emulative and jealous agents are embedded in an exogenous network where agent-specific reference group is determined by the direct link emanating from the agent. Similarly to Ghiglino and Goyal (2010) but in a somewhat different framework, we show that individual consumption is proportional to the agent's "outbound" Katz-Bonacich network centrality measure and equilibrium is generally inefficient. More important, the negative externality associated with each agent depends on her "inbound" centrality measure-the conspicuousness index. A tax based on this index combined with a uniform lump-sum transfer attains efficiency.Résumé. Structure du réseau social et concurrence pour le rang. Dans lesétudes sur la concurrence pour le statut social ou le rang, l'utilité des individus hétérogénes dépend typiquement d'un indicateur moyen de statut portant sur la socio-économie dans son ensemble. Dans le modéle proposé, des agents rivaux et jaloux sont encastrés dans un réseau oú le groupe de référence est spécifiqueà l'agent, et est déterminé par le lien direct emanant de l'agent. On montre que la consommation individuelle est proportionnelleà la mesure de centralité « externe » (outbound) du réseau Katz-Bonacich de l'agent, et que l'équilibre est généralement inefficient. L'externalité négative associéeà chaque agent dépend de la mesure de centralité « interne » (inbound) que les auteurs nomment indice de visibilité. Une taxe fondée sur cet indice combinéeà un versement de transfert unique put assurer l'efficacité.

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This paper employs a spatial dependency framework to examine intermediary roles played by trade, institutional quality and natural resource endowment in determining direct and indirect (spillover) effects of inbound foreign direct on direct and indirect effects of FDI on growth. Third, we find that an increase in resource rents as a share of the economy significantly reduces direct and spillover effects of inbound FDI on economic growth. Last, our analysis indicates that both low democratic (high autocratic) and high democratic (low autocratic) regimes do accelerate the positive impact of FDI on growth. However, results indicate a slowdown effect of FDI on growth under moderate democraticautocratic regimes. This particular finding suggests that the intermediary role of democracy in determining the effect of FDI on economic growth is non-linear. A number of policy implications can be extrapolated from our analysis. Most importantly, trade policies, which boost integration of sub-Saharan African countries and open up the continent to the rest of the world, are likely to play major intermediation roles in accelerating the positive effect of FDI on growth.

We apply a heterogenous coefficient spatial autoregressive panel model to explore competition/cooperation by duopoly pairs of German fueling stations in setting prices for diesel and E5 fuel. We rely on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation methodology applied with non-informative priors, which produces estimates equivalent to those from (quasi-) maximum likelihood. We explore station-level pricing behavior using pairs of proximately situated fueling stations with no nearby neighbors. Our sample data represents average daily diesel and e5 fuel prices, and refinery cost information covering more than 487 days.The heterogeneous coefficients spatial autoregressive panel data model uses the large sample of daily time periods to produce spatial autoregressive model estimates for each fueling station. These estimates provide information regarding the price reaction function of each station to its duopoly rival station. This is in contrast to conventional estimates of price reaction functions that average over the entire cross-sectional sample of stations. We show how these estimates can be used to infer competition versus cooperation in price setting by individual stations.