Development of Ideas

After finishing post-graduate studies, I engaged in applied research and advisory activities. After that, I also conducted basic economic research. From a perspective of regional research and local politics, I had learned about many concrete and practical problems and questions, and  about the background of data usage. Currently, I try to put this know-how in a larger economic context and to generalize:

First, I concentrated on a dissertation on (vertical) market power, supervised by Prof. Dennis C. Mueller at the University of Vienna. I regard the power of oligopolies as an often neglected factor.

Departing from Paul Krugman’s New Economic Geography and using data on the development of population, transport, real estate prices, and income in Austrian municipalities, in a second dissertation at the University of Klagenfurt I tried to get empirical evidence of a linkage between transport costs, settlement structure, oligopolistic markets and regional disparities. But I recognized that the concept of New Economic Geography despite some realistic assumptions is positioned in mainstream social science too much. So there was still a need to develop a more basic socioeconomic theory.
 


Copyright © 2010 by Josef Baum