Development of Siloxane Coating with Oxide Fillers for Kesteritic (CZTS) Photovoltaic Systems

The work focused on the development of high-temperature electrical insulation coatings for film photovoltaics. The idea was into replacing the electroconductive metal dispersed phase in siloxane high-temperature coating to ceramic particles with phonon thermal conductivity. The slurry of industrial composition based on polysiloxane lacquer and thermally conductive paste containing zinc oxide was centrifuged to obtain a thin, optically transparent coating with the destruction temperature of over 600 °C. Topology, electrical properties, and thermal conductivity of the resulting film were investigated. The mathematical model of thermal processes in films in the course of heating was figured out. Quantitatively the relation of thermal conductivities of a control sample and a sample with a heat-conducting filler was established. The effectiveness of using this technology is shown.

Industrial Composition and Agglomeration Shadow: Evidence from China’s Large Urban Systems

New economic geography (NEG) raises the question why the “agglomeration shadow” effect is significant in some urban regions but not others. This study attempts to answer this question in the context of China by examining the impact of industrial composition of core cities on regional urban systems. Based on the model of urban location from NEG, this study attempts to examine the population growth of six core cities and their urban systems in China. We find services exert a significantly negative effect on market potential, while that of manufacturing is positive. The results are robust in different spatial scales and time spans. This suggests that strong centralizing and agglomerative effects of higher order service sector are more likely to cast an agglomeration shadow on noncore cities in China’s regional urban systems. The differences in industrial composition can explain why an urban region centered on a large core city like Beijing is more likely to cast an agglomeration shadow on its surrounding cities compared to the Shanghai-centered urban region. The findings hold important implications for uneven development of regional urban systems and construction of metropolitan areas in China.

Electrification, Power Outages and Employment

Although electrification rates have increased in developing countries, the poor quality of electricity still remains a challenge. This paper studies the effects of electrification at the intensive margin, using a fixed effects approach. I find that power outages significantly reduce employment, earnings, and hours of work. A key channel through which outages affect employment is decreased prevalence of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) among households. Evidence indicates that severe outages reduce opportunities for households to indulge in income generating activities. The decrease in employment opportunities is further exacerbated by reduced industrial growth and changes in the industrial composition. The results suggest that unreliable electricity may have a negative implication for job creation in developing countries.

From Complementary to Competitive: The London and U.K. Provincial Stock Markets

For many decades, there were stock exchanges operating in provincial cities across Britain. We analyze why companies listed on these markets and how this changed over time. We find that the provincial exchanges had traditionally been complementary to London, providing a trading venue for smaller regional companies. However, they gradually lost their uniqueness and were increasingly competing with London by listing similar stocks. Much of this change can be explained by shifts in industrial composition, leading to more companies being headquartered and listed in the capital and many of the remaining regional firms cross-listing in London to achieve certification.

Spatial Pattern and City Size Distribution

Many large cities are found at locations with certain geographic and historical advantages, or the first nature advantages. Yet those exogenous locational features may not be the most potent forces governing the spatial pattern and the size variation of cities. In particular, population size, spacing, and industrial composition of cities exhibit simple, persistent, and monotonic relationships that are often approximated by power laws. The extant theories of economic agglomeration explain some aspects of this regularity as a consequence of interactions between endogenous agglomeration and dispersion forces, or the second nature advantages. To obtain results about explicit spatial patterns of cities, a model needs to depart from the most popular two-region and systems-of-cities frameworks in urban and regional economics in which the variation in interregional distance is assumed away in order to secure analytical tractability of the models. This is one of the major reasons that only few formal models have been proposed in this literature. To draw implications about the spatial patterns and sizes of cities from the extant theories, the behavior of the many-region extension of the existing two-region models is discussed in depth. The mechanisms that link the spatial pattern of cities and the diversity in size as well as the diversity in industrial composition among cities are also discussed in detail, thought the relevant theories are much less available. For each aspect of the interdependence among spatial patterns, size distribution and industrial composition of cities, the concrete facts are drawn from Japanese data to guide the discussion.