(No)competition in the Spanish retailing gasoline market: a variance filter approach

Various methodologies in economic literature have been used to analyse the international hydrocarbon retail sector. Nevertheless at a Spanish level these studies are much more recent and most conclude that generally there is no effective competition present in this market, regardless of the approach used. In this paper, in order to analyse the price levels in the Spanish petrol market, our starting hypothesis is that in uncompetitive markets the prices are higher and the standard deviation is lower. We use weekly retail petrol price data from the ten biggest Spanish cities, and apply Markov chains to fill the missing values for petrol 95 and diesel, and we also employ a variance filter. We conclude that this market demonstrates reduced price dispersion, regardless of brand or city.

Market Competition and Lower Tier Incentives

The relationship between competition and performance-related pay has been analyzed in single-principal-single-agent models. While this approach yields good predictions for managerial pay schemes, the predictions fail to apply for employees at lower tiers of a firm's hierarchy. In this paper, a principal-multi-agent model of incentive pay is developed which makes it possible to analyze the effect of changes in the competitiveness of markets on lower tier incentive payment schemes. The results explain why the payment schemes of agents located at low and mid tiers are less sensitive to changes in competition when aggregated firm data is used. Journal of Economic Literature classiffication numbers: D82, J21, L13, L22. Keywords: Cournot Competition, Contract Delegation, Moral Hazard, Entry, Market Size, Wage Cost.

Asynchronous growth and competition in a two-sex age-structured population model

Asynchronous exponential growth has been extensively studied in population dynamics. In this paper we find out the asymptotic behaviour in a non-linear age-dependent model which takes into account sexual reproduction interactions. The main feature of our model is that the non-linear process converges to a linear one as the solution becomes large, so that the population undergoes asynchronous growth. The steady states analysis and the corresponding stability analysis are completely made and are summarized in a bifurcation diagram according to the parameter R0. Furthermore the effect of intraspecific competition is taken into account, leading to complex dynamics around steady states.

Conjugacy of piecewise linear Lorenz map that expand on average

For piecewise linear Lorenz map that expand on average, we show that it admits a dichotomy: it is either periodic renormalizable or prime. As a result, such a map is conjugate to a ß-transformation.

Still in the Era of Area Studies? Political-Scientific Perspectives on European Competition Policy in the 2000s

This note reviews the political-scientific literature on European competition policy (ECP) in the 2000s. Based on a data set extracted from four well-known journals, and using an upfront methodology and explicit criteria, it analyzes the literature both quantitatively and qualitatively. On the quantitative side, it shows that, although a few sub-policy areas are still neglected, ECP is not the under-researched policy it used to be. On the qualitative side, the literature has greatly improved since the 1990s: Almost all articles now present a clear research question, and most advance specific theoretical claims/hypotheses. Yet, improvements can be made on research design, statistical testing, and, above all, state-of-the-art theorizing (e.g. in the game-theoretical treatment of delegation problems). Indeed, it is paradoxical that ECP specialists do not pay more attention to theoretical questions which are so central to the actual policy area they study.

Competition between TV platforms

The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that affect the market penetration of pay television by studying the competition that exists between three types of technology (satellite, cable and ADSL). We distinguish three groups of factors: the level of market competition, the level of competition in the industry and the quality of the product being offered. Our results seem to indicate that as market concentration increases, the television service can achieve greater penetration. This relationship is specifically captured by the level of intra- and inter-platform competition. We also examine the relationship between free television channels and pay television and find that as the amount of time dedicated to the broadcasting of advertising by the former increases, the number of subscribers to pay TV rises. Finally, we examine product quality by introducing the effect of holding the rights to broadcast Professional Football League matches and an HBO or Showtime produced series. Our results suggest that these variables are critical for the penetration of pay television.

Some Considerations Concerning Regulation and Competition in the Port Sector

The aim of this paper is to discuss the circumstances in which the process of competition between ports takes place in Spain − circumstances arising from the way the port system is currently set up and from the regulations governing it. The importance of this matter lies both in the fact that intensified competition between ports is the way to set about boosting the efficiency of the Spanish port sector and in the relevance of this business to the economies of the regions in which the ports are located. It is precisely for this reason that the reform instituted in 1992 aimed to combine balanced development of the national port system with the defence of the interests of autonomous regions. To this end the current regulatory framework provides for the possibility of port authorities drawing up their own competitive strategies, but makes their implementation conditional upon approval of their business plan by the Spanish state port authority. The latter body coordinates the national port system to ensure the guidelines set by the central government authorities are followed in the field of transport. However, the scale of the differences which exist among both the size of facilities and their relevant markets on the one hand, and the financial and economic circumstances of each of them on the other, suggest that each port authority's needs must be very different. Consequently, their competitive strategies must also be very different. It is therefore valid to ask whether coping with this diversity calls for different guidelines to regulate their freedom of action. Key words: Competition, regulation, port sector JEL classification numbers: L1, L5, L9

Exponentially small splitting of separatrices in the perturbed McMillan map

The McMillan map is a one-parameter family of integrable symplectic maps of the plane, for which the origin is a hyperbolic fixed point with a homoclinic loop, with small Lyapunov exponent when the parameter is small. We consider a perturbation of the McMillan map for which we show that the loop breaks in two invariant curves which are exponentially close one to the other and which intersect transversely along two primary homoclinic orbits. We compute the asymptotic expansion of several quantities related to the splitting, namely the Lazutkin invariant and the area of the lobe between two consecutive primary homoclinic points. Complex matching techniques are in the core of this work. The coefficients involved in the expansion have a resurgent origin, as shown in [MSS08].

Resurgence of inner solutions for perturbations of the McMillan map

A sequence of “inner equations” attached to certain perturbations of the McMillan map was considered in [MSS09], their solutions were used in that article to measure an exponentially small separatrix splitting. We prove here all the results relative to these equations which are necessary to complete the proof of the main result of [MSS09]. The present work relies on ideas from resurgence theory: we describe the formal solutions, study the analyticity of their Borel transforms and use ´Ecalle’s alien derivations to measure the discrepancy between different Borel-Laplace sums.

Iceberg transport technologies in spatial competition. Hotelling reborn

Transport costs in address models of differentiation are usually modeled as separable of the consumption commodity and with a parametric price. However, there are many sectors in an economy where such modeling is not satisfactory either because transportation is supplied under oligopolistic conditions or because there is a difference (loss) between the amount delivered at the point of production and the amount received at the point of consumption. This paper is a first attempt to tackle these issues proposing to study competition in spatial models using an iceberg-like transport cost technology allowing for concave and convex melting functions.

Trade liberalization, competition and growth

Increasing evidence support the claim that international trade enhances innovation and productivity growth through an increase in competition. This paper develops a two-country endogenous growth model, with firm specific R&D and a continuum of oligopolistic sectors under Cournot competition to provide a theoretical support to this claim. Since countries are assumed to produce the same set of varieties, trade openness makes markets more competitive, reducing prices and increasing quantities. Under Cournot competition, trade is pro-competitive. Since firms undertake cost reducing innovations, the increase in production induced by a more competitive market push firms to innovate more. Consequently, a reduction on trade barriers enhances growth by reducing domestic firm's market power.

Creació automàtica de gràfics estadístics a partir de dades de soroll d’Europa amb tecnologies Open Source en el visor Noise Map Viewer de l’ETC-LUSI

El projecte ha consistit en la creació de gràfics estadístics de soroll d’Europa de forma automàtica amb tecnologies Open Source dins el visor Noise Map Viewer per Europa de l’ETC-LUSI. La llibreria utilitzada per fer aquest procés ha estat JFreeChart i el llenguatge de programació utilitzat ha estat Java (programació orientada a objectes) dins l’entorn de desenvolupament integrat Eclipse. La base de dades utilitzada ha estat PostgreSQL. Com a servidors s’han fet servir Apache (servidor HTTP) i Tomcat (servidor contenidor d’aplicacions). Un cop acabat el procés s’ha integrat dins de MapFish canviant el codi JavaScript corresponent de la web original.

Diseño, Desarrollo e Implementación de una aplicación WEB-MAP para la visualización y consulta de los proyectos ejecutados por AudingIntraesa

Consiste en el desarrollo de una aplicación WEB-MAP para la visualización y consulta de los proyectos ejecutados por AudingIntraesa. La tecnología utilizada fue MySQL como sistema de gestión de bases de datos, HTTP Apache como servidor web y Adobe Flex como entorno de desarrollo. Se creó una base de datos. Se diseñó una interfaz de usuario intuitiva, eficiente y atractiva. Se desarrollaron rutinas en AS3 para dotar de funcionalidades a la aplicación. Incluyen la consulta y actualización en tiempo de ejecución, descarga de ficheros externos, la fácil navegación por el mapa con capacidades de zoom, pan, cambio de mapas.

Monopolistic competition and different wage setting systems

In this paper we match the static disequilibrium unemployment model without frictions in the labor market and monopolistic competition with an infinite horizon model of growth. We compare the wages set at the firm, sector and national (centralized) levels, their unemployment rates and growth of the economic variables, for the Cobb-Douglas production function, in order to see under wich conditions the inverse U hypothesis between unemployment and centralization of wage bargain is confirmed. We also analyze, in the three wage setting systems, the effect of an increase in the monopoly power on employment and growth.

Trade, firm selection, and innovation: the competition channel

The availability of rich firm-level data sets has recently led researchers to uncover new evidence on the effects of trade liberalization. First, trade openness forces the least productive firms to exit the market. Secondly, it induces surviving firms to increase their innovation efforts and thirdly, it increases the degree of product market competition. In this paper we propose a model aimed at providing a coherent interpretation of these findings. We introducing firm heterogeneity into an innovation-driven growth model, where incumbent firms operating in oligopolistic industries perform cost-reducing innovations. In this framework, trade liberalization leads to higher product market competition, lower markups and higher quantity produced. These changes in markups and quantities, in turn, promote innovation and productivity growth through a direct competition effect, based on the increase in the size of the market, and a selection effect, produced by the reallocation of resources towards more productive firms. Calibrated to match US aggregate and firm-level statistics, the model predicts that a 10 percent reduction in variable trade costs reduces markups by 1:15 percent, firm surviving probabilities by 1 percent, and induces an increase in productivity growth of about 13 percent. More than 90 percent of the trade-induced growth increase can be attributed to the selection effect.