Alternation and Cooperation in a Two-party System: Implications for Resource-Based Developing Economies

This paper studies cooperation in a political system dominated by two opportunistic parties competing in a resource-based economy. Since a binding agreement as an external solution might be difficult to enforce due to the close association between the incumbent party and the government, the paper explores the extent to which co-operation between political parties that alternate in office can rely on self-enforcing strategies to provide an internal solution. We show that, for appropriate values of the probability of re-election and the discount factor cooperation in maintaining the value of a state variable is possible, but fragile. Another result is that, in such political framework, debt decisions contain an externality element linked to electoral incentives that creates a bias towards excessive borrowing.

Resource management research in Passive Optical Networks (PON)

Next Generation Access Networks (NGAN) are the new step forward to deliver broadband services and to facilitate the integration of different technologies. It is plausible to assume that, from a technological standpoint, the Future Internet will be composed of long-range high-speed optical networks; a number of wireless networks at the edge; and, in between, several access technologies, among which, the Passive Optical Networks (xPON) are very likely to succeed, due to their simplicity, low-cost, and increased bandwidth. Among the different PON technologies, the Ethernet-PON (EPON) is the most promising alternative to satisfy operator and user needs, due to its cost, flexibility and interoperability with other technologies. One of the most interesting challenges in such technologies relates to the scheduling and allocation of resources in the upstream (shared) channel. The aim of this research project is to study and evaluate current contributions and propose new efficient solutions to address the resource allocation issues in Next Generation EPON (NG-EPON). Key issues in this context are future end-user needs, integrated quality of service (QoS) support and optimized service provisioning for real time and elastic flows. This project will unveil research opportunities, issue recommendations and propose novel mechanisms associated with the convergence within heterogeneous access networks and will thus serve as a basis for long-term research projects in this direction. The project has served as a platform for the generation of new concepts and solutions that were published in national and international conferences, scientific journals and also in book chapter. We expect some more research publications in addition to the ones mentioned to be generated in a few months.

Sales restriction, quality selection and the mode of competition

A regulator imposing “sales restrictions” on firms competing in oligopolistic markets may enhance quality provision by the firms. Moreover, for most restrictions levels, the impact on quality selection is invariant to the mode of competition

A simulation-based algorithm for solving the resource-assignment problem in satellite telecommunication networks

This paper proposes an heuristic for the scheduling of capacity requests and the periodic assignment of radio resources in geostationary (GEO) satellite networks with star topology, using the Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) protocol in the link layer, and Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA) and Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) in the physical layer.

Toronto Waterfront Internacional Competition

Concurs internacional restringit per invitació per a la Toronto Waterfront international competition

Anisotropic dispersion, space competition, and the slowdown of the Neolithic transition

The front speed of the Neolithic (farmer) spread in Europe decreased as it reached Northern latitudes, where the Mesolithic (huntergatherer) population density was higher. Here, we describe a reaction diffusion model with (i) an anisotropic dispersion kernel depending on the Mesolithicpopulation density gradient and (ii) a modified population growth equation. Both effects are related to the space available for the Neolithic population. The model is able to explain the slowdown of the Neolithic front as observed from archaeological data

Avoiding transcription factor competition at promoter level increases the chances of obtaining oscillations

Background: The ultimate goal of synthetic biology is the conception and construction of genetic circuits that are reliable with respect to their designed function (e.g. oscillators, switches). This task remains still to be attained due to the inherent synergy of the biological building blocks and to an insufficient feedback between experiments and mathematical models. Nevertheless, the progress in these directions has been substantial. Results: It has been emphasized in the literature that the architecture of a genetic oscillator must include positive (activating) and negative (inhibiting) genetic interactions in order to yield robust oscillations. Our results point out that the oscillatory capacity is not only affected by the interaction polarity but by how it is implemented at promoter level. For a chosen oscillator architecture, we show by means of numerical simulations that the existence or lack of competition between activator and inhibitor at promoter level affects the probability of producing oscillations and also leaves characteristic fingerprints on the associated period/amplitude features. Conclusions: In comparison with non-competitive binding at promoters, competition drastically reduces the region of the parameters space characterized by oscillatory solutions. Moreover, while competition leads to pulse-like oscillations with long-tail distribution in period and amplitude for various parameters or noisy conditions, the non-competitive scenario shows a characteristic frequency and confined amplitude values. Our study also situates the competition mechanism in the context of existing genetic oscillators, with emphasis on the Atkinson oscillator.

Interbank Competition with Costly Screening

We analyse credit market equilibrium when banks screen loan applicants. When banks have a convex cost function of screening, a pure strategy equilibrium exists where banks optimally set interest rates at the same level as their competitors. This result complements Broecker s (1990) analysis, where he demonstrates that no pure strategy equilibrium exists when banks have zero screening costs. In our set up we show that interest rate on loans are largely independent of marginal costs, a feature consistent with the extant empirical evidence. In equilibrium, banks make positive profits in our model in spite of the threat of entry by inactive banks. Moreover, an increase in the number of active banks increases credit risk and so does not improve credit market effciency: this point has important regulatory implications. Finally, we extend our analysis to the case where banks have differing screening abilities.

Bundling and competition for slots: Sequential pricing

In this paper we study, as in Jeon-Menicucci (2009), competition between sellerswhen each of them sells a portfolio of distinct products to a buyer having limitedslots. This paper considers sequential pricing and complements our main paper (Jeon-Menicucci, 2009) that considers simultaneous pricing.First, Jeon-Menicucci (2009) find that under simultaneous individual pricing, equilibriumoften does not exist and hence the outcome is often inefficient. By contrast,equilibrium always exists under sequential individual pricing and we characterize it inthis paper. We find that each seller faces a trade-off between the number of slots heoccupies and surplus extraction per product, and there is no particular reason thatthis leads to an efficient allocation of slots.Second, Jeon-Menicucci (2009) find that when bundling is allowed, there alwaysexists an efficient equilibrium but inefficient equilibria can also exist due to purebundling (for physical products) or slotting contracts. Under sequential pricing,we find that all equilibria are efficient regardless of whether firms can use slottingcontracts, and both for digital goods and for physical goods. Therefore, sequentialpricing presents an even stronger case for laissez-faire in the matter of bundling thansimultaneous pricing.

Bargaining, coalitions and competition

We study a decentralized matching model in a large exchange economy,in which trade takes place through non--cooperative bargaining in coalitionsof finite size. Under essentially the same conditions of core equivalence, we show that the strategic equilibrium outcomes of our model coincide with theWalrasian allocations of the economy. Our method of proof exploits equivalenceresults between the core and Walrasian equilibria. Our model relaxes differentiability and convexity of preferences thereby covering the caseof indivisible goods.

Let's (not) talk about sex: The effect of information provision on gender differences in performance under competition

We study how gender differences in performance under competition areaffected by the provision of information regarding rival s gender and/ordifferences in relative ability. In a laboratory experiment, we use two tasks thatdiffer regarding perceptions about which gender outperforms the other. Weobserve women s underperformance only under two conditions: 1) tasks areperceived as favoring men and 2) rivals gender is explicitly mentioned. Thisresult can be explained by stereotype-threat being reinforced when explicitlymentioning gender in tasks in which women already consider they are inferior.Omitting information about gender is a safe alternative to avoid women sunderperformance in competition.

Endogenous spillovers, increased competition and re-organization waves

We consider an entrepreneur that is the sole producer of a costreducing skill, but the entrepreneur that hires a team to usethe skill cannot prevent collusive trade for the innovation related knowledge between employees and competitors. We showthat there are two types of diffusion avoiding strategies forthe entrepreneur to preempt collusive communication i) settingup a large productive capacity (the traditional firm) and ii)keeping a small team (the lean firm). The traditional firm ischaracterized by its many "marginal" employees that work shortdays, receive flat wages and are incompletely informed about the innovation. The lean firm is small in number of employees,engages in complete information sharing among members, that are paid with stock option schemes. We find that the lean firm is superior to the traditional firm when technological entry costsare low and when the sector is immature.

Recontracting and competition

We characterize the set of Walrasian allocations of an economy as theset of allocations which can be supported by abstract equilibria that satisfy a recontracting condition which reflects the idea that agents can freely trade with each other. An alternative (and weaker) recontracting condition characterizesthe core. The results are extended to production economies by extending thedefinition of the recontracting condition to include the possibility of agentsto recontract with firms. However, no optimization requirement is imposed onfirms. In pure exchange economies, an abstract equilibrium is a feasible allocation and a list of choice sets, one for each agent, that satisfy thefollowing conditions: an agent's choice set is a subset of the commodity space that includes his endowment; and each agent's equilibrium bundle isa maximal element in his choice set, with respect to his preferences. Therecontracting condition requires that any agent can buy bundles from any other agent's choice set by offering the other agent a bundle he prefers tohis equilibrium bundle.