Prices versus exams as strategic instruments for competing universities

In this paper we investigate the optimal choice of prices and/or exams by universities in the presence of credit constraints. We first compare the optimal behavior of a public, welfare maximizing, monopoly and a private, profit maximizing, monopoly. Then we model competition between a public and a private institution and investigate the new role of exams/prices in this environment. We find that, under certain circumstances, the public university may have an interest to raise tuition fees from minimum levels if it cares for global welfare. This will be the case provided that (i) the private institution has higher quality and uses only prices to select applicants, or (ii) the private institution has lower quality and uses also exams to select students. When this is the case, there are efficiency grounds for raising public prices

Casos de aplicaciones empresariales de Web Mapping y SIG Libre

La incorporación Software Libre para Geomática (FOSS4G), para la explotación de Información Geoespacial en Sistemas de Información (SI) empresariales es una tendencia inexorable. Aunque estas tecnologías se están difundiendo con rapidez en entornos de empresas especializadas, Universidades, Administraciones Públicas y Centros Tecnológicos, todavía es algo incipiente en grandes empresas, especialmente en aquellas no directamente relacionadas con las tecnologías de los SIG. El objetivo de esta presentación será mostrar cómo se está consiguiendo introducir el software de SIG libre en el mundo empresarial, con tres casos de éxito. El primero es un desarrollo tradicional para una compañía tipo ‘utility’ donde el cliente define una funcionalidad y contrata su desarrollo. El segundo es un modelo de contratación de servicios. La tercera es una aplicación para la administración pública. En los tres casos, el uso de software libre ha permitido ofrecer soluciones exitosas para los requerimientos de los clientes (tanto funcionales como de rendimiento), y óptimas en coste

El Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ): aproximació a un in-dicador de qualitat del sistema universitari australià

The Course Experience Questionnaire is one of the instruments designed to appraise the quality of the university education, which applies in a global way to the Australian universities, public as well as private. It is a indicator of the courses that they are imparted at the university from the point of view of the student. The present article studies the historical evolution, the structure and the functioning of this questionnaire in order to grasp the positive aspects that it brings to the analysis of the quality of the university system

Entrepreneurship, ties and relational networks: the case of a public-private cross-border tourism product

The thesis aims to understand the processes of entrepreneurship that try to create businesses or products with a high degree of complexity. This complexity comes from the fact that these products or initiatives can only be viable with the concurrence of a large number of heterogeneous actors (public, private, from different regions, etc..) which interact in a relational context. A case with these characteristics is the Camí dels Bons Homes. The thesis analyzes the evolution of the relational network from the point of view of its structure and content of its links. The results show and explain the observed changes in the network structure and the changes in the ties content. This analysis of the content of ties contributes to a new systematization and operationalization of ties’ content. Moreover this analysis takes in account negative ties, a less discussed issue in literature.