Modeling and forecasting long-term natural gas (NG) consumption in Iran, using particle swarm optimization (PSO)

The gradual changes in the world development have brought energy issues back into high profile. An ongoing challenge for countries around the world is to balance the development gains against its effects on the environment. The energy management is the key factor of any sustainable development program. All the aspects of development in agriculture, power generation, social welfare and industry in Iran are crucially related to the energy and its revenue. Forecasting end-use natural gas consumption is an important Factor for efficient system operation and a basis for planning decisions. In this thesis, particle swarm optimization (PSO) used to forecast long run natural gas consumption in Iran. Gas consumption data in Iran for the previous 34 years is used to predict the consumption for the coming years. Four linear and nonlinear models proposed and six factors such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Population, National Income (NI), Temperature, Consumer Price Index (CPI) and yearly Natural Gas (NG) demand investigated.

Hotellens marknadsföring : En fråga om olika förhållningssätt

Tidigare forskning kring de två aktörerna hotell och onlineresebyråer har koncentrerats runt intäktsoptimering samt konsumentbeteende gällande omdömen relaterat till onlineresebyråer. Det råder däremot en avsaknad gällande tidigare forskning runt hotellens strategiska marknadsföringsbeslut i och med att de ansluter sig till olika onlineresebyråer. Syftet med studien är att få en insikt i hur hotellen arbetar med sin marknadsföring gentemot onlineresebyråerna. Vidare besvaras frågeställningen om vad effekten blir när hotellen lämnar över delar av sin marknadsföring till onlineresebyråerna. I studien tillämpades ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt där fem telefonintervjuer genomfördes. Resultaten indikerar på att hotellen i studien inkluderar onlineresebyråerna i delar av sina marknadsföringsstrategier och att det i viss bemärkelse kan vara positivt men å andra sidan kan medföra vissa risker för de olika hotellen.

The Economic Effects of Ski Resorts on Communities in the State of Maine

Skiing and snowboarding is a fairly expensive activity for participant and one in which the industry as a whole makes handsome profits. In the 2005/06 season, resorts in the Northeast reported an average gross revenue of $18.5 million. (NSAA) With the current weather phenomenon of El Nino, however, resorts in New England especially, have been suffering economically. The gross revenue in New England in the ’05/’06 season was down 4% from the previous year, likely due to the fact the total snowfall declined by 16%. (NSAA) Much of this loss in revenue came during the Christmas to New Years vacation period. In the 2007 season, most mountains were less than half-opened during this peak week and the number of skiers and riders was especially low. With such a large decrease in profits, it is likely that many people will soon be affected (if they have not already been), including local employees. This project, therefore, seeks to analyze the impact that the resorts have on the local economies in order to determine the potential problems the changing snowfall patterns could have on locals’ well-being. It is hypothesized that there will be a strong correlation between the proximity of a community to a resort and the relative economic prosperity of that community; meaning that the ski industry is a pivotal part of their income and livelihood.

Future Students, Future Revenues: Thriving in a Decade of Demographic Decline:

Over the past decade, universities were able to grow revenue primarily by growing enrollment and increasing net tuition per student. But demographic and economic changes will make it increasingly difficult for all but a handful of institutions to grow tuition revenue at historic rates. Despite rising access rates, demographic projections suggest that the number of high school graduates will decline over the coming decade, leading to a dramatic drop-off in the overall rate of enrollment growth. The traditional population of 18- to 22-year-olds will remain a majority at most institutions, but enrollment growth will come primarily from other student segments. Populations such as community college transfers, international undergraduates, professional master’s students, and adult degree completers offer the best opportunities to grow enrollment and tuition revenue. Serving them well requires significant investments, new organizational models, and cultural change on campus. This can be done in a financially sustainable way—fulfilling the university’s mission to serve a diverse range of students while providing financial resources to support the core. This brief analyzes the forces that will shape higher education over the next decade and highlights the strategies and competencies that colleges and universities will need to be successful.

Incentives for Increased Graduate Enrollments: Incentive Types and Implementation Strategies

Institutions seeking to increase graduate enrollment consider incentivizing program growth. This report outlines ways that institutions allow graduate programs to keep surplus revenue, including tuition rebates, funding proportional to credit-hours, and decreased tax rates. It also examines scholarship programs created to increase admitted graduate student yield, new program offerings, and ongoing unit review.

Online and Hybrid Course Prioritization Guide: 10 Strategies for Promoting Enrollment Growth and Student Success

Institutions of all shapes and sizes are investing significant sums to expand their portfolio of online and hybrid courses without specific institutional priorities in mind, often resulting in a mix of arbitrary, sub-scale offerings. This creates an unsustainably expensive disconnect between the institution’s online portfolio (largely steered by unit-level interests and capacity) and its overarching interest in using technology to increase access, improve student success, and grow revenue. This guide is designed to help institutional leaders prioritize scarce resources devoted to online and hybrid course development toward the most promising available opportunities. By targeting specific curricular "gaps," institutions can improve retention, reduce time-to-degree, regain or expand their share of currently enrolled student credit hours, or even attract new students to existing programs.

Informality in labor market and welfare

The neoclassical growth model with two sectors in production is employed in this paper in order to investigate how a change in the tax structure affects informality and welfare. We calibrate and simulate the model and find that welfare always increases when we reduce the tax rate on the demand for labor and adjust the tax rate on the value added so that the government revenue remains constant.

Public debt sustainability and endogenous seignorage in Brazil: time-series evidence from 1947-92

Using national accounts data for the revenue-GDP and expenditure GDP ratios from 1947 to 1992, we examine two central issues in public finance. First, was the path of public debt sustainable during this period? Second, if debt is sustainable, how has the government historically balanced the budget after hocks to either revenues or expenditures? The results show that (i) public deficit is stationary (bounded asymptotic variance), with the budget in Brazil being balanced almost entirely through changes in taxes, regardless of the cause of the initial imbalance. Expenditures are weakly exogenous, but tax revenues are not;(ii) a rational Brazilian consumer can have a behavior consistent with Ricardian Equivalence (iii) seignorage revenues are critical to restore intertemporal budget equilibrium, since, when we exclude them from total revenues, debt is not sustainable in econometric tests.

Abstract types and distributions in independent private value auctions

In this note, in an independent private values auction framework, I discuss the relationship between the set of types and the distribution of types. I show that any set of types, finite dimensional or not, can be extended to a larger set of types preserving incentive compatibility constraints, expected revenue and bidder’s expected utilities. Thus for example we may convexify a set of types making our model amenable to the large body of theory in economics and mathematics that relies on convexity assumptions. An interesting application of this extension procedure is to show that although revenue equivalence is not valid in general if the set of types is not convex these mechanism have underlying distinct allocation mechanism in the extension. Thus we recover in these situations the revenue equivalence.

The Brazilian 1994 stabilization plan: an analytical view

The Real Plan has succeeded in stabilizing the Brazilian inflation. The consumer price inflation has been reduced from 11260 percent per year, in June 1994, to an estimate of 8 percent in 1997. The lower inflation resulted in a remarkable income distribution, and in an increased private consumption. The plan managed to control the inflationary effects of the increased demand with some traditional measures: A more liberalized economy, a moving (and overvalued) exchange rate band, high interest rate differentials, and a tight domestic credit policy. The government has, so far failed to accomplish the fiscal adjustment. The price stabilization has largely depended on the current account deficit. However, macroeconomic indicators do not present reasons for concern about the current account sustainability, in the medium-run. The economy may be trapped in a low-growth vicious cycle, represented by a stop-and-go trend, due to the two-way endogencity between domestic saving and growth. Economic growth depends on policies in increase the public sector saving, to secure the privatization of the State enterprises, and to promote investments. The major problem for the government action is, as always, in the political sphere. Approximately 80 percent of the Central Government net revenue are allocated to the social sectors. Consequently, the fiscal reform will hue to deal with the problem of re-designing the public sector’s intervention in the social area. Most probably, it will be inevitable to cut the social area budget. This is politically unpleasant.

Pure strategy equilibria of multidimensional and non-monotonic auctions

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of symmetric equilibrium without ties in interdependent values auctions, with multidimensional independent types and no monotonic assumptions. In this case, non-monotonic equilibria might happen. When the necessary and sufficient conditions are not satisfied, there are ties with positive probability. In such case, we are still able to prove the existence of pure strategy equilibrium with an all-pay auction tie-breaking rule. As a direct implication of these results, we obtain a generalization of the Revenue Equivalence Theorem. From the robustness of equilibrium existence for all-pay auctions in multidimensional setting, an interpretation of our results can give a new justification to the use of tournaments in practice.

Análise da tributação do consumo no Brasil

Nas últimas décadas, as propostas de reforma tributária em diversos países foram redirecionadas para a redução dos encargos incidentes sobre poupança e investimento, para a atenuação da progressividade do imposto sobre a renda do trabalho e para o aumento da participação dos impostos sobre o consumo na receita tributária. Atualmente, os impostos sobre o consumo representam a parcela mais significativa da carga tributária no Brasil. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar as principais características e ineficiências da tributação do consumo no Brasil. Algumas distorções já foram corrigidas, mas outras ainda necessitam de correção. Pretende-se também mostrar os maiores desafios para a reformulação dessa forma de tributação.

Teoria de Leilões com Aplicação ao Mercado de Petróleo Brasileiro

O processo de reforma que ocorreu na indústria petrolífera a partir da década de 1990, associada à transferência de serviços de utilidade pública para o setor privado, trouxe mudanças importantes para a economia. Neste contexto, a intensificação do uso de leilões, para a privatização das empresas públicas e para a concessão de direitos de exploração de seus serviços assumiu um papel de grande relevância na economia brasileira. A discussão sobre o desenho de leilão adotado para a venda de blocos petrolíferos é fundamental, pois representa o ponto inicial desta nova política. Sendo assim, este trabalho aborda os principais aspectos que fundamentam a escolha de um formato apropriado de leilão, detalhando as peculiaridades da indústria petrolífera e, finalmente, discutindo os resultados obtidos.

Mudanças institucionais, receitas cumulativas do governo federal e exportações no Brasil entre 1982 e 2001

Desde o início dos anos oitenta, o governo federal brasileiro passou a substituir a receitas de impostos tradicionais por receita de contribuições sociais (cumulativas) na composição da sua receita total (mudança de gestão). Alega-se que este procedimento é uma conseqüência das regras de compartilhamento estabelecidas (receitas de impostos do governo federal são compartilhadas com estados e municípios enquanto que receitas de contribuição não o são).Existem argumentos na literatura mostrando que este processo de descentralização das receitas teve sua origem na mudança de regime político (militar para democrático), outros com a nova Constituição de 1988 e, por último, outros afirmando que ele só foi possível porque a ineficiência das contribuições foi encoberta pela ineficiência alocativa da inflação. Por outro lado, fatos ocorridos no mesmo período, embora não citados na literatura, poderiam explicar ou ajudar na explicação deste comportamento. Entre eles, a fragmentação do poder executivo a partir de 1989 com a primeira eleição presidencial e/ou o processo de abertura da economia a partir dos anos noventa. Usando a técnica de OLS, observou-se que a Nova Constituição e a abertura da economia explicariam esta mudança de gestão. De qualquer forma, independente do que esteja explicando esta mudança, ela é apontada como altamente prejudicial a competitividade das exportações brasileiras. Existem várias proxies tentando medir este efeito, nenhuma delas considerando uma medida de gestão. Resolvemos realizar esta tentativa. Como tínhamos desconfiança da exogeneidade da variável representativa da abertura da economia no teste anterior, tratamos a questão com o instrumental de séries de tempo. No longo prazo, descobrimos que a mudança de gestão afeta negativamente as exportações e positivamente a abertura da economia por ser menos punitiva com as importações em termos de competitividade (as contribuições incidem apenas na comercialização dos produtos importados). JEL classification: H27; H77, H87.

O impacto da Lei Kandir sobre a economia paulista

Em setembro 1996 o Congresso Nacional aprovou uma lei de desoneração tributária destinada a reduzir o Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços para estimular as exportações de bens primários e semi-elaborados assim como investimentos em bens de capital e serviços. As principais razões para adotar esta desoneração fiscal eram estimular as exportações assim como, alavancar o investimento doméstico. Inicialmente a lei enfrentou enorme resistência política dos governos estaduais desde que ela implicaria em perdas substantivas de arrecadação dos estados. Como resultado, o Governo Federal negociou com os estados um mecanismo de compensação baseado no conceito de seguro-receita. Este projeto pretende avaliar (i) o impacto da lei nas exportações brasileiras e no nível de investimento e (ii) o seu efeito sobre as finanças estaduais decorrentes de uma eventual perda de receita tributária.