Social welfare with a foreign competitor

In this paper, we consider a mixed market in which a state-owned welfare-maximizing public (domestic) firm competes against a profit-maximizing private (foreign) firm. We suppose that the domestic firm is less eflScient than the foreign firm. However, the domestic firm can lower its marginal costs by conducting cost-reducing R&D investment. We examine the impacts of entry of a foreign firm on decisions upon cost-reducing R&D investment by the domestic firm and how these affect the domestic welfare.

Environmental policies in an international mixed duopoly

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of environmental and trade policies in an international mixed duopoly serving two markets. We suppose that the firm in the home country is a welfare-maximizing public firm, while the firm in the foreign country is its own profit-maximizing private firm. We find that the environmental tax can be a strategic instrument for the home government to distribute production from the foreign private firm to the home public firm. An additional effect of the home environmental tax is the reduction of the foreign private firm's output for local consumption, thereby expanding the foreign market for the home public firm.

Cournot competition between a non-profit firm and a for-profit firm with uncertainty

In this paper, we consider a Cournot competition between a nonprofit firm and a for-profit firm in a homogeneous goods market, with uncertain demand. Given an asymmetric tax schedule, we compute explicitly the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of the tax rate and the degree of altruistic preference on market equilibrium outcomes.

Simultaneous decisions or leadership in an international competition

In this paper, we study an international market with demand uncertainty. The model has two stages. In the first stage, the home government chooses an import tariff to maximize the revenue. Then, the firms engage in a Cournot or in a Stackelberg competition. The uncertainty is resolved between the decisions made by the home government and by the firms. We compare the results obtained in the three different ways of moving on the decision make of the firms.

Two-production-period in a duopoly with nonprofit and for-profit firms

We investigate endogenous roles in a competition between a nonprofit firm and a for-profit firm in a homogeneous goods market, by allowing two production periods. We find that the Cournot-type equilibrium and one Stackelberg-type equilibrium where the nonprofit firm becomes the follower exist; however, another tackelberg-type equilibrium where the nonprofit firm becomes the leader does not exist.

Price forecasting in the day-ahead Iberian electricity market using a conjectural variations Arima model

Price forecast is a matter of concern for all participants in electricity markets, from suppliers to consumers through policy makers, which are interested in the accurate forecast of day-ahead electricity prices either for better decisions making or for an improved evaluation of the effectiveness of market rules and structure. This paper describes a methodology to forecast market prices in an electricity market using an ARIMA model applied to the conjectural variations of the firms acting in an electricity market. This methodology is applied to the Iberian electricity market to forecast market prices in the 24 hours of a working day. The methodology was then compared with two other methodologies, one called naive and the other a direct forecast of market prices using also an ARIMA model. Results show that the conjectural variations price forecast performs better than the naive and that it performs slightly better than the direct price forecast.

Desirable role in an international duopoly model with tariffs

In this paper, we study an international market model in which the home government imposes a tariff on the imported goods. The model has two stages. In the first stage, the home government chooses an import tariff to maximize a function that cares about the home firm’s profit and the total revenue. Then, the firms engage in a Cournot or in a Stackelberg competition. We compare the results obtained in the three different ways of moving on the decision make of the firms.

Experimental study on polyester based concretes filled with glass fibre reinforced plastic recyclates – a contribution to composite materials sustainability

The development and applications of thermoset polymeric composites, namely fibre reinforced plastics (FRP), have shifted in the last decades more and more into the mass market [1]. Despite of all advantages associated to FRP based products, the increasing production and consume also lead to an increasing amount of FRP wastes, either end-of-lifecycle products, or scrap and by-products generated by the manufacturing process itself. Whereas thermoplastic FRPs can be easily recycled, by remelting and remoulding, recyclability of thermosetting FRPs constitutes a more difficult task due to cross-linked nature of resin matrix. To date, most of the thermoset based FRP waste is being incinerated or landfilled, leading to negative environmental impacts and supplementary added costs to FRP producers and suppliers. This actual framework is putting increasing pressure on the industry to address the options available for FRP waste management, being an important driver for applied research undertaken cost efficient recycling methods. [1-2]. In spite of this, research on recycling solutions for thermoset composites is still at an elementary stage. Thermal and/or chemical recycling processes, with partial fibre recovering, have been investigated mostly for carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) due to inherent value of carbon fibre reinforcement; whereas for glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP), mechanical recycling, by means of milling and grinding processes, has been considered a more viable recycling method [1-2]. Though, at the moment, few solutions in the reuse of mechanically-recycled GFRP composites into valueadded products are being explored. Aiming filling this gap, in this study, a new waste management solution for thermoset GFRP based products was assessed. The mechanical recycling approach, with reduction of GFRP waste to powdered and fibrous materials was applied, and the potential added value of obtained recyclates was experimentally investigated as raw material for polyester based mortars. The use of a cementless concrete as host material for GFRP recyclates, instead of a conventional Portland cement based concrete, presents an important asset in avoiding the eventual incompatibility problems arisen from alkalis silica reaction between glass fibres and cementious binder matrix. Additionally, due to hermetic nature of resin binder, polymer based concretes present greater ability for incorporating recycled waste products [3]. Under this scope, different GFRP waste admixed polymer mortar (PM) formulations were analyzed varying the size grading and content of GFRP powder and fibre mix waste. Added value of potential recycling solution was assessed by means of flexural and compressive loading capacities of modified mortars with regard to waste-free polymer mortars.

Person Localization Using Sensor Information Fusion

Nowadays the incredible grow of mobile devices market led to the need for location-aware applications. However, sometimes person location is difficult to obtain, since most of these devices only have a GPS (Global Positioning System) chip to retrieve location. In order to suppress this limitation and to provide location everywhere (even where a structured environment doesn’t exist) a wearable inertial navigation system is proposed, which is a convenient way to track people in situations where other localization systems fail. The system combines pedestrian dead reckoning with GPS, using widely available, low-cost and low-power hardware components. The system innovation is the information fusion and the use of probabilistic methods to learn persons gait behavior to correct, in real-time, the drift errors given by the sensors.

Media Brokerage: Agent-Based SLA Negotiation

Media content personalisation is a major challenge involving viewers as well as media content producer and distributor businesses. The goal is to provide viewers with media items aligned with their interests. Producers and distributors engage in item negotiations to establish the corresponding service level agreements (SLA). In order to address automated partner lookup and item SLA negotiation, this paper proposes the MultiMedia Brokerage (MMB) platform, which is a multiagent system that negotiates SLA regarding media items on behalf of media content producer and distributor businesses. The MMB platform is structured in four service layers: interface, agreement management, business modelling and market. In this context, there are: (i) brokerage SLA (bSLA), which are established between individual businesses and the platform regarding the provision of brokerage services; and (ii) item SLA (iSLA), which are established between producer and distributor businesses about the provision of media items. In particular, this paper describes the negotiation, establishment and enforcement of bSLA and iSLA, which occurs at the agreement and negotiation layers, respectively. The platform adopts a pay-per-use business model where the bSLA define the general conditions that apply to the related iSLA. To illustrate this process, we present a case study describing the negotiation of a bSLA instance and several related iSLA instances. The latter correspond to the negotiation of the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for a specific end viewer.

Stochastic Framework for Strategic Decision-making of Load-serving Entities for Day-ahead Market

The deregulation of electricity markets has diversified the range of financial transaction modes between independent system operator (ISO), generation companies (GENCO) and load-serving entities (LSE) as the main interacting players of a day-ahead market (DAM). LSEs sell electricity to end-users and retail customers. The LSE that owns distributed generation (DG) or energy storage units can supply part of its serving loads when the nodal price of electricity rises. This opportunity stimulates them to have storage or generation facilities at the buses with higher locational marginal prices (LMP). The short-term advantage of this model is reducing the risk of financial losses for LSEs in DAMs and its long-term benefit for the LSEs and the whole system is market power mitigation by virtually increasing the price elasticity of demand. This model also enables the LSEs to manage the financial risks with a stochastic programming framework.

Smart Grid Market Using Joint Energy and Ancillary Services Bids

The power systems operation in the smart grid context increases significantly the complexity of their management. New approaches for ancillary services procurement are essential to ensure the operation of electric power systems with appropriate levels of stability, safety, quality, equity and competitiveness. These approaches should include market mechanisms which allow the participation of small and medium distributed energy resources players in a competitive market environment. In this paper, an energy and ancillary services joint market model used by an aggregator is proposed, considering bids of several types of distributed energy resources. In order to improve economic efficiency in the market, ancillary services cascading market mechanism is also considered in the model. The proposed model is included in MASCEM – a multi-agent system electricity market simulator. A case study considering a distribution network with high penetration of distributed energy resources is presented.

Planeamento de um Data Market Place

Relatório de Estágio apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Novos Media e Práticas Web

Analysis of Electricity Market Prices Using Multidimensional Scaling

This paper studies the impact of the energy upon electricity markets using Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). Data from major energy and electricity markets is considered. Several maps produced by MDS are presented and discussed revealing that this method is useful for understanding the correlation between them. Furthermore, the results help electricity markets agents hedging against Market Clearing Price (MCP) volatility.

Cournot model with investments to change the market size

We present a new deterministic dynamical model on the market size of Cournot competitions, based on Nash equilibria of R&D investment strategies to increase the size of the market of the firms at every period of the game. We compute the unique Nash equilibrium for the second subgame and the profit functions for both firms. Adding uncertainty to the R&D investment strategies, we get a new stochastic dynamical model and we analyse the importance of the uncertainty to reverse the initial advantage of one firm with respect to the other.