Search results for "Surplus"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
Operational and financial performance of Italian airport companies: A dynamic graphical model
2016
Abstract This paper provides evidence on the relationship within a set of financial and operational indicators for Italian airports over 2008–2014. The limited sample size of national and regional airports suggests to apply the penalised RCON ( V , E ) model, which falls within the class of Gaussian graphical models. It provides both estimate and easy way to visualise conditional independence structures of the variables. Moreover, it is particularly suitable for handling longitudinal data where small number of units and huge number of variables have been collected. Findings highlight that a qualified concept of size matters in determining good financial performance. Specifically, increasing…
New options in assisted reproduction technology: the Cryotop method of oocyte vitrification
2008
The Cryotop vitrification method has been shown to be a very useful tool for oocyte cryopreservation, giving excellent results regarding survival and clinical outcome. There are several clinical situations in which oocyte cryopreservation provides solutions that have not been available to date. This report describes three of these situations: (i) a low-responder patient who needed a single gene diagnosis due to the presence of a genetic disease; (ii) a patient undergoing endometrial bleeding on the day of oocyte retrieval who was also affected by a genetic disorder; and (iii) a patient who failed to become pregnant after the donation of vitrified oocytes and subsequently had the re-vitrifie…
Spaniards’ Secular Ritual
2015
Football is the most popular sport in Spain, and its strong attraction is clearly reflected in its economic dimensions. Recent estimations of the economic influence of Spanish football concluded that it had an effect on production of some €4,000,000,000, almost one per cent of the general Gross National Product (GNP) and about 1.2 per cent of the GNP of the services sector (LFP, 2004). Adding in other indirect effects, such as employee remuneration and the gross operating surplus, the total impact of Spanish football on the Spanish economy climbs to €8,066,000,000, approximately 1.7 per cent of the overall GNP and 2.5 per cent of the GNP of the services sector, and it provides direct or ind…
Joint Audit, Audit Market Structure, and Consumer Surplus
2017
We use a structural application of the discrete choice model to investigate how the introduction of a joint audit policy would affect audit market structure and consumer surplus. We perform this policy evaluation by identifying demand fundamentals in a joint audit regime and applying them to a single audit regime. We find that a joint audit requirement has the potential to change the audit market structure substantially but that the effects are sensitive to the specific policy design. For example, small audit firms gain market share in a joint audit regime but only if an equal sharing of the workload between the two joint auditors is not required. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that th…
Cooperation among competitors: A comparison of cost-sharing mechanisms
2016
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the consequences of using outcome-based versus ex ante-based cost-sharing mechanisms in terms of competing firms' profitability and total welfare. We consider two firms making a joint expenditure, which can positively affect firms' demand and/or unit operating costs, while competing in the final market by setting either price or quantity. We compare two outcome-based cost-sharing mechanisms, i.e., Quantity Proportional (QP) and Total Margin proportional (TM), with the more competitive Fixed Share (FS) mechanism where cost-sharing is set up on an ex ante basis. We show that outcome-based mechanisms, and even a fully collusive behavior induced by the opt…
More firms, more competition? The case of the fourth operator in France's mobile phone market
2010
Accepted, Forthcoming; International audience; To foster competition the French government authorized a fourth operator, ‘Free', to enter the country's mobile phone market at the end of 2009 alongside Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom (BT), who held respectively one-half, one-third and one-sixth of the market. By using a stylized model of France's phone market, we have examined what we call the regulator's nightmares and dreams. If Cournot competition is in place before Free's entry, minimizing the total profit fails to maximize the consumer surplus and the total surplus; the maximum most realistic price fall is 6.7% compared to three-way competition and could be 1.7% only; if Orange, SFR an…
Wage gaps between the public and private sectors in Spain
1998
Based on data from the last household survey conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estatistica in 1990-91, we estimate separate earnings equations by sector of employment and gender, treating the choice of employment sector as endogenous. From these results we compare the wage-generating process for each subgroup and identify the returns to human capital of males and females working in the public and private sectors. We then decompose overall wage gaps by sector for each gender in order to measure the contribution of education and other personal characteristics to public-private wage differentials and to evaluate the economic surplus that public sector workers receive compared to their pri…
Alternative pricing regimes in interurban passenger transport with externalities and modal competition
2009
Abstract We develop an interurban passenger transport model with modal competition, where modes are perceived as differentiated products, and capture all major externalities. Our objective is to establish whether alternative regulatory regimes, which may involve road tolls, may lead to a traffic allocation, user welfare, and total welfare that may be closer to the social optimum. An empirical application to interurban Spanish travel is undertaken. We find that the private regime yields the lowest total welfare level: 12.6% below the social optimum level. Optimum pricing requires a toll on car transport of 5.1 cents of per passenger-km, and a price decrease of all other modes, relative to th…
Competing R&D Joint Ventures in Cournot oligopoly with spillovers
2014
This paper considers competition between R&D cartels, whereby prospective Cournot competitors coordinate their R&D decisions in order to maximize joint profit. It studies how R&D activity, aggregate profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare vary as the number of competing cartels varies. It also compares equilibrium with second best R&D, and discusses the policy implications of the results. The results show that the effects of R&D cartel competition depend on the welfare criterion adopted and on whether there are cooperative synergies or not.
Towards a more sustainable food Supply chain: opening up invisible waste in food service
2016
Future challenges to the global food supply chain are complex. In order to embrace sustainability, companies should change their management practices towards more efficient resource use. Food waste being a misuse of resources, we identify its causes and possible ways of minimising it. To achieve this goal, we conducted explorative research with qualitative and quantitative data through in-depth semi-structured interviews and an open questionnaire with top Spanish food service companies. Results show that most businesses mainly tend to minimise food waste according to economic criteria, without taking into account the social, ethical or environmental factors. As a consequence, just “visible”…