Spurious complexity and common standards in markets for consumer goods

It has been argued that cognitively constrained consumers respond sub-optimally to complex decision problems, and that firms can exploit these limitations by introducing spurious complexity into tariff structures, weakening price competition. We model a countervailing force. Restricting one's choices to the most easily comparable options is a psychologically well-attested heuristic. Consumers who use this heuristic favour firms that follow common conventions about tariff structures. Because a 'common standard' promotes price competition, a firm's use of it signals that it offers value for money, validating the heuristic. This allows an equilibrium in which firms use common standards and set competitive prices.common standard, spurious complexity, cognitive limitations

Cooperative Precoding/Resource Allocation Games under Spectral Mask and Total Power Constraints

The use of orthogonal signaling schemes such as time-, frequency-, or code-division multiplexing (T-, F-, CDM) in multi-user systems allows for power-efficient simple receivers. It is shown in this paper that by using orthogonal signaling on frequency selective fading channels, the cooperative Nash bargaining (NB)-based precoding games for multi-user systems, which aim at maximizing the information rates of all users, are simplified to the corresponding cooperative resource allocation games. The latter provides additional practically desired simplifications to transmitter design and significantly reduces the overhead during user cooperation. The complexity of the corresponding precoding/resource allocation games, however, depends on the constraints imposed on the users. If only spectral mask constraints are present, the corresponding cooperative NB problem can be formulated as a convex optimization problem and solved efficiently in a distributed manner using dual decomposition based algorithm. However, the NB problem is non-convex if total power constraints are also imposed on the users. In this case, the complexity associate with finding the NB solution is unacceptably high. Therefore, the multi-user systems are categorized into bandwidth- and power-dominant based on a bottleneck resource, and different manners of cooperation are developed for each type of systems for the case of two-users. Such classification guarantees that the solution obtained in each case is Pareto-optimal and actually can be identical to the optimal solution, while the complexity is significantly reduced. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed cooperative precoding/resource allocation strategies and the reduced complexity of the proposed algorithms.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to the IEEE Trans. Signal Processing in Oct. 200

Application of a structural model to the Spanish electricity wholesale market

The aim of this work is to analyse the behaviour of agents in highly concentrated and strongly regulated electricity wholesale markets with rigid demand. In order to accomplish this aim, the analysis was based on the former Spanish electricity generation market, between January 1999 and June 2007, before the MIBEL (Iberian Electricity Market) has started. The analysis is carried out in the theoretical framework of the structural models. Despite the characteristics of this market, the paper suggests that the average high mark-ups observed in the period examined were very likely due to the implementation of anti-competitive strategies. Therefore, the analysis carried out shows that the opening of a wholesale electricity market without the prior increase in the number of market players does not prevent, by itself, the manipulation of the market, even when the market is strongly regulated.peer-reviewe

When Europe encounters urban governance: Policy Types, Actor Games and Mechanisms of cites Europeanization

This paper examines European Union (EU) causal mechanisms and policy instruments affecting the urban domain throughout the lenses of the Europeanization approach. Instead of looking at EU instruments that are formally/legally consecrated to cities, we use theoretical public policy analysis to explore the arenas and the causal mechanisms that structure the encounters between the EU and urban systems of governance. Policy instruments are related to policy arenas and in turn to different mechanisms of transmission thus originating a typology of European Policy Modes. The paper focuses on four different EU instruments in the in the macro-area of sustainable development and proposes potential game-theoretical models for each of them. In the conclusions we highlight the differences between this approach and the traditional analysis of EU urban policy, and suggest avenues for future empirical research based on typologies of policy instruments and modes of Europeanization

Cognitive Radio Made Practical: Forward-Lookingness and Calculated Competition

Cognitive radio is more than just radio environment awareness, but more importantly the ability to interact with the environment in the best way possible. Ideally, cognitive radios will form a selfregulating society of mobile radios achieving maximum spectrum utilization. However, challenges arise as mobile radios tend to compete with one another for spectrum, generating harmful interference and damaging performance individually and for the network as a whole. In this paper, we present a framework that allows competing radios to teach and learn from each other’s action so that a desirable equilibrium can be reached. The heart of cognition to establish this is the forward-looking ability, which enables competing radios to see beyond the present time, negotiate and optimize their actions towards a more agreeable equilibrium. Technically speaking, we adopt a belief-directed game where each mobile radio, regarded as player, formulates a belief function to project how the radio environment as a whole would respond to any of its action. This model facilitates engineering of the equilibrium by different choices of the players’ belief functions. Under this model, players will negotiate naturally through a sequence of calculated competition (i.e., cycles of teaching and learning with each other). We apply this methodology to a cognitive orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) radio network where mobile users are free to access any of the subcarriers and thus compete for radio resources to maximize their rates. Results reveal that the proposed negotiation-by-forward-looking competition mechanism guides users to converge to an equilibrium that benefits not only individual users but the entire network approaching the maximum achievable sum-rate

Transmit-power control for cognitive radio networks: Challenges, requirements and options

A critical design challenge for cognitive radio networks is to establish a balance between transmit power and interference. In recent years, several approaches for regulating the transmit power of secondary users in cognitive radio networks have been proposed. This report explores the challenges and requirements of power control in cognitive radio networks. The report details two algorithms that have attracted research attention, namely the iterative water-filling algorithm and the no-regret learning algorithm. The two algorithms are compared by considering their application to a simple model, given the same conditions and assumptions. Furthermore, an adaptive scheme is introduced. The scheme incorporates both algorithms into the design of the cognitive engine, which is the functional unit responsible for power control. The conceptual architecture of the cognitive engine is presented. Simulation results for the iterative water-filling algorithm and the no-regret learning algorithm are presented. The number of iterations it takes for the algorithms to attain equilibrium are compared and used as a basis to establish the operational procedures of the hybrid-adaptive scheme. The operational procedures of the scheme are illustrated with a test application scenario. Several application scenarios are further presented to show how secondary users in cognitive radio networks can adaptively switch between the two operational strategies