The cost structure of Australian telecommunications

Since 1991 Australian telecommunications has undergone substantial reform. To a large extent, the economic correctness of pro-competitive policy depends on the non-existence of natural monopoly technology. This paper provides estimates of the Australian telecommunications system cost structure, and tests for subadditivity from 1943 to 1991. Additivity of the cost function after 1945 rejects the natural monopoly hypothesis and supports recent government policy. Diminished natural monopoly characteristics suggest that co-ordination between firms through networking can achieve similar economies as internal co-ordination within a monopoly. This finding is important, given the trend towards network unbundling, and service provision through interconnection.Cost structure of Australian telecommunications

Market Structure, Concentration Indices and Welfare Cost

This paper revisited the analytics of the welfare significance of market imperfections using the industry concentration index. It reopened the issue of how best to measure the concentration index. Specifically, it developed a new market concentration index based on the Hirschman- Herfindahl concentration index that preserves all its known advantages as a full information industry concentration index. It also improved on its usefulness and applicability. In developing the new index the paper reviewed the development of the analytical principles and methodologies for the empirical measurement of the welfare or social cost of monopoly (market imperfections). In particular, it reviewed Cowling-Mueller (1981) extensively because the analytical framework they prescribed for the measurement of the welfare cost of oligopoly is misconceived and misleading. The new index is of great usefulness and wide applicability and generalizes the welfare loss function to the entire market structure spectrum.market power; market imperfections; industry concentration indices; Hirschman-Herfindahl concentration index; Agiobenebo-Hirschman- Herfindahl index; welfare cost of market imperfections

A study of design trade (OFFS) using a computer model

The interaction between the efficiency of the structural design and the cost of the structure used was studied. It is shown that future effort is best directed at producing a low cost structure of medium efficiency, but with the ability to withstand normal service wear. The trade-off between aerodynamic drag and structure weight in selecting a length to diameter ratio for the hull is evaluated along with the implications of power plan type and fuel cost on the economics of the airship. The choice of lifting gas is considered

RURAL-URBAN DIFFERENCES IN NURSING HOME ACCESS, QUALITY AND COST

Rural-urban differences in the supply of nursing home services as hypothesized to be jointly affected by competitive and regulatory forces, government policies, and the cost structure. Study findings indicate that rural services are slightly less accessible and lower in quality. A translog cost share function reveals no difference in the operating cost structure of rural and urban homes. Cost shares for nursing care are directly related to the degree of skilled nursing provided by homes. Significant scale economies were not detected for any of the major operating costs.Rural health care, Nursing homes, Cost structure, Health Economics and Policy,

Cost Structure of the Portuguese Water Industry: a Cubic Cost Function Application

The main scope of this paper is to confirm, or otherwise, the idea usually presented in national reports and strategic programmes for the water sector that the Portuguese water market is a natural monopoly. Based on a multi-product approach (considering the m3 of potable water delivered and wastewater collected as the outputs) we use a cubic functional specification to estimate water utilities cost function, and then to look for the presence of economies of scale and of scope. The estimated results show that the average production scale is below the estimated minimum efficient scale and that large utilities have moderate overall diseconomies of scale and scope. In addition, there are moderate economies of scope from the joint production of potable water and wastewater collection up to the minimum efficient scale, suggesting advantages in merging small and medium sized contiguous water utilities. Sufficient conditions for subadditivity of costs are not verified throughout the range of outputs, allowing us to conclude that the Portuguese water industry is not a natural monopoly for all output vectors.cubic function, multi-product cost function, water utilities, regulatory policy

Network correlated data gathering with explicit communication: NP-completeness and algorithms

We consider the problem of correlated data gathering by a network with a sink node and a tree-based communication structure, where the goal is to minimize the total transmission cost of transporting the information collected by the nodes, to the sink node. For source coding of correlated data, we consider a joint entropy-based coding model with explicit communication where coding is simple and the transmission structure optimization is difficult. We first formulate the optimization problem definition in the general case and then we study further a network setting where the entropy conditioning at nodes does not depend on the amount of side information, but only on its availability. We prove that even in this simple case, the optimization problem is NP-hard. We propose some efficient, scalable, and distributed heuristic approximation algorithms for solving this problem and show by numerical simulations that the total transmission cost can be significantly improved over direct transmission or the shortest path tree. We also present an approximation algorithm that provides a tree transmission structure with total cost within a constant factor from the optimal

Lithography-Free, Manganese-Based Ultra-Broadband Absorption Through Annealing-Based Deformation of Thin Layers into metal-air composites

Fabrication, characterization, and analysis of an ultra-broadband lithography-free absorber is presented. An over 94% average absorption is experimentally achieved in the wavelength range of 450-1400 nm. This ultra-broadband absorption is obtained by a simple annealed tri-layer metal-insulator-metal (MIM) configuration. The metal used in the structure is Manganese (Mn), which also makes the structure cost-effective. It is shown that the structure retains its high absorption for TM polarization, up to 70 degrees, and, for TE polarization, up to 50 degrees. Moreover, the physical mechanism behind this broadband absorption is explained. Being both lithography-free and cost-effective, the structure is a perfect candidate for large-area and mass production purposes.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure