The effect of legal barriers to entry in the Spanish retail market: a local market approach.

Recent studies have shown that barriers to entry for large retail establishments in Spain have been increased in the last decade. Using information on local markets, we test whether the entry of large retail establishments was effectively limited by regional regulation and whether it effectively protected in-town shops from competition. We find that if entry barriers were reduced to their average level in 1997, the number of large retail establishments would increase by 11.7%. We also find that over-regulation in 1997 has improved in-town shops’ market position, with their number increasing by 13.8%.Barriers to entry, retail distribution, regulation

Measuring the Integration of Staple Food Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: Heterogeneous Infrastructure and Cross Border Trade in the East African Community

This analysis employs cointegration methods and semiparametric regression in order to assess the integration of maize markets and the factors determining national and cross-national transmission of price signals in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use a rich dataset of 16 series of wholesale maize prices between 2000 and 2008 for Kenya, Tanzanian and Uganda. Distance is shown to have a significant nonlinear impact on the transmission of information - modelled using a semi-parametric partially linear model. Border effects are found to be heterogeneous. The empirical results provide strong evidence that the Tanzanian market is isolated from the rest of East Africa and internally fragmented.border effect, spatial market integration, cointegration, semi-parametric regression, partially linear model, Eastern Africa, maize

MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING FOR RESOURCE POLICY APPRAISAL UNDER MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES

Mathematical programming is one technique that can be used for resource policy appraisal. Multiple objectives are usually involved in resource policy considerations. This paper discusses issues regarding the use of mathematical programming techniques for the multiobjective resource policy arena. Theoretical models are introduced with a separation called for between producer response models and policy maker models due to a disparity of objectives. The paper draws on the literature citing cases where producer level models have been utilized to simulate the policy outcome implications of alternative policies.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Hardware Platform for Communication and Localization Performance Evaluation of Devices inside the Human Body

Body area networks (BAN) is a technology gaining widespread attention for application in medical examination, monitoring and emergency therapy. The basic concept of BAN is monitoring a set of sensors on or inside the human body which enable transfer of vital parameters between the patient´s location and the physician in charge. As body area network has certain characteristics, which impose new demands on performance evaluation of systems for wireless access and localization for medical sensors. However, real-time performance evaluation and localization in wireless body area networks is extremely challenging due to the unfeasibility of experimenting with actual devices inside the human body. Thus, we see a need for a real-time hardware platform, and this thesis addressed this need. In this thesis, we introduced a unique hardware platform for performance evaluation of body area wireless access and in-body localization. This hardware platform utilizes a wideband multipath channel simulator, the Elektrobit PROPSimâ„¢ C8, and a typical medical implantable device, the Zarlink ZL70101 Advanced Development Kit. For simulation of BAN channels, we adopt the channel model defined for the Medical Implant Communication Service (MICS) band. Packet Reception Rate (PRR) is analyzed as the criteria to evaluate the performance of wireless access. Several body area propagation scenarios simulated using this hardware platform are validated, compared and analyzed. We show that among three modulations, two forms of 2FSK and 4FSK. The one with lowest raw data rate achieves best PRR, in other word, best wireless access performance. We also show that the channel model inside the human body predicts better wireless access performance than through the human body. For in-body localization, we focus on a Received Signal Strength (RSS) based localization algorithm. An improved maximum likelihood algorithm is introduced and applied. A number of points along the propagation path in the small intestine are studied and compared. Localization error is analyzed for different sensor positions. We also compared our error result with the Cramèr- Rao lower bound (CRLB), shows that our localization algorithm has acceptable performance. We evaluate multiple medical sensors as device under test with our hardware platform, yielding satisfactory localization performance

Velocity Fluctuations and Extreme Events in Microscopic Traffic Data

Vehicle velocity distributions are of utmost relevance for the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of road traffic. Yet, due to technical limitations, they are often empirically analyzed using spatiotemporal averages. Here, we instead study a novel set of microscopic traffic data from Dresden comprising 346 million data points with a resolution of one vehicle from 145 detector sites with a particular focus on extreme events and distribution tails. By fitting q-exponential and Generalized Extreme Value distributions to the right flank of the empirical velocity distributions, we establish that their tails universally exhibit a power-law behavior with similar decay exponents. We also find that q-exponentials are best suitable to model the vast extent to which speed limit violations in the data occur. Furthermore, combining velocity and time headway distributions, we obtain estimates for free flow velocities that always exceed average velocities and sometimes even significantly exceed speed limits. Likewise, congestion effects are found to play a very minor, almost negligible role in traffic flow at the detector sites. These results provide insights into the current state of traffic in Dresden, hinting toward potentially necessary policy amendments regarding road design, speed limits, and speeding prosecution. They also reveal the potentials and limitations of the data set at hand and thereby lay the groundwork for further, more detailed traffic analyses

Alcohol Advertising and Advertising Bans: A Survey of Research Methods, Results, and Policy Implications

This chapter surveys the literatures on advertising bans and alcohol consumption or abuse, and advertising expenditures and alcohol consumption. Studies of state-level bans of billboards are examined as well as studies of international bans that cover broadcasting media. For expenditures, the survey concentrates on econometric methods and the existence of an industry advertising-sales response function. Selected results from survey-research studies of advertising and youth alcohol behaviors also are discussed. The chapter concludes that advertising bans do not reduce alcohol consumption or abuse; advertising expenditures do not have a market-wide expansion effect; and survey-research studies of youth behaviors are seriously incomplete as a basis for public policy. Results of the survey are applied to the Supreme Court's Central Hudson test for constitutionality of restrictions on commercial speech.

Countervailing Power and Seller Performance in U.S. Food and Tobacco Manufacturing Industries

An analysis of the impact of buyer structure on the profitability of U.S. food manufacturing industries shows inconclusive evidence in support of the countervailing power hypothesis in these industries. However, findings show that industries that have high sales to other food manufacturing industries, as opposed to sales to the wholesale, retail and other nonindustrial buyers have lower profitability.Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,