“Ineffective” competition: a puzzle?

Conventionally, we think of an increase in competition as weakly decreasing prices, increasing the number of consumers served, thus increasing consumer surplus, decreasing firms profits, etc. Here, we demonstrate that, under some tame circumstances, an increase in competition may lead to a price increase in a horizontally differentiated market. We show this relationship for the petrol market in German cities

“Ineffective†competition: a puzzle?

Conventionally, we think of an increase in competition as weakly decreasing prices, increasing the number of consumers served, thus increasing consumer surplus, decreasing firms profits, etc. Here, we demonstrate that, under some tame circumstances, an increase in competition may lead to a price increase in a horizontally differentiated market. We show this relationship for the petrol market in German cities.

Definition of Fuel and Lubricant Consumption Rates and Production of Tractor Units As Part of John Deere Tractors

Tractors are mainly applied in agriculture. The share of import in the structure of tractor machinery market is constantly growing. One of the information sources for the optimization of the machine and tractor fleet and the development of standards to satisfy the needs of typical farms in tractors and agricultural machines for crop production are the performance standards of machinery and fuel consumption. The recommended norms of fuel production and consumption imply the rational use of shift time, optimal composition of machine-tractor units and effective operation modes of tractors and self-travelling agricultural machines. In recent years, many tractors and agricultural machines of foreign companies, including John Deere, are working in the fields of Trans-Urals, Siberia and Russia as a whole. The standards of production and consumption of fuels and lubricants for these agro-climatic conditions are not available for all machine-tractor units. Therefore, it is becoming ever more relevant for agricultural producers to develop such. The studies to establish fuel consumption standards and performance rates of machine-tractor units as part of John Deere tractors were carried out in the fields of agricultural enterprises of the Tyumen Region. The paper presents the results of the study. For example, the productivity of a tractor for a field located at a distance of 5–6 km and an average length of furrow of 1300 m can be in the range of 5.8–6.0 ha/h. Taking into account natural and climatic conditions and different physical and mechanical composition of soil, as well as configuration of fields and length of furrows during processing, the data on the consumption of basic lubricants were obtained. Recommendations on the use of consumption rates for fuels and lubricants of modern tractors in various technological operations in agriculture will greatly facilitate planning and calculation of operating costs of machine-tractor units. The paper considers recommendations on the use of correction factors to the nominal range of fuel consumption depending on soil type for John Deere tractors of the 9th series on the example of disk tillage. Software for economic evaluation of agricultural machinery as part of agricultural technology was developed

Justification for the Conversion of a Combine Harvester to Operate on Compressed Natural Gas

The article considers the issue of expanding the use of gas motor fuel in the agricultural sector on agricultural machinery. Several regulatory documents on the regulation of relations in the use of gas motor fuels and on energy conservation and energy efficiency in agriculture are indicated. It was noted that the conversion of agricultural machinery, in particular, combine harvesters to compressed natural gas, has been little studied and little attention has been paid to this, although this area is promising, especially for the Tyumen region of Russia, since it has huge reserves of natural gas. The use of natural gas as a motor fuel on a combine harvester is more expedient than the use of liquid fuels, since such gas is a more economical, safe, environmentally friendly and environmentally friendly type of fuel. An Acros-530 combine harvester was chosen as the object of study. The purpose of the study is to increase the efficiency of the combine by converting it to work on gas fuel. The technical characteristics of the gas engine Yaroslavl Engine Plant-53644 CNG, which is proposed to be used instead of a regular diesel engine, are considered. Analysis of the design of the Acros-530 combine allowed us to determine the place for placing gas cylinders, as well as the mounting points of the developed frame designs on which gas cylinders will be mounted. It is planned to install 9 cylinders with a capacity of 276.9 cubic meters on the combine. m compressed natural gas. An analysis of the technological operations of grain harvesting using a gas processor showed the possibility of achieving an annual economic effect for a field of 1,500 hectares of more than 100,000 rubles, mainly due to a reduction in fuel costs by 3.5–4.5 times

Design and Justification of a Combined Tillage Machine

The tillage of soil with minimum energy consumption can be achieved by breaking the bonds between soil aggregates with tensile deformations. The design of a combined tillage machine is proposed and its technological parameters are justified. The proposed machine includes a frame with a flat working element with a leg, top and bottom rotary agitators with a drive mechanism placed behind a flat working element above each other. The design feature is that the circumferential velocity of a soil-destroying element of the lower rotary agitator is higher than the translational velocity of a machine, and the circumferential velocity of the upper rotary agitator is higher than the circumferential velocity of the lower rotary agitator. Besides, the proposed shape of a rotary agitator made along the Archimedes’ spiral does not allow soil to be collapsed by the back of a cutting edge. This reduces specific energy consumption at high quality of soil loosening. The purpose of the machine is to reduce specific energy consumption of soil treatment. This is achieved by the fact that the axis of rotation of the upper rotary agitator is shifted backwards in the direction of machine movement relative to the axis of rotation of the lower rotary agitator by h = R · sin · (arccos (– 1/λ)), where R – radius of the upper rotary agitator, λ – kinematic parameter characterizing the operation mode of the upper rotary agitator. Thus, the destruction of a pre-stressed soil formation due to tensile stresses caused by the mutual arrangement of working elements and the interconnection of machine operation modes contributes to the reduction of energy consumption

Radiation Emission by Electrons Channeling in Bent Silicon Crystals

Results of numerical simulations of electron channeling and emission spectra are reported for straight and uniformly bent silicon crystal. The projectile trajectories are computed using the newly developed module [1] of the MBN Explorer package [2,3]. The electron channeling along Si(110) crystallographic planes is studied for the projectile energy 855 MeV.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures; submitted to European Physical Journal D. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1307.678