Critical import supply elasticities and the ‘imports-as-market-discipline’ hypothesis

This paper formally examines the factors underlying how responsive imports must be to domestic prices (the ‘import supply elasticity’) in order to thwart an anticompetitive domestic price increase stemming from a merger––an issue that frequently arises in many antitrust reviews. Domestic firms face a fringe comprised of foreign firms who import their products into the domestic market. In the eyes of domestic consumers, these imports are viewed as imperfect substitutes in demand to the output produced by the domestic firms. The model is solved in terms of the ‘critical’ import supply elasticity that can then be used evaluate the ability of imports to constrain an anticompetitive price increase post-merger. Both general and linear demand specifications are considered. Numerical simulations are conducted to consider the magnitude of perturbations in the model’s exogenous parameters. Potential empirical extensions of the model are also considered.

Competition and cost pass-through in differentiated oligopolies

The impact that competition exerts on the incentives of firms to pass through reductions in their marginal costs is an important consideration in assessing the performance of alternate market structures. This paper examines the role of product differentiation on firm-specific and industry-wide pass-through rates. Relying on Shubik’s (1980) model of differentiated Cournot competition with linear demand, we show that there exists an initial critical range over which the firm-specific cost pass-through rate decreases in the number of firms. Beyond this range the rate continually increases – approaching 50 percent as the number of firms goes to infinity. This contrasts with a model of differentiated Bertrand competition in which cost pass through monotonically decreases in the number of firms. The disparate effects across the Cournot and Bertrand models are shown to stem from the influence of competition and product differentiation on the respective firm reaction functions. Suggestions for future empirical work based upon the models’ predictions and implications for antitrust policy are also discussed.Competitive effects; Oligopoly; Merger; Pass-through; Product differentiation

Energy efficient engine high pressure turbine ceramic shroud support technology report

This work represents the development and fabrication of ceramic HPT (high pressure turbine) shrouds for the Energy Efficient Engine (E3). Details are presented covering the work performed on the ceramic shroud development task of the NASA/GE Energy Efficient Engine (E3) component development program. The task consists of four phases which led to the selection of a ZrO2-BY2O3 ceramic shroud material system, the development of an automated plasma spray process to produce acceptable shroud structures, the fabrication of select shroud systems for evaluation in laboratory, component, and CF6-50 engine testing, and finally, the successful fabrication of ZrO2-8Y2O3/superpeg, engine quality shrouds for the E3 engine

Critical import supply elasticities and the ‘imports-as-market-discipline’ hypothesis

This paper formally examines the factors underlying how responsive imports must be to domestic prices (the ‘import supply elasticity’) in order to thwart an anticompetitive domestic price increase stemming from a merger––an issue that frequently arises in many antitrust reviews. Domestic firms face a fringe comprised of foreign firms who import their products into the domestic market. In the eyes of domestic consumers, these imports are viewed as imperfect substitutes in demand to the output produced by the domestic firms. The model is solved in terms of the ‘critical’ import supply elasticity that can then be used evaluate the ability of imports to constrain an anticompetitive price increase post-merger. Both general and linear demand specifications are considered. Numerical simulations are conducted to consider the magnitude of perturbations in the model’s exogenous parameters. Potential empirical extensions of the model are also considered.Competitive effects; Critical loss; Market definition; Import supply elasticity

Space environment operation of experimental hydrazine reactors Final report

Correlation of low temperature high vacuum hydrazine ignition properties of Shell 405 catalyst with concentration of adsorbed gase

Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of A≤6A\leq6 Nuclei

The energies of $^{3}H$, $^{3}He$, and $^{4}He$ ground states, the ${\frac{3}{2}}^{-}$ and ${\frac{1}{2}}^{-}$ scattering states of $^{5}He$, the ground states of $^{6}He$, $^{6}Li$, and $^{6}Be$ and the $3^{+}$ and $0^{+}$ excited states of $^{6}Li$ have been accurately calculated with the Green's function Monte Carlo method using realistic models of two- and three-nucleon interactions. The splitting of the $A=3$ isospin $T=\frac{1}{2}$ and $A=6$ isospin $T=1$, $J^{\pi} = 0^{+}$ multiplets is also studied. The observed energies and radii are generally well reproduced, however, some definite differences between theory and experiment can be identified.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Towards a relation extraction framework for cyber-security concepts

In order to assist security analysts in obtaining information pertaining to their network, such as novel vulnerabilities, exploits, or patches, information retrieval methods tailored to the security domain are needed. As labeled text data is scarce and expensive, we follow developments in semi-supervised Natural Language Processing and implement a bootstrapping algorithm for extracting security entities and their relationships from text. The algorithm requires little input data, specifically, a few relations or patterns (heuristics for identifying relations), and incorporates an active learning component which queries the user on the most important decisions to prevent drifting from the desired relations. Preliminary testing on a small corpus shows promising results, obtaining precision of .82.Comment: 4 pages in Cyber & Information Security Research Conference 2015, AC

User's manual for the coupled mode version of the normal modes rotor aeroelastic analysis computer program

This User's Manual was prepared to provide the engineer with the information required to run the coupled mode version of the Normal Modes Rotor Aeroelastic Analysis Computer Program. The manual provides a full set of instructions for running the program, including calculation of blade modes, calculations of variable induced velocity distribution and the calculation of the time history of the response for either a single blade or a complete rotor with an airframe (the latter with constant inflow)

Importance of Baryon-Baryon Coupling in Hypernuclei

The $\Lambda N - \Sigma N$ coupling in $\Lambda$--hypernuclei and $\Lambda \Lambda - \Xi N$ coupling in $\Lambda \Lambda$--hypernuclei produce novel physics not observed in the conventional, nonstrange sector. Effects of $\Lambda \leftrightarrow \Sigma$ conversion in $^3_{\Lambda}$H are reviewed. The role of $\Lambda N - \Sigma N$ coupling suppression in the $A=4,5$ $\Lambda$--hypernuclei due to Pauli blocking is highlighted, and the implications for the structure of $^{10}_{\;\, \Lambda}$B are explored. Suppression of $\Lambda \Lambda - \Xi N$ conversion in $^{\;\;\, 6}_{\Lambda \Lambda}$He is hypothesized as the reason that the $$ matrix element is small. Measurement of $^{\;\;\, 4}_{\Lambda \Lambda}$H is proposed to investigate the full $\Lambda \Lambda - \Xi N$ interaction. The implication for $\Lambda \Lambda$ analog states is discussed.Comment: 17 pages LATEX, 1 figure uuencoded postscrip

Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of excited states in A = 6--8 nuclei

A variational Monte Carlo method is used to generate sets of orthogonal trial functions, Psi_T(J^pi,T), for given quantum numbers in various light p-shell nuclei. These Psi_T are then used as input to Green's function Monte Carlo calculations of first, second, and higher excited (J^pi,T) states. Realistic two- and three-nucleon interactions are used. We find that if the physical excited state is reasonably narrow, the GFMC energy converges to a stable result. With the combined Argonne v_18 two-nucleon and Illinois-2 three-nucleon interactions, the results for many second and higher states in A = 6--8 nuclei are close to the experimental values.Comment: Revised version with minor changes as accepted by Phys. Rev. C. 11 page