STRUCTURAL CHANGE, RENTS TRANSFERRING AND MARKET POWER IN THE INTERNATIONAL COFFEE MARKET: A TIME SERIES ANALYSIS

The breakdown of the International Coffee Agreement (an oligopoly of exporting countries) in 1990 led to increasing competition for market share. We use an econometric model to examine the effects of the agreement's dissolution. Results suggest a transfer of rents from producers to wholesalers and little impact on consumers.Industrial Organization,

Optimal Capacity of the Blume-Emery-Griffiths perceptron

A Blume-Emery-Griffiths perceptron model is introduced and its optimal capacity is calculated within the replica-symmetric Gardner approach, as a function of the pattern activity and the imbedding stability parameter. The stability of the replica-symmetric approximation is studied via the analogue of the Almeida-Thouless line. A comparison is made with other three-state perceptrons.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Localized vortex beams in anisotropic Lieb lattices

We address the issue of nonlinear modes in a two-dimensional waveguide array, spatially distributed in the Lieb lattice geometry, and modeled by a saturable nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. In particular, we analyze the existence and stability of vortex-type solutions finding localized patterns with symmetric and asymmetric profiles, ranging from topological charge S=1 to S=3. By taking into account the presence of anisotropy, which is inherent to experimental realization of waveguide arrays, we identify different stability behaviors according to their topological charge. Our findings might give insight on experimental feasibility to observe these kind of vortex states.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

The relationship between public and private bicycle use: the case of Seville

Despite the success achieved by Public Bicycle Sharing Systems (PBSS) across the world, several researchers provide evidence on their limitations and constraints in a medium-long term, and bicycle ownership may be considered as a complementary tool to promote a 'bicycle-culture'. This paper aims to cover the gap about the interaction between both systems (public bicycle / private bicycle) and which are the key aspects to explain the bicycle-buying decision. After a fieldwork based on surveys conducted in Seville (Spain), one of the cities currently acknowledged worldwide for its successful policy of promoting cycling, we apply a Discrete Choice Model. Our findings show that among the socio-demographic factors that favor the move from the PBSS to the private bicycle are: having a higher level of education, being more progressive ideologically-speaking, and being a resident of the city itself; while age and gender do not appear to be conclusive. Experienced users, for whom the bicycle is a part of his /her healthy lifestyle, state a greater willingness to buy a bicycle. And the main obstacles to make the jump from the PBSS to the private bicycle, and that any action plan to support private bicycle usage should take into account, are: the lack of proper parking at the origin/destination, and fear of theft

A spherical Hopfield model

We introduce a spherical Hopfield-type neural network involving neurons and patterns that are continuous variables. We study both the thermodynamics and dynamics of this model. In order to have a retrieval phase a quartic term is added to the Hamiltonian. The thermodynamics of the model is exactly solvable and the results are replica symmetric. A Langevin dynamics leads to a closed set of equations for the order parameters and effective correlation and response function typical for neural networks. The stationary limit corresponds to the thermodynamic results. Numerical calculations illustrate our findings.Comment: 9 pages Latex including 3 eps figures, Addition of an author in the HTML-abstract unintentionally forgotten, no changes to the manuscrip