The Real Economy and Competition Policy in Periods of Retrenchment

Competition policy works well when markets are given time to evolve and drive improved efficiency; but this takes time. However, under current turbulent times, the short-run survival actions may be insistently sought by policy-makers under the pressure of trade unions and the exit of failing firms may be perceived to be more costly for society. Actually, the immediate costs that existing businesses, employees and consumers have to incur may be up-front and visible, while the benefits of competition may be less visible. As a consequence, times of severe financial and economic crises bring about a severe questioning of market mechanisms with unfailing regularity and the stance of the competition policy against this backdrop. We shall therefore look in the current paper at the role of competition authorities in a time of severe economic and financial crisis and in particular, at how the crisis will impact the application of competition law. In the end, we will conclude in favour of the need to preserve competition policy as well in difficult times even if we admit that a certain flexibilisation in procedures (but not in rules) may be probably necessary.retrenchment, antitrust and merger control, state aid policy, competition authority

Activities of a Large Pulp Company and a Forest Engineer\u27s Relation Thereto

The Champion Fibre Company, manufacturers primarily of all kinds of chemical wood pulp, and also makers on a large scale of paper, container board, and tannin extract, operates the largest mill of its kind in the world. The daily consumption of raw material is 650 cords elf wood, and 70,000 board feet of saw-timber, which is equivalent to the yield of an average 70* acres of the section from which it draws its supplies. The location of the plant is such that it can tap a wide territory, heavily limbered and within reasonable freight haul

Why No Mercy? A Study of Clementia in the Aeneid

The Roman poet Vergil lived through the tumultuous age of the Roman civil wars of the first century BC, and witnessed as the Roman republic was repeatedly torn apart by rival aristocrats. His great epic, the Aeneid, tells the story of how the Trojan hero Aeneas, ancestor of Octavian, escapes from Troy and sets out to find a new home for his people. He is guided by fate to Italy, but not all of the Italians are ready to accept the Trojans as friends, and war breaks out between newcomers and natives. This war, as it is fought between two peoples that are later to merge into the Romans, is portrayed by Vergil as a civil war. It is therefore natural to assume that his account of this war is influenced by his meditations on, and evaluation of, the civil wars he himself lived through. On the occasion of the restoration of the republic and the assignment to Octavian of the honorary title of Augustus in 27 BC, a shield was set up in the senate house inscribed with four virtues; virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas. Octavian himself mentions the event proudly in his Res Gestae, and the implicit assertion is that by exercising these four virtues he had restored the republic. However, both ancient sources and modern historians agree that the young Octavian - in contrast to Julius Caesar, his adoptive father - could lay very little claim to the virtue of clementia, or clemency. Aeneas too has at times been critized for a lack of clemency. I find it intriguing that a flaw has been perceived in the characters of both Octavian and his ancestor regarding this same virtue

Description and operational scheme for the Caribbean food corporation's marketing intelligence service

This document show the necessary information to establish an efficient, reliable and timely service for agricultural production

Alkali-Activated Cement-Based Binders (AACBs) as durable and cost-competitive low-CO2 binder materials: some shortcomings that need to be adressed

Available online 14 October 2016.The production of 1 t of ordinary Portland cement generates 0.55 t of chemical CO2 and requires an additional 0.39 t of CO2 in fuel emissions for baking and grinding, accounting for a total of 0.94 t of CO2. The projections for the global demand of Portland cement show that by 2056 it will have doubled, reaching 6 Gt/year. Publications in the field of alkali-activated cement-based binders (AACBs) state that this new material is likely to have high potential to become an alternative to Portland cement. However, AACBs still show some shortcomings that needs to be addressed so that they can effectively compete against Portland cement. This chapter thus reviews AACB costs, carbon dioxide emissions, and some durability issues like efflorescences, alkali silica reaction, and corrosion of steel reinforcement.(undefined

Resistance to acid attack, abrasion and leaching behavior of alkali-activated mine waste binders

This paper report results of a research project on the development of alkali-activated binders using mine wastes. Abrasion and acid resistance of two ordinary Portland cement (OPC) strength class concrete mixtures (C20/25 and C30/37) and several mine waste (MW) mixtures were compared. This study indicates that MW binders possess higher acid and abrasion resistance than OPC based concrete mixtures.The leaching assessment of the MW binders shows it can be considered an inert material which indicates that it could be used as a building material

Aluminum-rich belite sulfoaluminate cements: clinkering and early age hydration

Belite sulfoaluminate (BSA) cements have been proposed as environmentally friendly building materials, as their production may release up to 35% less CO2 into the atmosphere when compared to ordinary Portland cements. Here, we discuss the laboratory production of three aluminum-rich BSA clinkers with nominal mineralogical compositions in the range C2S (50-60%), C4A3$(20- 30$, i.e. a value as close as possible to the nominal composition. Under these experimental conditions, three different BSA clinkers, nominally with 20, 30 and 30 wt% of C4A3$, had 19.6, 27.1 and 27.7 wt$ respectively, as determined by Rietveld analysis. We also studied the complex hydration process of BSA cements prepared by mixing BSA clinkers and gypsum. We present a methodology to establish the phase assemblage evolution of BSA cement pastes with time, including amorphous phases and free water. The methodology is based on Rietveld quantitative phase analysis of synchrotron and laboratory X-ray powder diffraction data coupled with chemical constraints. A parallel calorimetric study is also reported. It is shown that the b-C2S phase is more reactive in aluminum-rich BSA cements than in standard belite cements. On the other hand, C4A3$ reacts faster than the belite phases. The gypsum ratio in the cement is also shown to be an important factor in the phase evolution

Plant Community Diversity Influences Allocation to Direct Chemical Defence in Plantago lanceolata

Background: Forecasting the consequences of accelerating rates of changes in biodiversity for ecosystem functioning requires a mechanistic understanding of the relationships between the structure of biological communities and variation in plant functional characteristics. So far, experimental data of how plant species diversity influences the investment of individual plants in direct chemical defences against herbivores and pathogens is lacking. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used Plantago lanceolata as a model species in experimental grasslands differing in species richness and composition (Jena Experiment) to investigate foliar concentrations of the iridoid glycosides (IG), catalpol and its biosynthetic precursor aucubin. Total IG and aucubin concentrations decreased, while catalpol concentrations increased with increasing plant diversity in terms of species or functional group richness. Negative plant diversity effects on total IG and aucubin concentrations correlated with increasing specific leaf area of P. lanceolata, suggesting that greater allocation to light acquisition reduced the investment into these carbon-based defence components. In contrast, increasing leaf nitrogen concentrations best explained increasing concentrations of the biosynthetically more advanced IG, catalpol. Observed levels of leaf damage explained a significant proportion of variation in total IG and aucubin concentrations, but did not account for variance in catalpol concentrations. Conclusions/Significance: Our results clearly show that plants growing in communities of varying species richness an