5,275 research outputs found
Strategic Buyers, Horizontal Mergers and Synergies: An Experimental Investigation*
This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate interrelationships between strategic buyers, market power and merger-induced synergies. The experiment consists of 40 posted-offer quadropolies. Treatments include the use of simulated or human buyers, seller consolidations and merger-induced fixed cost and unit cost synergies. In the simulated-buyer markets we observe behavior generally consistent with comparative static predictions: prices rise post-merger, and unit (but not fixed) cost synergies may exert some price-moderating effect. The addition of powerful buyers changes results markedly. Although prices are lower in the human buyer markets, outcomes are more variable and predicted comparative static effects are no longer observed.
Determining the Impact of Wind on System Costs via the Temporal Patterns of Load and Wind Generation
Wind Energy, System Costs, Alternative Energy, Electricity Generation, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q4, Q42, Q54,
Modified Gravity Makes Galaxies Brighter
We investigate the effect of modifed gravity with screening mechanisms, such
as the chameleon or symmetron models, upon the structure of main sequence
stars. We find that unscreened stars can be significantly more luminous and
ephemeral than their screened doppelgangers. By embedding these stars into
dwarf galaxies, which can be unscreened for values of the parameters not yet
ruled out observationally, we show that the cumulative effect of their
increased luminosity can enhance the total galactic luminosity. We estimate
this enhancement and find that it can be considerable given model parameters
that are still under experimental scrutiny. By looking for systematic offsets
between screened dwarf galaxies in clusters and unscreened galaxies in voids,
these effects could form the basis of an independent observational test that
can potentially lower the current experimental bounds on the model independent
parameters of these theories by and order of magnitude or more.Comment: 16 pages, six figure
Raising Revenues for Charity: Auctions versus Lotteries
We report an experiment conducted to gain insight into factors that may affect revenues in English auctions and lotteries, two commonly used charity fund-raising formats. In particular, we examine how changes in the marginal per capita return (MPCR) from the public component of bidding, and how changes in the distribution of values affect the revenue properties of each format. Although we observe some predicted comparative static effects, the dominant result is that lottery revenues uniformly exceed English auction revenues. The similarity of lottery and English auction bids across sales formats appears to drive the excess lottery revenues.auctions, lotteries, charitable giving, experimental tests
The Chameleonic Contribution to the SZ Radial Profile of the Coma Cluster
We constrain the chameleonic Sunyaev--Zel'dovich (CSZ) effect in the Coma
cluster from measurements of the Coma radial profile presented in the WMAP
7-year results. The CSZ effect arises from the interaction of a scalar (or
pseudoscalar) particle with the cosmic microwave background in the magnetic
field of galaxy clusters. We combine this radial profile data with SZ
measurements towards the centre of the Coma cluster in different frequency
bands, to find Delta T_{SZ,RJ}(0)=-400+/-40 microKelvin and Delta T_{CSZ}^{204
GHz}(0)=-20+/-15 microKelvin (68% CL) for the thermal SZ and CSZ effects in the
cluster respectively. The central value leads to an estimate of the photon to
scalar (or pseudoscalar) coupling strength of g = (5.2 - 23.8) x 10^{-10}
GeV^{-1}, while the 95% confidence bound is estimated to be g < (8.7 - 39.4) x
10^{-10} GeV^{-1}.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Extrapolation of Galactic Dust Emission at 100 Microns to CMBR Frequencies Using FIRAS
We present predicted full-sky maps of submillimeter and microwave emission
from the diffuse interstellar dust in the Galaxy. These maps are extrapolated
from the 100 micron emission and 100/240 micron flux ratio maps that Schlegel,
Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998; SFD98) generated from IRAS and COBE/DIRBE data.
Results are presented for a number of physically plausible emissivity models.
We find that no power law emissivity function fits the FIRAS data from 200 -
2100 GHz. In this paper we provide a formalism for a multi-component model for
the dust emission. A two-component model with a mixture of silicate and
carbon-dominated grains (motivated by Pollack et al., 1994}) provides a fit to
an accuracy of about 15% to all the FIRAS data over the entire high-latitude
sky. Small systematic differences are found between the atomic and molecular
phases of the ISM.
Our predictions for the thermal (vibrational) emission from Galactic dust at
\nu < 3000 GHz are available for general use. These full-sky predictions can be
made at the DIRBE resolution of 40' or at the higher resolution of 6.1 arcmin
from the SFD98 DIRBE-corrected IRAS maps.Comment: 48 pages, AAS LaTeX, 6 figures, ApJ (accepted). Data described in the
text, as well as 4 additional figures, are available at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/dus
Twist and Measure: Characterizing the Effective Radius of Strings and Bundles under Twisting Contraction
We test the standard model for the length contraction of a bundle of strings
under twist, and find deviation that is significantly greater than typically
appreciated and that has a different nature at medium and large twist angles.
By including volume conservation, we achieve better fits to data for single-,
double-, and triple-stranded bundles of Nylon monofilament as an ideal test
case. This gives a well-defined procedure for extracting an effective twist
radius that characterizes contraction behavior. While our approach accounts for
the observed faster-than-expected contraction up to medium twist angles, we
also find that the contraction is nevertheless slower than expected at large
twist angles for both Nylon monofilament bundles and several other string
types. The size of this effect varies with the individual-string braid
structure and with the number of strings in the bundle. We speculate that it
may be related to elastic deformation within the material. However, our first
modeling attempt does not fully capture the observed behavior.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
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