Profitability of Horizontal Mergers in the Presence of Price Stickiness

In this paper, we investigate the profitability of horizontal mergers of firms with price adjustments. We take a di¤erential game approach and both the open-loop as well as the closed-loop equlibria are considered. We show that the merger incentive is determined by how fast the price adapts to the equilibrium level.

The Profitability of Small Horizontal Mergers with Nonlinear Demand Functions

We want to take a differential game approach with price dynamics to conduct an investigation into the consequences of horizontal merger of firms where the demand function is nonlinear. We take into consideration the open-loop equilibrium. We show that in relation to the fact that the demand is nonlinear and prices follow some stickiness an incentive for small merger exists, while it does not appear under the standard approach using a linear demand function.

Neuroblastoma;Variable Symptoms of A Neurogenic Tumor; A Report From Iran

ObjectiveAccording to current data available, neuroblastoma is the most frequent extracranial solid tumor in infants and children; because of its relationship to the primitive sympathetic ganglia, it may progress or regress spontaneously to more malignant or benign forms of tumors, respectively. It is also an important cause of the Opsoclonus Myoclonus Ataxia Syndrome (OMAS), or the "dancing eyes"syndrome. The risk factor of neuroblastoma includes patient's age at diagnosis; degree of tumor spread, and selected biologic variables such as serum LDH, urinary and serum catecholamines such as VMA and HVA, ploidy and MYCN copy numbers. So, detection of risk factors and risk directed therapy are the mainstay of patient management.Materials & MethodsFor this study the records of 43 out of 46 patients, aged less than 14 years, admitted over 8 years (1996-2004), with the confirmed diagnosis of neuroblastoma or ganglioneuroblastoma were evaluated for full course of therapy and follow up.ResultsOf the patient group, 60% were male and 40% female. The most frequent clinical stage was stage 3 (34.7%), followed with stage 4 (32.6%) and 2 (26%).Less than 2% of patients presented with pure neurologic symptoms and these responded well to treatment. Relapse was seen more frequently in stage 4 patients and less in stage 4S. The OPEC protocol, started in 81% of patients, achieved a 54% response; on the other hand, in 15%, N6 was used, with the response rate of 40%. Patient data was analyzed and interpreted using SPSS software to reveal which clinical and biologic factors improve neuroblastoma outcome.ConclusionStaging and patients' age at the time of diagnosis are the most important clinical factors to predict outcome, while primary tumor site and some biologic findings such as urinary VMA and serum LDH levels have a less important value

An Empirical Growth Model for Major Oil Exporters

This paper develops a long-run growth model for a major oil exporting economy and derives conditions under which oil revenues are likely to have a lasting impact. This approach contrasts with the standard literature on the "Dutch disease" and the "resource curse", which primarily focuses on short-run implications of a temporary resource discovery. Under certain regularity conditions and assuming a Cobb-Douglas production function, it is shown that (log) oil exports enter the long-run output equation with a coefficient equal to the share of capital (). The long-run theory is tested using quarterly data on nine major oil economies, six of which are current members of OPEC (Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), plus Indonesia which is a former member, and Mexico and Norway, which are members of the OECD. Overall, the test results support the long-run theory. The existence of long-run relations between real output, foreign output and real oil income is established for six of the nine economies considered. The exceptions, Mexico and Norway, do not possess sufficient oil reserves for oil income to have lasting impacts on their economies. At their current production rates, the proven oil reserves of Mexico and Norway are expected to last 9 and 10 years respectively, as compared to reserve-production ratios of OPEC members, which lie in the range of 45 to 125 years. For Indonesia, whose share of oil income in GDP has been declining steadily over the past three decades, the theory suggests that the effect of oil income on the economy's steady state growth rate will vanish eventually, and this is indeed confirmed by the results. Sensible estimates of a are also obtained across the six economies with long-run output equations, and impulse responses are provided for the effects of shocks to oil income and foreign output in these economies

Design for Health 4.0: Exploration of a New Area

Driven by networked Electronic Health Record systems, Artificial Intelligence, real-time data from wearable devices with an overlay of invisible user interfaces and improved analytics, Health 4.0 is changing the healthcare industry. The focus on collaboration, coherence, and convergence that will make healthcare more predictive and personalised. Furthermore, Health 4.0 realises the value of data more consistently and effectively. It can pinpoint areas of improvement and enable more informed decisions. What it also does is help move the entire healthcare industry from a system that is reactive and focused on fee-for-service to a system that is value-based, which measures outcomes and ensures proactive prevention. In this paper, the authors will first explore the realm of the emerging area of Health 4.0 and identify its opportunities and challenges. This includes understanding the relevant base technologies as well as the design principles for the realization of smart healthcare product, systems and product-service-systems of the future. Following on from there, the authors focus on the role of design in the specific context of healthcare

Control of Dynamic Systems via Neural Networks

This report is devoted to the problem of controlling a class of linear time-invariant dynamic systems via controllers based on additive neural network models. In particular, the tracking and stabilization problems are considered. First, we show how to transform the problem of tracking a reference signal by a control system into the stabilization problem. Then, some concepts from the variable structure control theory are utilized to construct stabilizing controllers. In order to facilitate the stability analysis of the closed-loop systems we employ a special state space transformation. This transformation allows us also to reveal connections between the proposed controllers and the additive neural network models