Intellectual Property and Competition as Complementary Policies: a Test Using An Ordered Probit Model

Este Artigo Testa a Proposição da Teoria Econômica de que Propriedade Intelectual e Defesa da Concorrência são Políticas Complementares. um Modelo Probit Ordenado é Utilizado para Estimar os Efeitos Marginais do Uso e Qualidade do Enforcement dos Direitos de Propriedade Intelectual em uma Medida da Gravidade dos Problemas Relacionados À Concorrência. os Resultados Obtidos Reforçam a Noção de que as Políticas de Concorrência e Propriedade Intelectual não são Contraditórias.

A PRIVATIZAÇÃO BENEFICIA OS POBRES? OS EFEITOS DA DESESTATIZAÇÃO DO SANEAMENTO BÁSICO NA MORTALIDADE INFANTIL

This paper aims to measure, using a difference-in-differences estimator, the impacts of the privatization of water and sewage services on child mortality in municipalities in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo states. We obtain evidence that privatization is associated with a significant decrease in child mortality. This result is corroborated by the fact that private ownership impacts only child deaths caused by infectious and parasitic deceases. We also analyze the channels through which privatization affects child mortality, and evidence that increases in quality, but not in access to services, is positively affected by private ownership.

Competition Policy in Developing Economies: The Case of Brazil Symposium on Competition Law and Policy in Developing Countries

The objective of this article is to discuss the implementation of competition policy in Brazil through a historical perspective. In contrast with the experience of various OECD countries, including the United States in particular, competition policy in Brazil has only recently become relevant. However, its increasing prevalence has not been preceded by the development of a competition culture and institutions. This fact has several implications for policy making. Best practices in the OECD countries cannot be automatically imported without due attention to the peculiarities of a developing economy. This paper is divided into five sections. Section II describes the different phases of competition policy in Brazil. Section III underlines the structural transformations of the economy as well as the international circumstances that made competition policy relevant. Section IV discusses the challenges and peculiarities of implementing competition policy in a developing economy. Section V describes how Brazil has coped with such challenges. Section VI contains the major conclusions

Norms in bargaining : evidence from government formation in Spain

La teoría sobre negociación multilateral y formación de coaliciones aplicada a asambleas legislativas predice que el poder de negociación de un partido queda determinado por la proporción de escaños obtenidos. En este artículo, presentamos algunos resultados que son difícilmente conciliables con dicha predicción. Usamos datos de 2.898 elecciones municipales españolas en las que dos partidos empataron en número de escaños, y demostramos que el partido con unos pocos votos más tiene una probabilidad sustancialmente mayor de nombrar el alcalde (formar gobierno). Dado que dos partidos que empatan en escaños deberían tener, en media, igual poder de negociación, esta diferencia en votos identifica el efecto de ser el más votado debido a una norma que prescribe que «el más votado debe formar gobierno». El efecto de ser el más votado es comparable en magnitud con el efecto de tener un escaño adicional. Esta norma se cumple incluso cuando el segundo y el tercer partido más votados están alineados ideológicamente y podrían formar una coalición desplazando al más votado. Los votantes castigan en futuras elecciones a los segundos partidos que nombran el alcalde, lo que sugiere que hacen cumplir la norma. También documentamos efectos similares cuando el segundo y el tercer partido empatan en escaños, y proporcionamos resultados que sugieren la existencia de normas similares, usando datos de 28 Parlamentos nacionales en Europa. Un modelo en el que las elecciones cumplen un papel dual (agregar información y disciplinar al partido en el gobierno) y distintos equilibrios (normas) pueden suceder es consistente con nuestros resultados y proporciona predicciones adicionalesTheories of multilateral bargaining and coalition formation applied to legislatures predict that parties’ seat shares determine their bargaining power. We present findings that are difficult to reconcile with this prediction. We use data from 2,898 municipal Spanish elections in which two parties tie in the number of seats. The party with slightly more general election votes is substantially more likely to appoint the mayor (form the government). Since tied parties should, on average, have equal bargaining power, this identifies the effect of being the most voted due to a norm prescribing that “the most voted should form government.” The effect of being most voted is comparable in size to the effect of obtaining an additional seat. This norm binds behavior even when the second and third most voted parties can form a winning coalition that prefers the most voted not to appoint the mayor. Voters punish, in future elections, second most voted parties that appoint mayors, suggesting that they enforce the norm. We document a similar second-versus-third most voted effect and provide suggestive evidence of similar norms from 28 national European parliaments. A model where elections play a dual role (aggregating information and disciplining incumbents) and different equilibria (norms) can occur is consistent with our results and yields additional prediction

Cratering Experiments on the Self Armoring of Coarse-Grained Granular Targets

Recently published crater statistics on the small asteroids 25143 Itokawa and 433 Eros show a significant depletion of craters below approx. 100 m in diameter. Possible mechanisms that were brought up to explain this lack of craters were seismic crater erasure and self armoring of a coarse, boulder covered asteroid surface. While seismic shaking has been studied in this context, the concept of armoring lacks a deeper inspection and an experimental ground truth. We therefore present cratering experiments of glass bead projectiles impacting into granular glass bead targets, where the grain sizes of projectile and target are in a similar range. The impact velocities are in the range of 200 to 300 m/s. We find that craters become fainter and irregular shaped as soon as the target grains are larger than the projectile sizes and that granular craters rarely form when the size ratio between projectile and target grain is around 1:10 or smaller. In that case, we observe a formation of a strength determined crater in the first struck target grain instead. We present a simple model based on the transfer of momentum from the projectile to this first target grain, which is capable to explain our results with only a single free parameter, which is moreover well determined by previous experiments. Based on estimates of typical projectile size and boulder size on Itokawa and Eros, given that our results are representative also for km/s impact velocities, armoring should play an important role for their evolution.Comment: accepted for publication in Icaur

Competition Builds Trust

Abstract This paper shows that increases in (firm-level) competition positively impact (individual-level) trust. Using US states' banking de-regulation events that previous studies have already shown to have large impacts on competition in non-banking sectors, we show that an increase in competition had a causal impact on trust, measured in the General Social Survey (GSS). We develop a model which explains why increased competition within a state increases trust. The model also predicts a positive correlation between trust and sectoral competitiveness in the cross-section. We explore this implication using the 2004 wave of the GSS which we can match with US census of firms competition measures. The findings are consistent with the model's predictions, suggesting that competition across firms seems to build trust

Semi-classical limit of Schrodinger-Poisson equations in space dimension at least 3

We prove the existence of solutions to the Schrodinger-Poisson system on a time interval independent of the Planck constant, when the doping profile does not necessarily decrease at infinity, in the presence of a subquadratic external potential. The lack of integrability of the doping profile is resolved by working in Zhidkov spaces, in space dimension at least three. We infer that the main quadratic quantities (position density and modified momentum density) converge strongly as the Planck constant goes to zero. When the doping profile is integrable, we prove pointwise convergence.Comment: 30 pages. To appear in JD