Corporate governance and the Mondragón cooperatives.

This paper builds upon recent advances in the corporate governance framework to extend and complement the economic literature on producer cooperatives. We argue that the problem of governance in a cooperative is twofold and consists in designing mechanisms and setting up institutions that (1) encourage workers to define a goal that maximizes workers’ welfare and (2) induce managers to pursue and internalize such a broad goal. When compared to capital-controlled firms, the agency problems become more complex and harder to solve in the cooperative framework. As empirical evidence of this problem and its corresponding solution, we illustrate the case of the Mondragón cooperatives, explaining in detail the incentive system and the control mechanisms now in place in this successful business group. The study of the governance architecture of Mondragón may help us to propose solutions to traditional problems of the cooperative firm and to reach a better understanding of both the governance of cooperatives and corporate governance in general.

Problemática de la peste porcina africana en Europa. Alternativas futuras

African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most important infectious diseases of swine. It is a complex disease caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV), the only member of the Asfarviridae family, without available vaccine or effective treatment. The latest introduction of ASFV in Europe was in 2007 through Georgia and rapidly spreading to Eastern European countries. The first cases of ASF in the European Union (EU) were reported in 2014, producing 2346 outbreaks so far. It currently represents a huge threat to the EU pig production since the EU is the second largest pig producer and the largest exporter in the world.La peste porcina africana (PPA) es una de las enfermedades infecciosas más importantes en la especie porcina. Se trata de una enfermedad compleja producida por el virus de la peste porcina africana (VPPA) para la que no se dispone de vacuna ni tratamiento efectivo. La última introducción del VPPA en Europa tuvo lugar en 2007 a través de Georgia, expandiéndose rápidamente por los países de Europa del Este. En 2014 se dieron los primeros casos de PPA en la Unión Europea (UE), produciéndose 2.346 brotes hasta el momento. Teniendo en cuenta que la UE es el segundo productor de carne de porcino y la principal exportadora del planeta, en la actualidad, la PPA representa una amenaza para la producción porcina europea

Corporate governance and the Mondragón cooperatives

This paper builds upon recent advances in the corporate governance framework to extend and complement the economic literature on producer cooperatives. We argue that the problem of governance in a cooperative is twofold and consists in designing mechanisms and setting up institutions that (1) encourage workers to define a goal that maximizes workers’ welfare and (2) induce managers to pursue and internalize such a broad goal. When compared to capital-controlled firms, the agency problems become more complex and harder to solve in the cooperative framework. As empirical evidence of this problem and its corresponding solution, we illustrate the case of the Mondragón cooperatives, explaining in detail the incentive system and the control mechanisms now in place in this successful business group. The study of the governance architecture of Mondragón may help us to propose solutions to traditional problems of the cooperative firm and to reach a better understanding of both the governance of cooperatives and corporate governance in general.Publicad

Dynamic simulations in SixTrack

The DYNK module allows element settings in SixTrack to be changed on a turn-by-turn basis. This document contains a technical description of the DYNK module in SixTrack. It is mainly intended for a developer or advanced user who wants to modify the DYNK module, for example by adding more functions that can be used to calculate new element settings, or to add support for new elements that can be used with DYNK.Comment: Submission to CERN yellow report / conference proceeding, the 2015 collimation tracking code worksho

Pêcheries Artisanales des Îles Canaries. Cas des Petits Pélagiques

Fondo Europeo Marítimo y de Pesca (FEMP

Experimental evaluation of interference alignment for broadband WLAN systems

[Abstract]: In this paper, we present an experimental study on the performance of spatial interference alignment (IA) in indoor wireless local area network scenarios that use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) according to the physical-layer specifications of the IEEE 802.11a standard. Experiments have been carried out using a wireless network testbed capable of implementing a 3-user MIMO interference channel. We have implemented IA decoding schemes that can be designed according to distinct criteria (e.g., zero-forcing or MaxSINR). The measurement methodology has been validated considering practical issues like the number of OFDM training symbols used for channel estimation or feedback time. In case of asynchronous users, a time-domain IA decoding filter is also compared to its frequency-domain counterpart. We also evaluated the performance of IA from bit error ratio measurement-based results in comparison to different time-division multiple access transmission schemes. The comparison includes single- and multiple-antenna systems transmitting over the dominant mode of the MIMO channel. Our results indicate that spatial IA is suitable for practical indoor scenarios in which wireless channels often exhibit relatively large coherence times.This work has been supported by Xunta de Galicia, MINECO of Spain, and by FEDER funds of the E.U. under Grant 2012/287, Grant TEC2013-47141-C4-R (RACHEL project), Grant CSD2008-00010 (COMONSENS project), and FPU Grants AP2010-2189 and AP2009-1105.Xunta de Galicia; 2012/28

Approximating the influence coefficients of non-planar elastic solids for conformal contact analysis

The exact contact theory is an efficient alternative to the more general yet computationally expensive Finite Element Method for the detailed study of elastostatic contact problems. For its application in conformal contact problems, the exact contact theory needs to be fed with influence coefficients (ICs) appropriate for non-planar solids. An analytical approximation of the ICs for non-planar solids was proposed in a previous work, avoiding the involved process generally necessary to obtain ICs accurately. This work presents further developments of this approximation, further comparison with numerically obtained ICs, and evaluates the errors incurred when using approximated ICs in conformal contact.This work has been partly financed within the European Horizon 2020 Joint Technology Initiative Shift2Rail, through contract no. 826255 (IN2TRACK2). The authors wish to thank as well the Spanish Research Ministry MICINN/Economy and Competitiveness Ministry MINECO and MCI/AEI for their funding through contracts TRA2014-59599-R and PID2019-109483RB-I00, including funding by the FEDER-ERDF European Regional Development Fund, and also the Basque Government for financial assistance through IT919-1