Self-customization and price competition

New technologies increasingly provide firms with abilities to design self-customizable products, that can be redeveloped by end-users at their own expenses. The decision to market only a standard product or also a self-customizable one is a strategic one; we analyze this decision in a duopoly with product differentiation. In our model adding a customizable product cannibalizes part of own demand but also allows exploitation of a distinct segment of consumers who attach high value to customizability; it also diverts demand from the rival firm. Firms use second degree price discrimination, attaching a different price to the different products. We find the conditions leading to both firms introducing the self-customizable product, both refraining from it, and to asymmetric equilibria. Our results indicate that self-customization appears in equilibrium; it is profit improving; it can be used by only one or both firms according to the value of the market for customizability. It also leads to lower prices. An increase in consumers\u2019 ability to self-customize reduces profits, while a higher cost of self-customization increases profits. Finally a first-mover advantage arises in offering a self-customizable product

'Ionizing radiation effects on a 64-channel charge measurement ASIC designed in CMOS 0.35 μm technology'

A 64-channel circuit Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for charge measurement has been designed in CMOS 0.35mm technology and characterized with electrical tests. The ASIC has been conceived to be used as a front-end for dosimetry and beam monitoring detector read-out. For that application, the circuitry is housed at a few centimeters from the irradiated area of the detectors and therefore radiation damages can affect the chip performances. The ASIC has been tested on an X-ray beam. In this paper, the results of the test and an estimate of the expected lifetime of the ASIC in a standard radio-therapeutical treatment environment are presented. An increase of the background current of 2 fA/Gy has been observed at low doses, whilst the gain changes by less than 3% when irradiated up to 15 kGy. Furthermore it has been assessed that, when used as an on-line beam monitor and the annealing effect has been taken into account, the background current increase is � 440 fA/year

Green Consumers, Greenwashing and the Misperception of Environmental Quality

In this paper we analyse a setup where consumers are heterogeneous in the perception of environmental quality. The equilibrium is verified in a setting with horizontal and vertical (green) differentiation. Profits are increasing in the misperception of quality, while, the investment in green quality decreases the more the goods are substitutes. We further consider the introduction of either an emission tax or an environmental standard. The former rises the investment in environmental quality due to the higher cost of production, whereas in equilibrium quality always improves after the introduction of the latter. We show that an optimal environmental standard is an effective regulatory instrument against greenwashing and that the efficacy of the interventions is conditioned to the damage distribution and the aggregate level of emission