Resale price maintenance and manufacturer competition for retail services

We investigate the incentives of manufacturers to use resale price maintenance (RPM) when selling products through common retailers. In our model retailers provide product specific pre-sales services. If the competitive retail margins are low, each manufacturer fixes a minimum price to induce favorable retail services. With symmetric manufacturers, products are equally profitable in equilibrium and no product is favored as without RPM, but retail prices are higher. We show that minimum RPM can create a prisoner’s dilemma for manufacturers without increasing, and possibly even decreasing the overall service quality. This challenges the service argument as an efficiency defense for RPM

Competition, collusion and spatial sales patterns : theory and evidence

We study competition in markets with significant transport costs and capacity constraints. We compare the cases of price competition and coordination in a theoretical model and find that when firms compete, they more often serve more distant customers that are closer to plants of competitors. By means of a rich micro-level data set of the cement industry in Germany, we provide empirical evidence in support of this result. Controlling for other potentially confounding factors, such as the number of production plants and demand, we find that the transport distances between suppliers and customers were on average significantly lower in cartel years than in non-cartel years

Ontologies4Chem: The landscape of ontologies in chemistry

For a long time, databases such as CAS, Reaxys, PubChem or ChemSpider mostly rely on unique numerical identifiers or chemical structure identifiers like InChI, SMILES or others to link data across heterogeneous data sources. The retrospective processing of information and fragmented data from text publications to maintain these databases is a cumbersome process. Ontologies are a holistic approach to semantically describe data, information and knowledge of a domain. They provide terms, relations and logic to semantically annotate and link data building knowledge graphs. The application of standard taxonomies and vocabularies from the very beginning of data generation and along research workflows in electronic lab notebooks (ELNs), software tools, and their final publication in data repositories create FAIR data straightforwardly. Thus a proper semantic description of an investigation and the why, how, where, when, and by whom data was produced in conjunction with the description and representation of research data is a natural outcome in contrast to the retrospective processing of research publications as we know it. In this work we provide an overview of ontologies in chemistry suitable to represent concepts of research and research data. These ontologies are evaluated against several criteria derived from the FAIR data principles and their possible application in the digitisation of research data management workflows

Sektionskonzept Meta(daten), Terminologien und Provenienz zur Einrichtung einer Sektion im Verein Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) e.V

Die Sektion befasst sich mit den Themenbereichen (Meta)daten, Terminologien und Provenienz. Aufgabenfelder der Sektion umfassen organisatorische Aspekte (Kollaboration, Wissenstransfer), inhaltliche Aspekte (z.B. Modellierung/Ontologien) und infrastrukturelle Perspektiven (Entwicklung von Standards / Basisdiensten). Eine der wesentlichen Aufgaben der Sektion wird sein, die Arbeit der NFDI-Konsortien im Bereich (Meta)daten, Terminologien und Provenienz entlang der FAIR Kriterien wechselseitig sichtbar zu machen, zu harmonisieren und nachnutzbar zu machen. Hierbei wird die Sektion in enger Rückkopplung mit den Sektionen “Common Infrastructures” sowie “Ethical, Social and Legal Aspects” insbesondere die Themenbereiche Terminologien und Provenienz bearbeiten. (1) Im Themenbereich Metadaten und Forschungsdaten - im Folgenden kurz (Meta)daten - beschäftigt sich die Sektion mit Fragen zur (Meta-)daten-Harmonisierung, Auffindbarkeit von Daten, allgemeine Daten- und Metadaten-Standards mit Blick auf ein mögliches NFDI-Kernmetadatenformat sowie Formatumwandlungen und Persistent-Identifier-Systemen. (2) Im Themenbereich Terminologien beschäftigt sich die Sektion mit community- und disziplinenübergreifenden Definitionen von Top-Level Ontologien und Mappings von Ontologien sowie Best Practices zur Modellierung von Terminologien, Vokabularen und Ontologien sowie darauf aufbauenden Diensten zur Datenintegration (z.B. Terminology Service, Knowledge Graphs etc.). (3) Im Themenbereich Provenienz befasst sich die Sektion mit rechtlichen, technischen und kulturellen Aspekten des Entstehungskontextes von (Meta)daten (z.B. im Rahmen von Experimenten, Laborbüchern, Digitalisierungsprozessen etc.) und entwirft Vorschläge für einheitliche und nachvollziehbare Dokumentationsverfahren zur Beantwortung der Fragen nach dem was, wo, wann, wer, wie und warum der Datenerzeugung und Datenprozessierung. Hierbei entwickelt die Sektion Empfehlungen für die Abbildung der Provenienz in einem möglichen NFDI-Kernmetadatenformat

Probleme des interkulturellen Lernens bei tschechischen Studenten der Germanistik und Anglistik

Probleme des interkulturellen Lernens bei tschechischen Studenten der Germanistik und Anglistik : aufgezeigt am Beispiel d. Pädagog. Univ. Hradec Králové. - 2000. - 195 S. - Augsburg, Univ., Diss

Competition, collusion and spatial sales patterns : theory and evidence

We study competition in markets with significant transport costs and capacity constraints. We compare the cases of price competition and coordination in a theoretical model and find that when firms compete, they more often serve more distant customers that are closer to plants of competitors. By means of a rich micro-level data set of the cement industry in Germany, we provide empirical evidence in support of this result. Controlling for other potentially confounding factors, such as the number of production plants and demand, we find that the transport distances between suppliers and customers were on average significantly lower in cartel years than in non-cartel years

Competition, collusion and spatial sales patterns – theory and evidence

International audienceThis article studies competition in markets with transport costs and capacity constraints. Using a rich micro-level data set of the cement industry in Germany, we study a cartel breakdown to identify the effect of competition on transport distances. We find that when firms compete, they more often serve more distant customers. Moreover, the transport distance also varies in the ratio of capacity relative to demand, but only if firms compete and not when they coordinate their sales. We provide a theoretical model of spatial competition with capacity constraints that rationalizes the empirical results

Characterization of Aqueous Lower Polarity Solvation Shells Around Amphiphilic TEMPO Radicals in Water

Solvation of the stable nitroxide radicals 2,2,6,6-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (TEMPO) and 4-Oxo-TEMPO (TEMPONE) in water and THF is studied. With electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy at X- and Q-band as well as spectral simulations, the existence of pure water shells enclosing TEMPO in aqueous solution that lead to significantly reduced local polarity at the nitroxide is shown. These aqueous lower polarity solvation shells (ALPSS) offer TEMPO a local polarity that is similar to that in organic solvents like THF. Furthermore, using double electron-electron resonance (DEER) spectroscopy, local enrichment and inhomogenous distribution without collisions of dissolved TEMPO in water is found that can be correlated with potentially attractive interactions mediated through ALPSS. However, no local enrichment of TEMPO is found in organic solvents such as THF. These results are substantiated by MD and metadynamics simulations and physical methods like DLS and MS

Towards a Versatile Terminology Service for Empowering FAIR Research Data: Enabling Ontology Discovery, Design, Curation, and Utilization Across Scientific Communities

Presentation of the paper at SEMANTiCS 2023 (https://2023-eu.semantics.cc/) --- Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under the National Research Data Infrastructure – NFDI4Chem – Projektnummer 44195820