1,609 research outputs found
International Oligopoly and Asymmetric Labour Market Institutions
Asymmetries in labour relations can have important effects on imperfectively competitive rivalries between firms. Such asymmetries are particularly striking in cross-country comparisons and are therefore of greatest interest in international markets. Using a simple duopoly model, we focus on two asymmetries. First, one firm may face a noncooperative union and second, institutional factors may allow one firm to commit itself to particular labour input before its rival sets output, giving it a natural Stackelberg leadership role. We examine the trade policy incentives resulting from these labour asymmetries, focusing on profit shifting tariffs, quotas and subsidies.
Export Subsidies and International Market Share Rivalry
Countries often perceive themselves as being in competition with each other for profitable international markets. In such a world export subsidies can appear as attractive policy tools, from a national point of view, because they improve the relative position of a domestic firm in noncooperative rivalries with foreign firms, enabling it to expand its market share and earn greater profits. In effect, subsidies change the initial conditions of the game that firms play. The terms of trade move against the subsidizing country, but its welfare can increase because, under imperfect competition, price exceeds the marginal cost of exports. International noncooperative equilibriumis characterized by such subsidies on the part of exporting nations, even though they are jointly suboptimal.
Trade Warfare: Tariffs and Cartels
National governments have incentives to intervene in international markets, particularly in encouraging export cartels and in imposing tariffs on imports from imperfectly competitive foreign firms. Although the optimal response to foreign monopoly is usually a tariff, a specific subsidy will be optimal if demand is very convex, as with constant elasticity demand. If ad valorem tariffs or subsidies are considered, a subsidy is optimal if the elasticity of demand increases as consumption increases.The critical conditions in both ad valorern and specific cases hold generally for Cournot ologopoly. Noncooperative international policy equilibrium will be characterized by export cartels and rent-extracting tariffs.
Generalized DPW method and an application to isometric immersions of space forms
Let be a complex Lie group and denote the group of maps from
the unit circle into , of a suitable class. A differentiable
map from a manifold into , is said to be of \emph{connection
order } if the Fourier expansion in the loop parameter of the
-family of Maurer-Cartan forms for , namely F_\lambda^{-1}
\dd F_\lambda, is of the form . Most
integrable systems in geometry are associated to such a map. Roughly speaking,
the DPW method used a Birkhoff type splitting to reduce a harmonic map into a
symmetric space, which can be represented by a certain order map,
into a pair of simpler maps of order and respectively.
Conversely, one could construct such a harmonic map from any pair of
and maps. This allowed a Weierstrass type description
of harmonic maps into symmetric spaces. We extend this method to show that, for
a large class of loop groups, a connection order map, for ,
splits uniquely into a pair of and maps. As an
application, we show that constant non-zero curvature submanifolds with flat
normal bundle of a sphere or hyperbolic space split into pairs of flat
submanifolds, reducing the problem (at least locally) to the flat case. To
extend the DPW method sufficiently to handle this problem requires a more
general Iwasawa type splitting of the loop group, which we prove always holds
at least locally.Comment: Some typographical correction
Bailouts in a common market: a strategic approach
Governments in the EU grant Rescue and Restructure Subsidies to bail out ailing firms. In an international asymmetric Cournot duopoly we study effects of such subsidies on market structure and welfare. We adopt a common market setting, where consumers from the two countries form one market. We show that the subsidy is positive also when it fails to prevent the exit. The reason is a strategic effect, which forces the more efficient firm to make additional cost-reducing effort. When the exit is prevented, allocative and productive efficiencies are lower and the only gaining player is the rescued firm
Mathematical Model of Easter Island Society Collapse
In this paper we consider a mathematical model for the evolution and collapse
of the Easter Island society, starting from the fifth century until the last
period of the society collapse (fifteen century). Based on historical reports,
the available primary sources consisted almost exclusively on the trees. We
describe the inhabitants and the resources as an isolated system and both
considered as dynamic variables. A mathematical analysis about why the
structure of the Easter Island community collapse is performed. In particular,
we analyze the critical values of the fundamental parameters driving the
interaction humans-environment and consequently leading to the collapse. The
technological parameter, quantifying the exploitation of the resources, is
calculated and applied to the case of other extinguished civilization (Cop\'an
Maya) confirming, with a sufficiently precise estimation, the consistency of
the adopted model.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, final version published on EuroPhysics Letter
Curved Flats, Pluriharmonic Maps and Constant Curvature Immersions into Pseudo-Riemannian Space Forms
We study two aspects of the loop group formulation for isometric immersions
with flat normal bundle of space forms. The first aspect is to examine the loop
group maps along different ranges of the loop parameter. This leads to various
equivalences between global isometric immersion problems among different space
forms and pseudo-Riemannian space forms. As a corollary, we obtain a
non-immersibility theorem for spheres into certain pseudo-Riemannian spheres
and hyperbolic spaces.
The second aspect pursued is to clarify the relationship between the loop
group formulation of isometric immersions of space forms and that of
pluriharmonic maps into symmetric spaces. We show that the objects in the first
class are, in the real analytic case, extended pluriharmonic maps into certain
symmetric spaces which satisfy an extra reality condition along a totally real
submanifold. We show how to construct such pluriharmonic maps for general
symmetric spaces from curved flats, using a generalised DPW method.Comment: 21 Pages, reference adde
Supernova 1987A: Rotation and a Binary Companion
In this paper we provide a possible link between the structure of the bipolar
nebula surrounding SN1987A and the properties of its progenitor star. A Wind
Blwon Bubble (WBB) scenario is emplyed, in which a fast, tenuous wind from a
Blue Supergiant expands into a slow, dense wind, expelled during an earlier Red
Supergiant phase. The bipolar shapre develops due to a pole-to-equator density
contrast in the slow wind (ie, the slow wind forms a slow torus). We use the
Wind Compressed Disk (WCD) model of Bjorkman & Cassinelli (1992) to determine
the shape of the slow torus. In the WCD scenario, the shape of the torus is
determined by the rotation of the progenitor star. We then use a self-similar
semi-analytical method for wind blown bubble evolution to determine the shape
of the resulting bipolar nebula.
We find that the union of the wind-compressed-disk and bipolar-wind-blown-
bubble models allows us to recover the salient properties of SN1987A's
circumstellar nebula. In particular, the size, speed and density of SN1987A's
inner ring are easily reproduced in our calculations. An exploration of
parameter space shows the the red supergiant progenitor must be been rotating
at > 0.3 of its breakup speed. We conclude that the progenitor was most likely
spun up by a merger with a binary companion. Using a simple model for the
binary merger we find that the companion is likely to have had a mass > 0.5
M_sun.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure
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