251 research outputs found
Vertical integration and the licensing of innovation with a fixed fee or a royalty
In this paper, we analyse a situation where a patent holder is considered as an upstream firm that can license its innovation to some downstream companies that compete on a final market with differentiated products. Licensing contract may be based either on a royalty or a fixed fee. The patent holder can either be independant or vertically integrated with one of the downstream companies. We show that a licence based on a royalty works better with vertical integration, and that consequently, the patent holder have some interest to vertically integrate if it enables him to apply a royalty based license. The effect of vertical integration on the social surplus can be either positive or negative.LICENSING; INNOVATION; VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Downstream labeling and upstream price competition
The paper analyses the economic consequences of labeling in a setting with two vertically related markets. Labeling on the downstream market affects upstream price competition through two effects : a differentiation effect and a ranking effect. The magnitude of these two effects determines who in the supply chain will receive the benefits and who will bear the burden of labeling. For instance, whenever the ranking effect dominates the differentiation effect, the low quality upstream firm loses from labeling while all downstream actors are individually better off. By decreasing the low quality input price, the label acts then as a subsidy which assures an increase of the downstream market welfare. This analysis furthers our understanding of the economic consequences of the public labeling in cases like restaurants or GMOs.LABEL;IMPERFECT CONSUMER INFORMATION;VERTICAL PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION;VERTICAL RELATIONS;REGULATION
Credence goods, experts and risk aversion
The existing literature in expert-customer relationship concludes that when: i) consumers are homogenous, ii) consumers are committed with an an expert once this one made a recommendation, and iii) the type of treatment provided is verifiable, an expert finds optimal to serve efficiently his customers. This work shows that the previous result may not occur when consumers are not risk-neutral. Our result, that holds in a monopoly setting and under Bertrand competition, suggests that risk averse consumers have more likely to be mistreated by experts.CREDENCE GOODS;EXPERT SERVICES;RISK AVERSION
Thermal Enhancement of Interference Effects in Quantum Point Contacts
We study an electron interferometer formed with a quantum point contact and a
scanning probe tip in a two-dimensional electron gas. The images giving the
conductance as a function of the tip position exhibit fringes spaced by half
the Fermi wavelength. For a contact opened at the edges of a quantized
conductance plateau, the fringes are enhanced as the temperature T increases
and can persist beyond the thermal length l_T. This unusual effect is explained
assuming a simplified model: The fringes are mainly given by a contribution
which vanishes when T -> 0 and has a decay characterized by a T-independent
scale
Universal scaling of the order-parameter distribution in strongly disordered superconductors
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the statistical properties of
the inhomogeneous order-parameter distribution (OPD) at the verge of the
superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). We find within two prototype
fermionic and bosonic models for disordered superconductors that one can
identify a universal rescaling of the OPD. By performing scanning-tunneling
microscopy experiments in three samples of NbN with increasing disorder we show
that such a rescaling describes also with an excellent accuracy the
experimental data. These results can provide a breakthrough in our
understanding of the SIT.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, revised version submitted to PR
A case of Ureaplasma parvum meningitis in an adult after transphenoidal ablation of craniopharyngioma
We report the case of a Ureaplasma parvum meningitis in an immunocompetent patient, 17 days after surgical ablation of a craniopharyngioma. Presence of U. parvum in the cerebrospinal fluid was assessed by 16S rDNA sequencing and U. parvum specific PCR. This article details a surprising complication in an adult of a transphenoidal surgery for ablation of a craniopharyngioma. This is the first case, to our knowledge, of U. parvum meningitis in an adult patient
The impact of performing bacterial identification (BI) and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for bronchoalveolar fluid (BAL) cultures 24h a day in a clinical microbiology laboratory
We previously demonstrated the positive impact of performing bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) after day hours (night service [NS]) for certain clinical samples on the treatment of infected patients. Our objective was to evaluate the impact of including positive bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cultures in our NS. Two major positive consequences were recorded: initiation of earlier appropriate treatment and earlier change to a reduced-spectrum but still effective regimen. Reductions in delay were defined as the differences between the hours actually spent and hours estimated as though laboratory tests had been performed in the absence of NS. Fifty BALs were included. The NS led to the implementation of earlier appropriate therapy in 10 cases (20%), to earlier de-escalation in 15 cases (30%), and to earlier appropriate therapy and de-escalation in 4 cases (8%). In conclusion, performing bacterial identification and AST for positive BAL after laboratory opening hours could be relevant
Extended-spectrum β-lactamase Enterobacteriaceae (ESBLE) in intensive care units: strong correlation with the ESBLE colonization pressure in patients but not same species
Sink drains of six intensive care units (ICUs) were sampled for screening contamination with extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBLE). A high prevalence (59.4%) of sink drain contamination was observed. Analysing the data by ICU, the ratio \u27number of ESBLE species isolated in sink drains/total number of sink drains sampled\u27 was highly correlated (Spearman coefficient: 0.87; P = 0.02) with the ratio \u27number of hospitalization days for patients with ESBLE carriage identified within the preceding year/total number of hospitalization days within the preceding year\u27. Concurrently, the distribution of ESBLE species differed significantly between patients and sink drains
An alternative approach to regularity for the Navier-Stokes equations in critical spaces
In this paper we present an alternative viewpoint on recent studies of
regularity of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in critical spaces. In
particular, we prove that mild solutions which remain bounded in the space
do not become singular in finite time, a result which was proved
in a more general setting by L. Escauriaza, G. Seregin and V. Sverak using a
different approach. We use the method of "concentration-compactness" +
"rigidity theorem" which was recently developed by C. Kenig and F. Merle to
treat critical dispersive equations. To the authors' knowledge, this is the
first instance in which this method has been applied to a parabolic equation.
We remark that we have restricted our attention to a special case due only to
a technical restriction, and plan to return to the general case (the
setting) in a future publication.Comment: 41 page
A process very similar to multifractional Brownian motion
In Ayache and Taqqu (2005), the multifractional Brownian (mBm) motion is
obtained by replacing the constant parameter of the fractional Brownian
motion (fBm) by a smooth enough functional parameter depending on the
time . Here, we consider the process obtained by replacing in the
wavelet expansion of the fBm the index by a function depending on
the dyadic point . This process was introduced in Benassi et al (2000)
to model fBm with piece-wise constant Hurst index and continuous paths. In this
work, we investigate the case where the functional parameter satisfies an
uniform H\"older condition of order \beta>\sup_{t\in \rit} H(t) and ones
shows that, in this case, the process is very similar to the mBm in the
following senses: i) the difference between and a mBm satisfies an uniform
H\"older condition of order ; ii) as a by product, one
deduces that at each point the pointwise H\"older exponent of is
and that is tangent to a fBm with Hurst parameter .Comment: 18 page
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