Technological choice under environmentalists’ participation in Emissions Trading Systems

We model competition in an emissions trading system (ETS) as a game between two firms and environmental group. In a previous stage, firms endogenously choose their manufacturing technologies. Our results show that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between how polluting the chosen technology is and the degree of the environmentalists' impure altruism. Firms choose a less polluting technology in the presence of the environmentalists than in their absence only if they are characterised by intermediate degrees of impure altruism.ETS; Technology Choice; Induced Technological Change; Impure Altruism

Emission Taxes and the Adoption of Cleaner Technologies: The Case of Environmentally Conscious Consumers

We model a market with environmentally conscious consumers and a duopoly in which firms consider the adoption of a clean technology. We show that as pollution increases, consumers shift more resources to the environmental activities, thereby affecting negatively the demand faced by the duopoly. This effect generates incentives for firms to adopt the clean technology even in the absence of emissions taxes. When such taxes are considered, our results indicate that the benefit of adopting the clean technology is initially increasing and then decreasing in the emission tax. The range of values for which the emission tax increases this benefit becomes narrower when the consumers’ environmental awareness is stronger.Environmentally Conscious Consumers; Technology Choice; Environmental Taxation

Entry and Exit in a Liberalised Market

We analyse the entry and exit activity in the UK airline markets in the post-liberalisation period and study the differential traits between traditional and low cost carriers. Alongside with the characteristics traditionally highlighted as determinants of entry (e.g., airport presence and network economies), we find that the existence of charter or seasonal operators, product differentiation opportunities and the level of quality provided by the incumbents are also relevant in explaining entry and/or exit. Despite the liberalisation policies, the contestability of important large markets still seems to be limited.

Endogenous Market Structure, Occupational Choice, and Growth Cycles

We model an industry that supplies intermediate goods in a growing economy. Agents can choose whether to provide labor or to become firm owners and compete in the industry. The idea that entry is determined through occupational choice has major implications for the economy's dynamics. Particularly, the results show that economic dynamics are governed by endogenous volatility in the determination of both the number of industry entrants and in the growth rate of output. Consequently, we argue that occupational choice and the structural characteristics of the endogenous market structure can act as both the impulse source and the propagation mechanism of economic fluctuations

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

Economic aspects of the Microsoft case: networks, interoperability and competition

In this paper, we discuss the main economic aspects of the European Microsoft case; in particular, Microsoft’s refusal to supply the necessary information to make the competitors’ work group server systems interoperable with Windows Operating System. The case can be seen as an example of competition between networks. We review the relevant economics literature with the objective of understanding the motivations behind Microsoft’s strategies

Pollution and environmentalists' participation in emissions trading systems

In this paper, we show that the participation by an environmental group in a permit market does not necessarily result in more investment in abatement or even less pollution. There is a U-shaped relationship between the emission per unit of output and the extra weight given by the environmental group to the reduction of emissions. For high values of this weight, firms invest less in abatement but also produce less. For lower values, firms invest more in abatement but also produce more, which may result in higher emissions levels

Technological choice under environmentalists' participation in emissions trading systems

We model competition in an emissions trading system (ETS) as a game between two firms and environmental group. In a previous stage, firms endogenously choose their manufacturing technologies. Our results show that there is a U-shape relationship between how polluting the chosen technology is and the degree of the environmentalists’ impure altruism. Firms choose a more polluting technology in the presence of the environmentalists than in their absence if they are characterised by high enough degrees of impure altruism

Entry and Exit in a Liberalised Market

We analyze the entry and exit activity in the UK airline markets in the post-liberalisation period and study the di¤erential traits between tra-ditional and low cost carriers. Alongside with the characteristics tradition-ally highlighted as determinants of entry (e.g., airport presence and network economies), we …nd that the existence of charter or seasonal operators, prod-uct di¤erentiation opportunities and the level of quality provided by the in-cumbents are also relevant in explaining entry and/or exit. Despite the liber-alisation policies, the contestability of important large markets still seems to be limited. J.E.L. Classi…cations: L11, L9