Entry, Pricing and Product Design in an Initially Monopolized Market

We analyze entry, pricing and product design in a model with differentiated products. Under plausible conditions, entry into an initially monopolized market leads to higher prices for some, possibly all, consumers. Entry can induce a misallocation of goods to consumers, segment the market in a way that transfers surplus to producers and undermine aggressive pricing by the incumbent. Post entry, firms have strong incentives to modify product designs so as to raise price by strengthening market segmentation. Firms may also forego socially beneficial product improvements in the post-entry equilibrium, because they intensify price competition too much. Multi-product monopoly can lead to better design incentives than the non-cooperative pricing that prevails under competition.

Enhancing the Profitability of Solar Tower Power Plants through Thermoeconomic Analysis Based on Multi-objective Optimization

AbstractSolar tower power plants with integrated thermal energy storage units represent one of the most promising technologies for enhancing the economic viability of concentrating solar power in the short term. Tower systems allow higher concentration ratios to be achieved, which in turn means higher fluid operating temperatures and thus higher power cycle efficiencies. Moreover, the integration of storage allows power production to be shifted from times where there is low demand to periods where electricity prices are higher, potentially enhancing the profitability of the plantdespite representing an additional upfront cost.The variable nature of the solar resource and the myriad potential roles that storage can assume, together with the complexity of enhancing the synergies between the three blocks: the solar field, the storage block and power block, make the design of these power plants a challenging process. This paper introduces a comprehensive methodology for designing solar tower power plants based on a thermoeconomic approach that allows the true optimum trade-off curves between cost, profitability and investment to be identified while simultaneously considering several operating strategies as well as varying critical design parameters in each of the aforementioned blocks.The methodology is presented by means of analyzing the design of a power plant for the region of Seville. For this location, results show that similar profits, measured in terms of the internal rate of return, can be achieved from different power plant configurations in terms of sizing and operating strategy, each associated to different investments. In particular, optimum configurations found corresponded tolarger power blocks with medium-to-large solar field and storage blocksthat allow the plants to operate continuously throughout the day and be shut down during midnight. Moreover, it isshown that for a fixed power block size it can also be economically interesting to consider smaller storage unitsand adopt instead a peaking strategy, as this can still be profitable whilst representing a lower investment, thus lower risk

The external benefits of higher education

The private market benefits of education are widely studied at the micro level, although the magnitude of their macroeconomic impact is disputed. However, there are additional benefits of education, which are less well understood. In this paper the macroeconomic effects of external benefits of higher education are estimated using the “micro-to-macro” simulation approach. Two types of externalities are explored: technology spillovers and productivity spillovers in the labour market. These links are illustrated and the results suggest they could be very large. However, this is qualified by the dearth of microeconomic evidence, for which we hope to encourage further work

Higher education and unemployment in Europe : an analysis of the academic subject and national effects

This paper examines the impact of an academic degree and field of study on short and long-term unemployment across Europe (EU15). Labour Force Survey (LFS) data on over half a million individuals are utilised for that purpose. The harmonized LFS classification of level of education and field of study overcomes past problems of comparability across Europe. The study analyses (i) the effect of an academic degree at a European level, (ii) the specific effect of 14 academic subjects and (iii) country specific effects. The results indicate that an academic degree is more effective on reducing the likelihood of short-term than long-term unemployment. This general pattern even though it is observed for most of the academic subjects its levels show significant variation across disciplines and countries

Expecting the unexpected: a review of learning under uncertainty across development

Stress and Psychopatholog