Detecting Market Power Along Food Supply Chains: Evidence From the Fluid Milk Sector in Italy

This paper applies to Italian milk supply chain a theoretically grounded methodology able to detect for the presence of market power along the supply chain itself using easily available data. The model, developed by Lloyd et al. brings to estimate a quasi-reduced form equation in which consumer price is regressed against producer price, marketing costs and demand and supply shifters. When market power is exerted along the supply chain both of the shifters are statistically significant and signed accordingly to model prescriptions, while with perfect competition none of the shifters is significant. 29 time series have been used in the analysis, within three different dataset covering partially or totally overlapped time periods. Variables having the same order of integration have been used within an Error Correction Model framework. Among all the variables having one cointegrating vector, only those with statistically significant parameters and signed according to model prescriptions have brought to conclusive results, detecting market power exertion along the Italian milk supply chain during two over the three periods examined. The present methodology may be useful in competition policy analysis as a preliminary “fast” test on food supply chain conduct. For this purpose theoretical model validation is however necessary using Monte Carlo simulations. In this line, further improvements relates to explicitly modeling food processing-retailing relationships in order to detect for market power on each segment of the supply chain.market power, cointegration, supply chain., Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Labor and Human Capital,

On minimal Poincar\'{e} 44-complexes

We consider two types of minimal Poincar\'e $4$-complexes. One is defined with respect to the degree $1$-map order. This idea was already present in our previous papers, and more systematically studied later by Hillman. The second type of minimal Poincar\'e $4$-complexes were introduced by Hambleton, Kreck and Teichner. It is not based on an order relation. In the present paper we study existence and uniqueness

Fibonacci type semigroups

We study "Fibonacci type" groups and semigroups. By establishing asphericity of their presentations we show that many of the groups are infinite. We combine this with Adjan graph techniques and the classification of the finite Fibonacci semigroups (in terms of the finite Fibonacci groups) to extend it to the Fibonacci type semigroups

Nietzsche e l’enigma dell'identità, la più difficile delle scoperte. Il corpo lente, il corpo testo

«Poche nozioni sono tanto inflazionate. L’identità è diventata oggi uno slogan brandito come un totem o ripetuto in maniera compulsiva come un’evidenza che sembrerebbe aver risolto proprio ciò che risulta problematico: il suo contenuto, i suoi limiti, la sua stessa possibilità. La sua estensione e la sua proliferazione sono tali che essa è in grado di caratterizzare tanto un’affermazione religiosa, sociale, nazionale, regionale, familiare, professionale o generica ( i gruppi di uomini, di giovani, di omosessuali), (…) Quindi in questo sacco ci vengono ficcate un mucchio di cose disparate: il “me”, ma anche il “noi”, il noi qui, il noi là, ma anche il “noialtri”, francesi, europei..» F. Laplantine, Identità e Métissage. Umani al di là delle appartenenze, Elèuthera, Milano, 2004, p.15 Identità o le corps du litige, tale poteva essere il titolo dell'ennesimo articolo di maniera che, ancora una volta, chiama in causa Friedrich Nietzsche per attribuirgli la paternità di un pensiero scomodo o di una brillante intuizione. La cifra dell'opera nietzschiana non è il conflitto, ma la dolorosa urgenza di una liberazione attraverso una conoscenza di sé che trascenda le piccole vanità e le certezze meschine. Una conoscenza sempre provvisoria che si acquisisce recuperando il gusto e l'azzardo della scoperta – Nietzsche invita il suo lettore ad accostarsi alla realtà come ad una terra da esplorare e cartografare, ad abbandonare i pregiudizi del senso comune per esporsi al rischio di un sapere sovversivo che ha a che fare con l'identità, la grande questione che lo interrogherà per tutta l'esistenza

Tadpole Labelled Oriented Graph Groups and Cyclically Presented Groups

We study a class of Labelled Oriented Graph (LOG) group where the underlying graph is a tadpole graph. We show that such a group is the natural HNN extension of a cyclically presented group and investigate the relationship between the LOG group and the cyclically presented group. We relate the second homotopy groups of their presentations and show that hyperbolicity of the cyclically presented group implies solvability of the conjugacy problem for the LOG group. In the case where the label on the tail of the LOG spells a positive word in the vertices in the circuit we show that the LOGs and groups coincide with those considered by Szczepa�nski and Vesnin. We obtain new presentations for these cyclically presented groups and show that the groups of Fibonacci type introduced by Johnson and Mawdesley are of this form. These groups generalize the Fibonacci groups and the Sieradski groups and have been studied by various authors. We continue these investigations, using small cancellation and curvature methods to obtain results on hyperbolicity, automaticity, SQ-universality, and solvability of decision problems

The Application of EC Competition Law to Non-European (U.S.) Corporations

The present thesis deals with the application of European Community (EC)1 Competition Law by the competent Communitarian institutions, namely the Commission, the Court of First Instance and the European Court of Justice. Because the discussion will concern its application to non-European legal entities, one explanatory remark is necessary. Dealing with the application of Competition Law with regard to non-European corporations is not meant to suggest that any form of discrimination based on nationality exists. As former Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan commented with regard to one of the early cases involving non-EC companies, “the location of a party’s incorporation or headquarters is immaterial for Competition Law” ,2 which must focus on impact on markets. One necessary goal of this thesis then will be the assessment of the EC’s treatment of these cases. A legal entity’s non-European nationality must not be confused with the lack of links to the EC, as the presence of an established (not necessarily incorporated) branch or subsidiary within the EC will suffice to determine the ordinary - that is territorial - application of EC law. Instead, the focus will be on cases that would require extraterritorial application of the law: As it will be discussed, the Court of Justice has never formally endorsed the principle of extraterritorial jurisdiction,3 so that it will be necessary to discover how the EC deals with cases that have no links that could trigger the territoriality principle. Another purpose of this thesis will be to search into the ramifications of the transnational structure of certain corporations. In fact, while these may be affected by the peculiarities of EC Competition Law, they may be able to affect a market in Europe through their dominance of another market elsewhere. Based on the assumption that the legal standards cannot and will not vary simply depending on the nationality of the entities that are subject to the EC’s sovereignty, a case-oriented analysis will be made to uncover the general orientations, if any, followed by the Communitarian institutions in the application of Competition Law to non-EC firms. However, while Mr. Brittan’s argument can be said to hold true, it must also be noted that EC law is no exception to one basic principle, that is the territorial nature of the law. The law is the expression of one sovereign power which has territorially limited extension and its application to entities or situations that have no territorial links to its territory deserves special treatment

Image enhancement for a Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer

The atom, thanks to its wave behaviour, can manifest phenomena which are, usually, associated to light: interference is one of them. The possibility of cooling atomic clouds and manipulating the states of the atoms contained in them opened many new opportunities to exploit these states in many ways; one of them is measuring various kinds of physical observables with high precision, thanks to the aforementioned interference phenomena: this is atom interferometry. Since the first Bose-Einstein condensates in atomic gases were obtained, there has been a keen interest in interference between them, as it would mean to observe coherent quantum phenomena between macroscopic objects. Nevertheless, the high atomic density of condensates with respect to non condensed, thermal atomic clouds makes it difficult to ignore the effects of interactions within them. For the applications, understanding the role of interactions in the formation of interference figures is crucial. In this thesis, an algorithm for the enhancement of absorption images of a condensate has been developed. This algorithm computes an image basis for the noise and then remove the projection of the starting image from this basis, thus obtaining a clean image. This algorithm has then been applied to the enhancement of images obtained from atom interferometry. These images have then been analyzed using two techniques, and the obtained results have been compared to those for an ideal condensate. The results have been found not compatible with the ideal case, and are then due to atom-atom interactions