Land Use Regulation as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from the Texas Lodging Industry

This paper examines the anticompetitive effects of land use regulation using microdata on mid-scale chain hotels in Texas. I construct a dynamic entry-exit model that endogenizes hotel chains' reactions to land use regulation. Estimation results indicate that imposing stringent regulation increases costs considerably. Hotel chains nonetheless enter highly regulated markets even if entry probabilities are lower, anticipating fewer rivals and hence greater market power. Consumers incur the costs of regulation indirectly in the form of high prices.Land use regulation; firms\' entry; lodging industry;

Land Use Regulation as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from the Texas Lodging Industry

I empirically examines the anticompetitive effects of land use regulation by using microdata on midscale chain hotels in Texas. I construct a dynamic entry-exit model of midscale hotel chains. By endogenizing their entry decisions, the model explicitly considers hotel chains' reactions to the stringency of land use regulation. Estimation results indicate that imposing stringent regulation increases cost enough to affect hotel chains' entry decisions. Although hotel chains are the immediate payers of the increased entry cost, incumbents shift a part of their cost increase onto consumers by exploiting their increased market power. (JEL: R3, L1, L5)Land use regulation, zoning, barrier to entry, lodging industry

Firm boundaries and buyer-supplier match in market transaction: IT system procurement of U.S. credit unions

By examining IT system procurement between U.S. Credit Unions (CUs) and IT vendors, we present descriptive analyses showing that firms’ outsourcing decisions might be interrelated to each other through suppliers’ market entry decisions. The buyer-supplier match in the market might also play an important role in determining firms’ boundaries. We also argue that market thickness along the product space might determine the characteristics of input that is procured through the market.

Compressed Exponential Relaxation as Superposition of Dual Structure in Pattern Dynamics of Nematic Liquid Crystals

Soft-mode turbulence (SMT) is the spatiotemporal chaos observed in homeotropically aligned nematic liquid crystals, where non-thermal fluctuations are induced by nonlinear coupling between the Nambu-Goldstone and convective modes. The net and modal relaxations of the disorder pattern dynamics in SMT have been studied to construct the statistical physics of nonlinear nonequilibrium systems. The net relaxation dynamics is well-described by a compressed exponential function and the modal one satisfies a dual structure, dynamic crossover accompanied by a breaking of time-reversal invariance. Because the net relaxation is described by a weighted mean of the modal ones with respect to the wave number, the compressed-exponential behavior emerges as a superposition of the dual structure. Here, we present experimental results of the power spectra to discuss the compressed-exponential behavior and the dual structure from a viewpoint of the harmonic analysis. We also derive a relationship of the power spectra from the evolution equation of the modal autocorrelation function. The formula will be helpful to study non-thermal fluctuations in experiments such as the scattering methods.Comment: 17pages, 3 figures, to be published on AIP conference proceedings for "The 4th International Symposium on Slow Dynamics in Complex Systems

Observation of the B[c] meson in 1.8-TeV proton-antiproton collisions

Thesis (Ph. D. in Science)--University of Tsukuba, (A), no. 1850, 1998.3.2

Full MAC System Demonstration of Extended 10G-EPON Uplink with 512 ONU Splits Access Span via Burst-Mode SOA and Enhanced-FEC combined with Burst-Mode 3R

This first Extended 10G-EPON uplink system test achieved the largest access span loss of 37 dB supporting 512 ONU splits over 25 km with an enlarged loss budget of 51.2 dB via burst-mode SOA, E-FEC and burst-mode 3R

Comparasite: a database for comparative study of transcriptomes of parasites defined by full-length cDNAs

Comparasite is a database for comparative studies of transcriptomes of parasites. In this database, each data is defined by the full-length cDNAs from various apicomplexan parasites. It integrates seven individual databases, Full-Parasites, consisting of numerous full-length cDNA clones that we have produced and sequenced: 12 484 cDNA sequences from Plasmodium falciparum, 11 262 from Plasmodium yoelii, 9633 from Plasmodium vivax, 1518 from Plasmodium berghei, 7400 from Toxoplasma gondii, 5921 from Cryptosporidium parvum and 10 966 from the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis. Putatively counterpart gene groups are clustered and comparative analysis of any combination of six apicomplexa species is implemented, such as interspecies comparisons regarding protein motifs (InterPro), predicted subcellular localization signals (PSORT), transmembrane regions (SOSUI) or upstream promoter elements. By specifying keywords and other search conditions, Comparasite retrieves putative counterpart gene groups containing a given feature in common or in a species-specific manner. By enabling multi-faceted comparative analyses of genes of apicomplexa protozoa, monophyletic organisms that have evolved to diversify to parasitize various hosts by adopting complex life cycles, Comparasite should help elucidate the mechanism behind parasitism. Our full-length cDNA databases and Comparasite are accessible from

Inconsistencies of genome annotations in apicomplexan parasites revealed by 5'-end-one-pass and full-length sequences of oligo-capped cDNAs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Apicomplexan parasites are causative agents of various diseases including malaria and have been targets of extensive genomic sequencing. We generated 5'-EST collections for six apicomplexa parasites using our full-length oligo-capping cDNA library method. To improve upon the current genome annotations, as well as to validate the importance for physical cDNA clone resources, we generated a large-scale collection of full-length cDNAs for several apicomplexa parasites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we used a total of 61,056 5'-end-single-pass cDNA sequences from <it>Plasmodium falciparum</it>, <it>P. vivax</it>, <it>P. yoelii</it>, <it>P. berghei</it>, <it>Cryptosporidium parvum</it>, and <it>Toxoplasma gondii</it>. We compared these partially sequenced cDNA sequences with the currently annotated gene models and observed significant inconsistencies between the two datasets. In particular, we found that on average 14% of the exons in the current gene models were not supported by any cDNA evidence, and that 16% of the current gene models may contain at least one mis-annotation and should be re-evaluated. We also identified a large number of transcripts that had been previously unidentified. For 732 cDNAs in <it>T. gondii</it>, the entire sequences were determined in order to evaluate the annotated gene models at the complete full-length transcript level. We found that 41% of the <it>T. gondii </it>gene models contained at least one inconsistency. We also identified and confirmed by RT-PCR 140 previously unidentified transcripts found in the intergenic regions of the current gene annotations. We show that the majority of these discrepancies are due to questionable predictions of one or two extra exons in the upstream or downstream regions of the genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data indicates that the current gene models are likely to still be incomplete and have much room for improvement. Our unique full-length cDNA information is especially useful for further refinement of the annotations for the genomes of apicomplexa parasites.</p