Iceberg transport
technologies in spatial competition. Hotelling reborn
(joint with J.M. Usategui)
Transport costs in address models of differentiation are
usually modeled as separable of the consumption commodity and
with a parametric price. However, there are many sectors in an
economy where such modeling is not satisfactory either because
transportation is supplied under oligopolistic conditions or
because there is a difference (loss) between the amount
delivered at the point of production and the amount received
at the point of consumption. This paper is a first attempt to
tackle these issues proposing to study competition in spatial
models using an iceberg-like transport cost technology
allowing for concave and convex melting functions.
Partnerships in pre-competitive agreements (joint with
R. Nicolini)
In this paper we aim at studying the effects entailed by a
pre-competitive agreement in the case of a Bertrand duopoly. Our
distinguishing ferature is to introduce a time dimension for
such an agreement. Despite of the common issues in the current
literature, such an agreement yields pecuniary advantages each
firm may enjoy once the agreement comes to end. In this dynamic
framework, the magnitude of those adavantages turns out to be
associated with firms' technology and, as a novelty, to the
lenght of the agreement. The set of possible admissible
solutions coincides with a Cantor set.
Technological adoption in health care (joint with P.P. Barros)
This paper addresses the impact of payment systems on the rate
of technology adoption.
We present a model where technological shift is driven by demand
uncertainty, increased patients' benefit, financial variables,
and the reimbursement system to providers. Two payment
systems are studied: cost reimbursement and (two variants of)
DRG. According to the system considered, adoption occurs either
when patients' benefits are large enough or when the
differential reimbursement across technologies offsets the cost
of adoption. Cost reimbursement leads to higher adoption
of the new technology if the rate of reimbursement is high
relative to the margin of new vs. old technology reimbursement
under DRG. Having larger patient benefits favors more adoption
under the cost reimbursement payment system, provided that
adoption occurs initially under both payment systems.
Pricing proprietary research
projects in large scientific facilities (joint with David Pérez-Castrillo)
Large scientific facilities in all domains of science, are looking
at cooperation between science and the industry to alleviate their
increasing financial constraints, as proprietary research proposals
are charged a price for the time-use of the facility. We argue that
present practices to determine those prices are completely ad hoc and thus, not based in
any economic rationality. This paper presents several alternative
pricing mechanisms based on three economic concepts: willingness to
pay, social benefits, and opportunity cost. These mechanisms satisfy
some desirable properties like publicity, simplicity, and based in
well-accepted economic principles.
On-Going Research 
