Luis Rubalcaba Bermejo, Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and the Institute of Social and Economic Analysis at the University of Alcalá (UAH), coordinates a research project of a consortium of eleven European institutions adopted by the Seventh Framework Program for Research and Development Technology of the European Union 2007-2013 (FP7). Emphasizes the positive evaluation of independent experts working for the services of the European Commission, which rated the project led Rubalcaba with 14 out of 15. This is the first contract signed by the Commission and the University of Alcalá under FP7.
The Seventh Framework Program for Research and Technological Development (FP7) is the main instrument of the European Union regarding research funding, and has a budget of 53.2 million euros for seven years.
The project entitled ‘The contribution of the sector of public and private services to European growth and welfare, and the role of public and private networks of innovation’, which leads the teacher Rubalcaba and involving a total of eleven European partners — nine universities, a research center and an SME, has been granted within the area of Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities, one of the ten that comprise the specific program “Cooperation” of FP7. The total project budget, which lasts three years, is 1,480,141 euros, of which UAH receive over 19%. So far, it’s the only one led by the university. Besides UAH professor, Luis Rubalcaba is president of the European association of research on the service sector and Director of Area RESER Services, Innovation and Competitiveness Servilab Institute. It also has extensive experience as a researcher and project manager, both at national and European level. More information on FP7: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_es.html
|
 A significant proportion of the costs of football clubs is totally useless. This is one of the conclusions of a scientific paper published recently by researchers at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Journal of Sports Economics, Which empirically examines the economic situation of the Spanish football industry. According to the study, the clubs could reduce their costs and get the same scores.
According to investigators, the status of the Spanish football industry during the study period analyzed (1996-2003) can be likened to a kind of nuclear arms race. For example, if all countries had a single atomic bomb would work as a deterrent, but if some are beginning to increase their numbers, they all tend to do so and the balance of power remains the same, albeit with a considerable increase in costs. “In football, something similar happens,” explains one of the study’s authors, Philippe Gagnepain, Department of Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. “Every club tries to buy players stepped up – ongoing – and for this they have to offer more money than other teams, creating a race of wages and allowances.
Sports Econometrics
For the realization of this article, researchers have applied the world of football utilizadazas economic and econometric techniques to other industries. Their results indicate that the Spanish football industry, which is facing major financial difficulties, could lower their costs and achieve similar success in sports. “We can assess the percentage and total amount of money could be saved if, for example, the introduction of rules on maximum salaries and allowances – argues Gagnepain – because the enrichment of these quantities gives no competitive advantage to any club.”
The researchers also identified another possible cause of the financial crisis affecting some Spanish or other European leagues, as Italian or English. “In the mid-nineties, the revenue from television broadcasting rights were very high, and some clubs did not anticipate an inflection of the trend towards the end of that decade,” the economist, so the drop in income while that increased expenditure. This situation, however, is not comparable to the U.S., Gagnepain said, because there sporting bodies function more like profit maximizing firms (debt not allowed).
This study has been published under the title “Evaluating Rent Dissipation in the Spanish Football Industry“In the Journal of Sports EconomicsOne of the major international academic journals in the field of economics and sport management. Its authors are Philippe Gagnepain, University Carlos III of Madrid, and Guido Ascari University of Pavia (Italy).
|
Two researchers at the University Pompeu Fabra, Marta Reynal-Querol and Jan Eeckhout, may carry out their research projects after securing one of the first Starting Grant granted by the European Research Council (ERC, for its acronym in English). Aids are equipped with up to two million euros to develop research in the next five years.
Marta Reynal-Querol, Ramon y Cajal researcher at the UPF, a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics (UK) and Master in Economics from UPF. His research areas are related to the resolution and the consequences of conflicts, the causes of civil wars, ethnic polarization and economic institutions.
Jan Eeckhout, from the University of Pennsylvania (USA), soon will join the Department of Economics and Business at UPF. Her research interests are related to the applied theory, game theory and microeconomics. Among those selected in this call was also Antoni Calvo, Ph.D. in Economics from UPF and ICREA researcher, recently deceased. The Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), UPF attached to the center, has won a scholarship to the researcher Well Lehner (although they have two more potential candidates, to be confirmed). Importantly, Nicola Pavoni, Doctorate in Economics from UPF and is currently teaching at University College London, is also among those who have achieved this important concession. For the first edition of the Starting Grant, the European Research Council received over 9,000 applications for funding of projects designed to boost research of young researchers. Of these proposals, according to criteria of scientific excellence, only 300 of them were selected. Projects Spanish State investigators have been 24, 15 of whom (63%) were for researchers who work in schools and universities in Catalonia. The European Research Council European Research Council (ERC) Started business in 2007 as part of the Seventh Framework Program of the European Union. Composed of excellent scientists, the ERC is the body responsible for funding scientific research projects of the European Union. Andreu Mas-Colell, Professor of Economics at the UPF, shall exercise general secretary in 2009-2011.
|
The VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has studied the profitability of electricity production from bush chips in Namibia, where woody biomass has a high potential for energy production. Namibia suffers from an excess of shrubs that cause problems for livestock, the main livelihood of the country.
The biomass of shrubs has great potential for energy production. Thus, the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has investigated forms of electricity production from bush chips in Namibia, and has developed a production technology suited to them.
According to the study, although the production of chips for power plants is technically possible, electricity production at the plants studied, whose capacity is 5 to 20 MW, is not profitable from the economic point of view if not received aid for investment and benefits related to emissions trading. For the VTT team, “pays the conversion of a boiler of the plant’s coal capital of Namibia, Windhoek, to adapt to the use of biomass. The major items of expenditure in electricity production are for the fuel and investment in power plants. The splinters of shrubs are an important source of feedstock for electricity production in Namibia, in southern Africa. It is estimated that the excess of shrubs significantly affects an area of about 10 million hectares in northern parts of central and eastern Namibia, where there are between 1,000 and 10,000 bushes per hectare. The amount of biomass per hectare is 5 to 25 tons. The excess could be controlled clearing bushes and leaving between 200 and 300 of the largest bushes to grow on the savannah. The average amount of biomass obtained by thinning procedure is about 10 tonnes per hectare. The shrubs cut back to emerge from its roots, so the thinning can be repeated after 10 or 15 years. In other words, the area affected by the bush produces in excess of total 125 million tons of biomass, ie 500 TWh. The total energy consumption in Namibia was 12.6 TWh in 1999. Rehearsals for the production of chips of shrubs for the VTT study were carried out on a farm owned by the CCF (Cheetah Conservation Fund). It has an area of 36,000 hectares and is located in the area where the growth of shrubs is problematic, ie, about 200 km north of Windhoek. In this farm produce chips for the briquette factory CCF. During the production process of chips CCF, shrubs are cut with axes. Once cleared, they are left next to skid trails, which are 50 meters away. The shrubs are stacked along the road, where they dry up have a humidity between 15 and 20%. With the climatic conditions of Namibia, the plant takes two to three weeks to dry to achieve this moisture content. When sufficiently dry, it is chipped in a drum chipper, which sends them directly to a tractor trailer, which transfers them to the briquette factory which is located 40 km. The tractor has two trailers dump trailers. The 5 MW plant bioprocess studied using 32,000 t of wood chips per year with a moisture content of 20%. To achieve this production as the existing method would require 198 workers, in addition to the machines. The production cost of the chips, calculated for a transport distance of 30 km, is € 5.01 per MWh. The most important expenditure item is for the chipping. Reducing costs cut by 15% The VTT also improved the efficiency of the chip production chain. After conducting tests on machinery, mechanization was proposed total chain. This process consists of cutting down the bushes with a small tractor equipped with a rotating cutting head. Shrubs relocates another small tractor that has a hook. The chipping is done on a drum chipper which has an input conveyor, and then used a tractor and trailer for transport by road, since the distance is short. According to VTT, the new channel could reduce the cost mechanized logging about 15% compared with the system used so far. If a 50 MW power plant using 32,000 t of wood chips (with a moisture content of 20%) a year to get this production would require 32 workers. The independent central electricity production in 10 and 20 MW can be profitable if the entity invested in this plant receives an investment grant of 35% and 15 € per tonne of carbon dioxide through emissions trading. According to the study, a power of 20 MW would be recouped in seven years, and one 10 MW in a decade. In the study, the electricity price was 40 € per MWh. A power of 5 MW would be too small, since its amortization period as the above parameters is 16. Plants could be located in northern Namibia, where the largest biomass resources.
|
Researchers at the School of Informatics, University of Madrid (UPM) have developed a system that improves the decision making processes to solve complex situations. And they have illustrated with a real example, the restoration of Lake Savyatoye of Belarus contaminated after the Chernobyl accident.
In its investigation, Antonio Jiménez, Alfonso Mateos and Sixto Rios, researchers in the Group Decision Analysis and StatisticsOf Department of Artificial Intelligence School of Computing, propose to have incomplete information and its potential impacts on decision making. The results of their research were published in the journal Omega.
The real decision problems are often complex, because we have to consider simultaneously different objectives that are conflicting with each other, ie when one of them improved at the expense of worsening one of the other. Therefore, “we must seek a balance in meeting the various goals set,” say the researchers.
A widespread approach in the academic and professional to deal with the resolution of such problems is the multiattribute utility theory (Multi-Attribute Utility Theory). Here, once built a hierarchy of objectives and identified a set of alternatives and the value or impact that each provide for the objectives or criteria considered, it must quantify the preferences of the decision-maker.
First, you need to know the preferences of the decision maker on the possible values or impacts they may have in each of the criteria considered. To do this, define a function that assigns a value between 0 (least impact associated preferred) and 1 (associated with the impact most preferred) to all values in the range of criteria. Through this function, given the impact of an alternative on a criterion, you can tell to what degree is preferred or not this impact on the decision-maker (through its value and utility).
On the other hand, one must also know the relative importance of different criteria in the decision. In this sense, scientists have proposed various methods for obtaining weights representing the relative importance.
Once the decision-maker preferences obtained this information, along with the impacts of various alternatives on different attributes are integrated into an evaluation function that allows us to identify the best alternative. Different models have been proposed evaluation function, such as additive or multiplicative.
Having incomplete information
The experts considered the possibility of incorporating in the analysis incomplete information on the impacts of some alternative, ie, that these impacts are unknown for some alternatives and attributes.
“This situation can come caused because some criteria are intangible or non-monetary, which reflect social or environmental impacts, because impacts of alternatives in the criteria are uncertain nature, that depend on variables whose values are not known at the time of taking the decision, or that the information provided is incomplete, contradictory or not credible, “they said in their article.
Thus, I discuss two possible treatments for incomplete information. The first is to redistribute the weights of the criteria for which no values are provided in a logical and impacts through the hierarchy of objectives, among other criteria.
The second treatment is to associate and analyzed for impact approach that provides no value, the range of that criterion (a set of possible values that can take) assuming a uniform distribution over them, ie all values in the range are considered possible and equally likely.
Scientists show that the second option is best. For analysis, the theory is illustrated with a real complex decision problem, the restoration of an aquatic ecosystem altered by radioactive waste, the lake Savyatoye (Belarus), contaminated after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in which the environmental impact was considered one of the main objectives of decision analysis.
|