			Home About us Contact

Competitive Sector (competitive + sector)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	60%

Selected Abstracts

Flexural Strength Evaluation of Nonconstant Thickness Ceramic Floorings by Means of the Finite-Element Method

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED CERAMIC TECHNOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Beatriz Defez
The ceramic tile industry has become an extremely competitive sector. The entry of new Asian and South American manufacturers into the market is shifting the leadership in production and exports from the traditional clusters of Europe to China, Turkey, and Brazil. In this uncertain environment, enterprises should raise the quality and cut costs by means of new products and processes. Ceramic tiles lightened by carving of a deep back relief could give rise to a generation of new, efficient products. These tiles could be manufactured with fewer raw materials than the traditional ones, which may lead to saving of weight and energy. Additionally, a lighter final product improves working conditions on the shopfloor and at the building site. Nevertheless, lightened tiles are structurally different from traditional ones, and so is their mechanical behavior. Because tiles are constructive elements, it is necessary to know their response under typical loads and assure fulfillment of the valid standards. This paper aims at evaluating the flexural strength (R) of lightened ceramic floorings using solid three-dimensional modelling and the finite-element method, establishing a new formula for the application of the international standard ISO 10545 "Ceramic Tiles." In order to achieve this objective, one reference model and 48 different relief versions were designed, which underwent a simplified computational simulation of the bending test. In accordance with the Rankine criterion, the maximal stresses of each version were calculated, as much as their distribution. Next, we correlated the results defining a new parameter called "normalized thickness," defined as the thickness that a carved tile should have to behave as a traditional flooring under flexion. This parameter allowed the adjustment of the international standard ISO 10545 to this kind of a product, facilitating their certification and therefore their real introduction in the market. Finally, thanks to the collaboration of the company Keros Cerámica S. A., it was verified that the methodology used was appropriate. [source]

The Impact of Public Ownership and Competition on Productivity

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2005
José Manuel González-Páramo
Summary Are private firms more efficient than public ones? Does privatisation improve performance? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to disentangle the impact of ownership and competition upon business performance. This paper presents empirical evidence relating to the hypothesis that public ownership and competition are determinants of firms' productivity. It concludes that public ownership has a significant negative effect on productivity and also that privatisation has a positive impact on efficiency. Furthermore, increased competition is found to have a positive effect on productivity. These results are interpreted as confirming that privatisation is effective as a means of increasing firms' efficiency, at least in a non-regulated and relatively competitive sector, such as manufacturing. [source]

Welfare Effects of Local versus Central Wage Bargaining

LABOUR, Issue 1 2010
Marcus Dittrich
The paper analyses the welfare effects of union bargaining (de)centralization in a dual labour market with a unionized and a competitive sector. We show that social welfare depends on both the structure of the union's objective function and the elasticities of labour demand in both sectors. The welfare-maximizing employment allocation can be obtained under a high degree of centralization if the union maximizes the total wage-bill. Otherwise, if the union is rent maximizing, welfare is higher under local bargaining. However, in that case neither central nor local wage setting yields the social optimum. [source]

MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION WITH EFFICIENCY GAPS AND A HECKSCHER-OHLIN TRADE PATTERN,

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
TORU KIKUCHI
We develop a two-factor, three-sector model of international trade in which the monopolistically competitive firms are characterized by different fixed production costs. We show that, depending on the pattern of the international distribution of factor endowments, the trade pattern is determined not only by relative factor endowments as suggested by Heckscher and Ohlin, but also by absolute factor endowments via a mechanism of competitive selection in the monopolistically competitive sector. [source]

The ,New Minimalist Approach' to Private-Sector Development: A Critical Assessment

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
Tilman Altenburg
Recent literature on private-sector development emphasises the need to establish a ,level playing field' and tends to disregard selective supportive interventions. The most commonly highlighted elements are administrative simplification and effective property rights policies, with business services largely left to private providers - what we call the ,new minimalist approach' (NMA). However, the NMA is based on certain unrealistic assumptions and is barely backed by empirical evidence. A range of complementary public policies is needed to create competitive sectors and overcome internal constraints, especially in small-scale economies. [source]