title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The composition consists of a Composition Playlist (in XML format) that defines the playback sequence of a set of Track Files. Track Files carry the essence, which is wrapped using Material eXchange Format (MXF). Two track files at a minimum must be present in every composition (see SMPTE ST429-2 D-Cinema Packaging – DCP Constraints, or Cinepedia): a track file carrying picture essence, and a track file carrying audio essence. The composition, consisting of a Composition Playlist and associated track files, are distributed as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP). A composition is a complete representation of a title version, while the DCP need not carry a full composition. However, as already noted, it is commonplace in the industry to discuss the title in terms of a DCP, as that is the deliverable to the cinema.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The Picture Track File essence is compressed using JPEG 2000 and the Audio Track File carries a 24-bit linear PCM uncompressed multichannel WAV file. Encryption may optionally be applied to the essence of a track file to protect it from unauthorized use. The encryption used is AES 128-bit in CBC mode.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: In practice, there are two versions of composition in use. The original version is called Interop DCP. In 2009, a specification was published by SMPTE (SMPTE ST 429-2 Digital Cinema Packaging – DCP Constraints) for what is commonly referred to as SMPTE DCP. SMPTE DCP is similar but not backwards compatible with Interop DCP, resulting in an uphill effort to transition the industry from Interop DCP to SMPTE DCP. SMPTE DCP requires significant constraints to ensure success in the field, as shown by ISDCF. While legacy support for Interop DCP is necessary for commercial products, new productions are encouraged to distribute in SMPTE DCP.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The DCP root folder (in the storage medium) contains a number of files, some used to store the image and audio contents, and some other used to organize and manage the whole playlist.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Picture contents may be stored in one or more "reels" corresponding to one or more MXF files. Each reel contains pictures as MPEG-2 or JPEG 2000 essence, depending on the adopted codec. MPEG-2 is no longer compliant with the DCI specification. JPEG 2000 is the only accepted compression format.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Sound contents are stored in reels, too, corresponding to picture reels in number and duration. In case of multilingual features, separate reels are required to convey different languages. Each file contains linear PCM essence.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Defines the playback order during presentation. The order is saved in XML format in this file; each picture and sound reel is identified by its UUID. In the following example, a reel is composed by picture and sound:


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: All files in the composition are hashed and their hash is stored here, in XML format. This file is generally used during ingestion in a digital cinema server to verify if data have been corrupted or tampered with in some way. For example, an MXF picture reel is identified by the following codice_1 element:


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: A single DCP may be stored in more than one medium (e.g., multiple hard disks). The XML file codice_2 is used to identify the volume order in the series.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The DCP format is also used to store stereoscopic (3D) contents. In this case, 48 frames exist for every second – 24 frames for the left eye, 24 frames for the right.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Depending on the projection system used, the left eye and right eye pictures are either shown alternately (double or triple flash systems) at 48 fps or, on 4k systems, both left and right eye pictures are shown simultaneously, one above the other, at 24 fps.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: In triple flash systems, active shutter glasses are required whereas optical filtering such as circular polarisation is used in conjunction with passive glasses on polarized systems.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Since the maximum bit rate is always 250 Mbit/s, this results in a net 125 Mbit/s for single frame, but the visual quality decrease is generally unnoticeable.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Most film producers and distributors rely on digital cinema encoding facilities to produce and quality control check a digital cinema package before release. Facilities follow strict guidelines set out in the DCI recommendations to ensure compatibility with all digital cinema equipment. For bigger studio release films, the facility will usually create a DCDM (Digital Cinema Distribution Master).


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: A DCDM is the post-production step prior to a DCP. The frames are in XYZ TIFF format and both sound and picture are not yet wrapped into MXF files. A DCP can be encoded directly from a DCDM. A DCDM is useful for archiving purposes and also facilities can share them for international re-versioning purposes. They can easily be turned into alternative version DCPs for foreign territories. For smaller release films, the facility will usually skip the creation of a DCDM and instead encode directly from the DSM (Digital Source Master) the original film supplied to the encoding facility. A DSM can be supplied in a multitude of formats and color spaces. For this reason, the encoding facility needs to have extensive knowledge in color space handling including, on occasion, the use of 3D LUTs to carefully match the look of the finished DCP to a celluloid film print. This can be a highly involved process in which the DCP and the film print are "butterflied" (shown side by side) in a highly calibrated cinema.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: Less demanding DCPs are encoded from tape formats such as HDCAM SR. Quality control checks are always performed in calibrated cinemas and carefully checked for errors. QC checks are often attended by colorists, directors, sound mixers and other personnel to check for correct picture and sound reproduction in the finished DCP.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The distributor can choose to encrypt the media (MXF) files with AES encryption to stop unauthorised access. The symmetric AES keys used to encrypt the content essence must be carefully protected, so they are never distributed directly. Instead the AES keys are themselves encrypted using asymmetric 2048 bit RSA. Each playback system has its own unique public/private key pair. The private key is never shared and is buried in the playback systems within secure hardware meeting FIPS-140 security standards. The matching public key is shared with the distributor, who can then create Key Delivery Messages (KDMs) which control access to the encrypted content for each playback system. KDMs are XML files containing the RSA encrypted AES keys that can be decrypted only by the private key within the destination device. A KDM is associated to the particular compositions (CPLs) which may include multiple encrypted picture, sound and subtitle assets, and each playback system requires a uniquely generated KDM. KDMs also provide the ability to define date/time windows within which the KDM is valid. Playback systems will not allow playback outside of this validity window, allowing distributors to ensure that content cannot be unlocked prior to release date and to enforce the rental agreement period agreed with the exhibitor.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: The most common method uses a specialist hard disk (most commonly the CRU DX115) designed specifically for digital cinema servers to ingest from. These hard drives were originally designed for military use but have since been adopted by digital cinema for their hard wearing and reliable characteristics. The hard disk drives are usually formatted with the Linux ext2 or ext3 file system as D-Cinema servers are typically Linux-based and are required to have read support for these file systems. Usually the inode size is set to 128 bytes to avoid compatibility issues with some servers. NTFS and FAT32 are also occasionally used. Hard drive units are normally hired from a digital cinema encoding company, sometimes in quantities of thousands. Drives are commonly shipped in protective hard cases. The drives are delivered via express courier to the exhibition site. Other methods adopt a full digital delivery, using either dedicated satellite links or high-speed Internet connections.


title: Digital Cinema Package

text: For example, theaters received "Cats" before opening day, Friday 20 December 2019. When the film received poor reviews after its world premiere on 16 December, Universal notified theaters on 20 December that an updated version of the film with "some improved visual effects" would be available for download on 22 December and on hard drive by 24 December.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Faith Susan Alberta Watson (March 6, 1955 – March 21, 2015), better known as Alberta Watson, was a Canadian film and television actress.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1955. She grew up in Toronto with her mother Grace, a factory worker, and her brother. She began performing with a local Toronto theatre group, T.H.O.G. (Theatre House of God), of the Bathurst Street United Church, at age 15.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson took a workshop for the "Hair" musical. While at the workshop she acted in "Hamlet", which was directed by René Bonnière, who later directed her in "La Femme Nikita".


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson got her first role at age 19 in a CBC movie called "Honor Thy Father". Early in her career she portrayed the role of Mitzi in George Kaczender's "In Praise of Older Women" (1978), for which she received a Genie nomination. A year later she received the Best Actress award at the Yorkton Film Festival for "Exposure". She moved to Los Angeles, California, and later to New York City.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson lived in New Jersey for eight years with her husband until they divorced. She then returned to Toronto and focused on finding roles in independent films. She worked with director Colleen Murphy on the film "Shoemaker" (1996), for which she received a second Genie nomination for Best Actress.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Among her well-known film roles are the bed-ridden mother Susan Aibelli in the 1994 American independent film "Spanking the Monkey", Lauren Murphy (the mother of Jonny Lee Miller's character Dade, also called "Crash Override"/"Zero Cool") in the 1995 cult film "Hackers", and Risa in the 1997 Academy Award-nominated Canadian film "The Sweet Hereafter", directed by Atom Egoyan.


title: Alberta Watson

text: In "Spanking the Monkey", Watson plays her favourite character, a mother who has an incestuous relationship with her son. The role was turned down by several actresses such as Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange and others. Watson said:


title: Alberta Watson

text: She played the role of Madeline in "La Femme Nikita" for four seasons from 1997 to 2001 (with guest appearances in the short fifth season). During the show's second season (in 1998), Watson was diagnosed with lymphoma, for which she had to undergo chemotherapy treatment which caused her to lose her hair. Producers at "La Femme Nikita" worked around her treatment and limited her appearances. Watson wore wigs in the show when she lost her hair. When her hair started to regrow, she sported the short haircut in her role as Madeline in the show's third season.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson's first name inspired the character Alberta Green in the first season of "24". In 2005, Watson joined the cast of "24", playing CTU Director Erin Driscoll for 12 episodes of the show's fourth season.


title: Alberta Watson

text: During 2007 and 2008, Watson played a supporting role in the Canadian television series "The Border" as the Minister of Public Safety.


title: Alberta Watson

text: In 2010, Watson guest-starred in "Heartland", a series on CBC Television, and she won a 2011 Gemini Award for her portrayal of Sarah Craven.


title: Alberta Watson

text: In a nod to her "La Femme Nikita" role, Alberta played recurring character Madeline Pierce in "Nikita", the CW's 2010–2013 reboot of the film and TV series.


title: Alberta Watson

text: Watson died on March 21, 2015, due to complications from cancer at Kensington Hospice in Toronto fifteen days after her 60th birthday.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination is a microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider in different markets. Price discrimination is distinguished from product differentiation by the more substantial difference in production cost for the differently priced products involved in the latter strategy. Price differentiation essentially relies on the variation in the customers' willingness to pay and in the elasticity of their demand. For price discrimination to succeed, a firm must have market power, such as a dominant market share, product uniqueness, sole pricing power, etc. All prices under price discrimination are higher than the equilibrium price in a perfectly-competitive market. However, some prices under price discrimination may be lower than the price charged by a single-price monopolist.


title: Price discrimination

text: The term differential pricing is also used to describe the practice of charging different prices to different buyers for the same quality and quantity of a product, but it can also refer to a combination of price differentiation and product differentiation. Other terms used to refer to price discrimination include "equity pricing", "preferential pricing", "dual pricing" and "tiered pricing". Within the broader domain of price differentiation, a commonly accepted classification dating to the 1920s is:


title: Price discrimination

text: In a theoretical market with perfect information, perfect substitutes, and no transaction costs or prohibition on secondary exchange (or re-selling) to prevent arbitrage, price discrimination can only be a feature of monopolistic and oligopolistic markets, where market power can be exercised. Otherwise, the moment the seller tries to sell the same good at different prices, the buyer at the lower price can arbitrage by selling to the consumer buying at the higher price but with a tiny discount. However, product heterogeneity, market frictions or high fixed costs (which make marginal-cost pricing unsustainable in the long run) can allow for some degree of differential pricing to different consumers, even in fully competitive retail or industrial markets.


title: Price discrimination

text: The effects of price discrimination on social efficiency are unclear. Output can be expanded when price discrimination is very efficient. Even if output remains constant, price discrimination can reduce efficiency by misallocating output among consumers.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination requires market segmentation and some means to discourage discount customers from becoming resellers and, by extension, competitors. This usually entails using one or more means of preventing any resale: keeping the different price groups separate, making price comparisons difficult, or restricting pricing information. The boundary set up by the marketer to keep segments separate is referred to as a "rate fence". Price discrimination is thus very common in services where resale is not possible; an example is student discounts at museums: In theory, students, for their condition as students, may get lower prices than the rest of the population for a certain product or service, and later will not become resellers, since what they received, may only be used or consumed by them. Another example of price discrimination is intellectual property, enforced by law and by technology. In the market for DVDs, laws require DVD players to be designed and produced with hardware or software that prevents inexpensive copying or playing of content purchased legally elsewhere in the world at a lower price. In the US the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has provisions to outlaw circumventing of such devices to protect the enhanced monopoly profits that copyright holders can obtain from price discrimination against higher price market segments.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination can also be seen where the requirement that goods be identical is relaxed. For example, so-called "premium products" (including relatively simple products, such as cappuccino compared to regular coffee with cream) have a price differential that is not explained by the cost of production. Some economists have argued that this is a form of price discrimination exercised by providing a means for consumers to reveal their willingness to pay.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination differentiates the willingness to pay of the customers, in order to eliminate as much consumer surplus as possible. By understanding the elasticity of the customer's demand, a business could use its market power to identify the customers' willingness to pay. Different people would pay a different price for the same product when price discrimination exists in the market. When a company recognized a consumer that has a lower willingness to pay, the company could use the price discrimination strategy in order to maximized the firm's profit.


title: Price discrimination

text: Exercising first degree (or perfect or primary) price discrimination requires the monopoly seller of a good or service to know the absolute maximum price (or reservation price) that every consumer is willing to pay. By knowing the reservation price, the seller is able to sell the good or service to each consumer at the maximum price they are willing to pay, and thus transform the consumer surplus into revenues, leading it to be the most profitable form of price discrimination. So the profit is equal to the sum of consumer surplus and producer surplus. First-degree price discrimination is the most profitable as it obtains all of the consumer surplus and each consumer buys the good at the highest price they are willing to pay. The marginal consumer is the one whose reservation price equals the marginal cost of the product, meaning that the social surplus comes entirely from producer surplus, which is obviously beneficial for the firm. The seller produces more of their product than they would achieve monopoly profits with no price discrimination, which means that there is no deadweight loss. During first-degree price discrimination, the firm produces the amount where marginal benefit equals marginal cost, and fully maximizes producer surplus. Examples of this might be observed in markets where consumers bid for tenders, though, in this case, the practice of collusive tendering could reduce the market efficiency.


title: Price discrimination

text: In second-degree price discrimination, price varies according to quantity demanded. Larger quantities are available at a lower unit price. This is particularly widespread in sales to industrial customers, where bulk buyers enjoy discounts.


title: Price discrimination

text: Additionally to second-degree price discrimination, sellers are not able to differentiate between different types of consumers. Thus, the suppliers will provide incentives for the consumers to differentiate themselves according to preference, which is done by quantity "discounts", or non-linear pricing. This allows the supplier to set different prices to the different groups and capture a larger portion of the total market surplus.


title: Price discrimination

text: In reality, different pricing may apply to differences in product quality as well as quantity. For example, airlines often offer multiple classes of seats on flights, such as first-class and economy class, with the first-class passengers receiving wine, beer and spirits with their ticket and the economy passengers offered only juice, pop, and water. This is a way to differentiate consumers based on preference, and therefore allows the airline to capture more consumer's surplus.


title: Price discrimination

text: Third-degree price discrimination means charging a different price to different consumers in a given number of groups and being able to distinguish between the groups to charge a separate monopoly price. For example, rail and tube (subway) travelers can be subdivided into commuters and casual travelers, and cinema goers can be subdivided into adults and children, with some theatres also offering discounts to full-time students and seniors. Splitting the market into peak and off-peak use of service is very common and occurs with gas, electricity, and telephone supply, as well as gym membership and parking charges. Some parking lots charge less for "early bird" customers who arrive at the parking lot before a certain time.


title: Price discrimination

text: There are limits for price discrimination as well. When price discrimination exists in a market, the consumer surplus and producer surplus will be affected by its existence. In order to offer different prices for different groups of people in the aggregate market, the business has to use additional information to identify its consumers. Consequently, they will be involved in third-degree price discrimination.  With third-degree price discrimination, the firms try to generate sales by identifying different market segments, such as domestic and industrial users, with different price elasticities. Markets must be kept separate by time, physical distance, and nature of use. For example, Microsoft Office Schools edition is available for a lower price to educational institutions than to other users. The markets cannot overlap so that consumers who purchase at a lower price in the elastic sub-market could resell at a higher price in the inelastic sub-market. The company must also have monopoly power to make price discrimination more effective.


title: Price discrimination

text: The two-part tariff is another form of price discrimination where the producer charges an initial fee and a secondary fee for the use of the product. This pricing strategy yields a result similar to second-degree price discrimination. An example of two-part tariff pricing is in the market for shaving razors. The customer pays an initial cost for the razor and then pays again for the replacement blades. This pricing strategy works because it shifts the demand curve to the right: since the customer has already paid for the initial blade holder and will continue to buy the blades which are cheaper than buying disposable razors.


title: Price discrimination

text: These types are not mutually exclusive. Thus a company may vary pricing by location, but then offer bulk discounts as well. Airlines use several different types of price discrimination, including:


title: Price discrimination

text: The first/second/third degree taxonomy of price discrimination is due to Pigou ("Economics of Welfare", 3rd edition, 1929). However, these categories are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive. Ivan Png ("Managerial Economics", 1998: 301-315) suggests an alternative taxonomy:


title: Price discrimination

text: The hierarchy—complete/direct/indirect/uniform pricing—is in decreasing order of profitability and information requirement. Complete price discrimination is most profitable, and requires the seller to have the most information about buyers. Next most profitable and in information requirement is direct segmentation, followed by indirect segmentation. Finally, uniform pricing is the least profitable and requires the seller to have the least information about buyers is.


title: Price discrimination

text: The purpose of price discrimination is generally to capture the market's consumer surplus. This surplus arises because, in a market with a single clearing price, some customers (the very low price elasticity segment) would have been prepared to pay more than the single market price. Price discrimination transfers some of this surplus from the consumer to the producer/marketer. It is a way of increasing monopoly profit. In a perfectly-competitive market, manufacturers make normal profit, but not monopoly profit, so they cannot engage in price discrimination.


title: Price discrimination

text: It can be argued that strictly, a consumer surplus need not exist, for example where fixed costs or economies of scale mean that the marginal cost of adding more consumers is less than the marginal profit from selling more product. This means that charging some consumers less than an even share of costs can be beneficial. An example is a high-speed internet connection shared by two consumers in a single building; if one is willing to pay less than half the cost of connecting the building, and the other willing to make up the rest but not to pay the entire cost, then price discrimination can allow the purchase to take place. However, this will cost the consumers as much or more than if they pooled their money to pay a non-discriminating price. If the consumer is considered to be the building, then a consumer surplus goes to the inhabitants.


title: Price discrimination

text: It can be proved mathematically that a firm facing a downward sloping demand curve that is convex to the origin will always obtain higher revenues under price discrimination than under a single price strategy. This can also be shown geometrically.


title: Price discrimination

text: In the top diagram, a single price formula_1 is available to all customers. The amount of revenue is represented by area formula_2. The consumer surplus is the area above line segment formula_3 but below the demand curve formula_4.


title: Price discrimination

text: With price discrimination, (the bottom diagram), the demand curve is divided into two segments (formula_5 and formula_6). A higher price formula_7 is charged to the low elasticity segment, and a lower price formula_8 is charged to the high elasticity segment. The total revenue from the first segment is equal to the area formula_9. The total revenue from the second segment is equal to the area formula_10. The sum of these areas will always be greater than the area without discrimination assuming the demand curve resembles a rectangular hyperbola with unitary elasticity. The more prices that are introduced, the greater the sum of the revenue areas, and the more of the consumer surplus is captured by the producer.


title: Price discrimination

text: The above requires both first and second degree price discrimination: the right segment corresponds partly to different people than the left segment, partly to the same people, willing to buy more if the product is cheaper.


title: Price discrimination

text: It is very useful for the price discriminator to determine the optimum prices in each market segment. This is done in the next diagram where each segment is considered as a separate market with its own demand curve. As usual, the profit maximizing output (Qt) is determined by the intersection of the marginal cost curve (MC) with the marginal revenue curve for the total market (MRt).


title: Price discrimination

text: The firm decides what amount of the total output to sell in each market by looking at the intersection of marginal cost with marginal revenue (profit maximization). This output is then divided between the two markets, at the equilibrium marginal revenue level. Therefore, the optimum outputs are formula_11 and formula_12. From the demand curve in each market the profit can be determined maximizing prices of formula_13 and formula_14.


title: Price discrimination

text: The marginal revenue in both markets at the optimal output levels must be equal, otherwise the firm could profit from transferring output over to whichever market is offering higher marginal revenue.


title: Price discrimination

text: Given that Market 1 has a price elasticity of demand of formula_15 and Market 2 of formula_16, the optimal pricing ration in Market 1 versus Market 2 is formula_17.


title: Price discrimination

text: The price in a perfectly-competitive market will always be lower than any price under price discrimination (including in special cases like the internet connection example above, assuming that the perfectly competitive market allows consumers to pool their resources). In a market with perfect competition, no price discrimination is possible, and the average total cost (ATC) curve will be identical to the marginal cost curve (MC). The price will be the intersection of this ATC/MC curve and the demand line (Dt). The consumer thus buys the product at the cheapest price at which any manufacturer can produce any quantity.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination is a sign that the market is imperfect, the seller has some monopoly power, and that prices and seller profits are higher than they would be in a perfectly competitive market.


title: Price discrimination

text: An oligopoly forms when a small group of business dominates an industry. When the dominating companies in an oligopoly model compete in prices, the motive for inter-temporal price discrimination would appear in the oligopoly market. Price discrimination can be facilitated by inventory controls in oligopoly.


title: Price discrimination

text: True price discrimination occurs when exactly the same product is sold at multiple prices. It benefits only the seller, compared to a competitive market. It benefits some buyers at a (greater) cost to others, causing a net loss to consumers, compared to a single-price monopoly. For congestion pricing, which can benefit the buyer and is not price discrimination, see counterexamples below.


title: Price discrimination

text: Manufacturers may sell their products to similarly situated retailers at different prices based solely on the volume of products purchased. Sometimes, the firm investigate the consumers’ purchase histories which would show the customer's unobserved willingness to pay. Each customer has a purchasing score which indicates his or her preferences; consequently, the firm will be able to set the price for the individual customer at the point that minimizes the consumer surplus. Oftentimes, consumers are not aware of the ways to manipulate that score. If he or she wants to do to so, he or she could reduce the demand to reduce the average equilibrium price, which will reduce the firm's price discriminating strategy.


title: Price discrimination

text: Airlines and other travel companies use differentiated pricing regularly, as they sell travel products and services simultaneously to different market segments. This is often done by assigning capacity to various booking classes, which sell for different prices and which may be linked to fare restrictions. The restrictions or "fences" help ensure that market segments buy in the booking class range that has been established for them. For example, schedule-sensitive business passengers who are willing to pay $300 for a seat from city A to city B cannot purchase a $150 ticket because the $150 booking class contains a requirement for a Saturday-night stay, or a 15-day advance purchase, or another fare rule that discourages, minimizes, or effectively prevents a sale to business passengers.


title: Price discrimination

text: Notice however that in this example "the seat" is not always the same product. That is, the business person who purchases the $300 ticket may be willing to do so in return for a seat on a high-demand morning flight, for full refundability if the ticket is not used, and for the ability to upgrade to first class if space is available for a nominal fee. On the same flight are price-sensitive passengers who are not willing to pay $300, but who are willing to fly on a lower-demand flight (one leaving an hour earlier), or via a connection city (not a non-stop flight), and who are willing to forgo refundability.


title: Price discrimination

text: On the other hand, an airline may also apply differential pricing to "the same seat" over time, e.g. by discounting the price for an early or late booking and for weekend purchases (without changing any other fare condition). It is part of an airline’s profit-maximizing strategy by segmenting price-sensitive leisure travellers from price inelastic business travellers as the former often have an incentive to buy in advance and often purchase on weekends. This could present an arbitrage opportunity in the absence of any restriction on reselling. However, passenger name changes are typically prevented or financially penalized by contract.


title: Price discrimination

text: In addition, an airline may apply directional price discrimination by charging passengers different roundtrip fares based on their origins. For example, the per capita income of City A is $30,000 higher than City B and the finding implies that passengers originating from City A will pay $5400 - $12900 more than those from City B. It is argued that this price discrimination method is the result of airlines segmenting passenger price sensitivity based on their income of route endpoints.


title: Price discrimination

text: Since airlines often fly multi-leg flights, and since no-show rates vary by segment, competition for the seat has to take in the spatial dynamics of the product. Someone trying to fly A-B is competing with people trying to fly A-C through city B on the same aircraft. This is one reason airlines use yield management technology to determine how many seats to allot for A-B passengers, B-C passengers, and A-B-C passengers, at their varying fares and with varying demands and no-show rates.


title: Price discrimination

text: With the rise of the Internet and the growth of low fare airlines, airfare pricing transparency has become far more pronounced. Passengers discovered it is quite easy to compare fares across different flights or different airlines. This helped put pressure on airlines to lower fares. Meanwhile, in the recession following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., business travelers and corporate buyers made it clear to airlines that they were not going to be buying air travel at rates high enough to subsidize lower fares for non-business travelers. This prediction has come true, as vast numbers of business travelers are buying airfares only in economy class for business travel.


title: Price discrimination

text: There are sometimes group discounts on rail tickets and passes. This may be in view of the alternative of going by car together.


title: Price discrimination

text: The use of coupons in retail is an attempt to distinguish customers by their reserve price. The assumption is that people who go through the trouble of collecting coupons have greater price sensitivity than those who do not. Thus, making coupons available enables, for instance, breakfast cereal makers to charge higher prices to price-insensitive customers, while still making some profit off customers who are more price-sensitive.


title: Price discrimination

text: For certain products, premium products are priced at a level (compared to "regular" or "economy" products) that is well beyond their marginal cost of production. For example, a coffee chain may price regular coffee at $1, but "premium" coffee at $2.50 (where the respective costs of production may be $0.90 and $1.25). Economists such as Tim Harford in the Undercover Economist have argued that this is a form of price discrimination: by providing a choice between a regular and premium product, consumers are being asked to reveal their degree of price sensitivity (or willingness to pay) for comparable products. Similar techniques are used in pricing business class airline tickets and premium alcoholic drinks, for example.


title: Price discrimination

text: This effect can lead to (seemingly) perverse incentives for the producer. If, for example, potential business class customers will pay a large price differential only if economy class seats are uncomfortable while economy class customers are more sensitive to price than comfort, airlines may have substantial incentives to purposely make economy seating uncomfortable. In the example of coffee, a restaurant may gain more economic profit by making poor quality regular coffee—more profit is gained from up-selling to premium customers than is lost from customers who refuse to purchase inexpensive but poor quality coffee. In such cases, the net social utility should also account for the "lost" utility to consumers of the regular product, although determining the magnitude of this foregone utility may not be feasible.


title: Price discrimination

text: Many movie theaters, amusement parks, tourist attractions, and other places have different admission prices per market segment: typical groupings are Youth/Child, Student, Adult, Senior Citizen, Local and Foreigner. Each of these groups typically have a much different demand curve. Children, people living on student wages, and people living on retirement generally have much less disposable income. Foreigners may be perceived as being more wealthy than locals and therefore being capable of paying more for goods and services - sometimes this can be even 35 times as much. Market stall-holders and individual public transport providers may also insist on higher prices for their goods and services when dealing with foreigners (sometimes called the "White Man Tax"). Some goods - such as housing - may be offered at cheaper prices for certain ethnic groups.


title: Price discrimination

text: Some businesses may offer reduced prices members of some occupations, such as school teachers (see below), police and military personnel. In addition to increased sales to the target group, businesses benefit from the resulting positive publicity, leading to increased sales to the general public.


title: Price discrimination

text: A variety of incentive techniques may be used to increase market share or revenues at the retail level. These include discount coupons, rebates, bulk and quantity pricing, seasonal discounts, and frequent buyer discounts.


title: Price discrimination

text: Many methods exist to incentivize wholesale or industrial buyers. These may be quite targeted, as they are designed to generate specific activity, such as buying more frequently, buying more regularly, buying in bigger quantities, buying new products with established ones, and so on. They may also be designed to reduce the administrative and finance costs of processing each transaction. Thus, there are bulk discounts, special pricing for long-term commitments, non-peak discounts, discounts on high-demand goods to incentivize buying lower-demand goods, rebates, and many others. This can help the relations between the firms involved.


title: Price discrimination

text: Gender-based price discrimination is the practice of offering identical or similar services and products to men and women at different prices when the cost of producing the products and services is the same. In the United States, gender-based price discrimination has been a source of debate. In 1992, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (“DCA”) conducted an investigation of “price bias against women in the marketplace”. The DCA's investigation concluded that women paid more than men at used car dealers, dry cleaners, and hair salons. The DCA's research on gender pricing in New York City brought national attention to gender-based price discrimination and the financial impact it has on women.


title: Price discrimination

text: With consumer products, differential pricing is usually not based explicitly on the actual gender of the purchaser, but is achieved implicitly by the use of differential packaging, labelling, or colour schemes designed to appeal to male or female consumers. In many cases, where the product is marketed to make an attractive gift, the gender of the purchaser may be different from that of the end user.


title: Price discrimination

text: In 1995, California Assembly's Office of Research studied the issue of gender-based price discrimination of services and estimated that women effectively paid an annual “gender tax” of approximately $1,351.00 for the same services as men. It was also estimated that women, over the course of their lives, spend thousands of dollars more than men to purchase similar products. For example, prior to the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Affordable Care Act”), health insurance companies charged women higher premiums for individual health insurance policies than men. Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies are now required to offer the same premium price to all applicants of the same age and geographical locale without regard to gender. However, there is no federal law banning gender-based price discrimination in the sale of products. Instead, several cities and states have passed legislation prohibiting gender-based price discrimination on products and services.


title: Price discrimination

text: In Europe, motor insurance premiums have historically been higher for men than for women, a practice that the insurance industry attempts to justify on the basis of different levels of risk. The EU has banned this practice; however, there is evidence that it is being replaced by "proxy discrimination", that is, discrimination on the basis of factors that are strongly correlated with gender: for example, charging construction workers more than midwives.


title: Price discrimination

text: In Chinese retail automobile market, researchers found that male buyers pay less than female buyers for cars with the same characteristics. Although this research documented the existence of price discrimination between locals and non-locals, local men still receive $221.63 discount more than local women and non-local men receive $330.19 discount more than non-local women. The discount represents approximately 10% of average personal budget, considering the per capita GDP for 2018.


title: Price discrimination

text: Pharmaceutical companies may charge customers living in wealthier countries a much higher price than for identical drugs in poorer nations, as is the case with the sale of antiretroviral drugs in Africa. Since the purchasing power of African consumers is much lower, sales would be extremely limited without price discrimination. The ability of pharmaceutical companies to maintain price differences between countries is often either reinforced or hindered by national drugs laws and regulations, or the lack thereof.


title: Price discrimination

text: Even online sales for non material goods, which do not have to be shipped, may change according to the geographic location of the buyer, such as music streaming services by Spotify and Apple Music. The users in lower-income countries benefit from price discrimination by paying fewer subscription fees than those in higher-income countries. The researchers also found that the cross-national price differences actually raise the revenue of those companies by about 6% while reducing world users’ welfare by 1%.


title: Price discrimination

text: Companies will often offer discounted goods and software to students and faculty at school and university levels. These may be labeled as academic versions, but perform the same as the full price retail software. Academic versions of the most expensive software suites may be free or significantly cheaper than the retail price of standard versions. Some academic software may have differing licenses than retail versions, usually disallowing their use in activities for profit or expiring the license after a given number of months. This also has the characteristics of an "initial offer" - that is, the profits from an academic customer may come partly in the form of future non-academic sales due to vendor lock-in.


title: Price discrimination

text: Sliding scale fees are when different customers are charged different prices based on their income, which is used as a proxy for their willingness or ability to pay. For example, some nonprofit law firms charge on a sliding scale based on income and family size. Thus the clients paying a higher price at the top of the fee scale help subsidize the clients at the bottom of the scale. This differential pricing enables the nonprofit to serve a broader segment of the market than they could if they only set one price.


title: Price discrimination

text: Goods and services for weddings are sometimes priced at a higher rate than identical goods for normal customers.


title: Price discrimination

text: The welfare consequences of price discrimination were assessed by testing the differences in mean prices paid by patients from three income groups: low, middle and high. The results suggest that two different forms of price discrimination for obstetric services occurred in both these hospitals. First, there was price discrimination according to income, with the poorer users benefiting from a higher discount rate than richer ones. Secondly, there was price discrimination according to social status, with three high status occupational groups (doctors, senior government officials, and large businessmen) having the highest probability of receiving some level of discount.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination is common in the pharmaceutical industry. Drug-makers charge more for drugs in wealthier countries. For example, drug prices in the United States are some of the highest in the world. Europeans, on average, pay only 56% of what Americans pay for the same prescription drugs.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination is also prevalent within the textbook publishing industry. Prices for textbooks are much higher in the United States despite the fact that they are produced in the country. Copyright protection laws increase the price of textbooks. Also, textbooks are mandatory in the United States while schools in other countries see them as study aids.


title: Price discrimination

text: There are two conditions that must be met if a price discrimination scheme is to work. First the firm must be able to identify market segments by their price elasticity of demand and second the firms must be able to enforce the scheme. For example, airlines routinely engage in price discrimination by charging high prices for customers with relatively inelastic demand - business travelers - and discount prices for tourist who have relatively elastic demand. The airlines enforce the scheme by enforcing a no resale policy on the tickets preventing a tourist from buying a ticket at a discounted price and selling it to a business traveler (arbitrage). Airlines must also prevent business travelers from directly buying discount tickets. Airlines accomplish this by imposing advance ticketing requirements or minimum stay requirements — conditions that would be difficult for the average business traveler to meet.


title: Price discrimination

text: While the conventional theory of price discrimination generally assumes that prices are set by the seller, there is a variant form in which prices are set by the buyer, such as in the form of pay what you want pricing. Such user-controlled price discrimination exploits similar ability to adapt to varying demand curves or individual price sensitivities, and may avoid the negative perceptions of price discrimination as imposed by a seller.


title: Price discrimination

text: In the matching markets, the platforms will internalize the impacts in revenue to create a cross-side effects. In return, this cross-side effect will differentiate price discrimination in matching intermediation from the standard markets.


title: Price discrimination

text: Price discrimination only happens when the "same" product is sold at more than one price. Congestion pricing is not price discrimination. Peak and off-peak fares on a train are not the same product; some people have to travel during rush hour, and travelling off-peak is not equivalent to them.


title: Price discrimination

text: Some companies have high fixed costs (like a train company, which owns a railway and rolling stock, or a restaurant, which has to pay for premisses and equipment). If these fixed costs permit the company to additionally provide less-preferred products (like mid-morning meals or off-peak rail travel) at little additional cost, it can profit both seller and buyer to offer them at lower prices. Providing more product from the same fixed costs increases both producer and consumer surplus. This is not technically price discrimination (unlike, say, giving menus with higher prices to richer-looking customers, which the poorer-looking ones get an ordinary menu).


title: Price discrimination

text: If different prices are charged for products that only some consumers will see as equivalent, the differential pricing can be used to manage demand. For instance, airlines can use price discrimination to encourage people to travel at unpopular times (early in the morning). This helps avoid over-crowding and helps to spread out demand. The airline gets better use out of planes and airports, and can thus charge less (or profit more) than if it only flew peak hours.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Albert Arnold Gore (December 26, 1907 – December 5, 1998) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1953 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a U.S. Representative from the state's 4th congressional district from 1939 to 1953. He was the father of Al Gore, who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 until 2001, and held Tennessee's other U.S. Senate seat from 1985 to 1993. A native of Granville, Tennessee, Gore graduated from Middle Tennessee State Teachers College and taught school. From 1932 to 1936 he was superintendent of schools for Smith County. He attended the Nashville Y.M.C.A. Night Law School, now the Nashville School of Law, from which he graduated in 1936.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: He was admitted to the bar later that year, and also accepted appointment as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Labor, a position he held until 1937. In 1938, Gore was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee's 4th congressional district. He was twice re-elected, and served from 1939 until resigning in December 1944. During World War II, Gore briefly served in the United States Army as part of a program that enabled members of Congress to join the military incognito to obtain firsthand information on training, readiness, and treatment of service members. He served from December 1944 to March 1945, when he was discharged and took the House seat to which he had been elected again in November 1944. He was thereafter re-elected in 1946, 1948, and 1950, and served from 1945 until 1953. In 1952, Gore was a successful candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 1958 and 1964, and served from January 1953 to January 1971. Gore was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1970.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: In the Senate, Gore championed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. In 1956, he also opposed the segregationist Southern Manifesto, but he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Gore reversed course a year later and supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965. During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, Gore backed most of Johnson's Great Society programs. Gore's 1970 defeat was blamed in part on his opposition to continuing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. After leaving the Senate, Gore practiced law and taught law at Vanderbilt University. He later served as a vice president of the Occidental Petroleum Company and was a member of its board of directors. Gore also served on the boards of directors of several other companies and operated a farm on which he bred Angus cattle. Gore died in Carthage, Tennessee on December 5, 1998 and was buried at Carthage's Smith County Memorial Gardens.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore was born in Granville, Tennessee, the third of five children of Margie Bettie ( Denny) and Allen Arnold Gore. Gore's ancestors included Anglo-Irish immigrants who first settled in Virginia in the mid-18th century and moved to Tennessee after the American Revolutionary War. As teenagers, Allen Gore and Cordell Hull were friends.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore studied at Middle Tennessee State Teachers College, and taught school in Overton and Smith Counties from 1926 to 1930. He first sought elective public office at age 23, when he ran unsuccessfully for superintendent of schools in Smith County. A year later, he was appointed to the position following the death of the incumbent. Gore graduated from the Nashville Y.M.C.A. Night Law School, now the Nashville School of Law, in 1936 and attained admission to the bar.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: After serving as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Labor from 1936 to 1937, Gore was elected as a Democrat to the 76th Congress in 1938, re-elected to the two succeeding Congresses, and served from January 3, 1939, until he resigned on December 4, 1944, to enter the U.S. Army.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore was one of several members of Congress who joined the military incognito for short tours, in order to observe training and combat and provide first-hand reports to the U.S. House and Senate. He completed basic training at Fort Meade, Maryland, after which he was assigned to the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories in Germany as a prosecutor in one of the military government courts. Gore served as a private and was discharged in March 1945 so he could take the seat in the U.S. House to which he had been reelected in November 1944.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore was re-elected to the 79th and to the three succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1945, to January 3, 1953). In 1951, Gore proposed in Congress that "something cataclysmic" be done by U.S. forces to end the Korean War: a radiation belt (created by nuclear weapons) dividing the Korean peninsula permanently into two.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore was not a candidate for House re-election but was elected in 1952 to the U.S. Senate. In his 1952 election, he defeated six-term incumbent Kenneth McKellar. Gore's victory is widely regarded as a major turning point in Tennessee political history and as largely marking the end of statewide influence for E. H. Crump, the Memphis political boss. During this term, Gore was instrumental in sponsoring and enacting the legislation creating the Interstate Highway System. Gore was re-elected in 1958 and again in 1964, and served from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1971, after he lost reelection in 1970.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore was one of only three Democratic senators from the former Confederate states who did not sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto opposing integration, the others being Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (who was not asked to sign), and Tennessee's other Senator, Estes Kefauver. South Carolina Senator J. Strom Thurmond tried to get Gore to sign the Southern Manifesto, but Gore refused. Gore voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court, but voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and did not vote on the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished poll taxes.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: Gore easily won renomination in 1958 over former governor Jim Nance McCord. In those days, Democratic nomination was still tantamount to election in Tennessee since the Republican Party was largely nonexistent in most of the state. In 1964, he faced an energetic Republican challenge from Dan Kuykendall, chairman of the Shelby County (Memphis) Republican Party, who ran a surprisingly strong race against him. While Gore won, Kuykendall held him to only 53 percent of the vote, in spite of Johnson's massive landslide victory in that year's presidential election.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: By 1970, Gore was considered to be fairly vulnerable for a three-term incumbent Senator, as a result of his liberal positions on many issues such as the Vietnam War (which he opposed) and civil rights. This was especially risky, electorally, as at the time the Republican Party was becoming more competitive in Tennessee. He faced a spirited primary challenge, predominantly from former Nashville news anchor Hudley Crockett, who used his broadcasting skills to considerable advantage and generally attempted to run to Gore's right. Gore fended off this primary challenge, but he was ultimately unseated in the 1970 general election by Republican Congressman Bill Brock. Gore was one of the key targets in the Nixon/Agnew "Southern strategy." He had earned Nixon's ire the year before when he criticized the administration's "do-nothing" policy toward inflation. In a memo to senior advisor Bryce Harlow, Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield relayed the President's desire that Gore be "blistered" for his comment. Spiro T. Agnew traveled to Tennessee in 1970 to mock Gore as the "Southern regional chairman of the Eastern Liberal Establishment". Other prominent issues in the race included Gore's vote against Everett Dirksen's amendment on prayer in public schools, and his opposition to appointing Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brock won the election by a 51% to 47% margin.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: In 1956, he gained national attention after his disapproval of the Southern Manifesto. Gore voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in fact filibustering against it, although he supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Gore was a vocal champion of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which secured creation of interstate highways. Later, he backed the Great Society array of programs initiated by President Johnson's administration, and introduced a bill with a Medicare blueprint. In international politics, he moved from proposing in the House to employ nuclear weapons for establishing a radioactive demilitarized zone during the Korean War, to voting for the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and speaking against the Vietnam War, pivots that likely contributed to the loss of his Senate seat in 1970.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: On April 17, 1937, Gore married lawyer Pauline LaFon (1912–2004), the daughter of Maude (née Gatlin) and Walter L. LaFon. Together, they had two children: Nancy LaFon Gore (1938–1984) and Albert Gore Jr. (born 1948), who followed in his father's political footsteps by representing Tennessee as a U.S. Representative and as a Senator, and later served as Vice President of the United States under Bill Clinton.


title: Albert Gore Sr.

text: After leaving Congress, Gore Sr. resumed the practice of law and also taught law at Vanderbilt University. He continued to represent the Occidental Petroleum where he became vice president and member of the board of directors. Gore became chairman of Island Creek Coal Co., Lexington, Kentucky, an Occidental subsidiary, in 1972, and in his last years operated Gore Antique Mall, an antiques store in Carthage. He lived to see his son Albert Gore Jr. become Vice President of the United States. Gore Sr. died on December 5, 1998 at the age of 90 and is buried in Smith County Memorial Gardens in Carthage. The stretch of Interstate 65 in Tennessee has been named The Albert Arnold Gore Sr. Memorial Highway in his honor.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The "Iron Duke" class was a group of four dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy before the First World War. The class comprised four ships: , , , and . Launched from October 1912 to November 1913, this was the third class of Royal Navy super-dreadnoughts.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The ships were essentially repeats of the battleships; they retained the same ten 13.5 inch (34.3 cm) guns in five twin gun turrets on the centreline. However, the "Iron Duke"s had improved armour and a more powerful secondary armament of 6-inch weapons instead of the 4-inch mounted on the earlier ships.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The four ships were the most advanced battleships in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the First World War, though they were soon surpassed by the five ships of the . They all saw extensive service during the war with the Grand Fleet, where "Iron Duke" acted as the flagship for the fleet commander, Admiral John Jellicoe. Three of the ships, "Iron Duke", "Benbow", and "Marlborough", were present at the Battle of Jutland; "Emperor of India" missed the battle by being in dock for periodic refit. The four "Iron Duke"-class battleships saw limited active duty following the end of the war; they were all demilitarised under the terms of the London Naval Treaty signed in 1930. "Iron Duke" was reduced to a training and depot ship and lasted in that role until 1946 when she was scrapped. "Benbow" was scrapped in 1931 and "Marlborough" followed in 1932. "Emperor of India" was sunk as a gunnery target in 1931 though was later re-floated to be scrapped in 1932.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The "Iron Duke"-class ships were 622 feet 9 inches (189.8 metres) long overall, and had a beam of 90 ft (27.4 m) and a draught of 29 ft (8.8 m). This was an increase of 25 ft (7.7 m) in length and 1 ft (.3 m) in width over the preceding "King George V"-class ships. The "Iron Duke"s displaced 25,000 long tons (25,400 tonnes). This was some 2,000 tons (2,032 tonnes) heavier than the preceding "King George V"s, and was primarily due to the increase in calibre of the secondary battery.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The ships were powered by four-shaft Parsons turbines. Steam was provided to the turbines by 18 Babcock & Wilcox or Yarrow boilers. The engines were rated at 29,000 shaft horsepower and delivered a top speed of . "Iron Duke" and her sisters had a fuel storage capacity of of coal and of oil. This enabled a maximum range of at a cruising speed of .


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The "Iron Duke"-class ships mounted a main battery of ten 13.5 inch (34.3 cm) Mk V(H) guns in five twin gun turrets, all mounted on the centreline. Two turrets were placed in a superfiring pair forward ("A" and "B" turrets), one turret amidships—the "Q" turret—directly after the two funnels, and two in a superfiring pair aft of the rear superstructure ("X" and "Y" turrets). The gun houses used were Mk II turrets that weighed 600 tons (610 tonnes) and allowed for depression to −5° and elevation to 20°. Despite this, the range dials on the gunsights at the time of construction were graduated to 15 degrees; super-elevating cams and prisms to allow the full elevation of the guns to be used were issued some time after the Battle of Jutland. The forward and aft gun turrets could train 150° in either direction from the centreline, while the "Q" had a much more limited range. It could engage targets on an arc from between 30° to 150° from the centerline on either beam of the ship.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The guns fired at a rate of 1.5–2 rounds per minute. The Mk V "Heavy" gun fired a variety of shells, including high explosive and armour-piercing rounds; they all weighed 1,400 lb (635 kg). The guns were loaded with MD45 propellant charges that weighed 297 lb (135 kg); these were stored in silk bags. This provided a muzzle velocity of 2,491 ft/s (759 meters per second). At maximum elevation of 20°, the guns had a range of 23,740 yards (21,710 m), though at the maximum effective elevation of 15°, the range was somewhat shorter, at approximately 20,000 yd (18,290 m). At a range of 10,000 yd (9,144 m), the gun could penetrate up to 12.5 in (318 mm) of Krupp cemented steel armour, the type used on contemporary German dreadnoughts.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The secondary battery consisted of twelve 6-inch (15.2 cm) Mk VII guns mounted in casemates in the hull around the forward superstructure. These guns were chosen because the 4-inch (10.2 cm) guns on earlier battleships were deemed to be too weak and have too short a range to effectively combat torpedo boats with newer, more powerful torpedoes. Admiral Jackie Fisher had opposed the idea of increasing the secondary battery, though he retired from the post of First Sea Lord in 1910. As a result, the "Iron Duke"s, which were designed in 1911, received the larger 6 inch gun.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: These guns fired 100 lb (45.4 kg) shells at a rate of between 5–7 per minute. The shells were fired with a muzzle velocity of 2,775 ft/s (846 m/s), though the guns were capable of higher velocities. It was reduced in order to standardize the performance of all the 6 inch guns in Royal Navy service, which would simplify range calculations for guns of the calibre. The guns could elevate to 20°, which enabled a maximum range of 15,800 yd (14,450 m).


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: There were some significant problems with the casemate guns early on, however. They were equipped with hinged plates that were designed to close off the casemate opening in heavy seas. The plates were easily washed away, though, and without them, water easily entered the ship and caused significant flooding. This problem was compounded by the fact that they had been mounted too low in the hull, which subjected them to heavier pounding from rough seas. The problem was eventually corrected by the addition of dwarf bulkheads in the gun houses and rubber seals to the hinged plates.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: "Iron Duke" was the first British battleship to be mounted with anti-aircraft weaponry. In 1914, two 3 in (7.62 cm) QF guns were fitted to the aft superstructure, primarily to defend against German airships. The guns fired between 12–14 rounds per minute, and were expected to fire approximately 1,250 shells before replacement or repair was necessary. The shells fired were 12.5 lb (5.67 kg) with a high-explosive warhead. They were manually operated, and had a maximum effective ceiling of 23,500 ft (7,160 m).


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: As was customary for capital ships of the period, the "Iron Duke"-class ships were equipped with submerged torpedo tubes. The ships carried four 21 in (53.3 cm) tubes, two on each beam. These launched Mk II torpedoes that carried a 515 lb (234 kg) TNT warhead. They had two speed settings; and . At 31 knots, the range was 10,750 yd (9,830 m), though at 45 kn the range was considerably reduced, to 4,500 yd (4,110 m).


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: The "Iron Duke"-class battleships had an armour belt that was thick in the central area of the ship, where the ammunition magazines, machinery spaces, and other vital parts of the ship were located. The belt tapered down to towards the bow and stern. The barbettes that contained the main gun turrets were on the sides and on the rear, where shells were less likely to hit. The turrets themselves were thick on the sides. The ships' armoured deck was between 25–65 mm (1–2.5 in) thick. After the battle of Jutland in May 1916, some 820 tonnes of armour was added to the ships, primarily to thicken the deck around the main battery turrets, as well as to increase the bulkheads in the ammunition magazines.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: Upon commissioning, was assigned to the Home Fleet as the flagship of Admiral George Callaghan. After the outbreak of the First World War, the Royal Navy was reorganized; the Home Fleet and the Atlantic Fleet were combined to form the Grand Fleet; "Iron Duke" retained her position as fleet flagship, under John Jellicoe. The ship took part in all of the major fleet actions, though only one of them ended in combat—the sortie on 31 May 1916 that resulted in the Battle of Jutland. At Jutland, "Iron Duke" was assigned to the 3rd Division of the 4th Battle Squadron, and was stationed in the centre of the British line.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: Following the end of the war, "Iron Duke" was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet. During 1919–20, the ship operated in the Black Sea in support of the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 mandated that "Iron Duke" be removed from the active roster. However, she remained with the fleet for a short time, having been transferred to the Atlantic Fleet in 1926. This duty assignment lasted 3 years, after which she was removed from active service. She was demilitarised, to be used as a training ship. Two of her gun turrets and a good deal of her armour were removed, and her speed was reduced to through the removal of some of her boilers. She was later used as a depot ship in Scapa Flow, starting in 1939. After the outbreak of the Second World War that year, her remaining guns were removed to be used in shore defences. "Luftwaffe" bombers attacked her on 17 October 1939; while they scored no direct hits, several near misses caused significant damage. After repairs were effected, the ship resumed her duties as a depot vessel until the end of the war. She was finally sold for scrapping in 1946.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: was the most heavily engaged ship of the class during the battle of Jutland; she fired a total of 162 heavy-calibre shells, out of a total of 292 for the entire class. She was assigned to the 6th Division of the 1st Battle Squadron, towards the rear of the British line. She served as the flagship of Vice Admiral Cecil Burney. During the battle, she was hit by a torpedo amidships; the torpedo tore a hole that was 21 m by 6 m (70 ft by 20 ft). Despite the damage, she was able to keep her position in the line, though her speed was reduced to . "Marlborough" continued to fire her main guns until the list increased to the point that prevented her guns from being effectively employed. The ship eventually withdrew to the Humber, where she undertook 3 months of repairs.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: Post-war, "Marlborough" joined "Iron Duke" in the Mediterranean, where she remained until 1926. She was then transferred to the Atlantic Fleet; her tour of duty there lasted until 1929, at which point she was withdrawn from active duty. The ship was sold for scrapping in 1932.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: Like her sisters, was assigned to the Grand Fleet for the duration of the First World War. She was assigned to the 4th Battle Squadron on 10 December 1914. "Benbow" was the flagship of Admiral Doveton Sturdee, the commander of the 4th Division of the 4th Battle Squadron, during the battle of Jutland. The 4th Division was directly ahead of the 3rd Division, where Admiral Jellicoe commanded the fleet from "Benbow"s sister "Iron Duke". Throughout the battle the ship remained undamaged. Like "Iron Duke" and "Marlborough", "Benbow" was transferred to the Mediterranean in 1919, and she provided artillery support to White Russian forces in the Black Sea. She followed "Marlborough" to the Atlantic Fleet in 1926; she too was stricken in 1929 and sold for scrap.


title: Iron Duke-class battleship

text: was also assigned to the 4th Battle Squadron, in December 1914. She missed Jutland because she was in dock for a periodic refit. After the end of the war, she was transferred to the Mediterranean along with the other three ships of the class. "Emperor of India" returned to England in 1922 for a refit, after which she resumed her duties in the Mediterranean. She likewise joined the Atlantic Fleet in 1926, alongside her sisters, and stricken in 1929. Instead of being scrapped, however, she was used as a gunnery target, and sunk in 1931. She was raised shortly thereafter and sold to ship breakers on 6 February 1932.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Yegor Timurovich Gaidar (; ; 19 March 1956 – 16 December 2009) was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician, and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: He was the architect of the controversial shock therapy reforms administered in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which brought him both praise and harsh criticism. He participated in the preparation of the Belovezh Accords. Many Russians held him responsible for the economic hardships that plagued the country in the 1990s that resulted in mass poverty and hyperinflation among other things, although liberals praised him as a man who did what had to be done to save the country from complete collapse. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, who advised the Russian government in the early 1990s, called Gaidar "the intellectual leader of many of Russia's political and economic reforms" and "one of the few pivotal actors" of the period.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar was born in 1956 in Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union, the son of Ariadna Bazhova and "Pravda" military correspondent Timur Gaidar, who fought in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and was a friend of Raúl Castro. His paternal grandfather was Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar and his maternal grandfather was writer Pavel Bazhov. Despite the Turkic-sounding surname, Gaidar was Russian; his grandfather, originally called "Golikov", adopted the name "Gaidar" from the Khakas language as a "nom-de-plume".


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar married the daughter of writer Arkady Strugatsky during his time at the university. His daughter, Maria Gaidar, was one of the leaders of the Russian democratic opposition. From July 2009 till June 2011 she was Deputy Chair of the Government of Kirov oblast. In 2015 and 2016 she was vice-governor of Odessa Oblast in Ukraine.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar graduated with honors from the Moscow State University, Faculty of Economics, in 1978 and worked as a researcher in several academic institutes. A long-time member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and an editor of the CPSU ideological journal "Communist" during the perestroika, he joined Boris Yeltsin's camp during Perestroika. In 1991 he quit the Communist Party and was promoted to Yeltsin's government.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: While in government, Gaidar advocated free market economic reforms according to the principle of shock therapy. His best-known decision was to abolish price regulation by the state, which immediately resulted in a major increase in prices and amounted to officially authorizing a market economy in Russia. He also cut military procurement and industrial subsidies, and reduced the budget deficit. Gaidar was the First Vice-Premier of the Russian Government and Minister of Economics from 1991 until 1992, and Minister of Finance from February 1992 until April 1992.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: He was appointed Acting Prime Minister under President Boris Yeltsin in 1992 from 15 June until 14 December, when the anti-Yeltsin Russian Congress of People's Deputies refused to confirm Gaidar in this position and Viktor Chernomyrdin was eventually chosen as a compromise figure. Gaidar continued to advise the new government. On 18 September 1993, he was again appointed the First Vice-Premier under Chernomyrdin as a deliberate snub to the opposition. He played an active role in the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: On 3 October, he famously spoke live on Russian television, then broadcasting from an emergency station near Moscow, as there was fighting going on in the Ostankino complex, calling on Muscovites to gather to defend Yeltsin's government so that Russia would not be "turned into an enormous concentration camp for decades".


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: In the 1993 Duma elections, in the aftermath of the crisis, Gaidar led the pro-government bloc Russia's Choice and was seen by some as a possible future Prime Minister. However, due to the bloc's failure to win the plurality of votes in the election, Gaidar's role in the government diminished and he finally resigned on 20 January 1994.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: During the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov and Boris Fyodorov were in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on a mediation mission.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar was often criticized for imposing ruthless reforms in 1992 with little care for their social impact; however, it has to be understood that the country back then was at the brink of a famine. Russia had no currency for buying import goods, at the same time, no-one gave credits as the country was essentially bankrupt. The collapse of the Soviet social system led to serious deterioration in living standards. Millions of Russians were thrown into poverty due to their savings being devalued by massive hyperinflation. Moreover, the privatization and break-up of state assets left over from the Soviet Union, which he played a big part in, led to much of the country's wealth being handed to a small group of powerful business executives, later known as the Russian oligarchs, for much less than what they were worth. The voucher privatization program enabled these few oligarchs to become billionaires specifically by arbitraging the vast difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities and the prices prevailing on the world market. Because they stashed billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts rather than investing in the Russian economy, these oligarchs were dubbed "kleptocrats." As society grew to despise these figures and resent the economic and social turmoil caused by the reforms, Gaidar was often held by Russians as one of the men most responsible. On the other hand, the ubiquitous goods deficit of the Soviet years disappeared and it became possible to buy all goods in the shops. Per capita calorie consumption under Gaidar diminished by 3.5% from 2526.88 kCal to 2438.17 kCal.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: According to Franklin Foer writing in "The Atlantic", however, "when Yegor Gaidar ... asked the United States for help hunting down the billions that the KGB had carted away, the White House refused."


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: One of Gaidar's most outspoken critics was the Yabloko economist and MP Grigory Yavlinsky, who had proposed since 1990 a 500 Days programme for the transition of the whole USSR to market economic, which was first backed and then dismissed by the government of Nikolai Ryzhkov. Yavlinsky emphasized the differences between his and Gaidar's reforms program, such as the sequencing of privatization vs. liberalization of prices and the applicability of his program to the entire Soviet Union.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar's supporters contend that although many mistakes were made, he had few choices in the matter and ultimately saved the country both from bankruptcy and from starvation. According to the BBC's Andrei Ostalski, "There were only two solutions—either introduce martial law and severe rationing, or radically liberalize the economy. The first option meant going all the way back to the Stalinist system of mass repression. The second meant a colossal change, a journey—or, rather, a race—through uncharted waters with an unpredictable outcome."


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: In November 2006 Gaidar went to Dublin, Ireland, to present his book "" at an academic conference. Shortly after breakfast, a fruit salad and a cup of tea, Gaidar felt sick and returned from the conference hall to his room at the hotel. He was called on the phone to come down and deliver his speech, which Gaidar later recalled as a call that saved his life, as he would surely have died if he had been in his room unattended. After Gaidar had tried to deliver his speech he collapsed in the university hallway and was rushed to a local hospital. His colleague Ekaterina Genieva recalled that "He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose; he was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour". Next day he moved from the hospital to the Russian embassy's premises and arranged a transfer to Moscow where doctors familiar with his health status suggested that it looked like he was 'poisoned'.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: In an interview published in the FT, Gaidar claimed that it had been an attempted political murder, where "most likely that means that some obvious or hidden adversaries of the Russian authorities stand behind the scenes of this event, those who are interested in further radical deterioration of relations between Russia and the west".


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Anatoly Chubais, another Russian reformist official and a former colleague of Gaidar, rejected the possibility of Kremlin involvement in this case, commenting that "Yegor Gaidar was on the verge of death on 24 November. The deadly triangle – Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar – would have been very desirable for some people who are seeking an unconstitutional and forceful change of power in Russia."


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Irish police opened an official investigation of the case. One of the versions voiced by the Russian opposition leaders and Kremlin supporters suggested that Boris Berezovsky, then a Russian oligarch in exile, may have been behind it. Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser now living in the US, commented that the whole case was staged, and the reason for taking Gaidar to hospital must have been hyperthensia, stress or alcohol.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar died at the age of 53 in Odintsovo raion, Moscow Oblast, Russia. Gaidar's aide Valery Natarov stated that Gaidar died unexpectedly, early on 16 December 2009, at his Moscow Oblast home while he was working on a book for children.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Gaidar was regarded as an object of loathing among ordinary Russians who lost everything during the shock therapy economic reforms.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and convicted fraudster Platon Lebedev expressed their condolences. "He laid the foundation of our economy".


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed condolences to relatives and friends of Yegor Gaidar. Medvedev called Gaidar a "daring, honest and decisive" economist who "evoked respect among his supporters and opponents."


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: "The death of Gaidar is a heavy loss for Russia," says Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "We have lost a genuine citizen and patriot, a strong spirited person, a talented scientist, writer and expert... He didn't dodge responsibility and 'took the punch' in the most challenging situations with honor and courage," the statement said.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: The White House offered condolences over Gaidar's death. U.S. National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said that, although controversial, Gaidar's legacy formed the foundation of a dynamic market-based economy.


title: Yegor Gaidar

text: In honor of Yegor Gaidar, each year in mid-January the Russian Presidency holds the Gaidar Forum that attracts the Russian political and business elite, with top European politicians also attending. The Forum is organized the week before the World Economic Forum in Davos and thus also serves to formulate the Russian positions on a variety of topics.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Ricardo Antonio Rosselló Nevares (; born March 7, 1979) is a Puerto Rican politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico from 2017 to 2019. He resigned on August 2, 2019, after protests related to the Telegramgate scandal. He is the son of former governor of Puerto Rico and pediatric surgeon Pedro Rosselló.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In 2010, Rosselló founded the political advocacy group "Boricua ¡Ahora Es!" to advocate for changing the current political status of Puerto Rico. Rosselló supports Puerto Rican statehood. Following several years of political advocacy, Rosselló announced that he would seek the nomination of the New Progressive Party (PNP in Spanish) for Governor of Puerto Rico in 2016. After winning the New Progressive Party primary, Rosselló was elected governor in the 2016 general election, defeating five other candidates.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In July 2019, Rosselló faced widespread controversy after a group chat on the Telegram app between Rosselló and his staff was made public. The chat included vulgar, sexist, homophobic and misogynistic language, a discussion of the operation of Internet troll networks on social media, elitist comments, and mockery of the troubles of Puerto Ricans as they continue to recover from 2017's Hurricane Maria that caused approximately 3,000 deaths. In one message, Rosselló's chief financial officer joked about the people who died in Hurricane Maria, and an apparent death threat made by Rosselló against Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulín Cruz. As a result of the leak, protests were held for several consecutive days throughout Puerto Rico demanding Rosselló's resignation. An estimated 500,000 people took to Old San Juan on July 17, 2019, as part of the protests. After first stating that he intended to complete his term as governor, Rosselló later promised to resign on August 2, which he did.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló was born 1979 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Pedro Rosselló and Maga Nevares. His older brothers are Juan Óscar (b. 1971) and Luis Roberto (b. 1973). Pedro Rosselló served as Governor of Puerto Rico from 1993 to 2001. Rosselló's paternal great-grandfather, Pedro Juan Rosselló Batle, immigrated in 1902 at the age of 23 from Lloseta, Mallorca, Spain.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló attended high school at Colegio Marista de Guaynabo. He was selected to compete in the International Mathematical Olympiads.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló earned a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001 in biomedical engineering and economics. As a researcher in college, Rosselló focused on adult stem cell research. He received a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló is a co-founder of Beijing Prosperous Biopharm, a medical research company in Beijing, China. Rosselló claimed to have developed various drugs then later clarified that they were still in the research phase of development.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló became involved in politics during the 2008 Puerto Rico gubernatorial election when his father Pedro Rosselló lost a party primary against the eventual Governor Luis Fortuño. Rosselló was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the 2008 nominating convention and an Obama delegate to the 2012 convention. In 2008, he participated in Clinton's get-out-the-vote efforts for the June 1 Puerto Rico presidential primary, appearing in her final TV ad with several Democratic political leaders, including fellow statehooder Kenneth McClintock and commonwealth's Roberto Prats and José A. Hernández Mayoral.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Following this event, Rosselló became a political commentator, writing columns for "El Vocero", a daily newspaper published in San Juan, covering politics, science, healthcare and economics topics. Additionally, Rosselló appeared as a regular guest analyst in several political radio talk shows.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: He published a book that depicted the accomplishments of his father's administration (1993–2001). All copies of the limited edition print were exhausted in one day. To diffuse the message, he allowed the material to be public domain and published it on the La Obra de Rosselló website for everyone to read.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In 2012, Rosselló founded "Boricua ¡Ahora Es!", a political advocacy group that advocates changing Puerto Rico's current political status. The movement featured a grass-roots educational campaign, suggesting that involvement of the international community may be necessary for the United States government to take action. "Boricua ¡Ahora Es!" actively campaigned during the 2012 Puerto Rico status referendum.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló was accused by Bolivian author Lupe Andrade of plagiarizing her column "Responsabilidad y democracia" ("Accountability and Democracy"). He denied the claim and no legal action followed.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Since 2012, Rosselló was mentioned as a potential gubernatorial candidate for the 2016 election cycle.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In 2013, he began organizing a group of collaborators to build what he called "Plan para Puerto Rico" ("Plan for Puerto Rico"). This plan would serve as a blueprint to deal with the economic and political problems and Puerto Rico and by being built years before a candidacy, it would represent a more complete and realistic political agenda. In 2014, Rosselló utilized his political platform to perform several protest events against the policies of the incumbent governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla. Some of these events included a march against a proposed Value Added Tax. Rosselló described that he intended to apply a scientific approach to governance. As a part of this, he traveled to other countries and US states to study how they approached various problems in governing, such as Finland, Estonia, and Florida.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: On September 19, 2015, he confirmed his intention to run for Governor of Puerto Rico in the 2016 election, and held a campaign rally the next day at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan that surpassed the previous attendance record held by Ricky Martin. At the rally, he endorsed Jenniffer González, a Republican, for Resident Commissioner.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: On June 5, 2016, Rosselló won the New Progressive Party primary against incumbent Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, thus becoming the party's candidate for governor and heading to the general election against PPD candidate David Bernier. He made Puerto Rican statehood the central issue of his campaign, and views statehood as the key to economic recovery.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: On November 8, 2016, Rosselló defeated five other gubernatorial candidates and was elected Governor of Puerto Rico, receiving 41% of the vote. He was sworn in on January 2, 2017.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Upon his election, Rosselló was the second-youngest person to become Governor of Puerto Rico. On his first day as governor, Rosselló signed six executive orders. His first executive order was the OE-2017-001, decreeing a state of fiscal emergency. The second order was the OE-2017-002, which creates the COF with the intent of obtaining, maximizing and overseeing more federal funds. The third executive order, OE-2017-003, looks to streamline the permit obtaining process for development of projects that promote a new or improved infrastructure for the lending of services for the citizens and for economic development within Puerto Rico. The fourth executive order, OE-2017-004, creates an interagency group of projects critical for the infrastructure, a collateral effect of the OE 2017–003. The fifth executive order, OE-2017-005, orders the implementation of the method of zero base budget for the preparation of the budget for the fiscal year 2017–2018. The last executive order Rosselló signed on his first day was the OE-2017-006; it decrees a public policy within the Government of Puerto Rico that guarantees equal pay and work for women employees. He also began the process of restructuring Puerto Rico's national debt.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In 2017, Rosselló signed the "Permitting Reform Act", streamlining business permitting processes on the island, and he also created the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety. In July 2017, Rosselló signed a bill that enacts regulations and makes the use of marijuana legal for medicinal use. The move goes further than the executive order issued by his predecessor which in Roselló's words, "ignored the legislative process and, following an executive order, promulgated a regulation without due discussion with all sectors and representatives elected by the people." Rosselló has stated that he intends to shrink the size of government, through reducing funding to various parts of the bureaucracy. He also started an effort on labor reform, which was revoked after differences between the governor's intended version and the version developed by the Financial Oversight and Management Board. Rosselló then tabled a second version of the plan in March 2018.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló took credit for raising the minimum wage in Puerto Rico. and in 2017 signed the Equal Pay Act, pushing for equal pay regardless of gender. In 2018 he signed six laws targeting the reform of the insurance industry, as a response to how insurance companies acted during recent hurricanes. In December 2017, Rosselló signed the "New Government Law", which was intended to consolidate agencies in order to improve efficiency and save capital. Rosselló stated, "the objective is to establish a platform where we can reduce a 131 agencies to 30 or 35 agencies in Puerto Rico."


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In June 2019, Ricardo Rosello announced that $2 million had been appropriated to the Puerto Rico Office for Socioeconomic and Community Development (ODSEC by its Spanish initials) for construction of new roofs. The total number of homes that could receive new roofs was 180, of the 20,000 to 30,000 homes still missing roofs since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Wanda Vázquez Garced, the governor who followed his troubled tenure, stated all contracts signed by Rosselló would be reviewed by her administration. Rosselló's alleged corruption was given as a reason to further delay promised funds for Hurricane Maria recovery, as announced by United States Department of Housing and Urban Development on August 6, 2019.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: By the time Rosselló took office, the Puerto Rican government-debt crisis posed serious problems for the government which was saddled with outstanding debt of $70billion or $12,000 per capita at a time with a 45% poverty rate and 14.2% unemployment that is more than twice the mainland U.S. average.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: The Commonwealth had been defaulting on many debts, including bonds, since 2015. Rosselló discussed the situation and sketched out his plans in an interview with the international "Financial Times" in mid January and indicated that he would seek an amicable resolution with creditors and also make fiscal reforms. "There will be real fiscal oversight and we are willing to sit down. We are taking steps to make bold reforms. ... What we are asking for is runway to establish these reforms and have Washington recognise that they have a role to play." He also implemented austerity measures, instructing Puerto Rican government agencies to cut operating expenses by 10% and reduce political appointees by 20%.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: To ensure funds would be available to pay for "essential" government services Rosselló signed a fiscal emergency law on January 28, 2017, that would set aside funds that might otherwise be required for debt payments.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: In late January, the federal control board created under PROMESA gave the government until February 28 to present a fiscal plan - including negotiations with creditors - to solve the problems. It is essential for Puerto Rico to reach restructuring deals to avoid a bankruptcy-like process under PROMESA. A moratorium on lawsuits by debtors was extended to May 31.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: Rosselló hired investment experts Rothschild & Co to assist in convincing creditors to take deeper losses on Puerto Rico's debts than they had expected. The company was also exploring the possibility of convincing insurers that had guaranteed some of the bonds against default, to contribute more to the restructuring, according to reliable sources. The governor also planned to negotiate restructuring of about $9billion of electric utility debt, a plan that could result "in a showdown with insurers". Political observers suggest that his negotiation of the electrical utility debt indicated Rosselló's intention to take a harder line with creditors. Puerto Rico has received authority from the federal government to reduce its debt with legal action and this may make creditors more willing to negotiate instead of becoming embroiled in a long and costly legal battle.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: On May 31, Rosselló unveiled his $9.56billion proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year. The budget prioritized paying pensions, increasing spending in the island's health system, public safety, and transportation. At the same time, the budget proposed cutting in the departments of education, natural resources, housing, agriculture, correction, and justice. Of the education cuts, it included over a $200million cut for Puerto Rico's public university, which had experienced organized student strikes for over two months. The budget directed $2billion for the public pension system of Puerto Rico that were underfunded by about $50billion. To balance this increase, the budget eliminated millions of dollars in annual subsidies to 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico, forcing the mayors to find funding in other areas. In addition, the budget focused payments for the debt services and the federal control board. Rosselló also announced tax breaks for the working class and retirees.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: A tax reform bill was presented by the governor in December 2018, which included a work tax credit of between $300 and $2000 to each taxpayer and reduced the corporate tax rate from 39% to 37.5%. Prior to this, Rosselló reduced the sales tax from 11.5% to 7% for restaurant prepared foods.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: During 2018, Rosselló announced that Puerto Rico had reached its lowest unemployment rate in the region history, at 9.3%. However, because Rosselló had fired the director of Puerto Rico's Office of Statistics due to dissatisfaction with the unflattering reports emanating from that office, it is unclear how accurate this information (or any of the statistical data touted by the Rosselló administration) is. In June 2018, he began the process of privatizing the island's energy infrastructure, and in November 2018, he pledged for Puerto Rico to switch entirely to renewable energy by 2050. In 2018 Rosselló also started InvestPR, a program intended to attract business investment to Puerto Rico, put in place by Law 13–2017; in addition to creating the Destination Marketing Organization, which encourages tourists to visit the island, enacted in 2017 by Law 17–2017.


title: Ricardo Rosselló

text: On February 5, 2018, Rosselló announced a broad education reform. The reform aim to incorporate school vouchers and charter schools into the bankrupt U.S. territory's education system. It was signed into law in March 2018.