pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
mshw, a forecasting library to predict short-term electricity demand based on multiple seasonal Holt-Winters
Authors: Oscar Trull, J. Carlos García-Díaz, Angel Peiró-Signes
Date: 2024-02-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Demand Forecasting

Transmission system operators have a growing need for more accurate forecasting of electricity demand. Current electricity systems largely require demand forecasting so that the electricity market establishes electricity prices as well as the programming of production units. The companies that are part of the electrical system use exclusive software to obtain predictions, based on the use of time series and prediction tools, whether statistical or artificial intelligence. However, the most common form of prediction is based on hybrid models that use both technologies. In any case, it is software with a complicated structure, with a large number of associated variables and that requires a high computational load to make predictions. The predictions they can offer are not much better than those that simple models can offer. In this paper we present a MATLAB toolbox created for the prediction of electrical demand. The toolbox implements multiple seasonal Holt-Winters exponential smoothing models and neural network models. The models used include the use of discrete interval mobile seasonalities (DIMS) to improve forecasting on special days. Additionally, the results of its application in various electrical systems in Europe are shown, where the results obtained can be seen. The use of this library opens a new avenue of research for the use of models with discrete and complex seasonalities in other fields of application.
The Ebb and Flow of Brand Loyalty: A 28-Year Bibliometric and Content Analysis
Authors: Azin Yazdi, Sunder Ramachandran, Hoda Mohsenifard, Khaled Nawaser, Faraz Sasani, Behrooz Gharleghi
Date: 2024-02-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Articles

Business research is facing the challenge of scattered knowledge, particularly in the realm of brand loyalty (BL). Although literature reviews on BL exist, they predominantly concentrate on the pre-sent state, neglecting future trends. Therefore, a comprehensive review is imperative to ascertain emerging trends in BL This study employs a bibliometric approach, analyzing 1,468 papers from the Scopus database. Various tools including R software, VOS viewer software, and Publish or Perish are utilized. The aim is to portray the knowledge map, explore the publication years, identify the top authors and their co-occurrence, reliable documents, institutions, subjects, research hotspots, and pioneering countries and universities in the study of BL. The qualitative section of this research identifies gaps and emerging trends in BL through Word Cloud charts, word growth analysis, and a review of highly cited articles from the past four years. Results showed that highly cited articles mention topics such as brand love, consumer-brand identification, and social networks and the U.S. had the most productions in this field. Besides, most citations were related to Keller with 1,173 citations. Furthermore, in the qualitative section, social networks and brand experiences were found to be of interest to researchers in the field. Finally, by introducing the antecedents and consequences of BL, the gaps and emerging trends in BL were identified, so as to present the di-rection of future research in this area.
ATLAS: A Model of Short-term European Electricity Market Processes under Uncertainty - Balancing Modules
Authors: Florent Cogen, Emily Little, Virginie Dussartre, Quentin Bustarret
Date: 2024-02-20 00:00:00

The ATLAS model simulates the various stages of the electricity market chain in Europe, including the formulation of offers by different market actors, the coupling of European markets, strategic optimization of production portfolios and, finally, real-time system balancing processes. ATLAS was designed to simulate the various electricity markets and processes that occur from the day ahead timeframe to real-time with a high level of detail. Its main aim is to capture impacts from imperfect actor coordination, evolving forecast errors and a high-level of technical constraints--both regarding different production units and the different market constraints. This working paper describes the simulated balancing processes in detail and is the second part of the ATLAS documentation.
ATLAS: A Model of Short-term European Electricity Market Processes under Uncertainty
Authors: Emily Little, Florent Cogen, Quentin Bustarret, Virginie Dussartre, Maxime Lâasri, Gabriel Kasmi, Marie Girod, Frederic Bienvenu, Maxime Fortin, Jean-Yves Bourmaud
Date: 2024-02-20 00:00:00

The ATLAS model simulates the various stages of the electricity market chain in Europe, including the formulation of offers by different market actors, the coupling of European markets, strategic optimization of production portfolios and, finally, real-time system balancing processes. ATLAS was designed to simulate the various electricity markets and processes that occur from the day ahead timeframe to real-time with a high level of detail. Its main aim is to capture impacts from imperfect actor coordination, evolving forecast errors and a high-level of technical constraints--both regarding different production units and the different market constraints.
Revisiting the Impact of Upstream Mergers with Downstream Complements and Substitutes
Authors: Enrique Ide
Date: 2024-02-19 00:00:00

I examine how upstream mergers affect negotiated prices when suppliers bargain with a monopoly intermediary selling products to final consumers. Conventional wisdom holds that such transactions lower negotiated prices when the products are complements for consumers and raise them when they are substitutes. The idea is that consumer demand relationships carry over to upstream negotiations, where mergers between complements weaken the suppliers' bargaining leverage, while mergers between substitutes strengthen it. I challenge this view, showing that it breaks down when the intermediary sells products beyond those of the merging suppliers. In such cases, the merging suppliers' products may act as substitutes for the intermediary even if they are complements for consumers, or as complements for the intermediary even if they are substitutes for consumers. These findings show that upstream conglomerate mergers can raise prices without foreclosure or monopolisation and help explain buyer-specific price effects resulting from such mergers.
Robust Appointment Scheduling with Waiting Time Guarantees
Authors: Carolin Bauerhenne, Rainer Kolisch, Andreas S. Schulz
Date: 2024-02-19 00:00:00
Tasks: Scheduling

Appointment scheduling problems under uncertainty encounter a fundamental trade-off between cost minimization and customer waiting times. Most existing studies address this trade-off using a weighted sum approach, which puts little emphasis on individual waiting times and, thus, customer satisfaction. In contrast, we study how to minimize total cost while providing waiting time guarantees to all customers. Given box uncertainty sets for service times and no-shows, we introduce the Robust Appointment Scheduling Problem with Waiting Time Guarantees. We show that the problem is NP-hard in general and introduce a mixed-integer linear program that can be solved in reasonable computation time. For special cases, we prove that polynomial-time variants of the well-known Smallest-Variance-First sequencing rule and the Bailey-Welch scheduling rule are optimal. Furthermore, a case study with data from the radiology department of a large university hospital demonstrates that the approach not only guarantees acceptable waiting times but, compared to existing robust approaches, may simultaneously reduce costs incurred by idle time and overtime. This work suggests that limiting instead of minimizing customer waiting times is a win-win solution in the trade-off between customer satisfaction and cost minimization. Additionally, it provides an easy-to-implement and customizable appointment scheduling framework with waiting time guarantees.
Explaining the emergence of land-use frontiers
Authors: Patrick Meyfroidt, Dilini Abeygunawardane, Matthias Baumann, Adia Bey, Ana Buchadas, Cristina Chiarella, Victoria Junquera, Angela Kronenburg García, Tobias Kuemmerle, Yann le Polain de Waroux, Eduardo Oliveira, Michelle Picoli, Siyu Qin, Virginia Rodriguez García, Philippe Rufin
Date: 2024-02-19 00:00:00
Tasks: Friction

Land use expansion is linked to major sustainability concerns including climate change, food security and biodiversity loss. This expansion is largely concentrated in so-called frontiers, defined here as places experiencing marked transformations due to rapid resource exploitation. Understanding the mechanisms shaping these frontiers is crucial for sustainability. Previous work focused mainly on explaining how active frontiers advance, in particular into tropical forests. Comparatively, our understanding of how frontiers emerge in territories considered marginal in terms of agricultural productivity and global market integration remains weak. We synthesize conceptual tools explaining resource and land-use frontiers, including theories of land rent and agglomeration economies, of frontiers as successive waves, spaces of territorialization, friction, and opportunities, anticipation and expectation. We then propose a new theory of frontier emergence, which identifies exogenous pushes, legacies of past waves, and actors anticipations as key mechanisms by which frontiers emerge. Processes of abnormal rent creation and capture and the built-up of agglomeration economies then constitute key mechanisms sustaining active frontiers. Finally, we discuss five implications for the governance of frontiers for sustainability. Our theory focuses on agriculture and deforestation frontiers in the tropics, but can be inspirational for other frontier processes including for extractive resources, such as minerals.
The Gerber-Shiu Expected Discounted Penalty Function: An Application to Poverty Trapping
Authors: José Miguel Flores-Contró
Date: 2024-02-18 00:00:00

In this article, we consider a risk process to model the capital of a household. Our work focuses on the analysis of the trapping time of such a process, where trapping occurs when a household's capital level falls into the poverty area. A function analogous to the classical Gerber-Shiu function is introduced, which incorporates information on the trapping time, the capital surplus immediately before trapping and the capital deficit at trapping. We derive, under some assumptions, a model belonging to the family of generalised beta (GB) distributions that describes the distribution of the capital deficit at trapping given that trapping occurs. Affinities between the capital deficit at trapping and a class of poverty measures, known as the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) index, are presented. The versatility of this model to estimate FGT indices is assessed using household microdata from Burkina Faso's Enqu\^ete Multisectorielle Continue (EMC) 2014.
Estimating HANK with Micro Data
Authors: Man Chon Iao, Yatheesan J. Selvakumar
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

We propose an indirect inference strategy for estimating heterogeneous-agent business cycle models with micro data. At its heart is a first-order vector autoregression that is grounded in linear filtering theory as the cross-section grows large. The result is a fast, simple and robust algorithm for computing an approximate likelihood that can be easily paired with standard classical or Bayesian methods. Importantly, our method is compatible with the popular sequence-space solution method, unlike existing state-of-the-art approaches. We test-drive our method by estimating a canonical HANK model with shocks in both the aggregate and cross-section. Not only do simulation results demonstrate the appeal of our method, they also emphasize the important information contained in the entire micro-level distribution over and above simple moments.
Estudos de cenários de implantação de um imposto ambiental no transporte aéreo no Brasil
Authors: Carolina B. Resende, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

In recent years, the topic of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions has been increasingly in the media. This theme has raised various flags, showing concern for the future and seeking alternatives for a more sustainable life over the years. When studying greenhouse gas emissions, one of the main emitters of such gases is the burning of fuels, in which transport vehicles that depend on gas and oil are included. In this respect, air transport through aircraft is one of the sources emitting such gases. Aiming to reduce gas emissions, one of the ways to do this is by reducing fuel consumption; for this, aircraft would have to be more efficient, or the offer and demand for flights would be reduced. However, what if aircraft fuel consumption were taxed? What would be the effects of this on air transport? Could this be one of the alternatives to reduce emissions? To understand this relationship between taxation and a possible reduction in fuel consumption, a study was developed by the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), using an econometric model to understand how demand would be affected by changes in airfares. In addition, a simulation of possible environmental taxes on the values of air tickets was carried out to analyze the demand response and to get an idea if this taxation would really solve the emission problems.
A literatura das receitas comerciais em aeroportos: discussões e principais descobertas
Authors: Murillo Massaretto, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

The exploration of existing commercial opportunities has been increasing the share of commercial (non-aeronautical) revenues in the total revenues of airports worldwide. These revenues, also called commercial, non-aeronautical, or non-tariff revenues, come from rentals, duty-free shops, food and beverage sales, parking, advertising, etc. In other words, everything that is not the main business of the airport. Consequently, the dependence on commercial revenues has also become increasingly important, and airport managers are interested in understanding how to improve their financial results with this new revenue source, as it not only improves financial outcomes but also optimizes passengers' time and money consumption options at airports. Therefore, this chapter seeks to discuss the main determinants of commercial revenues at national airports, analyzing the possible impacts of the behavior of passengers from low-cost carriers (LCC) on these revenues, combined with other determining factors.
A padronização de frota e suas consequências para as companhias aéreas
Authors: Rodolfo R. Narcizo, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

This study addresses the growing standardization of airline fleets, highlighting that frequent passengers are more likely to fly on the same aircraft model more often. The objective is to analyze the fleet management of airlines and the impact of a reduced variety of models on company operations. The benefits of standardization, such as operational efficiency, and the risks, such as vulnerability to specific model failures, are discussed. The work reviews international scientific literature on the subject, identifying consensus and disagreements that suggest areas for future research. It also includes a study on the Brazilian market, examining how standardization affects operational costs and profitability in terms of model, family, and aircraft manufacturer. Furthermore, the relationship between fleet standardization and the business model of the companies is investigated, concluding that the advantages of standardization are not exclusive to low-cost companies but can also be leveraged by other airlines.
Análise das estratégias de planejamento de tempos de voo pelas companhias aéreas
Authors: Ana B. R. Eufrásio, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

This study explores the approaches used by airlines in setting flight times. It highlights the need to balance operational and strategic factors, such as optimizing the use of resources - including aircraft, crew, and fuel - and managing the risks related to delays and congestion. The work details a national analysis focused on domestic flights, investigating the factors that influence companies to adjust scheduled flight times and the impact of this practice on punctuality. The results indicate that decisions about flight time are influenced by both operational and strategic aspects, being affected by competition and the sector's policies on punctuality and slot allocation. Furthermore, it was found that adding extra time is an effective strategy for reducing delays, although it may conceal system deficiencies.
Impactos da Navegação Baseada em Performance nos Tempos de Voo da Aviação Comercial
Authors: João B. T. Szenczuk, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

This work presents an analysis of recent literature examining factors that influence flight times in Brazil, with special attention to the impact of new technology implementations, specifically Performance-Based Navigation (PBN). PBN procedures began to be implemented in Brazilian airspace in 2009 and represent a new concept of air navigation, using satellites to create 3D flight routes that are shorter and more precise, potentially reducing the distances flown and consequently flight times and delays. Flight times depend on various factors, such as the size and complexity of the origin and destination airports, weather conditions, aircraft models, and how full the flights are. Therefore, to assess the impact of the new procedures, the variation in this set of factors must be taken into account. The results found in the literature suggest that Performance-Based Navigation had a positive impact, reducing flight times by about 1-2%, representing a saving of tens of thousands of flight hours from the beginning of implementations in 2009 until the end of 2018.
Determinantes concorrenciais dos atrasos dos voos no aeroporto e na rota
Authors: William E. Bendinelli, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

Flight delays are a reality in the modern air industry worldwide. However, studies in the literature have investigated the competitive determinants of delays arising from factors originating at the airport and along the route separately. This work aims to present a national study that used a unifying approach from the literature, considering the local and global effects of competition on delays. The analysis took into account a phenomenon known as the "internalization of externalities" of airport congestion. Furthermore, it discusses the relationship between quality and competition on the route and the impacts of the entry of a low-cost carrier (LCC) on the delays of incumbent airlines in the Brazilian air market. The literature suggests that there is evidence of congestion internalization at Brazilian airports, in parallel with competition for quality at the route level. Additionally, the potential competition caused by the presence of the LCC leads to a global effect that suggests the existence of impacts other than prices on routes where it has not entered.
Low costs na aviacao: importancia e desdobramentos
Authors: Bruno F. Oliveira, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

This study aims to discuss the impacts of a low-cost airline on the air transport market and, especially, to present the most recent findings from specialized literature in the field. To this end, various works on this topic, published since 2015, were selected and analyzed. From this analysis, it was possible to categorize the main topics discussed in the papers into five groups: (i) the impacts of a low-cost airline on competing airlines; (ii) impacts on airports; (iii) general impacts on the demand for air transport; (iv) effects on passengers' choice process; and (v) general effects on a geographical region.
Companhias aéreas são todas iguais? A convergência dos modelos de negócios no transporte aéreo
Authors: Renan P. de Oliveira, Alessandro V. M. Oliveira
Date: 2024-02-17 00:00:00

This study discusses the literature on the convergence of business models of airlines in Brazilian air transport, focusing on the formation of flight networks. Initially, it analyzes the determinants of the network formation patterns of the "fundamental" business models (archetypes) of airlines in the first years after the sector's deregulation. Then, it discusses how the business models of Brazilian companies resemble these patterns. The literature highlights convergences between the network formation strategies of full-service companies in relation to older low-cost companies, in addition to business model redirections after mergers and acquisitions.
Awareness of self-control
Authors: Mohammad Mehdi Mousavi, Mahdi Kohan Sefidi, Shirin Allahyarkhani
Date: 2024-02-16 00:00:00
Tasks: Marketing

Economists modeled self-control problems in decisions of people with the time-inconsistence preferences model. They argued that the source of self-control problems could be uncertainty and temptation. This paper uses an experimental test offered to individuals instantaneous reward and future rewards to measure awareness of self-control problems in a tempting condition and also measure the effect of commitment and flexibility cost on their welfare. The quasi-hyperbolic discounting model with time discount factor and present bias at the same time was used for making a model for measuring awareness and choice reversal conditions. The test showed 66% awareness of self-control (partially naive behaviors) in individuals. The welfare implication for individuals increased with commitment and flexibility costs. The result can be useful in marketing and policy-making fields design precisely offers for customers and society.
Sequential unanimity voting rules for binary social choice
Authors: Stergios Athanasoglou, Somouaoga Bonkoungou
Date: 2024-02-20 00:00:00

We consider a group of voters that needs to decide between two candidates. We propose a novel family of neutral and strategy-proof rules, which we call sequential unanimity rules. By demonstrating their formal equivalence to the M-winning coalition rules of Moulin (1983), we show that sequential unanimity rules are characterized by neutrality and strategy-proofness. We establish our results by developing algorithms that transform a given M-winning coalition rule into an equivalent sequential unanimity rule and vice versa. The analysis can be extended to accommodate the full preference domain in which voters may be indifferent between candidates.
The matching problem with linear transfers is equivalent to a hide-and-seek game
Authors: Alfred Galichon, Antoine Jacquet
Date: 2024-02-19 00:00:00

Matching problems with linearly transferable utility (LTU) generalize the well-studied transferable utility (TU) case by relaxing the assumption that utility is transferred one-for-one within matched pairs. We show that LTU matching problems can be reframed as nonzero-sum games between two players, thus generalizing a result from von Neumann. The underlying linear programming structure of TU matching problems, however, is lost when moving to LTU. These results draw a new bridge between non-TU matching problems and the theory of bimatrix games, with consequences notably regarding the computation of stable outcomes.