Competitive Constraints Research Articles

The Differences between Alibaba's Domestic and Overseas Operations

Alibaba, the largest e-commerce enterprise in China, has a significant global influence beyond its domestic operations. The company's efficiency is mainly attributed to its extensive technology and logistics infrastructure which facilitates the association of a multitude of suppliers and clients. Alibaba's globalization strategy promotes the world economy and enhances global trade through efficient business tools. The company's domestic and international operations differ for several reasons, such as market conditions, consumer behavior, industry competitiveness, cultural disparities, and legal constraints. Alibaba possesses a strong business model and significant experience within the local market; nevertheless, it requires adjusting its tactics and business models to address the diverse obstacles and opportunities present in the international market. The differences between Alibaba's domestic and overseas operations arise due to varying market environments, cultural disparities, industry competition, legal constraints, and diverse consumer behaviors. However, it encounters intense rivalry from domestic firms and a challenging business environment in foreign markets, particularly in the West. In light of these challenges, it is imperative to innovate and adapt the business model while comprehending and accommodating the local norms and regulations, and to tailor fitting strategies and business models to cater to varying consumer demands.

Re-imagining EU Foreign and Security Policy in a Complex and Contested World

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) increasingly formulates and implements foreign and security policy under the constraints of internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition. While such contextual challenges can inhibit the EU from adopting an ambitious foreign and security policy, this Special Issue shows that the EU and its member states have developed ways of mitigating their impact. Through institutional, functional and diplomatic measures, the EU has managed to reduce the adverse effect of the contextual factors on its foreign and security policy towards conflicts and crises.

Does the local government multi-objective competition intensify the transfer of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt?

Exploring the effect of local government multi-objective competition on the transfer of polluting industries is of great practical significance for promoting the high-quality development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. This paper adopted the extended shift-share analysis method to measure the scale of inter-provincial transfer of polluting industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2008 to 2020. Considering local governments' economic, innovation, talent and environmental protection competition, the paper examined the effects of local government multi-objective competition on the transfer of polluting industries in the region, and tested its spatial spillover effects. The results showed that: 1. Different competitions had different effects on the transfer of polluting industries. Economic competition intensified the transfer of polluting industries, while talent, innovation, and environmental protection competition all restrained it, among which environmental protection competition had the strongest restraining effect. 2. Compared with the transfer of polluting industries, the direction of economic competition and environmental protection competition on the transfer of industries did not change, but the degree of influence was reduced, talent competition instead promoted industrial transfer of the research region to some extent. 3. From the basin level, government competition in the upstream region more obviously intensified the transfer of polluting industries; while from the economic scale level, the restraining effect of government competition in the developed region on the transfer of polluting industries was much stronger. 4. Both innovation and environmental protection competition had positive spatial spillover effects. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the promotion and assessment mechanism of local officials, adopt differentiated competitive constraint mechanisms in accordance with local conditions, guide local governments to transform their development concepts, promote the sharing and common use of technological innovations, and promote the orderly transfer of industries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Development of a Mission-Tailored Tail-Sitter MAV

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles are among the most versatile UAVs, appropriate for various missions. Given that there are still open challenges regarding the VTOL design, this paper presents the full development and test cycle of a tail-sitter. IMAV 2022 competition rules were used to define the mission. A multidisciplinary design and optimization strategy was defined with the goal of maximizing competition score considering design, manufacturing, and competition constraints. The resulting vehicle was designed to fly at 18[Formula: see text]m/s while carrying 200[Formula: see text]g of payload with a total weight of approximately 720[Formula: see text]g. It flew for roughly 13 min at IMAV2022, helping its team to achieve 1st place at the “Package delivery challenge”. Further flight tests revealed the ultimate endurance performance as 18[Formula: see text]min.

Banking sector competition and firms’ financial constraints: Firm-Level evidence from developing economies

We explore the link between bank competition and financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for a sample of 48 developing economies. We incorporate several firm-specific characteristics such as size, age, tangibility, profitability, growth potential, innovativeness, industry, internationalization, and ownership structure. In addition, we con-sider the role of financial development, credit information availability, credit cycle, business cycle, and macroprudential policies. We calculate the credit-constrained status of SMEs using information from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey (WBES). The findings suggest that the likelihood of a business being credit-constrained is smaller in a competitive banking environment. We get consistent results when employing various indicators of credit constraints and banking competition. The availability of credit information reduces the information asymmetry and lowers the discouraging role of banking market power. Furthermore, banking sector development supports the competition in decreasing SMEs’ financing obstacles. In addition, economies with more financial freedom, effective enforcement of legal rights, and institutional quality support businesses in gaining more access to external financing. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Leveraging on-shell interference to search for FCNCs of the top quark and the Z boson

Flavour-changing-neutral currents (FCNCs) involving the top quark are highly suppressed within the Standard Model (SM). Hence, any signal in current or planned future collider experiments would constitute a clear manifestation of physics beyond the SM. We propose a novel, interference-based strategy to search for top-quark FCNCs involving the Z boson that has the potential to complement traditional search strategies due to a more favourable luminosity scaling. The strategy leverages on-shell interference between the FCNC and SM decay of the top quark into hadronic final states. We estimate the feasibility of the most promising case of anomalous tZc couplings using Monte Carlo simulations and a simplified detector simulation. We consider the main background processes and discriminate the signal from the background with a deep neural network that is parametrised in the value of the anomalous tZc coupling. We present sensitivity projections for the HL-LHC and the FCC-hh. We find an expected 95% CL upper limit of {mathcal {B}}_{textrm{excl}}(trightarrow Zc) = 6.4 times 10^{-5} for the HL-LHC. In general, we conclude that the interference-based approach has the potential to provide both competitive and complementary constraints to traditional multi-lepton searches and other strategies that have been proposed to search for tZc FCNCs.

Cosmological constraints from low redshift 21 cm intensity mapping with machine learning

ABSTRACT The future 21 cm intensity mapping observations constitute a promising way to trace the matter distribution of the Universe and probe cosmology. Here, we assess its capability for cosmological constraints using as a case study the BINGO radio telescope, that will survey the Universe at low redshifts (0.13 < z < 0.45). We use neural networks (NNs) to map summary statistics, namely, the angular power spectrum (APS) and the Minkowski functionals (MFs), calculated from simulations into cosmological parameters. Our simulations span a wide grid of cosmologies, sampled under the ΛCDM scenario, {Ωc, h}, and under an extension assuming the Chevallier–Polarski–Linder (CPL) parametrization, {Ωc, h, w0, wa}. In general, NNs trained over APS outperform those using MFs, while their combination provides 27 per cent (5 per cent) tighter error ellipse in the Ωc–h plane under the ΛCDM scenario (CPL parametrization) compared to the individual use of the APS. Their combination allows predicting Ωc and h with 4.9 and 1.6 per cent fractional errors, respectively, which increases to 6.4 and 3.7 per cent under CPL parametrization. Although we find large bias on wa estimates, we still predict w0 with 24.3 per cent error. We also confirm our results to be robust to foreground contamination, besides finding the instrumental noise to cause the greater impact on the predictions. Still, our results illustrate the capability of future low-redshift 21 cm observations in providing competitive cosmological constraints using NNs, showing the ease of combining different summary statistics.

Dietary niche partitioning of three Sky Island Sceloporus lizards as revealed through DNA metabarcoding.

Lizard diets are highly diverse and have contributed to the diversification, biogeographical distributions, and evolution of novel traits across this global radiation. Many parts of a lizard's ecology-including habitat preferences, foraging modes, predation risks, interspecific competition, and thermal constraints, among others-interact to shape diets, and dietary niche partitioning simultaneously contributes to co-occurrence within communities. We used DNA metabarcoding of fecal samples to identify prey items in the diets of three sympatric Sceloporus lizards in the Madrean Sky Islands of Arizona, USA. We found evidence for dietary niche partitioning between interacting species concomitant with their respective ecologies. We also compared diet composition between populations to understand how conserved or plastic species' diets are between different environments. Our findings suggest that habitat generalists are also diet generalists in this system, while the same may be true for specialists. The identification of prey items to much lower taxonomic levels than previously documented further reveals hidden diversity in the diets of these species and underscores the utility of metabarcoding for understanding the full complexity of lizard diets.

Testing the Collisionless Nature of Dark Matter with the Radial Acceleration Relation in Galaxy Clusters

The radial acceleration relation (RAR) represents a tight empirical relation between the inferred total and baryonic centripetal accelerations, g tot = GM tot(< r)/r 2 and g bar = GM bar(< r)/r 2, observed in galaxies and galaxy clusters. The tight correlation between these two quantities can provide insight into the nature of dark matter. Here we use BAHAMAS, a state-of-the-art suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, to characterize the RAR in cluster-scale halos for both cold and collisionless dark matter (CDM) and self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) models. SIDM halos generally have reduced central dark matter densities, which reduces the total acceleration in the central region when compared with CDM. We compare the RARs in galaxy clusters simulated with different dark matter models to the RAR inferred from CLASH observations. Our comparison shows that the cluster-scale RAR in the CDM model provides an excellent match to the CLASH RAR obtained by Tian et al. including the high-acceleration regime probed by the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). By contrast, models with a larger SIDM cross section yield increasingly poorer matches to the CLASH RAR. Excluding the BCG regions results in a weaker but still competitive constraint on the SIDM cross section. Using the RAR data outside the central r < 100 kpc region, an SIDM model with σ/m = 0.3 cm2 g−1 is disfavored at the 3.8σ level with respect to the CDM model. This study demonstrates the power of the cluster-scale RAR for testing the collisionless nature of dark matter.

Probing generalized neutrino interactions with the DUNE Near Detector

We explore the prospects of constraining general non standard interactions involving light mediators through elastic neutrino-electron scattering events at the DUNE Near Detector (ND). We furthermore consider the special cases of light vector mediators in motivated models such as U(1)B−L, textrm{U}{(1)}_{L_{mu }-{L}_{tau }} , E6 and left-right symmetry. The present analysis is based on detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the expected DUNE-ND signal taking into account detector resolution effects, realistic backgrounds as well as On-Axis and Off-Axis neutrino spectra. We show that the high intensity neutrino beam available at Fermilab can place competitive constraints surpassing those of low-energy neutrino searches and direct detection dark matter experiments.

CMB and Lyman-α constraints on dark matter decays to photons

Dark matter energy injection in the early universe modifies both the ionization history and the temperature of the intergalactic medium.In this work, we improve the CMB bounds on sub-keV dark matter and extend previous bounds from Lyman-α observations to the same mass range, resulting in new and competitive constraints on axion-like particles (ALPs) decaying into two photons.The limits depend on the underlying reionization history, here accounted self-consistently by our modified version of the publicly available DarkHistory and CLASS codes. Future measurements such as the ones from the CMB-S4 experimentmay play a crucial, leading role in the search for this type of light dark matter candidates.

The evolving concept of market power in the digital economy

Assessing market power is central to the CMA’s cases, including cases involving digital markets. Over the past few years, it has adapted its approach to deal effectively with digital markets and revised its guidance to reflect that approach. In dealing with digital cases, the CMA has not found that a new notion of market power was needed specifically for the digital space or for it to be able to capture its concerns in digital markets. However, it has revised its guidance to reflect how it conducts its assessment, including placing less emphasis on a formalistic market definition exercise and more emphasis on dynamic constraints, considering innovation as the current process of rivalry through investment decisions and incorporated the threat of entry when determining current competitive constraints. It has also considered characteristics like multi-sidedness, network effects and any resulting tipping dynamics in performing its assessments. The CMA’s current tools sometimes struggle to deal effectively with digital markets; therefore, the CMA’s Digital Markets Taskforce has recommended the introduction of a new ex ante regulatory regime to proactively shape the behaviour of particularly powerful digital firms and to prevent consumer harm from arising, including a new test to identify what firms should be subject to this new regime which includes, as an integral part, an assessment of market power.

Leaf angle as a leaf and canopy trait: Rejuvenating its role in ecology with new technology.

Life on Earth depends on the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy by plants through photosynthesis. A fundamental challenge in optimizing photosynthesis is to adjust leaf angles to efficiently use the intercepted sunlight under the constraints of heat stress, water loss and competition. Despite the importance of leaf angle, until recently, we have lacked data and frameworks to describe and predict leaf angle dynamics and their impacts on leaves to the globe. We review the role of leaf angle in studies of ecophysiology, ecosystem ecology and earth system science, and highlight the essential yet understudied role of leaf angle as an ecological strategy to regulate plant carbon-water-energy nexus and to bridge leaf, canopy and earth system processes. Using two models, we show that leaf angle variations have significant impacts on not only canopy-scale photosynthesis, energy balance and water use efficiency but also light competition within the forest canopy. New techniques to measure leaf angles are emerging, opening opportunities to understand the rarely-measured intraspecific, interspecific, seasonal and interannual variations of leaf angles and their implications to plant biology and earth system science. We conclude by proposing three directions for future research.

DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES AND ACQUISITION OF NEW CUSTOMERS FOR SMES IN SANTA ELENA PROVINCE

This study analyzes digital marketing strategies in SMEs from the Santa Elena Province, evaluating their impact on attracting and retaining customers, as well as on business growth. Methodology: Using a mixed-methods approach, 239 surveys answered by business owners were examined out of a total of 279 sent forms, along with 8 interviews with owners and marketing managers. Results: The findings indicate the effectiveness of digital channels such as social media, email, and web positioning. Strengthening online presence and the reach of SMEs in the local market significantly influences customer acquisition and satisfaction. Conclusions: Based on the results obtained, it is concluded that SMEs in Santa Elena adopt diverse digital marketing tactics based on size, focused on driving sales and customer service. Despite facing knowledge, competition, and resource constraints, they strive to adapt to the digital environment. This study provides insights into the implementation of digital marketing strategies in SMEs for improving competitiveness and business performance in the Santa Elena Province

Solar System-scale Interferometry on Fast Radio Bursts Could Measure Cosmic Distances with Subpercent Precision

The light from an extragalactic source at a distance d will arrive at detectors separated by 100 au at times that differ by as much as 120(d/100 Mpc)−1 nanoseconds because of the curvature of the wave front. At gigahertz frequencies, the arrival time difference of a point source can be determined to better than a nanosecond with interferometry. If the spacetime positions of the detectors are known to a few centimeters, comparable to the accuracy to which very long baseline interferometry baselines and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) geolocations are constrained, nanosecond timing would allow competitive cosmological constraints. We show that a four-detector constellation at Solar radii of ≳10 au could measure geometric distances to individual sources with subpercent precision. The precision increases quadratically with baseline length. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are the only known bright extragalactic radio source that are sufficiently point-like for this experiment, and the simplest approach would target the population of repeating FRBs. Galactic scattering limits the timing precision at ≲3 GHz, whereas at higher frequencies the precision is set by removing the differential dispersion between the detectors. Furthermore, for baselines greater than 100 au, Shapiro time delays limit the precision, but their effect can be cleaned at the cost of two additional detectors. Outer solar system accelerations that result in ∼1 cm uncertainty in detector positions could be corrected for with weekly GNSS-like trilaterations between members of the constellation. The proposed interferometer would not only provide a geometric constraint on the Hubble constant, but also could advance solar system, pulsar, and gravitational wave science.

Peer effects and the mechanisms in corporate capital structure: Evidence from Chinese listed firms

Research background: Peer effects, in which individuals learn and imitate their peers? behaviors, have been widely recognized in different contexts. Particularly, with increasingly fierce competition, firms can no longer make financial decisions in isolation when facing terrible external operational environments. In contrast, observing peers? actions in corporate policies can help reveal intentions regarding what peers are doing, which is vital for policymakers and financial managers. Studies on the existence of capital structure peer effects in the Chinese context have been conducted, but the mechanisms of peer effects are still ambiguous at present. Purpose of the article: This study aims to examine peer effects in capital structure and discover the mechanisms in the Chinese context. Understanding the mechanisms behind peer effects can help scholars and policymakers obtain more insights into the working mechanisms of peer effects. Furthermore, how the industry- and firm-specific characteristics affect peer effects and the selection of mechanisms should be analyzed. Methods: Using the fixed effects model (industry effect and year effect) and propensity score matching (PSM), as well as market leverage and heterogeneous stock shocks, we investigate peer effects, the mechanisms, and the effects of specific factors from industries and firms based on the sample of Chinese non-financial A-share listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2014 to 2021. Findings &amp; value added: Study results show that peer effects exist in the corporate capital structure in the Chinese capital markets. Unlike previous studies, this analysis captures three mechanisms: the industrial average, industrial leaders, and industrial-similar firms. The intensity of peer effects and selection of mechanisms are influenced by both industry-specific characteristics (the degree of industrial competition and financing constraints) and firm-specific characteristics (firm size and market share).

Bribery and firm survival in Vietnam: Moderating effects of market competition, credit, and institutional constraints

AbstractThis paper examines the relationship between bribery and firm survival when facing different levels of market competition, credit constraints, and other institutional limitations. Using panel data from surveys of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises in Vietnam over a 10‐year period and a semi‐parametric Cox proportional hazards model approach, we provide empirical support for the “greasing‐the‐wheels” hypothesis of firm survival. Effects are found to be more pronounced for formally registered and larger firms, explained by their greater bargaining power vis‐à‐vis public officials. Moreover, bribery as a “risk‐of‐exit” reducing strategy is found only for firms not institutionally or financially constrained and for firms operating in sectors with low levels of competition.

Cosmological information in skew spectra of biased tracers in redshift space

Extracting the non-Gaussian information encoded in the higher-order clustering statistics of the large-scale structure is key to fully realizing the potential of upcoming galaxy surveys. We investigate the information content of the redshift-space weighted skew spectra of biased tracers as efficient estimators for 3-point clustering statistics. The skew spectra are constructed by correlating the observed galaxy field with an appropriately-weighted square of it. We perform numerical Fisher forecasts using two synthetic datasets: the halo catalogs from the Quijote N-body simulations and the galaxy catalogs from the Molino suite. The latter serves to understand the effect of marginalization over a more complex matter-tracer biasing relation. Compared to the power spectrum multipoles, we show that the skew spectra substantially improve the constraints on six parameters of the νΛCDM model, {Ω m , Ω b , h, ns , σ8 , Mν }. Imposing a small-scale cutoff of kmax = 0.25 Mpc-1 h, the improvements in parameter constraints from skew spectra alone range from 23% to 62% for the Quijote halos and from 32% to 71% for the Molino galaxies. Compared to the previous analysis of the bispectrum monopole on the same data and using the same range of scales, the skew spectra of Quijote halos provide competitive constraints. At the same time, the skew spectra outperform the bispectrum monopole for all cosmological parameters for the Molino catalogs. This may result from additional anisotropic information, particularly enhanced in the Molino sample, that is captured by the skew spectra but not by the bispectrum monopole. Our stability analysis of the numerical derivatives shows comparable convergence rates for the power spectrum and the skew spectra, indicating potential underestimation of parameter uncertainties by at most 30%.

Constraining the SMEFT with a differential cross section measurement of tWZ production at the HL-LHC

A prospective measurement of the differential cross section of $tWZ$ production with respect to the transverse momentum of the $Z$ boson using a general-purpose detector at the high-luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is described. The response of a general-purpose detector at the HL-LHC is simulated and used to estimate the uncertainties and covariances of the differential cross section measurement. Constraints on the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) enabled by the measurement are estimated. A parametric model of the differential cross section in the SMEFT is constructed and is used to determine the expected posterior probability function of six SMEFT Wilson coefficients and the expected 95% Bayesian credible intervals for each coefficient and pair of coefficients. The intervals suggest that for all coefficients, the measurement will provide competitive but weaker constraints than those derived from other HL-LHC measurements involving top quarks and $Z$ bosons. However, as the measurement is simultaneously sensitive to a unique set of SMEFT coefficients, it will provide a useful input to a global SMEFT analysis that considers many operators.

Evolving market boundaries and competition policy enforcement in the pharmaceutical industry

Competition investigations start with market definition, which establishes the perimeter of the competitive analysis. In this paper, we focus on the definition of economic markets in the pharmaceutical industry, where the entry of generics in different therapeutic areas provides a sequence of quasi-natural experiments involving a significant competitive shock for the originator producer. We show how generic entry modifies price and non-price competitive constraints over time, generating market-wide effects. Paradoxically, generic entry may soften the competitive pressure for brands other than the originator. We obtain these results by econometrically estimating time-varying price elasticities. We then apply the logic of the Hypothetical Monopolist Test to gauge the strength of competitive constraints under different market structures. Our results provide strong empirical support for an approach that defines relevant markets contingent on the theory of harm. We discuss the relevance of these findings in the context of ongoing cases.