Revenue Gain Research Articles

A Novel Computing Power Allocation Algorithm for Blockchain System in Multiple Mining Pools Under Withholding Attack

To overcome the fast-changing block withholding attacks among multiple mining pools composed of miners in the blockchain system, this paper proposes a mining pool computing power allocation (MPPA) algorithm, which significantly improves the revenues of mining pools with block withholding attacks. MPPA first establishes the revenue optimization model of mining pools, which includes current adequate total computing power, the revenues of honest mining, and the revenues of block withholding attacks. Then MPPA calculates the revenue gain generated by block withholding attacks on other mining pools. To adjust the fixed computing power in each iteration, we have the mining pool computing power allocation algorithm with a fixed change of computing power (MPPA_F). To adjust the optimal recovery and attack computing power, we have the mining pool computing power allocation algorithm with an optimal change of computing power (MPPA_O). The simulation results demonstrate that MPPA_F and MPPA_O can find the optimized solutions of power computing allocation for each mining pool and outperform the state-of-arts such as WSFS, ALLC, and ALLD.

Pay as Your Service Needs

Various differentiated pricing schemes have been proposed for the Internet market. Aiming at replacing the traditional single-class pricing for better welfare, yet, researchers have shown that existing schemes can bring only marginal profit gain for the ISPs. In this article, we point out that a proper form of differentiated pricing for the Internet should not only consider congestion, but more importantly, it should provide application specific treatment to data delivery. Formally, we propose an “application-driven pricing” approach, where an ISP offers a number of service classes in terms of a guaranteed quality of service and announces a unit usage price for each class, and content providers are free to choose which class to use depending on the requirement of their applications. Unlike previous studies, we point out that the revenue gain of multi-class pricing under our scheme can be significant. This is because we capture important aspects of application heterogeneity and take the quality of service and price as control knobs. We identify key factors that impact the revenue gain and reveal fundamental understandings on when and why an application-driven multi-class pricing can significantly increase the revenue of ISPs.

Taxing Billionaires: Estate Taxes and the Geographical Location of the Ultra-Wealthy

We study the effect of state-level estate taxes on the geographical location of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and its implications for tax policy. We use a change in federal tax law to identify the tax sensitivity of the ultra-wealthy's locational choices. Before 2001, some states had an estate tax and others didn't, but the tax liability for the ultra-wealthy was independent of their domicile state due to a federal credit. In 2001, the credit was phased out and the estate tax liability for the ultra-wealthy suddenly became highly dependent on domicile state. We find the number of Forbes 400 individuals in estate tax states fell by 35% after 2001 compared to non-estate tax states. We also find that billionaire's sensitivity to the estate tax increases significantly with age. Overall, billionaires' geographical location appears to be highly sensitive to state estate taxes. We then estimate the effect of billionaire deaths on state tax revenues. We find a sharp increase in tax revenues in the three years after a Forbes billionaire death, totaling $165 million for the average billionaire. In the last part of the paper, we study the implications of our findings for state tax policy. We estimate the revenue costs and benefits for each state of having an estate tax. The benefit is the one-time tax revenue gain when a wealthy resident dies, while the cost is the foregone income tax revenues over the remaining lifetime of those who relocate. Surprisingly, despite the high estimated tax mobility, we find that the benefit exceeds the cost for the vast majority of states.

The Future of the Progressive Personal Income Tax: How High Can It Go?

The author draws on economic theory and evidence to build the case for considering boundaries for the high-income tax rate. Because of behavioural responses to higher rates, an upper boundary arises; above it, the revenue loss from behavioural responses outweighs the revenue gain from the higher rate. However, this upper boundary can be pushed upward through stronger enforcement and may vary with non-tax considerations, such as shifts in the demand for and supply of highly skilled workers. This framework suggests that if higher rates are to raise revenue in Canada, serious measures must be taken to increase the upper boundary.

Analisis Keuntungan Dan Analisis Keuntungan Dan Strategi Pengembangan Usaha Ayam Buras Unggul Varietas Jowo Super (JOPER) Di Kabupaten Jember

This study aims to determine the profitability of domestic chicken business in Jember Regency, to find out the factors that influence the profitability of chicken farming in Jember Regency, determine the development strategy domestic chicken in Jember Regency. This researche used survey method. The research was conducted in 3 (three) Subdistricts namely Bangsalsari, Umbulsari, and Gumukmas Subdistricts, in Jember Regency. The data used in this researche include primary data and secondary data. The data is done qualitatively and quantitatively. The analysis used is profit analysis, multiple regression analysis and SWOT analysis. This researche concludes that (1) Wild Chicken Jowo Super (Joper) Business in Jember Regency is profitable with an average revenue gain of Rp. 9,749,038 per production process, and the total production costs are Rp. 9,082,346 per production process. The average business profit rate of Buras Joper Chicken in Kabupaten Jember is IDR 666,693 / production process / 404 heads. (2) Business Benefits of Burst Joper Chicken are influenced by 5 independent variables namely price (X1), production (X2), cost of production facilities (X3), labor costs (X4), and other costs (X5) with a positive relationship and significant at the real level of five percent. This is indicated by the results of the calculated F test greater than F table at the real level of 99%. Simultaneously the factors have a significant effect on profits including price, production, production facilities, labor costs and other costs. But partially significant factors include the price of output and production, while the ones that are not significant include the costs of means of production, labor costs, and other costs. (3) Based on the results of the SWOT Analysis, the Buras Chicken Business in Jember Regency is in position / quadrant I (Growth / Aggressive / progressive). This position signifies a strong and potential business, meaning that the business is carried out in prime condition. So that it is truly possible to continue to expand, increase growth and achieve maximum progress.

Quantifying the revenue gain of operating a cascade hydropower plant system as a pumped-storage hydropower system

Pumped-storage hydropower is one of the most viable large-scale energy storage options. When managed optimally, pumped-storage hydropower may also bring monetary benefits due to price variations in the electricity market. Two main concerns are the lack of suitable sites and potential environmental impacts, which can be alleviated by using already existing, closely situated reservoirs. The goal of this study is to develop operating strategies for cascade pumped-storage hydropower systems composed of already existing hydropower plants. Main challenges are the treatment of the stochastic behavior of inflows and hourly electricity price variations. In this study, monthly historical inflows are used as inputs to generate operating rule curves. Based on past electricity prices, a scenario-based approach is developed to reflect the uncertainty in electricity price variations. Combining the two approaches, nonlinear mathematical models are constructed to obtain average annual revenues for cascade hydropower plants and the pumped-storage hydropower systems. The models are solved for the cascade multi-reservoir system in Coruh Basin of Turkey for five different scenarios based on electricity prices for years 2013–2017. The revenue gain ranged between 2.9% and 10.4%. It is concluded that operation of the cascade hydropower plant system in the pumped-storage mode brings additional revenue.

Evaluating the effects of public transport fare policy change together with built and non-built environment features on ridership: The case in South East Queensland, Australia

The demand for public transport and commuter behaviour are evidently affected by a series of D-factors relating to the built environment, including density, diversity, design, destination and/or demography. The effect of fare policies, however, in conjunction with built and non-built environment features has not been assessed. Given the 2017 fare policy change introduced in South East Queensland, Australia, this study examines how the policy reform (changes in fares, its structure and incentives) affects public transport ridership. Drawing on two like-for-like periods of transport smart card data before and after the policy reform, we compare the number of card users, journeys, and travel costs under the two fare systems. Through a set of statistical analysis and spatial lag regression, we examine the impact of the fare policy change on ridership, controlled by variations of built and non-built environment features, including population density, land use diversity, demographic features of commuters, distance to the central business district (CBD) and destination accessibility. Our findings show that public transit ridership can be boosted by reducing the fare cost per journey which can then result in overall revenue gain. However, such attraction by fare reduction varies substantially by user groups. Furthermore, the influences of population density, destination accessibility, distance to CBD and demographic features of commuters on ridership are significant (p < 0.01); while the influences of land use diversity and fare change tend to be insignificant compared to the other D-factors. We argue that in order to increase public transport usage policy makers need to consider fare policy reform in conjunction with built environment and demographic factors in order to increase service availability and ensure that services are accessible and affordable to the general public. This study also offers a generic framework that employs big data analytics to assess public policy intervention in the Australian context.

Colorado: Budgetary Reform, Revenue Gains, and a Prosperous Economy

Author(s): Berry, Michael J. | Abstract: During the final year of Governor John Hickenlooper's second term as governor the General Assembly passed a state budget including $11.42 billion in General Fund spending that increased funding for nearly every state department. Governor Hickenlooper prioritized increased spending for education and the criminal justice system as Colorado residents also considered tax increases for education and transportation. Colorado’s economic trajectory remains generally positive, and recent budgetary reform has allowed policymakers to make greater investments in key issue areas.

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Taxing Billionaires: Estate Taxes and the Geographical Location of the Ultra-Wealthy

We study the effect of state-level estate taxes on the geographical location of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and its implications for tax policy. We use a change in federal tax law to identify the tax sensitivity of the ultra-wealthy?s locational choices. Before 2001, some states had an estate tax and others didn?t, but the tax liability for the ultra-wealthy was independent of their domicile state due to a federal credit. In 2001, the credit was phased out and the estate tax liability for the ultra-wealthy suddenly became highly dependent on domicile state. We find the number of Forbes 400 individuals in estate tax states fell by 35% after 2001 compared to non-estate tax states. We also find that billionaires? sensitivity to the estate tax increases significantly with age. Overall, billionaires? geographical location appears to be highly sensitive to state estate taxes. We then estimate the effect of billionaire deaths on state tax revenues. We find a sharp increase in tax revenues in the three years after a Forbes billionaire death, totaling $165 million for the average billionaire. In the last part of the paper, we study the implications of our findings for state tax policy. We estimate the revenue costs and benefits for each state of having an estate tax. The benefit is the one-time tax revenue gain when a wealthy resident dies, while the cost is the foregone income tax revenues over the remaining lifetime of those who relocate. Surprisingly, despite the high estimated tax mobility, we find that the benefit exceeds the cost for the vast majority of states.

A Stackelberg Game Approach Toward Socially-Aware Incentive Mechanisms for Mobile Crowdsensing

Mobile crowdsensing has shown great potential in addressing large-scale data sensing problems by allocating sensing tasks to pervasive mobile users. The mobile users will participate in a crowdsensing platform if they can receive a satisfactory reward. In this paper, to effectively and efficiently recruit a sufficient number of mobile users, i.e., participants, we investigate an optimal incentive mechanism of a crowdsensing service provider. We apply a two-stage Stackelberg game to analyze the participation level of the mobile users and the optimal incentive mechanism of the crowdsensing service provider using backward induction. In order to motivate the participants, the incentive mechanism is designed by taking into account the social network effects from the underlying mobile social domain. We derive the analytical expressions for the discriminatory incentive as well as the uniform incentive mechanisms. To fit into practical scenarios, we further formulate a Bayesian Stackelberg game with incomplete information to analyze the interaction between the crowdsensing service provider and mobile users, where the social structure information, i.e., the social network effects, is uncertain. The existence and uniqueness of the Bayesian Stackelberg equilibrium is analytically validated by identifying the best response strategies of the mobile users. The numerical results corroborate the fact that the network effects significantly stimulate a higher mobile participation level and greater revenue for the crowdsensing service provider. In addition, the social structure information helps the crowdsensing service provider achieve greater revenue gain.

The Effects of Firms' Lobbying on Resource Misallocation

We study the causal effect of firms’ lobbying activities on the misallocation of resources through the distortion of firm size. To address the endogeneity between firms’ lobbying expenditure and their size, we propose a new instrument. Specifically, we measure firms’ political connections based on the geographic proximity between their headquarter locations and politicians’ districts in the U.S., and trace the value of these networks over time by exploiting politicians’ assignment to congressional committees. We find that a 10 percent increase in lobbying expenditure leads to a 3 percent gain in revenue. To investigate the macroeconomic consequences of these effects, we develop a heterogeneous firm-level model with endogenous lobbying. Using a novel dataset that we construct, we document new stylized facts about lobbying behavior and use them, including the one from the instrument, to estimate the model. Our counterfactual analysis shows that the return to firms’ lobbying activities amounts to a 22 percent decrease in aggregate productivity in the U.S.

Greedy-Like Algorithms for Dynamic Assortment Planning Under Multinomial Logit Preferences

We study the joint assortment planning and inventory management problem, where stock-out events elicit dynamic substitution effects, described by the multinomial logit (MNL) choice model. Special cases of this setting have been extensively studied in recent literature, notably the static assortment planning problem. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, the general formulation is not known to admit efficient algorithms with analytical performance guarantees before this work, and most of its computational aspects are still wide open.In this paper, we devise what is, to our knowledge, the first provably good approximation algorithm for dynamic assortment planning under the MNL model. We derive a constant-factor guarantee for a broad class of demand distributions that satisfy the increasing failure rate property. Our algorithm relies on a combination of greedy procedures, where stocking decisions are restricted to specific classes of products and the objective function takes modified forms. We demonstrate that our approach substantially outperforms state-of-the-art heuristic methods in terms of performance and speed, leading to an average revenue gain of 4% to 12% in computational experiments. In the course of establishing our main result, we develop new algorithmic ideas that may be of independent interest. These include weaker notions of submodularity and monotonicity, shown sufficient to obtain constant-factor worst-case guarantees, despite using noisy estimates of the objective function.

Horizontal Subcontracting From Competitors: When and What?

We investigate horizontal subcontracting between two firms that compete in selling to uncertain markets. Each firm manages resources to make a key component indispensable for final assembly by both firms. A horizontal subcontract stipulates that one of them prepares key component or even produces final product for the other. The subcontract can be signed before or after resource preparation, which we refer to as forward and spot subcontracting, respectively. With the presence of demand uncertainty, the subcontract is signed before (after, resp.) demand realization in forward (spot, resp.) subcontracting, while resources are always prepared in advance. Forward subcontracting enables the firms to achieve the maximum overall cost saving by concentrating all production activities in the more cost‐efficient firm. Spot subcontracting draws the firms to unilateral undertaking to prepare resources and cooperative resource allocation. This gives rise to an efficiency effect by balancing production and market selling between the firms, and a pooling effect that enables them to profit from synergies between markets. The subcontracting subject is crucial to the contribution of total cost saving relative to total revenue gain to the efficiency effect, but is inconsequential on the scale of the pooling effect. We conduct a comparative investigation into forward and spot subcontracting, with the subject playing a differentiating role, and explore the impacts of the means and variances of demand intercepts and the firms’ costs on system performance under various horizontal subcontracting modes differentiated by timing and subject.

On the feasibility of on-farm biogas-to-electricity conversion: To what extent is solid oxide fuel cells durability a threat to break even the initial investment?

Despite their promising features, adverse economic feasibility still hamper SOFCs wide implementation and this effect is emphasized as long as the system size is reduced. According to previous investigations, the biogas pre-treatment section represents a burden for the economic viability. Aiming at reducing the extent of installation costs in SOFC-based configurations, biogas partial upgrading through CO2 gas-separation membranes is put forth as innovative solution against reforming. This innovative system concept is expected to make SOFCs more cost-effective, yet resulting feeding gas might cause a quicker SOFC performance decay. Besides solving this trade-off, the economic viability results strongly sensitive to subsidiary electricity prices in force according to the regulatory framework.This paper presents a comparative economic assessment regarding biogas-to-electricity conversion via Solid Oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and mature technologies as internal combustion engines (ICEs). Results highlighted that, the innovative SOFC system is far more viable than reforming-based one, exhibiting a reasonable payback time, with an adequate subsidized electricity sale price (4 and 5 years for small/medium and large-size plants respectively when subsidy is 0.28 €/kWh), up to 1%1000h degradation rate. On the other hand, whilst considering a SOFC degradation rate of 0.03%1000h, the reforming-based system appears feasible only on large-size plants, yet recovering the initial capital expenditure in 9 years. Moreover, once the break-even point is reached, the gain in the net revenue produced by the innovative system is amplified in the event of small-size installation. This allows the possibility to undertake the risk of higher degradation rates (up to 2%1000h) without jeopardizing the economic profitability. Therefore, in the present regulatory framework and under current capital costs projections, the innovative SOFC system appears as much profitable as ICE mature technology. Such effort in the design of the fuel pre-treatment unit can lever SOFC broad spreading into the market of small biogas producers.

Financial Regulation and Government Revenue: The Effects of a Policy Change in Ethiopia

Financial regulation affects government revenue whenever it imposes both the mandatory quantity and price of government bonds. This paper studies a banking regulation adopted by the National Bank of Ethiopia in April 2011, which forces all private banks to purchase a fixed negative-yield government bond in proportion to private sector lending. Having access to monthly bank balance sheets, a survey of branch costs and public finances documentation, the effect of the policy on government revenue can be tracked. This is compared to three plausible revenue-generating alternatives: raising funds at competitive rates on international markets; distorting the private lending of the state-owned bank; and raising new deposits through additional branches of the state-owned bank. Three main results emerge: the government revenue gain is moderate (1.5-2.6 percent of the tax revenue); banks comply with the policy and amass more safe assets; banks' profit growth slows without turning negative (from 10 percent to 2 percent).

Market Power and the Laffer Curve

We study commodity taxation and characterize the Laffer curve, a trade-off between tax rates and revenue, in noncompetitive markets. Pricing in these markets leads to incomplete tax pass-through and agents re-optimize their purchase and pricing decisions in response to any tax change. We use detailed data from Pennsylvania, a state that monopolizes retail sales of alcoholic beverages, to estimate a model of demand for horizontally differentiated products that ties consumers' demographic characteristics to heterogeneous preferences for spirits. We find that under the state's current tax policy, spirits are overpriced. Distillers respond to decreases in the tax rate by increasing wholesale prices, which limits the state's revenue gain to only 13% of the incremental tax revenue predicted under the common assumption of perfect competition. The strategic response of noncompetitive firms to changes in taxation therefore flattens the Laffer curve significantly.

Can Promotions Mitigate Quality Variability? Pricing for Customers Who Act Risk-Averse

We formalize an understudied mechanism through which quality variability hurts firm revenues, analyze when and why this mechanism is important, and generate new insight into how dynamic personalized pricing strategies can mitigate the negative effects of quality variability. To do so, we model a firm that sells a service repeatedly with variable but stationary quality. Customers update their quality beliefs based on their experiences (exponential smoothing), and their purchase probability in each period increases with their respective beliefs about mean quality (logit choice). For any price, we show that quality variability reduces the firm's revenue and leads to a downward bias in customer beliefs about quality. These effects arise even when customers are risk neutral and update their beliefs symmetrically after good and bad experiences. We then investigate whether the firm can improve revenues through dynamic personalized pricing. We find that a fixed perceived surplus pricing policy--charging a lower price when a customer believes the quality is lower to induce a constant purchase probability--is not only optimal but can also match the optimal revenue when quality is not variable. The revenue gain from implementing this pricing policy (as compared with pricing) is greatest when quality variability is large, customers react strongly to recent experiences, and/or mean service quality is high. Our numerical results further show that firms can achieve significant revenue gains through dynamic pricing even in information-poor or low-price-flexibility environments. Finally, we extend our model to consider social learning as well as competition between two firms.

Economic Impact Analysis of Autonomous Containerised Freight

Advanced robotics is a disruptive technology that has the potential to create massive economic impact. One application of advanced robotics is the automation of cargo ports, with the intention of increasing profitability for cargo terminals by reducing costs and increasing container handling productivity.Autonomous straddle carrier technology can not only significantly improve freight capacity but can also enhance the safety of operations, reducing the potential for manual errors by isolating the workforce from heavy machinery. Our findings suggest a net present value (NPV) of autonomous straddle carrier technology in direct impact worth for NSW of around $9.42 to $10 billion between the years 2014 and 2030.In this report we present only the final application of a long term process of university R&D effort, i.e. cost benefit analysis was not undertaken in this report as innovation studies show that any innovation outcome cannot capture the full benefit to the economy, therefore the costs are normally high and in most cases create no tangible benefit but creates intangibles like knowledge is not easy to be quantified

Challenges to developing cultivars in the public sector

Photo courtesy of Dean Calma/IAEA New plant cultivars are developed in both the private and public sector. Much of the work done in the private sector is focused corn, soy, and other high-value crops. Researchers in the public sector are more likely to deal with minor crops, perennials, or specialty crops within a specific geographical region and are typically based at land grant universities or with the USDA. Although public breeding programs have a high return on investment, there has been an overall decline in funding for them in recent decades. As funding has decreased, there has been an increase in intellectual property protections for cultivars developed at public universities. Intellectual property protection may provide a revenue stream for the university but can also limit the use of germplasm in further research and development. William Tracy, a plant breeder at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and colleagues are interested in how increased intellectual property protections are impacting plant breeding in the public sector. Tracy is a co-author on a recent article in Crop Science (http://bit.ly/2wVzP5b) summarizing results of a survey that asked plant breeders how intellectual property and material transfer agreements (MTA) affect their work. Survey questions were developed with input from an intellectual property symposium. Focusing on the responses of plant breeders actively releasing finished cultivars, the article provides information about restrictions put on shared germplasm and the current status of plant breeding programs from across the U.S. The authors report that more than 50% of respondents indicated the most common source of new genetic material used in their own breeding programs is germplasm from other programs. In addition, almost all respondents reported sharing germplasm with others. However, approximately 60% of respondents indicated sharing germplasm under a material transfer agreement, and 70% of respondents indicated most or all of their cultivars had some form of intellectual property protection. Given the prevalence of intellectual property protection, it is not surprising that greater than 55% of respondents indicated intellectual property restrictions on germplasm from public breeding programs have a negative impact on their work. This suggests that the short-term gain in revenue from intellectual property protections could result in a long-term barrier to the development of new cultivars in the public sector. One way to alleviate some of the MTA restrictions, according to Tracy, would be if researchers could develop a set of agreed-upon best practices among public plant breeders. Currently, individual researchers and their universities set up MTAs, leading to wide variation in MTA restrictions from one institution to the next. With widely accepted guidelines, universities could balance the need for intellectual property protection, and researchers could gain greater access to germplasm sources to advance plant breeding programs. The survey also revealed how demographics could lead to a setback in public cultivar development and release in near future. More than 55% of respondents had been in the field for 21 or more years. As these individuals retire, cultivar release is likely to decline until early career breeders establish programs. Making the situation worse is the fact that almost a quarter of respondents said that there was no plan for their position to be maintained, and another third were unsure if their position would be continued. This would affect not only cultivar development, but also limit the potential for students to gain hands-on training in plant breeding, a skill that will still be in demand. One area of focus in public breeding could be to develop crops resilient to a more variable climate, Tracy says, such as, “profitable forage crops or perennial crops because perennial crops can better resist severe weather events and come back and grow quickly, perhaps getting the farmer some profit.” Tracy and his co-authors hope to bring the issues raised in this article to the attention of plant breeders and university administrators, who can help find a way to balance intellectual property with cultivar development and look for new opportunities for public-sector breeding programs in the future. Dig Deeper Read the full study in Crop Science: http://bit.ly/2wVzP5b.