1,720,961 research outputs found
A Difference-In-Difference Approach to Estimate the Price Effect of Market Entry in High-Speed Rail
No full textThe effect of competition on prices in the passenger transport sector can be difficult to estimate because of many influencing factors such as state regulation, demand, seasonality, and reactions of indirect competitors. A case of great interest in the rail sector is Italy, where on-track competition in the high-speed segment has been in place for nearly ten years. The paper aims at answering the question whether—and how much—incumbent’s prices are affected when competition starts on a route previously in monopoly. The case is the start of operations on the Turin–Milan–Venice route, where Italo entered in May 2018. Adopting a difference-in-difference approach, we check if Trenitalia changed the price strategy on the route before and after the entry, with respect to two control groups. The addition of placebo tests allows us to understand the ranges of significance of the results and to estimate the noise level of the estimates. Our findings suggest that the start of competition led to lower prices in the short-medium period. In the specific case, the Milano–Venezia route saw Trenitalia’s prices reduced by 21–26% (±2–5%) in a time span of 84–140 days after Italo’s entry and for advanced bookings from 2 to 10 days. Last-day prices remain unchanged, while early bookings are reduced by just 9%. This price reduction does not remain stable in the longer term, when other effects add up and blur the effect of the entry. Nevertheless, we keep observing a smaller, ∼15%, but still negative prices change
Sustainable mobility policies at Universities: What after the pandemic?
No full textUniversities are increasingly paying attention to the topic of sustainability, pursuing since many years mobility management policies to reduce commuting by private transport modes in favour of public and active ones. The ongoing covid-19 pandemic heavily jeopardised many aspects of everyday life, including transport behaviour: this paper aims to understand how mobility management policies in universities can be reshaped by targeting different groups of users, considering the case study of Politecnico di Milano, one of the largest universities in Italy. Two surveys were conducted among its staff and students: before the pandemic (June 2019 – 10 000 answers) and during the pandemic (July 2020 – 7600 answers). Three logit models, two multinomial and one binomial, are built to investigate the characteristics of users with respect to actual and stated mobility habits, considering a set of variables common to both surveys. The designed models aim to identify the factors that motivate individuals to switch between different modes of transportation, in the pre-pandemic and during-pandemic situation. From these results, several conclusions to inform mobility management policies in the post-pandemic period are drawn: notably, the distance at which both actual car usage and willingness to use is higher shows a parabolic trend, suggesting policies should be targeted differently according to trip and users’ characteristics
Long-distance rail prices in a competitive market. Evidence from head-on competition in Italy
No full textRail liberalisation is far from homogeneous across Europe. Italy, thanks to a process started well before the European deadlines, is now one of the most interesting continental markets, at least limited to long-distance segment. The paper aims at understanding the pricing strategies of the two domestic Italian rail companies, with a focus on price discrimination using traditional methods and yield management. We are also investigating if price levels depend on the type of route and in particular on the presence or absence of intra-modal competition. Methodologically, the paper computes the price-per-km and the price dispersion for about thirty OD pairs in Italy for nearly two years, using observed prices. Routes cover the entire mainland of the country and represent different situations in terms of high-speed/conventional infrastructure and competition. We find that incumbent's prices are higher than the competitors. However, the incumbent is not applying higher prices on non-competing routes. This fact tells us that competition is not the only element ruling the prices, but also demand, capacity, users' willingness to pay, and obviously distance. These considerations are also useful to understand the network-strategy followed until now by the newcomer and what could happen in the future
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
