The size of government consumption relative to national output is examined to see if it is optimal in five Gulf countries of the Middle East. We follow the methodology suggested in Barro (1990) and Karras (1996, 1997) and examine the marginal productivity of government consumption. The "Barro rule" states that government services are optimally provided when the marginal product of government co...

We study when and how pure non-horizontal mergers, whether cross-product or vertical, can deter new entry. Organizational mergers implicitly commit firms to more aggressive price competition. Because heightened competition deters entry, mergers can occur in equilibrium even when, absent entry considerations, they do not. We show that, in order to prevent a flood of entrants, mergers arise even ...

We study marginal deformations of superconformal Chern-Simons matter theories that are based on 3-algebras. For this, we introduce the notion of an associated 3-product, which captures very general gauge invariant deformations of the superpotentials of the BLG and ABJM models. We also consider conformal multi-trace deformations preserving N = 2 supersymmetry. We then use N = 2 supergraph techni...

We study the incentives of a product innovator to license its product “partially” to a potential entrant. In a duopolistic setting we consider product design of a modular nature, which enables the incumbent to license some modules of its innovation. Competition is characterized by the size of the shared component of the product which determines the degree of product differentiation. Therefore, ...

It is quite common to associate the equilibrium rate of interest with the marginal product of capital. However, not all economists have endorsed this practice, and indeed many have challenged the explanation of interest according to marginal principles. In this paper I offer a resolution to this dispute by first agreeing with the critics of mainstream models, but then demonstrating that the "ju...

background and aim: an important criterion for success assessment of implant-supported prostheses is marginal fit. vertical and horizontal discrepancy can result in loosening of the prosthetic screw, crestal bone resorption, peri-implantitis and loss of osseointegration. despite careful attention to waxing, investing, and casting, marginal discrepancies are inevitable. the aim of this study was...

objective: this experimental in vitro study compared marginal adaptation of indirect composite, glass-ceramic inlays and direct composite. materials and methods: seventy-five recently extracted human molars were randomly divided into three groups (n=25) and mesio-occluso-distal cavities with the same dimensions were prepared in the teeth. indirect composite and glass-ceramic inlays were fabrica...

We study a multiperson bargaining problem with general risk preferences through the use of Shaked’s game of cycling offers with exogenous breakdown. If preferences are “smooth,” then as the risk of breakdown vanishes, the limiting outcome is one in which bargainers are equally marginally bold; where a bargainer’s marginal boldness measures his willingness to risk disagreement in return for a ma...

Fixed-path methods (FPMs) were introduced to manage situations where several individuals jointly operate a single technology (see [4]). In the production context, they consist in allocating marginal increments of output according to a proportions vector which changes along an arbitrary path. While very appealing from an incentives viewpoint under diminishing marginal returns, the asymmetry of t...

We construct analytic solutions of open bosonic string field theory for any exactly marginal deformation in any boundary conformal field theory when properly renormalized operator products of the marginal operator are given. We explicitly provide such renormalized operator products for a class of marginal deformations which include the deformations of flat D-branes in flat backgrounds by consta...