Feedback Stackelberg equilibrium strategies when the private label competes with the national brand

We consider a noncooperative differential game where a retailer sells her own private label in addition to the manufacturer’s brand. We assume that each brand’s goodwill evolves according to a modified Nerlove-Arrow dynamics, in such a way that the advertising effort of one brand hurts the competitor’s goodwill stock. We characterize Feedback-Stackelberg pricing and advertising strategies and employ simulations to analyze their sensitivity to the main model parameters. We thank an anonymous Reviewer for very helpful comments. Research supported by NSERC, Canada, and FQRSC, Quebec. Research completed when the second author was a visiting professor at GERAD, HEC Montréal. The second author’s research was partially supported by MEC and JCYL under projects SEJ2005-03858/ECON and VA045A06, co-financed by FEDER funds.     

Errata-corrige

Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo Series 1 -     

Asymptotic Behavior of a Structure Made by a Plate and a Straight Rod

This paper is devoted to describing the asymptotic behavior of a structure made by a thin plate and a thin perpendicular rod in the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The authors scale the applied forces in such a way that the level of the total elastic energy leads to the Von-K′arm′an’s equations (or the linear model for smaller forces) in the plate and to a one-dimensional rod-model at the limit. The junction conditions include in particular the continuity of the bending in the plate and the stretching in the rod at the junction.     

Excluded-volume effect for various chain models. I. Application to optical anisotropy and end-to-end distance of linear polymers

A study of the effect of excluded volume on the mean-square optical anisotropy 〈γ²〉 and the mean-square end-to-end distance 〈R²〉 has been carried out for polymer chains of up to 2000 bonds. The calculations have been made for models assuming (a) equiprobability of internal rotations and (b) interdependence of short-range intramolecular interactions. All the results indicate that 〈γ²〉 is practically insensitive to the excluded-volume effect. Concomitantly the behavior of 〈R²〉 has been analyzed.     

Enzymatically prepared n-alkyl esters of glucuronic acid: the effect of hydrophobic chain length on surface properties

N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) homopolymers having carboxylic acid-end groups were synthesized by using mercaptoacetic acid (MAA) as the chain transfer agent. Polymerization was achieved in ethanol using azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as the initiator. Average molecular weight of the homopolymer estimated by titration was 1958. This carboxylic acid-ended poly(NIPA) was then copolymerized with polyethylenimine (PEI, M(W)-2000) using a water soluble carbodiimide (EDAC). With respect to carboxyl-ended poly(NIPA), the block copolymers exhibited a pH dependent-temperature sensitivity and higher LCST values in acidic pH. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of both the homopolymer and the copolymer were obtained at 25 and 45 degrees C with tip-sample bias voltages of up to 800 mV and tunneling currents approximately 1 nA. These images showed that STM can be used to visualize both the formation of copolymer chains and their structure, and also their stimuli-responsive behavior.