Nicolas Boccard

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Girona

Ideally, a representative democracy awards a genuine vote to each adult. We study this issue in competitive democracies with an election model combining district apportionment and proportional representation. Four classic seat allocation rules, including d’Hondt, are reframed as Dutch auctions, allowing important properties to be easily derived. Th...

Low carbon power technologies are needed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Will major candidates nuclear, wind and solar power be able to scale-up multiple times? Our contribution to this inquiry focuses on the size of a typical generation plant to compare candidates across the criteria of physical scalability, building experience and financia...

We study the prevalence of forest fires in Spain in the long run by computing the probability that a forest tree, as opposed to shrub or bush, will be lost to fire over the course of the year. Climate change is first shown to increase the likelihood of this event. Next, we document how risk grew dramatically from 1961 up to the democratic era (c. 1...

We study the prevalence of forest fires in Spain in the long run by computing the probability that a forest tree, as opposed to shrub or bush, will be lost to fire over the course of the year. Climate change is first shown to increase the likelihood of this event. Next, we document how risk grew dramatically from 1961 up to the democratic era (c. 1...

Many jurisdictions use net metering to record power exchanges between residential solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and the grid, thus valuing solar power at the electricity retail rate. However, if over the billing period, production exceeds consumption, the surplus remains freely available for consumption. In Wallonia (Belgium), the combination of n...

We follow the United Nations Sendai (2015) [1] framework for the reduction of disaster risk to go beyond traditional impactmeasures and compute the Sendai targets for individual risk and property risk. We show that individual risk is “very likely” falling between 1970 and 2019 while property risk is “likely” falling between 1980 and 2019; additiona...

La Wallonie a mis en place en 2003 un mécanisme de certificats verts échangeables pour promouvoir le développement des énergies issues de sources renouvelables. Le marché des CV s’est trouvé dès 2007 en déséquilibre avec une offre excédentaire de certificats du fait notamment du soutien différencié et généreux à la filière solaire photovoltaïque. C...

Using an exhaustive administrative database, we assess the impact of extreme weather events over French cities between 1982 and 2017. We identify numerous non-catastrophic disasters, thereby improving coverage wrt. the existing literature. Counting residents of cities stricken by a disaster, we find that in the long run, there were 22 residents aff...

We tackle the incidence of accidents within the energy supply chain and firstly extend the analysis from severe accidents to smaller ones. We are then able to go beyond fossil fuels technologies and estimate the hazard rate (ratio of casualties to energy) of wind power, the electricity network and the nuclear sector (for latent victims). Technologi...

We consider a duopoly stage game where an incumbent sells a high-quality product while enjoying an ample production capacity. We study the quality–capacity best response of an entrant, before price competition takes place. We partially characterize equilibrium prices and payoffs in the corresponding Bertrand–Edgeworth pricing games and show that th...

We offer a new development on the management of extreme climatic events in France that goes beyond unfrequent catastrophes. We match a rich database of natural disaster lo- cal records over three decades to population censuses in order to characterize the evolving impact of disasters in this country. Our analysis reveals that in the long run, there...

published in ENERGY as http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.02.127

In 2003, the Walloon region implemented a tradable green certificate mechanism to support the production of "green" electricity. In this paper, we estimate that the total cost of the mechanism amounted to 1.871 billion for the period 2003-2012, corresponding to a support of 107/MWh produced. There were important differences between production techn...

We update Burgherr and Hirschberg (2014)’s comparative risk assessment of severe accidents in the energy sector between 1970 and 2008 by including wind power within an extended framework of both severe and non-severe accidents. Within the OECD, the wind power hazard rate (fatal accidents to output) was initially worse than for fossil fuels, but has...

Using an exhaustive administrative database, we assess the impact of extreme weather events over French cities during the last three decades. We identify numerous non catastrophic disasters, thereby improving coverage in the existing literature. Counting residents of cities stricken by a disaster, we find that in the long run, there were 23 residen...

Gathering databases of computer characteristics, we show that a regime change occurs between 1981 and 1985 with the advent of personal computing. Since then, the affordability of desktop computing has doubled every 13 months while our newly devised index of portable computing services has doubled every 17 months. Storage devices also display a simi...

The Fukushima disaster has lead the French government to release novel cost information relative to its nuclear electricity program allowing us to compute a levelized cost. We identify a modest escalation of capital cost and a larger than expected operational cost. Under the best scenario, the cost of French nuclear power over the last four decades...

Being driven by nature, the electrical output of wind power is intermittent rather than controllable. This feature impacts the security of supply on two dimensions related to the short and long terms: reliability and adequacy. The technical challenge presented by reliability has been met with ease by system operators at 5€MWh⁻¹. Preliminary work pu...

Industrial Organization, a Contract Based approach (aka IOCB) offers an extensive and an up-to-date panorama of Industrial Organization. It is aimed at advanced undergraduates, graduates, academics and practitioners with an interest in the field. The analysis of market interactions, business strategies and public policy is performed using the stand...

We investigate the concomitance of intermittent wind powered generation (WPG) with load to assess its system value as the cost of replacing its output, hour by hour, using more intensively thermal technologies. The difference with its actual cost defines a social cost of wind power which is further divided into a technological and an adequacy compo...

Many economists are aware that the FOCs for efficiency and monopolization in a partial equilibrium framework are the extremes of the Ramsey (1927)-Boiteux (1956) FOC when the Lagrange multiplier for the budget varies. The object of this note is to formalize the duality between the welfarist and monopolist constrained maximization programs. We prove...

San Martín and Saracho (2010) show that an incumbent, in a duopoly, prefers licensing an innovation through ad-valorem rather than per-unit royalties. In this note, we consider an outsider and oligopoly. We show that an outsider innovator prefers ad-valorem royalties. For an oligopoly that is not a duopoly, the incumbent prefers ad-valorem royaltie...

Economic models of rivalry such as Rent-Seeking (RS) and Production & Conflict (PC) use a contest success function (CSF). We first offer a straightforward axiomati- zation of the CSF most employed in the literature. Next, we show that the use of a black-box to turn investments into influence, forces all rivalries so modeled into a single narrow cla...

We show in a simple duopoly model of vertical differentiation that when a welfare maximizing regulator wishes to ensure entry while avoiding strategic quality underprovision, regulating the incumbent's capacity is preferable to imposing a “Minimum Quality Standard†on products. In order to establish this result, we make an original contribution...

Both quality differentiation and capacity commitment have been shown to relax price competition. However, their joint influence on the outcome of price competition has not yet been assessed. In this article, we consider a three-stage game in which firms choose quality, then commit to capacity and, finally, compete in price. When the cost of quality...

For two decades now, the capacity factor of wind power measuring the average energy delivered has been assumed in the 30-35% range of the name plate capacity. Yet, the mean realized value for Europe over the last five years is below 21%; accordingly private cost is two-third higher and the reduction of carbon emissions is 40% less than previously e...

The welfare impact of a merger involves the market power offense and the efficiency defense. Salant et al. (1983) show that mergers among symmetric firms are unprofitable except for monopolization. We characterize the limit to this merger paradox in a simple linear Cournot oligopoly with asymmetric costs. Farrell and Shapiro (1990) provide sufficient c...

Shaked and Sutton (1982) and Gelman and Salop (1983) are best remem-bered for their neat conclusions: a limited quality or limited capacity is an effective tool to relax competition and facilitate entry in a market. We aim at comparing the respective merits of these two strategic commitments. We claim that capacity limitation is more effective than...

We consider a stage-game where the entrant may simultaneously commit to its product's quality and the level of its production capacity before price competition takes place. We show that capacity limitation is more effective than quality reduction as a way to induce entry accomodation: the entrant tends to rely exclusively on capacity limitation in...

Both quality differentiation and capacity commitment have been shown to relax price competition. However, their joint influence on the outcome of price competition has not yet been assessed. In this article, we consider a three-stage game in which firms choose quality, then commit to capacity and, finally, compete in price. When the cost of quality...

For two decades now, the capacity factor of wind power measuring the average energy delivered has been assumed in the 30-35% range of the name plate capacity. Yet, the mean realized value for Europe over the last five years is below 21%; accordingly private cost is two-third higher and the reduction of carbon emissions is 40% less than previously e...

We show in a simple model of entry with sunk cost, that a regulator prefers limiting the output, or capacity, of the incumbent firm rather than imposing a "Minimum Quality Standard" in order to help the entrant to provide high quality. As a by-product, our analysis makes a contribution to the study of Bertrand-Edgeworth competition in a market with...

We investigate the concomitance of intermittent wind powered generation (WPG) with load to assess its system value as the cost of replacing its output, hour by hour, using more intensively thermal technologies. The difference with its actual cost defines a social cost of wind power which is further divided into a technological and an adequacy compo...

A regulator imposing sales restrictions or capacity limitation on firms competing in oligopolistic markets may enhance quality provision by these firms. The instrument amounts to protecting entrants or low-quality firms; this in turn makes it profitable to sink money into quality upgrades. Moreover, for most restrictions levels, the impact on quali...

In this note, we consider a Bertrand-Edgeworth duopoly model in which products are differentiated â€Ã la Hotellingâ€. We assumine that only one of the two firms faces a capacity constraint. For this particular case, we characterize the equilibrium payoff of the unconstrained firm for the complete domain of capacity levels.

We study duopoly competition between a domestic and a foreign firm who first choose their quality and then compete in prices in the domestic market. As is well known, the free-trade equilibrium exhibits quality differentiation and indeterminacy of the quality leader. We show that an import quota can enforce, as the unique subgame-perfect equilibriu...

We show in a simple model of entry with sunk cost, that a regulator is best advised to limit the output or capacity of the incumbent firm rather than impose a general Minimum Quality Standard in order to maximize industry welfare. The quota amounts to protect the entrant (or low quality firm) from price competi-tion. As a consequence it becomes mor...

We received independent comments from Dan Kovenock and Luis Ubeda regarding proofs of Lemma 1 and Theorem 1 in Boccard and Wauthy [Econ. Lett. 68 (2002) 279] (hereafter BW). Claim 4 is indeed poorly stated and proved while in the proof of Theorem 1 payoffs for the price subgame are incorrectly derived. We apologize for these shortcomings. Fortunate...

This paper considers social protection, in the form of a minimum wage, in a global market. We show that trade, even without factor mobility, puts downward pressure on the level of the minimum wage determined by majority voting. This is due to the industrial specialization that results from the imposition of different minimum wages. We show that coo...

We characterize the Nash equilibrium in the Hotelling model in the presence of an import quota. The optimal quota is identified and shown to be invariant to the mode of competition. We also prove that in the presence of a quota maximal differentiation is not achieved at equilibrium.

We report on a two-stage experiment in which i) we first elicit the social network within a section of undergraduate students and ii) we then measure their altruistic attitudes by means of a standard Dictator game. We observe that more socially integrated subjects are also more altruistic, as betweenness centrality and reciprocal degree are positiv...

The literature on contracts has shown that renegotiation in agency relationships generates efficiency losses when the principal leads the renegotiation. We show that contractual incompleteness may reduce such efficiency loss. This provides an explanation to the widespread use of simple contracts. We further point at the limited liability of the age...

We provide a simple framework for analyzing how competition affects the choice of audit structures in an oligopolistic insurance industry. When the degree of competition increases, fraud increases but the response of the industry in terms of investment in audit quality follows a U-shaped pattern. Following increases in competition, the investment i...

We study the efficiency of the equilibrium price in a centralized, order-driven market where asymmetrically informed traders are active for several periods and can observe each other current and past orders, as in electronic systems of trading. We show that the more precise the information the higher the incentive to reveal it in the first trading...

I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.

The aim of this paper is to bring together spatial and racial discrimination in an urban framework. While racial discrimination is against black workers, spatial discrimination (or redlining) is against residents living in the city-center. When the relative access cost for black workers to employment centers is sufficiently large, a city is segrega...

Quotas act as facilitating practices under price competition. Because they relax price competition, they may affect firms' quality choice in very specific ways. We analyze this issue by considering the following stage game: a domestic government chooses an import quota, then a domestic and a foreign firm choose the quality of their product before e...

The model of Kreps and Scheinkman where firms choose capacities and then compete in price is extended to oligopoly. Further, capacity is an imperfect commitment device: firms can produce beyond capacities at an additional unit cost theta. When theta is larger than the Cournot price, the Cournot outcome obtains in the unique subgame perfect equilibr...

A B ST R ACT This paper deals with situations where firms commit to capacities and compete in prices in the market for a differentiated product. First, we show that in capacity-constrained pricing games with product differentiation, there is a finite number of mixed strategies equilibria with finite support. Next, within the canonical model of Hote...

We consider the impact of an import quota under price competition in the Hotelling model of horizontal product differentiation. Two issues are contemplated. First, we show that the main qualitative implication of the quota in a pricing game is to generate equilibrium outcomes quite similar to those prevailing under Cournot competition. In particula...

We study the efficiency of the equilibrium price in a centralized, order-driven market where many asymmetrically informed traders are active for many periods. We show that asymmetries of information can lead to sub-optimal information revelation with respect to the symmetric case. In particular, we assess that the more precise the information the h...

We study the efficiency of the equilibrium price in a centralized, order-driven market where many asymmetrically informed traders are active for many periods.

Both product differentiation through quality and capacity commitment have been shown to relax price competition. However, they have not been considered simultaneously. To this end we consider a three stage game where firms choose quality then commit to capacity and finally compete in price.

We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for wi...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

We consider the following stage game : A domestic government chooses an import quota, then a domestic and a foreign firm choose their quality level before engaging a price competition in the final stage. We first show that the indirect effect of the quota on the sales of the domestic producer are different depending on whether his product quality i...

Williamson (1979) claims that in a buyer-seller relationship with observable but unverifiable investments and state of nature, the hold up of future benefits leads to underinvestment. Aghion, Dewatripont and Rey (1994) resolve it provided that the initial contract can specify a default option and allocate the bargaining power to either of the party i...

We consider the effects of export restraints on price competition in the Hotelling model of horizontal product differentiation. We characterise the Nash equilibrium for all possible values of the quota and compare our results with those of Krishna. We show that a foreign producer would choose a voluntary Export Restraint in he vicinity of the Free...

In this paper we examine the impact of membership in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) on trade between PTA members. Rather than considering the impact of PTA membership on the volume of trade we consider the impact of membership on the structure of trade. For a large sample of countries over the period 1962-2000 we find that membership in a PTA...

We consider the two-stage game proposed by Kreps and Scheinkman (83) in the address-model of horizontal differentiation developed by Hotelling. Firms choose capacities in the first stage and then compete in prices. We show that price competition is drastically softened since in almost all subgame perfect equilibria firms behave as if they were an i...

This paper analyses the interaction between comparative advantages, social protection and the political system.

In this note, we extend the classical result of Kreps & Scheinkman (1983) to an oligopolistic setting where capacity is modelled as an imperfect commitment device. To this end, we retain the cost structure put froward in Dixit (1980), i.e. we allow firms to produce beyond installed capacities but in this case they have to incur an additional unit c...

Wind powered generation (WPG) is the dominant renewable energy source for electricity production. The impossibility to stock electricity coupled with the intermittent nature of WPG limits its contribution to the adequacy of electrical systems. We investigate this issue from an economic rather than technical point of view and define the social cost...

In this paper, we characterize the price equilibrium in a Hotelling model where rms face capacity constraints. For a wide range of capacity levels, a pure strategy equilibrium does not exist. When this is the case, we show that in a mixed strategy equilibrium rms use a nite number of prices and the number of price in their support dier by at most o...