Evaluation of Continuous Power-Down Schemes

We consider a power-down system with two states—“on” and “off”—and a continuous set of power states. The system has to respond to requests for service in the “on” state and, after service, the system can power off or switch to any of the intermediate power-saving states. The choice of states determines the cost to power on for subsequent requests. The protocol for requests is “online”, which means that the decision as to which intermediate state (or the off-state) the system will switch has to be made without knowledge of future requests. We model a linear and a non-linear system, and we consider different online strategies, namely piece-wise linear, logarithmic and exponential. We provide results under online competitive analysis, which have relevance for the integration of renewable energy sources into the smart grid. Our analysis shows that while piece-wise linear systems are not specific for any type of system, logarithmic strategies work well for slack systems, whereas exponential systems are better suited for busy systems.

Further Evidence on Competition in Nonprofit Donor Markets

This article introduces a novel empirical approach to the nonprofit literature that can measure competition between nonprofit organizations. Our approach provides a framework to determine how the number of organizations may be incorporated into empirical competitive analysis. We then systematically estimate the average population needed to support a given number of nonprofits in a market. We find that, for the 10 nonprofit industries examined, markets reach competitive levels once four or more nonprofits have entered. The results suggest that a relatively small number of nonprofits are needed to ensure robust competition. Our findings demonstrate that donor market competition is both predictive in nonprofit entry decisions and remarkably similar to competitive behavior among for-profit firms. We discuss several implications of these findings, in terms of both policy and future empirical research.

Financial Analysis of MI’s Company Based on Harvard Analysis Framework

This paper takes the financial statements of MI from 2017to 2019, and uses Harvard analysis framework to analyse the financial situation of MI. The analysis content mainly includes enterprise macro environment, industry competitive analysis and financial ratio analysis. This paper tried to understand the current situation and development prospect of MI. Based on the analysis of MI’s financial situation under the framework of Harvard, we summarized the existing problems and put forward suggestions.