Mobility-on-demand pricing versus private vehicle TCO: how cost structures hinder the dethroning of the car

This study uses a unique dataset on the cost of motoring in Germany to analyse cost competitiveness of emerging mobility-on-demand (MOD) services. Previous studies have focused on comparing current and projected MOD prices with the average cost of private motoring. This study quantifies which proportion of private car travel would actually turn out to be costlier than MOD given that MOD costs drop below certain levels relative to the cost of private motoring. In this context, not the average but the distribution of the costs of motoring are the key issue. These costs are strongly skewed across the cars in private households when including new and old vehicles: a large proportion of private car kilometres are driven at relatively low cost. The study uses simplified scenario settings with MOD price levels ranging from 0.1 €/km to 1.5 €/km to make predictions of hypothetical modal shifts under the assumption that car user switch to the most economic mode of travel. These modal shifts serve as an indicator of MOD cost competitiveness. The results indicate that MOD prices would have to drop to 0.5 €/km or lower to have a notable impact on use of the private car if cost was the key mode choice criterion. Only if MOD prices drop down to a level of about 0.3 €/km—quite possibly a lower boundary for automated MOD—MOD-enabled mobility packages would be the less costly alternative to the private car for a substantial proportion of mileage. However, even at that MOD price level, the private car would still be the most economic option for the majority of today’s car user kilometres. Our findings illustrate that the skewed distribution of the cost of owning and running private cars—where many of those who drive much drive inexpensively—substantially dampens the disruptive potential of MOD. While we use data from Germany to illustrate this, many of our findings are more widely applicable.

Two-Dimensional Loading in Vehicle Routing Problem With Release and Due Dates

In this paper, we study a two-dimensional vehicle loading and routing problem, in which customer orders with deadlines become available for dispatch as per their release dates. The objective is to minimize the sum of transportation, inventory, and tardiness costs, while respecting various loading and routing constraints. This scenario allows us to study various tradeoffs that tend to arise due to temporal order aggregation across release dates. We thereby propose an integrated mathematical formulation to simultaneously model both the routing and loading requirements of the problem at hand. Specifically, as the problem is NP-hard, we propose a scatter search based heuristic approach to solve large-size instances. Further, its performance is enhanced using problem-specific procedures and strategic oscillation approaches. Additionally, the numerical experiments illustrate the influence of cost structures on both the optimal loading configurations along with the optimal routes. Importantly, our experiments also suggest that the proposed scatter search method can produce good quality solutions in less time.

Potential for Deep Rural Broadband Coverage With Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Radio Networks

Since the first generation of cellular networks was rolled out, the priority has been to improve the connectivity and capacity of densely populated areas, such as urban centers, whereas rural areas received less attention. The lower subscriber density of such areas makes it difficult to get a positive business case with current wireless technologies and current cost structures. Base stations are deployed more sparsely in rural areas and are typically shared by several operators and are thus not able to provide high-performance connectivity, compared to urban areas, resulting in a connectivity gap. Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently introducing Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) in 5G NR scope with Release 17 for broadband services, and this development will likely continue in 6G networks. In parallel, Sparse Terrestrial Networks (STN) using high towers and large antenna arrays, are being developed to deliver very long transmission ranges. In this paper we discuss the characteristics and the expected performance of networks based on satellites or terrestrial large cell networks, in relation to the traffic density and required infrastructure, with a focus on remote and sparsely populated areas. The two solutions are found to deliver in complementary traffic and partly different use case scenarios.

Cost-Structure and the Volatility of Capitalism

This conceptual paper explores the phenomena of changing cost-structures and the implications for the volatility of capitalism and the possibility to manage firms in such a hostile environment and proposes future research. It also provides an explanation of why the relevance of accounting is lost, the so-called “relevance lost” debate (see among others Francis & Schipper, 1999). The changing cost-structures raises fundamental questions concerning the resulting volatility of capitalism and the management of firms in such an increasingly more volatile environment. In Philipson, Johansson & Scheley (2016), we raised the question if it was possible to “...to ride the dragon.” Considering the importance of these phenomena, it is astonishing that we have not found any empirical research concerning them. They rest research questions, based on the author’s almost 25 years of experience as a senior executive in Scandinavian industry.

Impact of Social Interactions on Duopoly Competition with Quality Considerations

We study the impacts of social interactions on competing firms’ quality differentiation, pricing decisions, and profit performance. Two forms of social interactions are identified and analyzed: (1) market-expansion effect (MEE)—the total market expands as a result of both firms’ sales—and (2) value-enhancement effect (VEE)—a consumer gains additional utility of purchasing from one firm based on this firm’s previous and/or current sales volume. We consider a two-stage duopoly competition framework, in which both firms select quality levels in the first stage simultaneously and engage in a two-period price competition in the second stage. In the main model, we assume that each firm sets a single price and commits to it across two selling periods. We find that both forms of social interactions tend to lower prices and intensify price competition for given quality levels. However, MEE weakens the product-quality differentiation and is benign to both high-quality and low-quality firms. It also benefits consumers and improves social welfare. By contrast, VEE enlarges the quality differentiation and only benefits the high-quality firm, but is particularly malignant to the low-quality firm. It further reduces the consumers’ monetary surplus. Such impact is consistent, regardless of whether the VEE interactions involve previous or current consumers. We further discuss several model extensions, including dynamic pricing, combined social effects, and various cost structures, and verify that the aforementioned impacts of MEE and VEE are qualitatively robust to those extensions. Our results provide important managerial insights for firms in competitive markets and suggest that they need to not only be aware of the consumers’ social interactions, but also, more importantly, distinguish the predominant form of the interactions so as to apply proper marketing strategies. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.

Accounting for preference dependency in target costing – a note

Target costing is a well-established strategic cost management tool in theory and practice. The original target costing model implies independence of customer preferences resulting in additive utility functions for the customer-oriented optimization of cost structures. We argue that this independence of preferences is not given until a minimum variant of a product is reached that provides its inherent functionality. This is reasonable since one cannot assign customer utility to a product that does not function in its most basic way. Our modified model accounts for the dependency of customer preferences and differentiates between the costs necessary to produce a minimum variant and those related to product features beyond this minimum variant. The customer-oriented optimization of the cost structure is then conducted only for those costs that exceed the costs of the minimum variant. This modification justifies the preference independence assumption in target costing and allows for a more reasonable assignment of required adjustments in costs per product component.

Learning to Let Go: Ownership, Rights, Fees, and Permissions of Readers’ Photographs

This article explores the variance in attitudes towards user photography in UK libraries, archives, and museums. It examines the various interpretations of copyright and rights to reproduce images of items in the public domain deployed by cultural heritage institutions, the cost structures for user photography in the reading room, and the historic reasons for these decisions. Finally, this article explores the impact of the multiplicity of regulations on the researcher and the benefits of a clear and open approach to access and to the new research methods being employed by readers.

Targeted genome editing of plants and plant cells for biomanufacturing

Plants have provided humans with useful products since antiquity, but in the last 30 years they have also been developed as production platforms for small molecules and recombinant proteins. This initially niche area has blossomed with the growth of the global bioeconomy, and now includes chemical building blocks, polymers and renewable energy. All these applications can be described as “plant molecular farming” (PMF). Despite its potential to increase the sustainability of biologics manufacturing, PMF has yet to be embraced broadly by industry. This reflects a combination of regulatory uncertainty, limited information on process cost structures, and the absence of trained staff and suitable manufacturing capacity. However, the limited adaptation of plants and plant cells to the requirements of industry-scale manufacturing is an equally important hurdle. For example, the targeted genetic manipulation of yeast has been common practice since the 1980s, whereas reliable site-directed mutagenesis in most plants has only become available with the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 and similar genome editing technologies since around 2010. Here we summarize the applications of new genetic engineering technologies to improve plants as biomanufacturing platforms. We start by identifying current bottlenecks in manufacturing, then illustrate the progress that has already been made and discuss the potential for improvement at the molecular, cellular and organism levels. We discuss the effects of metabolic optimization, adaptation of the endomembrane system, modified glycosylation profiles, programmable growth and senescence, protease inactivation, and the expression of enzymes that promote biodegradation. We outline strategies to achieve these modifications by targeted gene modification, considering case-by-case examples of individual improvements and the combined modifications needed to generate a new general-purpose “chassis” for PMF.