Fernando Gascón

A payback model for radio frequency in warehousing

In spite of the wide experience already developed in the field of internal logistics using radio frequency, many companies are wary of its implantation due to the fact that the benefits of this technology are not easily quantifiable in most cases. Develops a detailed discounted payback analysis of the cash flows associated with the implementation of radio frequency, presenting a table with the needed payback periods depending on the size of the warehouse.

Measuring the efficiency of large pharmaceutical companies: an industry analysis

This paper evaluates the relative efficiency of a sample of 37 large pharmaceutical laboratories in the period 2008–2013 using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. We describe in detail the procedure followed to select and construct relevant inputs and outputs that characterize the production and innovation activity of these pharmaceutical firms. Models are estimated with financial information from Datastream, including R&D investment, and the number of new drugs authorized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considering the time effect. The relative performances of these firms—taking into consideration the strategic importance of R&D—suggest that the pharmaceutical industry is a highly competitive sector given that there are many laboratories at the efficient frontier and many inefficient laboratories close to this border. Additionally, we use data from S&P Capital IQ to analyze 2071 financial transactions announced by our sample of laboratories as an alternative way to gain access to new drugs, and we link these transactions with R&D investment and DEA efficiency. We find that efficient laboratories make on average more financial transactions, and the relative size of each transaction is larger. However, pharmaceutical companies that simultaneously are more efficient and invest more internally in R&D announce smaller transactions relative to total assets.

Trading in Alternative Organized Markets Based on Individual and Aggregate Behavior of Participants

We study competition between stock exchanges in a game where the wealth of individuals varies over time, creating liquidity and investment needs. On the basis of a profit-maximizing investment rule, participants must decide how to allocate their wealth between bank deposits and securities. In each stage there is a shock to the price of the security, and participants may pay a fee to become analysts in order to determine the nature of this shock and trade on the information. As any player may become an analyst, the number of analysts is endogenously determined. Certain players (insiders) may receive information on the shock without becoming analysts. We carry out a numerical analysis which allows us to study competition between exchanges and to determine the threshold levels associated with switching from one exchange to another. In our model, we find that traders cluster together and liquidity follows liquidity, further reducing the order flow of the stock exchange with the lower order flow. This result is similar to those of Chowdhry and Nanda (1991) and Admati and Pfleiderer (1988). However, in our case, we are able to quantify not only the effect of the volume of the order flow on the decision of participants to trade in a given stock exchange but also the joint effect of other additional factors such as the costs of submitting an order to each of the stock exchanges that compete simultaneously or the differences in terms of the probability of informed trading in both exchanges.

A Model of Financial Markets and Financial Intermediation

We build a model with a wide variety of players (liquidity traders, speculators, market makers, financial intermediaries, borrowers and lenders). The paper derives the individual and aggregate behavior of participants who are involved in financial interchanges taking into consideration the capacity of some participants to choose the role they want to play and the capacity to allocate funds between financial intermediaries and markets. It is shown that the values of the parameters are crucial in determining which players will and will not exist.