Title: Size, Subsidies and Technical Efficiency in Renewable Energy Production: an Empirical Study of Austrian Biogas Plants.
Speaker: Bernhard Mahlberg
Date: 05/05/2016 12:00 h
Location: Sala de Seminarios, Edificio Torretamarit
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to measure the efficiency of biogas plants in Austria and identify causes of inefficiency. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is applied on a representative sample of 86 biogas plants covering about one third of the installed electric capacity of Austrian biogas plants. By comparing each plant with all other plants, DEA provides a relative performance measure and identifies the plants operating efficiently. In a second-stage regression analysis the effects of subsidies and other environmental variables on efficiency are investigated. The main results are: i) 34% of biogas plants in our sample are technically efficient, 40% are scale efficient and 50 % are purely technically efficient; ii) small biogas plants (≤100 kW) are scale inefficient exhibiting increasing returns to scale; iii) plants with an enclosed digestate storeage unit are more efficient; iv) the relationship between production subsidies and pure technical efficiency is significantly negative; v) the correlation between investment subsidies and pure technical efficiency is negative but insignificant. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that production subsidies provide a disincentive to managerial effort of plant operators.
Brief Bio:
Bernhard Mahlberg is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Industrial Research (IWI) and Lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). Prior to joining the IWI he worked at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (first as Research Assistant at the Department of Economic Theory and Policy and then as Assistant Professor at the European Institute) and the Austrian Institute of Economic Research. His thesis quantified the effects of the single European market on Austrian and German insurance companies. The main research interests of Bernhard Mahlberg are efficiency and productivity analyzes with data envelopment analysis, Energy and Environmental Economics and Applied input-output models.
Title: A unified view of metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization
Speaker: El-Ghazali Talbi
Date: 27/04/2016 11:00 h
Location: Sala de Seminarios, Edificio Torretamarit
Abstract:
The aim of this talk is to present a unified view of metaheuristic approaches for multi-objective optimization. Following three main issues dealing with fitness assignment, diversity preservation and elitism, a robust and flexible model is introduced. This model is validated by demonstrating how state-of-the-art methods can conveniently fit into it. Then, a modular implementation is proposed and is successfully integrated in a general purpose software framework dedicated to the reusable design of multi-objective metaheuristic optimization techniques such as evolutionary algorithms.
Brief Bio:
El-Ghazali Talbi received the Master and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble in France. He is a full Professor at the University of Lille and the head of DOLPHIN research group from both the Lille’s Computer Science laboratory (LIFL, Universite Lille 1, CNRS) and INRIA Lille Nord Europe. His current research interests are in the field of multi-objective optimization, parallel algorithms, metaheuristics, combinatorial optimization, cluster and cloud computing, hybrid and cooperative optimization, and applications to logistics/transportation, bioinformatics and networks. Professor Talbi has to his credit more than 150 international publications including journal papers, book chapters and conferences proceedings.
Title: Economic Geography and Infrastructures: Implications for Agglomeration and Regional Cohesion
Speaker: Javier Barbero
Date: 14/04/2016 11:00
Location: Sala de Seminarios, Edificio Torretamarit
Abstract:
Economic geography is the study of where economic activity takes place and what are the underlying forces explaining it. To the traditional questions that economics aims to answer – what to produce, how to produce, and for whom to produce – economic geography adds a new important one: where to produce. In this talk research results of a doctoral thesis on how accessibility and market size affects the location of economic activity are presented. Resorting on network theory we are able to model the transportation infrastructure of a country and, depending on the network topology, determine how economic activity is unevenly distributed across space. This allows us to draw policy implications on ow infrastructure policy should be targeted to increase cohesion between regions.
Brief Bio:
Javier Barbero is Ph.D. in Economics and he holds MSc in International Economic by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He received a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education in 2012. He has made research stays at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at The London School of Economics and Political Science. His research fields are economic theory, spatial economics, location theory, and the introduction of network theory and computational methods in economic analysis, among others. He participates as a researcher in projects financed by ministries and public and private administrations.
Title: A Data Envelopment Analysis Toolbox for MATLAB
Speaker: Javier Barbero
Date: 08/04/2016 12:00
Location: Sala de Seminarios, Edificio Torretamarit
Abstract:
Data Envelopment Analysis Toolbox is a new package for MATLAB that includes functions to calculate the main DEA models. The package includes code for the standard additive and radial input and output measures, allowing for constant and variable returns to scale, as well as recent developments related to the directional distance function, and including both desirable and undesirable outputs when measuring efficiency and productivity; i.e., Malmquist and Malmquist-Luenberger indices. Bootstrapping to perform statistical analysis is also included. In this talk we are going to describe the methodology and implementation of the functions and show numerical results with well-known examples to illustrate their use. Data Envelopment Analysis Toolbox is available as free software, under the GNU General Public License version 3, and can be downloaded from http://www.deatoolbox.com, with all the supplementary material (data, examples and source code) to replicate all results to be presented during the talk. Users will benefit from the collaboration and review of the community, and can check the code to learn how DEA optimizing programs are translated into suitable code.
Brief Bio:
Javier Barbero is Ph.D. in Economics and he holds MSc in International Economic by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He received a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education in 2012. He has made research stays at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at The London School of Economics and Political Science. His research fields are economic theory, spatial economics, location theory, and the introduction of network theory and computational methods in economic analysis, among others. He participates as a researcher in projects financed by ministries and public and private administrations.
