About us
Athena is a consultancy firm specialized in economics, statistics, auctions, and competition policy. Founded by Nicolas Melissas, who earned his PhD in Economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Athena brings deep expertise and experience to each project. Based in Mexico City, we provide solutions in Dutch, English, French, or Spanish. We collaborated with private and public clients across Europe and Mexico, demonstrating our ability to explain complex economic concepts to a diverse audience.
The following lists represent a very short summary of the different projects we have been working on.
- Telecommunications
- Energy
- Competition Policy
- Development & Environmental Economics
- Course on Auction Theory taught at the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) – the Mexican telecommunications regulator. (Client: IFT)
- We analyzed the IFT-4 auction which was held by the telecommunications regulator in 2017. In that auction, firms competed for the right to broadcast a radio station in a well-defined geographic area. In terms of revenues, the auction was hugely successful: One firm, for example, offered 86.5 million pesos to establish a new radio station in Cancún. After a careful analysis of the bidding data, we estimated new minimal bids for future auctions. (Client: IFT)
- Using synthetic control methods and propensity score matching techniques, we estimated the impact of the asymmetric regulation in the Mexican telecommunications sector. (Client: Centro de Estudios de Competitividad)
- Analysis of the IFT-8 spectrum auction which was held in 2022. As in the IFT-4 auction, the spectrum on offer is used by radio broadcasters to expand their existing networks. In contrast to the IFT-4 auction, bidder participation was very weak: 234 radio frequencies were offered in the auction, 147 of them received no bids, and only 31 of them received bids from two or more bidders. The consultancy service analysed all the elements of the auction to avoid such a disastrous outcome in the future. (Client: IFT)
- We estimated the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of yearly fines for undelivered Certificados de Energía Limpia. Our model also estimates the CDF of profits and losses under a variety of assumptions about the future spot price of electricity. (Client: Zuma Energía)
- We replicated the outcome of the first long-term electricity auction organized by the Centro Nacional de Control de Energía (Client: Zuma Energía).
- We constructed a detailed database with all the bids submitted in the first three long-term electricity auctions. Among other things, our database includes information about which bids were inclusive and which were mutually exclusive.
- We analyzed several open season auctions for the transportation of natural gas in Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and the UK.
- Course on Auction Theory taught at the CENACE.
- We aided various government agencies to design an efficient auction.
- Estimation of consumer harm caused by a cartel in the Mexican pension fund industry. Between November 2012 and June 2014, four Mexican pension funds took steps to reduce the number of clients which wanted to switch from one cartel member to another. We estimated the harm caused by one cartel member and we argued that that harm was much lower than the one originally estimated by the Mexican Competition Authority.
- Estimation of consumer harm caused by a cartel in the Mexican sugar industry. Between the 29th of October and the ninth of December 2013, several firms successfully coordinated their output and pricing strategies to prop up wholesale sugar prices in Mexico. In the first week of December, for example, we estimated that sugar prices would have been 11% lower in the absence of any collusive agreement. (The counterfactual was estimated using time-series econometric techniques. Wholesale sugar prices were in decline prior to the entry of the cartel and, according to industry insiders, were expected to continue to decrease. This also explains why firms decided to form a cartel in the first place.) We estimated consumer harm to slightly exceed 215 million pesos—a rather large amount considering that the cartel was only active during six weeks. Our paper was published in a book published by the Mexican Competition Authority. (Client: COFECE)
- Identifying relevant markets and verifying the presence of a dominant firm in at least one of the identified relevant markets. (Client: Belgian Railroad Regulator)
- Analysis of mobility patterns in Mexico City during the COVID pandemic. Dr. Melissas documented that mobility went down—and sometimes spectacularly so—in the rich parts of the city between the 30th of March and the 1st of June 2020. In some poorer parts of the city, however, mobility went up! This finding can be explained by the fact that some unskilled persons work in the richer parts of the city as waiters, informal workers, etc. During the lockdown, businesses in the more affluent parts of the city were closed and there was no more work for the unskilled. As unskilled workers typically possess few savings, staying at home was just not an option for them and they started to look for alternative sources of income closer to their homes. (Client: United Nations Development Program in Mexico)
- Analysis of employment trends in the formal sector using data from the Mexican Social Security Institute. (Client: UNDP Mexico)
- Analysis of the evolution of digital skills. Dr. Melissas documented that some basic digital skills, such as sending and receiving emails, dramatically increased during the pandemic. (Client: UNDP Mexico)
- Analysis of remittances. Based on data from Mexico’s central bank, Mexico received almost 230 billion pesos as remittances in the third quarter of 2020. According to the Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares, however, the total amount of remittances received in the same quarter is slightly less than 15 billion pesos. This mismatch between both data sources can be explained by the fact that many households are afraid of organized crime and prefer to underreport the amount of money they receive from their family members in the US. (Client: UNDP Mexico)
- Analysis of GHG emissions, employment, and value added in Mexico. Using data from the Instituto Nacional de Ecología y de Cambio Climático and from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, we computed the emissions per employee and per value added in 31 industrial sectors in Mexico. (Client: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)